![Sleeping rickshaw driver, Hoi An, Vietnam [postcard]](https://jorgemolder.com/img/mata-2020/3129/image_1ZeI6p6scknKx.jpg)
1Hoi An, VietnamI took this photo walking back to my hotel in Hoi An, central Vietnam. I was leaving the next morning, and after packing I would have only a few hours left to wander the artfully-lit streets. I& 39;d resolved, firmly, to put my camera away, determined to experience the place live and not entirely through a camera lens.
This is episode 4 of a 5-part exclusive series, presented by Caldwell Collections and Our Site. Learn more.ARCTIC MAN was officially a go when I got a voicemail from Anchorage sled driver Spike Laskey at 6am. His message reassured us that all we needed to do was pull the trigger: “Hey this is Spike…I’m on my out there right now, not sure if I’ll have service, but yeah I’ll toss you a rope and tow you up a fucking hill if you want…” Click.
One of the items on my “pro” list for moving to San Jose is, “We can come back.”Neruda said, “Those who return never left.” It is, as my husband used to say, insistently, each of the many times we said goodbye during our ulta-long-distance courtship, “hasta luego,” not “adios.” Never adios.Our son says to me, “Mamita, I love you so much, como el sol.
1. Oysters from Bowens IslandI am a strong believer in the aphrodisiac quality of oysters, and I have yet to top the sensual experience produced at Bowens Island. This place serves the freshest genital-esque morsels to ever go down your throat (that are not actually human genitalia). If you’re not Kosher and love seafood, you will miss this no-nonsense establishment located en route to Folly Beach.
I’VE TRAVELED TO some of the most remote locations across the globe, including the Okavango Delta in Botswana, rainforests in South Vietnam, and the Aleutian Islands off the coast of Alaska, but I’ve never been able to fully escape the presence of man. For this reason, the allure of Antarctica as one of the last true wilderness frontiers on Earth was overwhelming.
Deep into our flight to New York, my head hit the tray table as I jarred awake, startled from my dream. I had just fallen for the 30th+ time on the last crux move of Picos Pardos, a route I had been climbing on for the previous three weeks. As my vision came into focus, I could make out the stewardess passing a customs form to the man sitting next to me.
“You’re a travel writer,” people say to me. “But you’re afraid of flying? How does that work?”It doesn’t. A terrible experience happened to me, where a flight from Lagos, Nigeria, to Accra, Ghana, kept losing altitude for 30 minutes straight. Storm clouds surrounded us, and I couldn’t see shit. The captain didn’t come on the loudspeaker to say there would be turbulence, or sorry for the inconvenience, or that we were totally safe and not crashing to the ground due to a terrible malfunction.
![South Africa has the craziest airport announcements ever [vid]](https://jorgemolder.com/img/mata-2020/3764/image_3h6mYrbrCoqo1.jpg)
