 So this is the book and there are copies of it back there, and I actually have more copies with me Optimus that I am not But that's the book. I'm going to be reading from So I guess I'll just I mean this is really thank you for coming in the rain That's the first thing I want to say And I really I love reading from this book and I'm just going to tell you kind of how it happened and how I Think I started my love of travel so When I travel we as I said we've been to almost a hundred countries and every state in the country my husband's British we've traveled for work and for pleasure and And I always write travel kind of travel-loggy things you've been yes, which my friends love getting With pictures and stuff especially since the internet with pictures And I have a friend who who actually her book group is using this book at the end of the month I'm going to New Jersey for that But she would always say to me you should just do a book of these that so I just feel like I'm there It's just you know wonderful, so I thought well why not it's already like written I just have to pull it together and edit it and so forth now a lot of the stories in the book Were I had said from years I've been doing them for years They were on floppies and I could and when we started using sticks. I just threw out the floppies But I had hard copy so I couldn't just get you know get them. Well, I managed to a Friend of mine who's a techie Managed to take this so I picked ones that I thought were reasonably okay and put them together Although they had mess ups in them and and he was able to create an actual workable MS word document so the these are not by any means a complete a complete book with nearly a hundred countries and Some of the it's random a little bit because of what I could access plus newer stuff However, I did organize them by continent so there's Europe Asia Africa Middle East and also Some of my collections are I often combine prose and poetry So this book is a combination of prose and poetry. It's not a photo or is it's very personal stories some of which are hilarious some of which are poignant, you know and And they include personal pictures the first run of the book the pictures were all color Let me see in this one These this book has color so you'd be lucky enough to buy one of these because for cost reasons the publisher on the second run Had to go to black and white to make the book a little more affordable And then there some of them have post scripts about the person. I was writing about or whatever. So it's a really Personal armchair travel book and people and it just got a great review I'm playing some people who read it really seem to like it. So that's how I came to do the book It was published in March by a small press I've worked with before called brawler books in Ohio and They did my last two books. This one is called children of the chalet. It's new and selected stories and And it won an award. That's what the gold seal was for Fiction and the day that I was to get my 50 free copies the day I was to get my copies This company went under and the guy I was working with was felt so badly that we weren't grandfathered Those of us that were in process that he committed to me to send me fifth to get me the 50 books They were sending me so I did get them. However, the covers were incomplete So I can only give them away or sell them for five bucks or something They're missing the attribution of the quotes and they're missing the Publishers imprint and they're missing the award piece Anyway, that but I didn't bring these books with me But I did bring the postcards if you're interested in them and then I worked with him again the same friend who told me to do this book asked me to do this book We're a part of a women's group and in the last three years Several of the women in that group have lost their partners or have been caregivers And so that we did a lot of talking about that and she said, you know You should really do a book about because I've done anthologies And so this is my fourth anthology done with the same production house, which is very small And it's 21 women caregivers writing Beautiful pieces in support of other women caregivers also in pros and poetry and this one is my one and only novel Which I'm actually about to undertake revising and trying to sell to a bigger house And this is called Hester's Daughters and it's a contemporary feminist Sort of retelling of the scarlet letter so all the key events in the scarlet letter replicated in modern context So and then I have and other books anthologies and short stories and stuff But so let me tell you quickly where my it's in the preface of the book My my love of travel really derives from the fact that my father was my parents were immigrants Actually at the turn of the century when they were a little the at last 1900s when they were very young Because they were both born in the Ukraine and They pogroms and in the early 1900s the pogroms against the Jews were pretty awful So my they both the both families had emigrated my father's family went to Canada Some of my mom's family went there, but mostly they came to Philadelphia And so every summer what my father was a small-scale merchant He was a haberdasher in New Jersey where I grew up actually he looked just like Harry Truman who was also a haberdasher And our summer holiday was that we would go every summer for two weeks We would go to Toronto to visit family, but it was in the days when there wasn't there weren't Superhighways so we would go we would come up through New England or New York State always Niagara Falls So it was very scenic and we'd stay it there was no holiday in thing or whatever So we'd stay in triple a approved motels with the Chanel bedspreads and the peeling linoleum and all that But it was so exciting to as a child to wake up every that morning And we had laid our new clothes our little sandals and our t-shirts and stuff out on the bed It was six o'clock in the morning We'd get up and we would drive for a bit and then we'd go to Howard Johnson's for breakfast And then they were favorite and we were crossing a border and the money changed and you know stuff like that So I think that's really what it began to instill in me that that that love of travel and then when I was young I when I was in my early 20s. I was living in New York with my route my college roommate and We decided we were going to go to Europe However, we didn't have this we had to wait a year because we had to save money So we said well, we're not going to go anywhere this summer. We'll go each of us home Well, she went home and got engaged to the boy next door from high school. So I said I'm not I'm not waiting so I the following year with hotel reservations a new real pass traveled by myself and throughout your several countries in Europe and Pardon that was 1965. I Was I was 21. I was 21. Yeah And that trip honestly in very archetypal terms changed my life I just felt as if I had crawled back into my own skin, you know, I had I I just found it a very sensual experience I could be honest. I would meet these amazing people one after the other figuring out the currencies and the geography and all that and And I and I came back feeling like I I can never marry an American This is this is a this is first of all There's such a genuine exchange with foreign people and and it's it's not sexual It's sensual, you know, you can be who you are and here was my sister saying to me Don't let the boys know how smart you are because they won't like that and I felt well. That's pretty stupid but there I felt I could be very real and and That really was a profound trip for me So so the been these milestones in my in my journey that have given given me the love of travel so in my professional work, I was First of all on a national level. I've worked in women's health advocacy and education And that's where my heart really is and and I've been it and then I had an academic career in gender studies And then when I got my master's degree, I did it in health communications Which is not about how to talk to your doctor. It's a whole multidisciplinary Methodology about behavior change for health promotion using communication and I began to write professionally a lot about that in the 80s And I also in the 80s went to I covered the Nairobi The UN conference for women if you recall the middle one was in Nairobi and I went to that I covered that And then I was in the Beijing conference anyway when I got my master's I was by that time interested in working Internationally because the health promotion stuff that I was studying and working on had to do with child survival So immunization getting Knowing or T oral rehydration therapy breastfeeding family planning. So I actually was managing deputy director of a big international USA ID funded Health communications project the first one that a ID ever did And so that was how I started being international my husband who's British had come to the states from the British Treasury Actually had met him at the Embassy in Washington And he subsequently left the Treasury to join the World Bank So we were both traveling a lot and we were able to we got a home leave to England every two years with the kids And so we could travel from there Sometimes we could segue our trips and meet up somewhere and a few times I actually went with him or he came with me So that was how we expanded this whole travel thing So I don't do that work anymore. I do writing workshops and I consider myself a full-time writer and Lecturer and so on but one of the things I have done in the last few years is I've done several volunteer trips As a doula. I'm a doula. Do you know what a doula is so a doula? So a doula is not the midwife. I don't catch the babies what we are there for as is solely to provide emotional and Physical support for the laboring mother labor and delivery and the family And so I wanted to do I wanted to do that in in a broad So the first time I did it was in the capital of Somalia and which is a It sees itself as an independent country from Somalia, but it's really a chunk of Somalia Does have its own capital city its own currency and stuff like that And the what the hospital I went to was the woman was written up in Nicholas Kristoff's book Holding up half something about holding up half the sky or something So I went there and that was an interesting experience. I did a lot of birthing with women there taught nurses about Support and so forth second time I did it was in Greece with I'd met There I had met a French Research physician a woman who spoke French and Greek because her husband got captain And they live in Greek a lot and Greece a lot and the next opportunity was to I had was to work with as a doula In Greece with refugee women and I asked Brigitte to come with me and she did thank God because otherwise I would have had to come home because it was so poorly organized and I don't speak Greek or whatever So that was the second experience. I didn't get to do birthing there But we were with supporting pregnant women And then the third time was when I just came back from Peru Where there were no patients and no nobody there because the hospital hadn't been certified yet. So Um, so those are some of the experiences I've had so one of the pieces that I like to read from the book I I enjoy reading from this book is has to do with when I was transiting to Hargeza I flown emirates to Dubai and then on down And this is a story that derives from that Hang on just a second. It's called Dubai desert wish and the guy I'm there's a picture of the guy that I'm going to Read about but he actually made the cover as well So Dubai desert wish Against my better judgment I await the driver who will take me from the lobby of my hotel to an evening in the desert near Dubai city of concrete chrome and glass I know that I've signed on for a typical tourist excursion that includes racing over sand dunes in a specially designed vehicle Riding a camel and getting your hands decorated with henna if you wish But I have only one layover day in Dubai and I figure that dinner in the desert under the stars is worth the cost of the trip The driver who bears a striking resemblance to a young version of libya's late dictator at mumar al-Qaddafi greets me wearing men's traditional long white robe known as dish dash and a head scarf or kafia Held in place by a braided red cloth encircling his head. You know Arafat used to wear them We are joined by a french woman and her young son and a young woman from south africa Who climbed into the back seat leaving me to ride shotgun with qaddafi This is fortuitous because I get to talk to him like the feminist and journalist that I am I ask him questions about the landscape as we set out on our one hour journey and about his country's culture As he relaxes into the conversation, which my companions also are enjoying I tell him laughingly who he reminds me of and he thinks it's funny too Then I ask about his family His wife. He tells us was killed in a car crash leaving him with three children one of whom is a little girl Welcome They all live with his parents now. It's a tragic story that makes me sad I ask about her and their life together in such a conservative culture Was yours an arranged marriage? I ask of course Did she wear an abaya and hey job? Of course Was she permitted to go out by herself? Not necessary Did he think she would have liked more independence? No I take a risk and deepen the conversation Qaddafi, I realize thinks I'm crazy than where we talk, but to his credit. He continues engaging with me Do you think your wife and other women like her ever long for more in life than simply being their husband's cook Made laundry's mother of their children And then I added the term sexual vessel because I know I knew he didn't know what it would mean But I had just come from a country where women have their genitals cut off and have no voice and have no nothing So for readers of the book I put it in I I explained to him that I've just come from Somali land where women are chattel They have no voice no right to their own bodies. No personal possessions. No way to be people They are simply property Deprived of everything but survival if they're lucky and I say that because um in Somali land 99.9 of the women are completely infibrillated They cannot have they cannot have a c-section a c-section a medically necessary c-section unless their husband agrees Very often their attitude is inshallah and they don't agree And if they have to have a hysterectomy they have to have the father's permission because he owns her body That's how bad it is um so so I say I I I asked the question do you think your wife and other women like her along for more than what they have? No, he says adding she get to sit in front of car like you I can't stop thinking about his wife. I wonder what she might have been like if she'd been born somewhere else I wonder if she and I could have talked honestly if we'd ever met I explained to qaddafi that in my country his might his wife might be called a victim of culture Maybe you're a victim too I suggest Maybe you would have been enriched if she'd had more freedom to be who she was in her heart He looks at me like i'm nuts We arrive at the desert and qaddafi dutifully starts our high speed terrifying sand dune dips and swerves We beg him to stop but he thinks we're having fun When we convince him we really want to forfeit this part of the trip He relents and takes us to the campsite where we forgo camels I'd already ridden the camel and henna and are seated on carpets for dinner under the stars On the trip back to the city. I noticed that qaddafi has removed his kafia Relieved it seems to me that he can drop the facade That as part of a job he wishes he didn't have to do This time I ask about his daughter She's eight years old and completely enveloped in the traditional life they lead What do you think she would like to be when she grows up if she could choose? I ask qaddafi looks at me at me like i'm totally ridiculous What if she could go to school maybe be a teacher or a nurse or even a doctor? I continue think about that. She'd probably she's probably full of life Don't you want her to be all that she dreams of? For some reason I feel a fierce attachment to this unseen child I care about her just as I feel sad for her mother and all the other females like them I think qaddafi is probably a good man in a bad culture. I really want to reach him Listen, I say I tell him about the work that I do to help make the lives of women and girls better I explain western ideas about human rights women's rights freedom and autonomy I talk about living the fullest life possible as god's gift and blessing I can't be sure but maybe just maybe I've planted a seed. I'm telling you I smile I'm going to be on your shoulder as that little girl grows up. I'm going to keep whispering in your ear about her I won't go away. So watch out. I'm always going to be there for her When he drops us off at the hotel qaddafi smiles at me I extend my hand and he actually shakes it which is big I'm glad I've gone to the desert in a dune buggy. It's an experience. I don't forget Perhaps qaddafi remembers it too It's several years now since I was in Dubai I still think about that little girl and I still whisper in qaddafi's ear I like to think he hears me as he watches his daughter dance to her dreams I like to imagine that he takes joy in seeing the young woman. She's becoming I know it's a long shot, but hey a girl can dream at any age. Can't she And this post script is I often do think about that little girl and wonder if her father thinks of me as she grows older You don't always know when you have made a difference in someone's life So welcome you didn't miss much. I was talking about how I came to love travel and My work that took me places and stuff like that Okay Pardon But well my work my work for many years professionally was doing international women's health promotion and Child survival health promotion through communications Yeah, and and then I had an academic career and now I'm a full-time writer Well, it was what let me say it was what I expected because I knew it was one of those like touristy things So, you know So I that part didn't interest me But we did sit on and of course there are a lot of people who come from all the hotels and everything So there's carpets spread out all over it is really desert You drive an hour through the desert and you pass a couple of farms and stuff and um And the and the food you sit on the On these rugs and there are low tables and the food is brought to you and it's very traditional food And it is you can see the stars like crazy and What like no, just no, it's just like seeing stars where there's no lights A lot of them Yeah No, it wasn't quite it It might have been that romantic if there were fewer people and not all the stuff that happens before with the Henan and all that kind of stuff, but it was it was worth it. It was it. Well, actually it was worth it to me You know people always say to me what's your favorite country your place or you know And honestly the answer is where my where the it it's based on the people when you have an experience like this And I've had many many of them many exchanges that are deeply meaningful and many that are in this book Um, that's the place. I love you know, I I do love Italy as my favorite European country. I love Thailand because I did live there Um, but there are many places I love and usually it's because I've had an extraordinary exchange while I've been there So part of I'll read you as I said, there is poetry in this book and um at the end of the book, there's a short section called Um, let me just see what I forget what I called it Some of these are North American trips that are funny too. Um It's called global perspectives in poetry and I'll just read you two of them One is called all the starving children Their eyes are everywhere the children for whom I ate green peas when I was young Their eyes are everywhere staring at me from dark hollow pools of despair In Mexico, they sprawl on the pavement claiming scraps of newspaper for home Bony fingers stretch out like splayed chicken feet It's one o'clock in the morning, but they are wide eyed and their eyes are everywhere In Bangladesh, they buzz around my car like flies on mucous filled noses and dry lips Their hands have that same withered habitual crook inverted paralyzed and their eyes are everywhere In Somalia, they drag themselves collapsing in the dust Like tumbleweed blown in by non-existent breezes Their eyelids droop down concealing glazed pupils and still their eyes are everywhere Their eyes are everywhere forcing me to avert mine And uh I did a poem called um, I listen to my heart. I listen and my heart is breaking Which I'll share with you. I wrote it at the 1985 UN conference and for women And sweet honey in the rock. Have you ever heard of them? So they put it to music And I actually got royalties for a while So I listen and my heart is breaking I listen to the women of Rio. These are all based on actual testimonies at the conference I listen to the women of Rio when they speak of street children murdered and my heart is breaking I listen to the women of Chernobyl a tale of childish faces grown old and lifeless and my heart is breaking I listen to the women of Bhopal whisper the grotesqueness of deformity and disease and my heart is breaking I listen to the women on the solomons giving testimony to jellyfish babies born without limbs and my heart is breaking I listen to the women of manila mourning the prostitution of their daughters and my heart is breaking I listen to the women of Addis Ababa describing empty stomachs and drought And my heart is breaking I listen to the women of Cyprus and Ireland and Sri Lanka and South Africa I hear conflicts pain and my heart is breaking But also I listen to the madres and the women in black and african mamas I listen to young women of asia and the pacific rim I listen to the female voice of north africa and the middle east and eastern europe And I hear the power of every women everywhere Then I rejoice. I hope I take heart And as I said I wrote that poem You know at the decade conference and sweet honey in the rocks set it set it to music There's one there's one other poem that I will read you from that section called getting religion Sometimes I get emotional at the end of this poem so don't worry if I get a little emotional I'll be fine I often cry at my own work I went to the remnants of the berlin wall Stood at the foot of the brandon bird gates cross the barren border of check point charlie And weeping in chill wind for all that had happened there. I found religion I saw the simple burial ground of geyser gardenia folk hero of hungary who told the tale of their liberation I walked the streets of buddha pesh and agar where hideous acts of history made me question the essence of humanity And still I found religion I visited the land of la clave haval and smetanism of last and watched cheerful cues of checks anxious to view their heritage On the day ancient crown jewels were shown I pressed my face against an iron fence to see the jumbled graves of the proghetto and there too I found religion But it wasn't in the great cathedrals where cold cavernous spaces drip gold and icons gazing heavenward Ignore beggars near the nave Nor in the gothic grandeur of tine church nor in the baroque splendor of saint vitus and saint george Neither monastery nor chapel could claim it I found it instead in the humble face of the waiter in east berlin And in the eager eyes of a hotel hostess who finally had a passport I saw it in the kind mustache smile of an old man playing accordion on the charles bridge And in the boy who spoke perfect english selling russian souvenirs to new tourists under the bronze majesty of yann hus I re i rejoiced in it in the beer halls and in the wine cellars and in the shops museums and theaters I celebrated its pulse and hungarian laughter and its pathos in check poetry and hungry human connection I found religion in eastern europe holy holy and its name is freedom So i'm going to read you one more thing and we'll talk then um a lighter piece which is um from my I did a When I was in thailand, um, I kept a journal and that became a Sort of a memoir. It's called um a chan, which means professor a year of teaching in thailand and it was just Basically my edited journal And I had a neighbor there Well, actually when I tried to find housings somebody had been there before Told me about this woman who was a real estate agent She said so I contacted her and she said yes. She had a little bungalow. She'd found for me was affordable Well, it turned out that she was my next door neighbor. So we had identical bungalows and um, and we just became such close friends I can't even tell you it was like one house, you know as my pajama is there Actually, there's a funny story about her being in her house So she spoke english But her husband dwee didn't speak a word of english and we used to have a hell of a good time with them So one day, um, he he didn't speak english, but he loved karaoke So one day I went my water wasn't running. So I went over there to take a shower And we each of us had a bathroom downstairs a complete bathroom, but neither of us used the shower We only used like a powder room because we had an upstairs bathroom. So there were no shower curtains So dwee thinks that i'm lana taking a shower, right? So he opens the door and walks in and sees me and i'm like this and he rushes out And the next thing I hear guy doesn't speak english I saw her standing there Anyway, we used to travel around Thailand with them and I got to go to the table of contents to find this But we had some funny experiences 70 Chiang Mai Yeah Is that were you there? Yeah, but Bangkok is like two days and you could that's it go to the palace, you know Um Okay, so and we traveled a lot while I was living there. We were in vietnam, kambodia Laos, india, indonesia. We did a lot of traveling and we worked a lot in asia too Okay, so these are just a little outtakes from the whole book that I wrote This is thailand silly the reality of living in a land you love Frustrations and all There's an expression among furong what that means westerners living in thailand. This is thailand silly We use it to remind each other of thai reality when things are hilarious or frustrating And they're often both and just an example of hilarious is the signs are hilarious because they don't spell things correctly But my favorite sign of all was in a woman's bathroom and it said please do not throw sanity in toilet With our thai friends lana and dwee we drive from Chiang Mai to Bangkok a nine-hour journey Early next morning. We head for the beach resort of pataya now. What's not included in this piece is Oh, yeah, it is included. Okay early next morning. We head for the beach resort of pataya No sooner have I navigated onto an eight lane highway when suddenly our rental car belches grinding noises and slows to a near halt A burning odor is ominous. I inch left try ties drive on the left side Cross eight lanes and coast to a stop on the narrow shoulder Laina epitome of the thai concept of Xi'an cool heart pulls out her cell phone She calls the tourist police and the police department's road service division Both promise to send help Then she calls avis rental car at dan muang airport a few kilometers behind us. There's now a big new airport The agent offers a promotion I get on the line to book it. What is your fax? Please the agent asks I'm in the middle of an eight lane highway in a broken down car. Oh, sorry. Sorry. You have email By now my Xi is not so yin. I hand the phone back to laina. I call you later. She says My husband meanwhile is on his cell to koon tan from whom we have rented the car He explains the situation then says what I'm in the middle of bank hogs busiest highway I can't check the transmission fluid An hour later. We're still awaiting help Laina suggests she and I grab a taxi and head for the airport to rent a car Now you have to visualize this laina Pretty and has long long dark hair and that day Because we were going to the beach She was wearing like a beach outfit that looked like baby doll pajamas You know like like short cut off thing in a shirt with a bow and it was like she looked like a little girl So she effortlessly she flags a cab and we're off to dan muang leaving husbands to mine the renter egg Hurt says they have a special but only good for shift I say I can drive manual. Sorry. He said my me don't have My cell rings. It's my husband. I need a Hong Nam toilet. Can you hurry? Dui meanwhile has spotted a Mitsubishi dealer across the highway from where they're stranded He calls on his cell and tells the repair shop that he has a dead car on the highway and a furong with a full bladder You drive me to be she the repairman said Dui confirmed so the guys is okay. My husband can use the restroom The tourist police arrive Stops eight arrives stops eight lanes of traffic in the opposite direction and leads my husband actually takes them by the hand across To the Mitsubishi Hong Nam Simultaneously Lena and I arrive at the dealership in our new rental car. We head for the beach only five hours behind schedule This is another vignette. It's 9 p.m. When our landlords knock on the door We have recently informed them we would leave Chiang Mai sooner than expected because my work is finished They demand the rent we explain that since they're holding two month security We have already paid for our last month. Mrs. Landlord an atypical aggressive Thai woman Says we must forfeit our security deposit and pay another month's rent or she will change the locks We invite her to return with a copy of the contract the next night At 5 p.m. Everyone assembles Including a lawyer. We have engaged and Lena We serve soft drinks and go through the expected amenities then the fireworks begin We point to clause nine of the contract which states that we are entitled to a full refund of our deposit because we have given 30 days notice Mrs. Landlord threatens to call the police. I say that's a good idea Mr. Landlord impunes Lena's integrity. I threaten to evict him Then I offer to take them to court to settle the matter The lawyer waits for the shouting match to end before quietly informing mr. And mrs. Landlord that it is against Thai law to forcefully evict tenants He suggests they accept our deposit as payment and full Mr. Landlord weakens mrs. Landlord continues to rant and in the end we agree to this solution and the landlord's depart All smiles and kapungkas. Thank you. I usher them out way Weighing, you know bowing only to the lawyer And this is the third excerpt, which is the last one Our friends arrive from the states after several days touring Chiang Mai We head for the golden triangle. Our first stop is Mesa Long where our travel book advises we must not miss the Mesa Long resort As evening approaches, we snake our way up a mountain and foggy rain Anticipating quote the best views of terraced hills and outstanding Yunanese food this village was founded by chinese escaping males cultural revolution The term resort is usually used and used is used loosely in thailand But what a misnomer for the hotel we find ourselves in Without checking the room. We plunked down 420 baht per couple a supposed 40 discount on the usual rate But after seeing the accommodations we upgrade to so-called vip rooms These are large dirty digs adjacent to staff quarters Our view is drying laundry wood piles and motorbikes The rooms are dank and dirty water runs brown from the taps the waste baskets are fuzzy the sheets and towels appear used The odor is owed to mold We passed a luck we had passed a luxury place a mile back But would they have room and would driving in wet darkness be sensible? I would have done it the others voted not to we accept our fate for the night a buddhist but ultimately bad decision We visit the restaurant for the promised chinese fare, but find a motley crew of servers stain table claws and a very limited menu We order several dishes A plate of chicken appears with boiled rice and two plates of what looked like weeds cooked in mud Chinese eggplant very good. You try the waitress says We return hungry to our cobweb vip lounge to drown our sorrows agreeing to abscond in the morning without paying the difference owed on our rooms None of us is able to sleep in the damp beds and no one dreams of showering Our friends find a huge cockroach in their bed. Actually Jean said we should cut off its legs and make a coffee table and and bob said I thought it was the pool boy making a pass in the morning We head downhill to the beautifully garden luxury hotel for breakfast and discover we could have stayed for 650 bot Later the resort calls to ask for their 1500 bot. They think we owe We say we are calling the ministries of health and tourism Most accommodations and it should be noted that most accommodations and restaurants in thailand are good to spend to splendid But it's best to look before you book I had booked because we were arriving at night and then we were three couples We needed three rooms and I just don't use dk don't use dk Travel guides for places to stay or eat absolutely do not But they're very good for pictures and places Okay Thailand is a wonderful country full of smiling people colorful sites delicious foods and glorious crafts I'd live there again in a heartbeat, but having done so I'd know that life can be frustrating and very funny Sometimes you just have to shrug and say this is thailand silly Um, and there there are no shortage of budas to see. Oh, there's a picture of a buda with this piece So the the post grip is there's no shortage of budas to see in thailand And the picture of the one in here is the emerald buda at the royal palace And if you go have you been to Bangkok? You didn't go to Bangkok The emerald buda Yeah, so you didn't get caught in the scam about the guy who says to you Oh, the temple's closed for cleaning right now, but my friend with his tuk tuk He can take you around and help Oh, okay, because that's the scam he can take you around while this being clean It's not being cleaned and I told my friends don't fall for it and they fell for it, you know So, um Pardon It's not very it's not that big That there are many many very big budas and the reclining gold budas very very big The emerald buda is probably about not much bigger than this height of this Yes It is really emerald Pardon Well, I I think it's really emerald. I think it really is it's I know it's You know really guarded, you know So No, you wouldn't know you wouldn't carry it around anywhere But the shang mai is the craft center. It's the the north is where the really the crafts Come from and often they're coming in from berma and laos and other places But the night markets are just to die for oh my god Until you finally figure out that everybody's selling the same thing and you know But you could lose your mind the first few times you go And the food is wonderful you could have like the best food for like like Probably the equivalent of three dollars, you know Yeah, I used to buy sticky mango with rice on the street and the other thing is massages. Oh my god I had a woman come to my house for two hours on a saturday For a two hour miss out. Yeah, two hour massage and it was um, it was five dollars I got I got used to get a haircut manicure pedicure and massage all for 25 dollars Really amazing And and foot massage as you just walking down the street you get them anywhere and they're always good So I was very spoiled the fish that Leaches I didn't I didn't do that. I didn't do that So so one day lana and another friend of ours on american laura we went down to Bangkok for the weekend and we went to the chinese Market area the one night we got there and we had foot massages and the two the people that were working on us were all laughing and Kibitzing or whatever and lana starts laughing her head off laughing her head Oh, and then I said is oh is she is she lana is she your guide? No, is she your translator? No She's our friend and they were like, you know Anyway, lana's laughing her head off and afterwards we said what was so funny. She said One of them said to the other one. I love the wrong money, but I can't stand the way their feet smell So So I'm not going to read more because let's have some time to talk and also if I read much more you won't buy the book So But that that's you know, there's if there's a and I should say that many of the pieces in here have been published And one of them is about spending a night in the train station in india And we needed to get we had reserved For you know a cabin which you share, but it's a private space And and we needed to get back to new deli to catch our flight the next day Well, we spent the night and the pretty much of the night in the station in a town called jancy because the trains are always late and there was a hilarious event there about My husband going into this with the cook took the cook and the driver from where we stayed took us there And they wouldn't leave us until we were on the train and they ended up taking my husband to the station master's Office and it was wild with people You know screaming and yelling and everything and when he walked in it all went very quiet And he was escorted up to the station master who said, you know, and may I help may I be a servicer Anyway, long story short. He got us on the next train in second class But it's a very funny story. Well, it's it's a funny story, but it's also A vivid description of what it's what it's like in india I mean we're a better place than a train station in the middle of the night with rats as big as rabbits and gypsies and you know vendors and Half-naked men and business people in suits who were saying, I hope you are not getting the wrong impression of india You know india is a fascinating place. Yeah, india is fascinating. I mean, I literally saw a camel at a gas station And we're walking down the street one day we ended up at somebody's wedding. I mean, it was it's really fun So anyway Questions comments travel experiences Well, I've been to israel and I've been to israel at a really good time It was a safe and open and I I am jewish, but I have a lot of trouble with israel right now and they're they're Human rights abuses of the palestinians the poem. I read you remember I said I think about the women in black. Do you know about them? There is there a jewish and palestinian women Who I think I don't know if they're still doing it But for many many years and it actually became a global movement every friday They would stand on various corners in israel as a peace protest And they were I stood with them and I I couldn't get a cab to pick me up because it was friday And I was in black so he knew where I wanted to go And I actually was frightened because they had been Stoned and they're called the horrors of hamas and which I've been called for writing about what the israel's doing to the palestinians And so, you know, and then also there's a piece in the book actually about israel and my conflict with Being a feminist and being a jew in israel because obviously everybody jewish would would feel something there You know, we all even if you didn't go through the holocaust. It's part of our history um But as a feminist I like lost my mind Because you know the women at the railing wall cannot be on the side where the most religious part is It's a small space in the sun. The only the men get to be over there So that made me nuts and then there was an exhibit at the King david museum called man and his kitchen There were escort services in every magazine The women in the army are not treated equally Um, I had lots of women. I got yelled at because in 110 degrees I had a long dress on but it was a sundress that had straps that I had to cover myself A woman who I thought was a problem. You know, I always assumed somebody's like me So she was western dressed and she was at the wall and she was selling something or whatever and um I start talking to her and she starts asking me if I observe the Sabbath and if I do this and if I do that and Why don't you go aren't you going to the wall and to touch the wall and I said well when I can touch it on that side I'll do that and I and then um And then we got in this conversation about you know Orthodox women have to be outside of the marital bed when they're menstruating and for two weeks afterwards That means they're in the bed when they're fertile. That's why the orthodox women have a lot of children. Um And I uh, you know, and I said something to that about that to her and oh, it's just tradition It's just that you know, so like I was like losing my stuff there. But um, so I was very conflicted. It's in the book So you were screaming too I tried not to scream but I was I was uh Firm, shall we say? Yes was firm I've been firm in a lot of my travel you'll see in a lot of my travel stories I'm firm like when I go to when I go to a place like Dubai And that and they have a complimentary night in a hotel because they always have to stay overnight to catch your ongoing flight And I'm in a line with to try to check into this hotel and there are three lines And I'm the middle one right and I suddenly realized that every time it's my turn The guy from this side goes up and the guy from that side goes up and this and this and this and finally I just said Stop, it's my turn. We all have to check in you know So I got checked in you know that kind of thing And well no, so here's so here's a good story about that So here's a good story about that so I'm at the airport and um, I guess it was I guess it was Dubai and um And I'm trying to ask the guy simply as is Jay and I'll see to mine and I'll see And he keeps telling me I have to go in another room where there's all kinds of people But there's no personnel there. It's a simple question. So finally I say to him Is Jay and I'll see he says yes So I say now there that wasn't so hard was it and then um And then when I was getting on the plane I said to the woman taking the tickets I said, um, how in the world do you women live here? And she said well, you have to be very strong And I said well, I am not exactly a potted plant and she said no madam. I noticed Sometimes you just have to be assertive. You also have to be careful. You have to keep your antenna up as a woman alone You know, I've had some dicey Experiences, um, and and you just learn Where how to get help or how to how to make it go away? You know Especially when I was much younger What you Feel is right as far as women rights go or any kind of right. Yeah, how do you how do you Well, I certainly really work hard at not being judgmental or Or antagonistic and I post things as questions and I say, you know I know I'm speaking from a western perspective You know and I know how hard it is for girls to get educated and I know this and that So I'm just wondering, you know Help me to understand, you know But I would never Avertly judge it although I in my head I might be well, I try to even do it in my head I try to be called really culturally sensitive and understand the ethos But also to explore, you know, um, I mean, I'm a communicator. I believe in communicating to learn, you know So I've never Been accused of offending somebody that way So I'm going to conclude with this there are three questions that people always ask me when I'm reading whether it's this book or any other book I've done and I just wanted to see if you can if those questions would have been questions in your mind What do you think the three most and it's not you can ask me whatever you want about travel writing But it's not just about this book. It's about being a writer Or being a feminist writer or but but there's three generic questions that people always ask What do you think they might be? So one is one two of them are simple one is people say do I write every day? And my answer is I don't write every day But I'm always thinking about writing and what I want to write and how I'm going to say it and all that kind of stuff Part of the reason I don't write every day is because writers have to do other things So like I teach and I give lectures and workshops and that takes work and promoting the work takes work and stuff like that Another one is do I journal and my answer to that is I do not keep a traditional journal But again, I'm journaling all the time because I write newspaper columns commentary So I process everything that way. That's those are my journals And that's why I've actually published three volumes of them But now I don't anymore because they don't sell but that's how I journal and the other one is How how and when did I know that I wanted to be a writer? And just quickly I mean I think I always had it in me when I was very young I think I couldn't have been more than maybe even eight or nine no more than 10 I went to the I lived in a small town My father's business was in the middle of the business block and at each end there was a five and dime And I went to the kreskies or whatever Said I want to buy the biggest the thickest tablet that you have and the woman said Oh, why would you like the thickest tablet? I said, well, if I tell you you're going to laugh at me And she said no, I won't I said because I'm going to write a book And she didn't laugh at me which was really good And then when I was 13 I didn't write the book but and then when I was 13 I submitted my first my first submission to this and it was a christmas poem to the saturday evening post And then I want I want a short story Competition at school and I used to love writing school papers and You know stuff like that. So I just you know, I just always had it had it in me English English and psychology Because and I did that because I wanted to do that because I felt that I could get more history and philosophy And psychology and stuff through literature than to focus only on one You know that was how I wanted to because I was always an avid reader I was reading Henry James when I was really young and you know, so I was learning about people, you know cultures and people And then when I got my master's I didn't want an mph because they were very geared to sort of biological stuff and I didn't want that I wanted the cultural stuff I I like Qualitative research I'd not into quantitative research So that was why I picked that and it was a new field So My parents my parents were not travelers They would go to florida in the in the winter and then we would do this kind of trip and they didn't have the the resources I think or even the curiosity So they were not travelers. My siblings Sadly both died pretty young. My sister was 52. My brother was 45 a year apart Both unexpected and so they they didn't travel the way I do The way we do but I think You know, they've they've been places and I think I don't know my brother's career was He was busy and I don't know. They just didn't have it the way I had it, you know We find our biggest challenge is Unless you are traveling People really aren't interested Our kids don't even know where we are Is that right? Yeah, well it may come later it may come later Yeah, well, well, I'm very my I I have a thing about Partially because of so much loss. I have a thing about I need to be in touch with my kids And I need for them to know where I am and I want to know that they're okay Yeah, yeah, so but my daughter and her husband, they really like to travel and He's also British. So they just came back from a 10 nice 10 days My kids are homebodies. Yeah And Maybe you have to have a curiosity you really have to have a curiosity You know, you can't miss what you don't know and if you've never experienced the joys and they and they um I would say almost exaltation they the lessons you learn if you've never had those exchanges, you know You don't miss it. You don't know what you're missing I mean, I don't understand why people take cruises and I don't understand why people take I mean, I do understand why older people take organized travel But I we just absolutely never do organized travel. We self drive, you know And we don't go just to beautiful places. Yeah Yeah, we we that was our last trip before this one I was in Yugoslavia when it was all Yugoslavia And I remember that it was very beautiful and I remember that Sarajevo was very beautiful But I didn't have a clear memory of it So we started in Sarajevo, which was phenomenal for all kinds of reasons again The people that we interacted with and the children's museum had just opened and the tunnel museum So we started and we drove the whole corrosion coast to split with various stops Oh, yeah, me too Yeah, well if you do the by Yeah Yeah, if you do the Baltics, um Riga was our favorite So we started in Riga, but if I would actually say do it in reverse because Riga is the best one Yeah Yeah, so I think Yeah I think our next trip next year we're going to um, we didn't go to Poland on this trip We talked about that maybe go to Poland and then we've haven't done southern germany the bavarian black forest stuff That's I think what we're doing next year And then we're going to go back to our two favorite parts of england, which is the lake district and cornwall and devin We're actually at the point now of wanting to go back to places that we really have loved And oftentimes it's disappointing because they're just not what they used to be The two and the two places the two places We haven't been that we always wanted to as my my husband's not so keen on this But I want to go to Patagonia and we both wanted to do Tibet and Bhutan and we haven't done that and I just don't think I can face a coach ticket trans Pacific again, you know But um, and then I here's on my bucket list. I don't have a lot left on my bucket list, but I want to go to a working dude ranch Oh Yeah, yeah, there's a story in here by the way about Me and two of my friends since high school days going on a A trip in the canadian rockies that was built as a soft adventure And so that was fun, you know helicoptering up the mountain to hike and Stuff like that Yeah So anyway, that's that's that night. Yeah Yes, yeah With us No, you can buy it on amazon. I guess you can get it on I don't get paid much if you buy it on kindle, but I think it may be on kindle I know For the weight of our suitcase, yeah Yeah Oh Now Well, when you when you're how long are you going to be in this area? Just another week. Just another week because um I was going to say that you know, maybe the library would have a copy or you can The thing is you can read parts of it in a bookstore and you don't have to read the whole thing Okay, okay Good. Okay. Well, thanks for coming