Name: Bird’s Nest Soup (Rang Nok)
Location: Yaowarat Chinatown in Bangkok, Thailand
Cost: 200 THB (6.21 USD) for the cheapest bowl

It’s not everyday that you get to recline on yellow sofas surrounded by jars of illuminated spit, get spoiled by your waitress, and sip on the finest Swift saliva.  Well, actually, we got the cheapest bowl possible, but it was still a great foodie experience.  Swift nest’s are formed by the birds regurgitating their spit and letting it harden.  Depending on the quality, bird’s nest can fetch anywhere from about $5 to …

From growing up in Africa and traveling through many countries, I’ve obtained a respectable transcript of outlandish edibles ranging from ambrosial to grotesque. Congolese snails in the reincarnation of rubber tires, grubs, unknown testicles, a scientific assortment of winged bugs, balut fetus, rats, and a host of interior animal organs, are among a host of the weird delicacies that have been sandwiched between these two extremes. Throughout it all, I have been able to mastermind an eating strategy when faced with freakishly weird awesome foods.

1.  The Adventurous Mindset
The adventurous mindset erases an automatic negative attitude and cry’s out …

The Songkran Festival in Thailand (traditional Thai New Years) is the biggest and most sought after holiday on the Thai calendar.  Songkran is usually thought of as a few inebriated day of throwing buckets of water and shooting water guns where everyone is a target.  However, with 66 million Thai inhabitants, there must be a bigger picture, so I turned to 27 of my Thai students to get a more local picture of what characterizes Songkran.
Tallying the results and analyzing the trends I came up with a single sentence …

From spending 24 Hours at Angkor Wat to aimlessly walking around the capital of Phnom Penh, in order to fit in to the Cambodian lifestyle, you will need to follow a few or possibly all of these tips.
1.  Parkas and Gore-Tex
If you venture outside or somewhere onto the street, whatever you do, don’t forget the North Face down parkas.  Locals don’t appreciate the glorious sunshine.  I saw numerous people rocking the latest in mittens, leggings,  scarves, and long johns.
2.  100cc Family Vehicle
The Dodge Caravan is no longer the family of 5 vehicle …

Migration Mark has been in South East Asia since March of 2009 and has grown to love a few serious things but mostly the extraordinarily quirky things.

1. Chili Peppers…Please!
I grew up eating food with spice and sometimes with chili.  Throughout SE Asia however, I have nurtured my ever craving lust for the succulent seeded heat of chili peppers.  I simply can’t taste food unless there is an abundance of hot chilies involved in the meal.  In my month in Indonesia, I was able to come up with 9 …

The jaunt from Batad to Mayoyao took nearly eight hours and included hiking, walking down completely barren mud roads, keeping my footing while crawling over fresh landslides, swinging back and forth on creeping jeeps, and clenching on to highly unstable homemade vehicular devices.
“In Mayoyao you are not just a tourist, but a family friend,”
said Efren, my guide.  “Let’s go and register at the town (village) municipality.”  I arrived to see 3 or 4 cops drinking coffee sprawled out in the office, elevated feet, and chuckling amongst themselves.  They sprang to …

Though I have been to only a fraction of Gawad Kalinga (GK) villages (if you are not sure what GK is check out Building Houses With Hope)(GK builds homes for the poorest of the poor in the Philippines giving people not only a living structure but a new perspective on life with an attitude to succeed), the Iriga Character village in the Bicol region of the Philippines was an astonishing example of how improvements are feasible in the midst of poverty.

I caught a 1.5 hour bus from Naga City to …

“If you can smell the garbage, you are entering Payatas,” said Tita Silver, the mother of my host family.
Our jeepney crackled through the streets amidst the hustle and bustle of vendors and commuters.  The stank of garbage was in the air and the streets and shops were not what you would call clean.
I was on a weekend trip in the Metro Manila area of Payatas (known as one of the main dump sites in Metro Manila) in Quezon City, joining a group of students from Ateneo de Manila University on …

Gawad Kalinga, known as GK, strives to create a Philippines and world with no more slums, no more violence, and no more poverty.  With dignity and honesty, GK and volunteers build homes, aiming to create sustainable villages, and forming safe communities as well as transforming danger and poverty into nation building and lifting each other up.  In the eyes of GK there is “less for self, more for others, [and] enough for all.”
GK provides the materials and builds homes for the poorest of the poor in the Philippines.  People who …

My first day walking around Manila, the Philippines and I happen to stumble upon a food item that I simply could not possibly pass by.  I took one look at the pile of “1 day old” chickens and decided I had to partake of them.

I ordered as the chef quickly threw one of the baby chickens into the boiling oil to reheat it.  He then poked it with a stick and pulled something very small out the mid section of the bird to discard (no idea what it was, but …