Brian Spencer

Perceptive Travel Blog • 10th July 2010

The Photo Shoot

His dimure Russian princess watched expectedly from the bathwater-warm water as he shook himself dry, like a dog, and reached for his camera. He attached the wide-angle lens. A glorious spectacle...

Perceptive Travel Blog • 2nd May 2014

A Game of Upstairs-Downstairs at Thiruvananthapuram Central Railway Station

There’s a brief prelude to V. S. Naipaul’s An Area of Darkness, a wonderful account of the author’s travels through India in the early 1960s, in which he deftly illustrates over nine pages flush with aggravation...

Perceptive Travel Blog • 17th September 2010

Life and Nobility in Kandy’s British Garrison Cemetery

The old graveyard up the hill seemed just as forgotten as the British colonials buried there 150 years ago. There was nobody in sight, no shade, no breeze, nothing—just a profound midday heat beating down...

Perceptive Travel Blog • 1st February 2013

In Tiananmen Square, Come for the Corpse, Stay for the Shopping

There are two things you should know about visiting Beijing’s Mausoleum of Mao Zedong: no cameras are allowed inside (unless like most people you have a camera-phone, which are allowed) and...

Perceptive Travel Blog • 23rd July 2010

A Metal Palace with Fangs

They don’t like what they see, turn around, and walk back out, quietly, quickly, but not before the barback, who has had a drink or six, takes note of their hasty exit. He takes it as a personal affront, like they’ve...

Perceptive Travel Blog • 28th February 2014

In a Dilapidated Warehouse, Tattooed Chefs and Artisanal Refugee Cuisine

I have no idea where I am, what I’ll be eating, or how much it will cost, but it doesn’t matter. Tonight, I’ll go anywhere. I’ll eat anything. I’ll gladly foot the bill, payable only in Bitcoin, quoted as...

Perceptive Travel Blog • 22nd August 2014

Something Between Paradise and Poverty, Somewhere Between Alleppey and Thathampally

The brawny, bare-chested boatsman wore nothing but a lungi wrapped around his waist, and a big, toothy grin tucked away in a bushy beard. His other hand gripping the handle of a rickety trolling...

Perceptive Travel Blog • 14th February 2014

In Amsterdam, a 37-Step Stairway to Hotel Hell

Know that at Hotel Nadia, a “two-star family hotel with a friendly atmosphere and a three-star service,” rates start at 54 euro/night for single-standard rooms, and top out at 155 euro/night for family...

Perceptive Travel Blog • 4th May 2012

A Few Things I Would Do in Bangkok If I Were in Bangkok Right Now

I’d walk down to the pier at Pratunam, down a dark residential alley that borders Khlong Saen Saab, skipping over pools of dirty water discharged from dusty washing machines, past sleeping cats...

Perceptive Travel Blog • 7th March 2014

Me and The Girl Who Drags the Yorkshire Terrier

The Chinese girl glides through the park on rollerblades, dragging a tiny Yorkshire terrier. You can hear her coming — you can always hear her coming — but you don’t hear the rollerblades. You hear...

Perceptive Travel Blog • 18th March 2016

On a Parcel of Land Outside Sydney, Parrots, Brown Bellies, and Quarter-Inch Thick Crotches

It was less than four miles between Sydney’s Inner West suburbs of Rozelle and Newtown, but by the time the taxi driver stopped...

Perceptive Travel Blog • 20th August 2010

The Thai Galaxy Street Basketball Challenge

I was lured in by the sound of basketballs swish, swish, swishing through a metal hoop with a chain-link net. One 10-baht coin bought me three minutes on the source of the swishing, a Galaxy Street...

Perceptive Travel Blog • 21st August 2015

In Bangkok, Scratching Beneath the Headlines of a Neighborhood Bombing

A bomb went off in Bangkok this week, by which I mean to say, in a less passive manner, that a man wearing a yellow t-shirt and, possibly, a shaggy wig, planted a bomb that exploded...

Perceptive Travel Blog • 5th July 2013

Just an Ordinary Lunch at an Ordinary Singapore Hawker Centre

It was a Monday afternoon lunch in passing at the hawker centre, like the yawning flip of a calendar with no dates. Office workers in business-casual uniforms chit-chatted about nothing at orange...

Perceptive Travel Blog • 7th August 2015

In Bangkok, Face the Thing That Should Not Be

Consider this curious, white-gloved creature of imagined import, stalking Phetchaburi Road–the middle of Phetchaburi Road, mind you, on a stretch of road that not even Thais will cross...

Perceptive Travel Blog • 6th March 2015

Visiting a Japanese Onsen, or Learning to Love Letting It All Hang Out

A Japanese onsen is, essentially, just a hot tub filled with mineral-rich waters drawn from nearby hot springs, sans the whirlpool jets and leering swingers chugging margaritas...

Perceptive Travel Blog • 9th July 2010

Like a Drifter in the Dark

We were lost, lost, hopelessly lost, and our only lifeline, a string of digits scrawled onto a scrap of paper, was as apparently as much a dead end as the one our tuk-tuk was currently parked in...

Perceptive Travel Blog • 28th September 2012

… And in Ubud, When the Greasy Taxi Driver Asked Me to Strip Naked in Front of Him, I Did It

There’s something strangely liberating about standing in a grungy, semi-private, open-air spa treatment room in the center of a traditional Balinese compound as a wiry Indonesian man, his grease-black...

Perceptive Travel Blog • 16th August 2013

The Dashed White Lines Between Life and Death on Bali’s Two-Lane Racetracks

There is no room for error on the close-your-eyes-and-hope-you-don’t-die raceways that pass for two-lane roads in Bali. Once you’ve crept out of the perma-traffic jam that is heaving Denpasar...

Perceptive Travel Blog • 12th April 2013

In Singapore, A Shit Hole That’s Worth the Splurge

One of my favorite places to eat in Singapore is a right shithole. Faded plastic tables are fossilized with remnants of decades’ worth of sauces and beers and seafood hastily wiped away with scuzzy...