A trip to Haikou Zoo

For the last few weeks Maggie’s been suggesting we take Casey to the Haikou zoo. I have deeply mixed feelings about zoos. Like the ROM for history, trips when I was a child to the Toronto Zoo instilled in me a great sense of wonder and a love for animals. On the same coin, I …

My ChinaTravel.net Feature on Suzhou

A while back I was approached by the fine folks at ChinaTravel.net, an English-language travel site about China that is “editorially independent” but strongly affiliated with Ctrip.com — one of China’s largest online travel booking Web sites. The site’s editors wanted me to put together a summary article on “my Suzhou”, and as of last …

Air travel just doesn’t fly anymore

Aside from family car trips, my first real travels started on a train. I was 11 years old and heading to Montreal from Niagara with just my best friend. We were going to visit his grandmother and meet up with his father, who would then drive us out to New Brunswick on Canada’s East Coast. …