“Reading departure signs in some big airport reminds me of the places I’ve been / Visions of good times that brought so much pleasure makes me want to go back again.”
Jimmy Buffett, “Changes in Latitudes, Changes in Attitudes”
I’m with you, Jimmy! Travel yields so many gifts: good times, interesting people, stirring and fascinating places, and mind-broadening experiences. As a recipe is to its ingredients, my travel memories are so much more than the sum of their parts: the times, people, places, and experiences meld into memories I’ll savor for the rest of my life.
2024 was a banner year from a travel standpoint:
I reached my seventh continent (Australia), visited twenty-five countries or territories, including seventeen that were new to me, and brought my life list of countries and territories to ninety-seven.
I made new friends on each of my trips and reconnected with old friends on a couple of them.
I viewed some of the world’s most renowned wonders, both natural and man-made.
I met inspirational people who are working hard to improve the lives of their compatriots.
I wished my country could take a lesson from things I saw elsewhere – effective gun control, excellent public transport, universal health care, commitment to environmental preservation – but I also recognized how fortunate I am to live in a country where freedom of expression is protected and corruption is somewhat constrained. (So far, at least.)
Here’s a single photograph from each country or territory I visited as well as a couple of sentences about what I found most meaningful or memorable. (Asterisks denote countries/territories I hadn’t been to before; places are listed in the order in which I visited them.)
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*Australia
There are so many things to love about Australia: Melbourne and Sydney are fun and fascinating cities, every Australian I met was warm and welcoming, the country has areas of startling natural beauty, including the Outback, the Daintree rain forest, and the Great Barrier Reef, and the native fauna are unique, not to mention cute. But what impressed me most was the sense of timelessness I found away from the cities. Visiting Uluru made tangible the fact that indigenous Australians with cultures and technologies perfectly adapted to their environment have been living on the continent two hundred fifty times longer than European settlers.
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*New Zealand
This one’s easy: New Zealand’s landscapes and seascapes are the most gorgeous I’ve ever seen, edging out Norway. In a country spilling over with natural wonders, Milford Sound takes top prize, combining stunning waterfalls and pristine mountains with an almost palpable serenity.
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*Hong Kong
My lasting impression of Hong Kong is a jumble of stolid tradition, frantic modernity, and a pervasive sense of inevitable, immeasurable change.
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*Vietnam
The unrestrained energy of Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, the scars left by decades of war, fever-pitch capitalism combined with strict one-party rule – all will stay with me forever. But transcending all of those, my defining memory of Vietnam is the people’s bottomless capacity for forgiveness. There is no ill will toward Americans; on the contrary, American visitors are genuinely welcomed.
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*Cambodia
This one’s a toss-up. The temple complexes in and around Angkor Wat live up to their iconic reputation, but when I recall Cambodia my most insistent impression is of a nation that wishes to erase its past. The horrors of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge are not spoken about, as if the country has opted into collective dissociative amnesia. Somehow, after all the inhumanity Cambodians have lived through and the extreme poverty afflicting so many of them, people seem content and calm.
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*Laos
Sheer spiritual peace. From the moment I stepped off the plane in Luang Prabang, I felt bathed in utter serenity.
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Bangkok, Thailand
Two nights in Bangkok. No chess, just lots of heat, humidity, traffic, and temples. The biggest impression I had was one of absence: Thai culture is fascinating, and I understand that much of the country is beautiful, but I missed all that. Bangkok didn’t do much for me, and the only other place I’ve been in Thailand is Phuket, which is a weird combination of hedonistic beach resort and Russian outpost.
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Iceland
Nature at its most awesome: hyperactive volcanos, lava fields strewn with fantastical frozen goblins, glaciers with Hadean crevasses, thundering waterfalls. Black sand, geysers, fifty shades of gray dotted with orange-beaked puffins. Where else can you feel like you’ve been transported to Earth’s cataclysmic beginnings then enjoy a sauna followed by a gourmet dinner?
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Toronto, Canada
My son and I spent a few days in Toronto to visit friends and catch a Jays game. I loved Toronto’s energetic vibe and a multi-ethnic flair.
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*Monaco
Moneyco. Yachts, race cars, gambling, other activities for those rich enough to live untouched by the world’s cares. Not my thing.
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Éze, France
Timeless and anachronistic – walking the steep, cobblestoned lanes feels like plummeting back several centuries.
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Sicily and Naples, Italy
For both Sicily and Naples, my predominant impression/recollection is of deep history with a twist. In Sicily, the twist was food – gelato and cannoli – consumed in the shadow of Mt. Etna. In Naples, unfortunately, the gloss was squalor. The beautifully restored villas in Herculaneum (and Pompeii, which I visited in 2014) put the dingy modern surroundings to shame.
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*Slovenia
Italy meets the Balkans, with more than a dash of Central Europe thrown in. Ljubljana impressed me as an exciting and attractive cultural mélange.
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Croatia
This was my third visit to Croatia. The first centered on the magnificent city of Dubrovnik, the second explored areas along the Danube, and this one sampled some of this beautiful nation’s many natural highlights. What I remember most is the great peace I felt in two national parks, one surrounded by steep, rocky mountains and the second amidst still, reflective pools and wide, wild waterfalls.
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*Bosnia and Herzegovina
The stupidity of war and the resilience of its victims. Visiting Mostar, a city that was nearly demolished by bombs three decades ago, and hearing the stories of its surviving residents, left me shaken but stirred.
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*Montenegro
Such beauty, such history, such corruption, so many cats. I loved Montenegro, but my abiding memory isn’t the majestic mountains or the ancient fishing villages or our guide’s tales of venal leadership – it’s the way the citizens of the lovely old city of Kotor absolutely worship cats.
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Corfu and Argostoli, Greece
Ten years ago I visited Athens (traffic-clogged, run-down, and filled with pornographic bookstores but nonetheless magnificent) and Mykonos (sun-splashed and poster-worthy). This year, I sampled Corfu and Argostoli, which were a whole other side of Greece. My lasting memory of Corfu is the contrast between the tourist-clogged main shopping streets and the far more picturesque and empty side alleys, filled with amazing food and drink (and laundry). For Argostoli, it’s the magnificent Drogorati Cave and the arid landscape, which I described as looking like someone had left Tuscany in the dryer for too long.
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Malta
When I think back to visiting Malta in 2019, most of my memories are food-related: the combination of Sicilian and Arabic influences yields a spectacularly flavorful cuisine. Returning to the island this year, I spent all my time in Valletta, the limestone-hewn, hilly capital city. My defining impression: a stately, centuries-old bastion overrun, but somehow untouched, by tourists.
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*French Polynesia (Tahiti and Bora Bora)
Paradise, of course. Dramatic mountains whose lush greenery was sometimes shrouded in clouds and sometimes pierced by the luminous sunlight. The constant crowing of roosters. And in Bora Bora, the achingly beautiful soprano singing voice of our taxi driver/guide.
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*Cook Islands (Rarotonga)
Biking past crystal-clear lagoons to the left and the steep central mountain to the right, with ominous clouds somehow never delivering on the threatened drenching.
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*American Samoa
I left American Samoa impressed by a people whose spiritual beauty somehow outshines the island’s natural splendor. Even beyond that, I was blown away by our 15-year old tour guide, whose poise, humor, knowledge, and pride in her country should make her a natural leader in the decades to come.
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*Samoa
What impressed me most about Samoa wasn’t its lovely scenery; it was the lengths to which the nation has gone to align itself more closely with Australia and New Zealand: switching sides of the international date line and changing from driving on the right to driving on the left.
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*Tonga
I’ll remember Tonga best for the remarkable Lisa, a dynamic, well-educated, proud woman who is single-handedly seeking to preserve the traditions and raise the living standards of her people. She has more spirit and drive than ten normal people.
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*Fiji
Bula!!! I’ve never met people who are simultaneously so ebullient and so maximally chill. Fiji is a country with lots of charm and an outsized personality.
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*Vanuatu
Immediately after visiting Vanuatu, I’d have said my abiding impression was the juxtaposition between the town of Port Vila, which is modern(ish), and the Ekasup Cultural Village, ten minutes out of town, where people still live like they did for centuries before European contact. Unfortunately, that memory is now overshadowed by pictures of the devastation wrought by a 7.4 magnitude earthquake that hit less than 48 hours after we left Port Vila.
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This will probably be my last travel blog post for a few months. Upcoming in 2025, I’ve got a trip to Japan in March, a cruise from San Diego to New York in July (stopping in Mexico, Guatemala, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, traversing the Panama Canal, Colombia, Grand Cayman, Miami, and Port Canaveral), and a river cruise from Arles to Dijon in September. Of course, my wanderlust may get the best of me on one or two other occasions, so stay tuned!
I opened with Jimmy and I’ll close with Willy:
“On the road again,
Goin’ places that I’ve never been,
Seein’ things that I may never see again,
And I can’t wait to get on the road again”
PuffinlessTravel 