Category: Collections

There is nothing comparable to deep fried beignets and café au lait.NEW ORLEANS’ INTERNATIONALLY famous cuisine is decadent and indulgent, mixing the best flavors from its many ethnic influences with the soul of the city.But in New Orleans, you should leave room for dessert. These seven are among the city’s most famous and most widely available treats.

Feature photo by Quinn Mattingly. Photo above by blmurch.Don’t be complacent and stick with what’s comfortable. If you’re moving to a whole new country then you might as well live like the locals.SO YOU’VE MOVED TO a new country for work/study/self-growth, and culture shock has hit. It’s all too easy to hide from the world in that expat pub, speaking English and bonding with others over your cultural hurdles.

Photo: Nataliehg Feature Photo: Editor BMegan Hill finds that a year of riding in a government van, wearing government-issued uniforms, and living out of a suitcase helped her wake up.THE TEAM WAS GETTING on my nerves. Actually, everything was. It was the fact that all twelve of us were squeezed into a twelve seat van.

Urban explorer Steve Duncan shares shots from his out-of-bounds expeditions in New York, London, Paris, and other world cities. Editor’s note: All photos courtesy of Steve Duncan. All rights reserved. Steve Duncan has been an urban explorer for over a decade, first venturing underground as a student at Columbia University in New York City.

OVER HIS NAKED right shoulder, an enormous gold Buddha. Sol Mang waves me over like he is hailing a cab, but can’t find it in him to make the proper emphatic New York gesture. He waves the way you’d expect a Cambodian rice farmer turned Khmer Rouge slave turned monk turned New Yorker to wave.I grew up a few blocks from here, but I have never been further from home in my life.

We expected at least one dreary alley pic. It turns out that Matadorians’ office views are anything but grey.My “office,” an English classroom in a middle school in South Korea, has a view on either side.To the right, I can see a wide, swampy rice paddy with craggy mountains behind it. The sagging farmer’s shed tells me someone tends the field, but I rarely see a soul.

12 places where pirates once thrived - Our Site1Melaka& 39;s Malay Sultanate Water WheelStrait of Malacca. This is the thin body of water separating peninsular Malaysia from the Indonesian island of Sumatra. As part of the main shipping channel between the Indian and Pacific Oceans, it has always attracted a heavy pirate presence, from the days of Arabian maritime traders to modern times.

Paper art is about so much more than a finely executed paper plane. Scope these 20 awesome examples.1Crane origami silhouetteCrane origami designed by Roman Diaz and Daniel Naranjo, and folded from 37 x 37cm paper by artist Emre Ayaroglu.2Tiny green frog origamiTiny frog origami designed by Toshikazu Kawasaki, and folded from 2 x 2cm paper by artist Emre Ayaroglu.

Starbucks is about to turn you into a loan officer.We’re a little short on jobs here in Amurica. Not that you need convincing, but here’s the latest report on it from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.So, what to do? Well, Howard Schultz, the CEO of Starbucks, did some thinking and came up with the following scenario:Small businesses created over 65 of the new jobs in the past 15 years.

When you’re talking about finite resources like space or fuel, it does seem a bit preposterous that we’re expending so much of it on dead people. ~ Sarah DitumI DON’T REALLY care what is done with my body after I die. Ideally, I hope that my body can be used in whatever way is necessary to save or prolong someone else’s life.

Austin Yoder has lived for several months out of his RV in the nation’s capital. Here’s his advice on how to go stealth mode.The Cellphone TrickYou can’t just be a guy sitting there in the front seat.A stranger, some interloper in this fancy, rich neighborhood with picket fences and glistening fully loaded BMWs with heated seats and steering wheels.

Laurel Fantauzzo heads stomach-first into Manila’s Chinatown, Binondo.WHEN I ENTER THE oldest church of the oldest Chinatown in the world, I notice I’ve walked into the middle of a Chinese-Filipino wedding. The groom is grinning in his white satin jacket and bright red shirt. The bride wears, of course, pure white.

Victoria Vorreiter shares the results of five years trekking in Southeast Asia’s Golden Triangle.The Golden Triangle — the mountainous expanse where Thailand, Myanmar/Burma, and Laos converge — is home to over 130 different ethnic groups and subgroups. The region remains one of the most culturally diverse places on the planet, with each community representing differing worlds, each unique in their histories, languages, customs, arts, beliefs, and dress.

Matthew Lynch travels to far western Mongolia to check out an ancient hunting tradition.“EAGLES HAVE BEEN KNOWN to pick off small children when hungry, or just plain annoyed.”Like most locals, my guide Aynabek is fluent in Mongolian, Kazakh, and English (he can also add Russian and French to the mix).

Road movies are the ultimate way to celebrate the eternally restless self.AN ANCIENT ZEN koan has it that in order to discover ourselves we must first get truly lost. Actually I just made that up, but you get the picture.Road movies can be quests, pilgrimages, chases, crime sprees, spiritual journeys, whatever, but mostly they’re about the need to escape the routine and, more often than not, the “tiresome self”.

I was in Seoul in October, and savored the opportunity to sample new dishes of a cuisine I have come to love over the years for its flavors and spices. I was not disappointed, especially because Korean food in Korea is so inexpensive. I would have loved to stay longer, just to eat more. Here are photos of some of my favorite meals.

*and occasional qualitative answers.In 2010, Ben Keys crossed the Atlantic Ocean three times, most recently delivering an 18-year-old superyacht to Nelson’s Dockyard, Antigua in time for the owner’s Christmas vacation. Here are some stats from that trip:Distance traveled from Palma de Mallorca – Gibraltar – Gran Canaria – Cape Verdes -Antigua: 4266 nautical miles.

Consider these tips before hiring a graphic designer, lest you find yourself lost, cold, and all alone. Or without good graphics.A few weeks ago I casually tweeted: “I need a graphic designer to design my business logo. If you know of anyone who might be interested, please DM me.”My inbox went wild. There are a lot of artists looking for work out there… who knew?

Marty Machado writes about and photographs the last leg of a 6-month stay working as deckhand (and often pulling the 12am to 4am watch) aboard a container ship.WE WERE APPROACHING Dubai on the third of three 57-day trips from New York to Singapore and back. In typical shipping industry fashion there was a drastic change of plans at the last minute, and it was decided to send the ship through the dry docks in Singapore.

The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster is celebrating. That’s a sentence I never thought I’d be typing.On July 13th, Austrian “Pastafarian” Niko Alm won* the right to don a colander on his head for his driver’s license photo in the name of the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Alm first applied for the license three years ago, having read that religious headgear was allowed in government identification photos.