You've posted several columns from afar -- Malaysia, Peru, Laos. How do you manage to head out on far-flung adventures when, at the same time, you're always whining about being laid-off and broke?

My jaunts tend to generate queries like this, often arriving with a subtly accusatory tone.

Spending several days on another continent costs money, but not as much you might think considering the places I like to visit. Meanwhile I live an exemplary low-impact lifestyle. By that I mean Spartan and grungy: no car, no cable, no cellphone. And if you've ever visited Somerville, Mass., you'll have the right mental picture when I say, "wood frame two-family, first-floor apartment."

If that all sounds depressing, it is. Except for the chance to have my passport stamped in a slew of exciting places. The idea, provided (1) the airlines haven't all gone Chapter 7, and (2) Messrs. Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld spare us from World War III, is to return to work believing my travels were a good and valuable thing, not an exercise in irresponsibility.

How many countries have you been to?

About 50. I say "about" because having been a pilot makes things muddy. Does it count if you're only at the airport? Does it count if you spend the night at an airport hotel? How about if you leave the airport, but only for an hour? Technically I've been to Ireland and Haiti, for example, but I won't put a pin on my map since I never went beyond the duty-free store. On the other hand, I once paid a cabby $20 to take me on a tour of Santo Domingo during a stopover. I was only on the island for a few hours, but I saw the capital and so the Dominican Republic gets a pin. Most on-the-job flying I've done, however, is domestic. The majority of the countries I've visited have been on my own time, and all of those are pin-worthy.

I imagine pilots must be adventurous travelers, especially in light of their benefits.

All airline employees, actually, get the same travel freebies, and I've found that pilots are no more adventurous than ticket agents, mechanics or flight attendants. Maybe less so. I've known plenty of airline pilots who do not possess passports and have no intention of ever leaving the United States of America.

Which place most exceeded your expectations?

My favorite-ever trip was a camping safari I took through Botswana. What I expected to be a featureless expanse of Kalahari turned out to be one of the most beautiful landscapes I've ever seen -- remote, primordial vistas that seemed to belong in another epoch. Also, Botswana is a very wealthy country, relatively speaking. Whatever your preconceptions might be, I'm sure they don't include the spotlessly clean supermarkets I saw there. Botswana is referred to as "an African success story." You'll be tempted to accept this with a grain of salt, but it's peaceful, prosperous, and splendidly scenic.

Another good example is Bali. First impressions of Bali are not good ones. The island's main city, Denpasar, is a blighted sprawl of traffic and fast food joints. It could almost be Miami, Honolulu or any of a dozen other sun-splashed shitholes. But everything changes once you're in the countryside. It becomes, to use a horrible and condescending term, magical --- terraced rice paddies dribbling down mountainsides; fields of swaying palm backdropped by conical volcanoes; women in sarongs carrying baskets of Hindu offerings on their heads.

You were there in 2003. With the bombing not long before, weren't you afraid?

The Bali bombers struck in the Kuta enclave of Denpasar -- a kind of East Indian Cancun -- and had come from Java, the Muslim island next door. Bali is not a Muslim island, it's Hindu. More correctly, it's a pantheistic amalgam of Hindu and Buddhist traditions. The place is covered by temples. Every home and village includes at least one of these rectangular, open-air courtyards decorated by ornately carved altars, statues and façades. You get used to the gargoyle stares of countless gods and monsters -- Shiva, Vishnu, Brahma, Garuda -- leering at you from every nook. I have never seen a place so utterly consumed by one thing as rural Bali is consumed by piety.

In terms of culture shock, has any place impacted you more than expected?

Two countries come to mind: Morocco and Mali. Morocco is one of the most visited places in the world, and so you'd anticipate a solidified tourist infrastructure, which really isn't there. Overall the country is a lot more underdeveloped than I guessed it would be. The exception being the roads, which are fabulous. We rented a Fiat for 10 days and never hit a pothole.

Mali is in another category altogether. After India I thought I'd seen everything, but the sights, sounds and atmosphere of rural Mali are borderline indescribable. To a Westerner, the mosque at Djenne, on market day, might as well be another planet. It was amazing.

That's interesting about the roads in Morocco. What about other surprises?

The bus system in Turkey. Turkish buses are modern, immaculate, and they go absolutely everywhere. (If you ever read Orhan Pamuk's "The New Life," however, you'll be given the wrong idea.)

What about biggest disappointments?

Chiang Mai, Thailand. The country's proclaimed "Jewel of the North" is in fact a pollution-choked sprawl of about a million residents and a roughly equal number of tourists. Chiang Mai makes a decent hub from which to explore other parts of Thailand and neighboring countries, but the city itself is awful.

Back in Morocco, Marrakech was a similar letdown. Dirty, noisy, snarled by cars and overrun with visitors. Fez, one of the other imperial cities, was moodier and much more intriguing.

You once wrote of your "anti-city bias."

That was in my description of Lima, Peru, possibly the ugliest metropolis I've ever seen. There are lots of miserable cities out there, and I don't care where you are -- Asia, Africa, South America -- they all look the same. A day or two in any big city is more than enough for me. A few I've enjoyed in moderation -- Istanbul, Budapest, Amsterdam and Kuala Lumpur -- but anybody who sees only cities is missing out. We have a tendency to associate countries only with their urban centers. When I got back from Peru a pilot said to me, "Peru? Why the hell would you go there?" The only part he'd ever seen was Lima, on layovers.

You've lamented Americans' unwillingness to travel beyond the comfort zones, as you put it, of Western Europe or the Caribbean. Is there one place you'd recommend to a first-timer willing to venture further?

Turkey. I can't say enough about Turkey -- the scenery, the Roman ruins, the otherworldly landscapes of Cappadocia. And with an established and reliable infrastructure for tourists, the culture shock is fully manageable even for the squeamish. And it's cheap.

Otherwise, Latin America is special in that it's not only exotic -- that word again -- but close. In less time or money than it takes to reach Paris, you could be standing atop Machu Picchu (which, trust me, is 50 times more spectacular than anything you'll see in France), or discovering the Mayan ruins of Central America. There are 2,000-year-old pyramids just two hours from Miami -- in Guatemala, Honduras and Belize.

People accuse me of being too cerebral about travel. Folks want to go somewhere to have fun, swim and relax. I have to laugh, because in most of these places you can do all of those things, and more, without being holed up in some gated resort. And usually for less money.

Do you recall your first plane ride?

Quite clearly. It was an American Airlines 727, from Boston to Washington. That's in my book, and I've mentioned it on Salon a few times. I have a photograph of my sister and me walking up the stairs. They served us cheesecake and offered me a second slice.

This will sound insane, but I can remember every airline, and every specific aircraft type, of every trip I've ever taken.

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