AT HOME, AT WORK

Anyone notice how much easier it is to blog when away from home?

I've been working on Lonely Planet's Myanmar (Burma) guide the past month, as well as finishing up their New York City guide.

Last week I was the 'expert' for an online forum chat on Budget Travel's website for Vietnam. I've done the sort of thing once before -- for LP -- when mostly my friends sent in joke questions about monkeys. (The idea was still raw then -- a couple years ago.) This one was serious and a lot of fun. Lots of good questions.

Meanwhile, I had an article published this week in the great online magazine Perceptive Travel. The piece recounts my time in a place everyone in Burma said I couldn't go: the new capital Nay Pyi Daw. I've not seen a place like it -- wide paved highways with no one but a few locals without vehicles on them.

Here in NYC, everyone's still coming down from the Super Bowl. I always like to experience such city events -- like the Rangers first Stanley Cup in half a century -- in public places. For the Super Bowl, I went to a simple sports bar on Ninth Ave in Park Slope. A tiny Puerto Rican waiter hugged me when the winning TD catch was made, and my right palm was bruised from so many strangers' high-fives. It was worth doing. And I'm a Green Bay fan.