VICE TRAVEL

Fresh Off the Boat

Back in Taiwan

In this episode of 'Fresh Off the Boat,' Eddie heads back to Taiwan to get heavy into the heavy metal scene—face paint, screaming lessons, and furry pink pillows. He also tastes Taiwan's famous "little snacks" in Gongguan before debating the pros and cons of Taiwanese independence over a home-cooked meal with local metal group CHTHONIC. Full story

Global Food Poisoning in Italy

Bra is the sort of town where old women really do wear all black to signify their widowhood and where the stores are closed for three, sometimes four, hours every afternoon. I went there to study Piedmontese regional food culture but instead found a surprisingly globalized coteri… Full story

Fresh Off the Boat

Back in Taiwan - Trailer

In the next episode of 'Fresh Off the Boat,' Eddie returns to Taiwan and vibes out in the metal scene, judges a cosplay fashion show, and taste tests stinky tofu, all while learning how Taiwanese identity is defined. Part one airs next Monday. Full story

Fighting Wildfires in Western Idaho

As we get to the ridge, the forest opens up into a clearing and we see the valley stretch out before us. Blue-green smoke covers the hills as far as we can see. The fire hasn't burned this side of the ridge, and it's quiet and cool in the morning. Full story

Americana

It's Like Vietnam All Over Again

Over the last 50 years war reenactment has gone from something guys at the Elks Club did on the weekend to get away from their wives to a full-blown obsession among history buffs with enough free time to make the experience as true to life as possible. The Vietnam War has typical… Full story

Christmas in Palestine

I spent Christmas in Bethlehem, Christ's birthplace, first in the international tourist hotspot of Manger Square, then in the hills surrounding it where there's fewer Nativity scenes and more posters honoring Palestinian martyrs and Fatah graffiti. Full story

Running on Empty

Squandering the Earth’s Natural Resources Sure Was Fun

Mother Nature is one bad bitch who can shake Homo sapiens off her topsoil like a nasty case of dandruff. In recognition of this inevitable outcome, we asked our international offices to find out what resources their countries were running out of the fastest. Full story

Me and My North Korean Minder, Ms. Song

“Gunfire and the sounds of revolutionary struggle were his lullaby,” proclaimed the beautiful Ms. Song (not her real name). She was one of the official monitors assigned to accompany me throughout my stay in North Korea. The government selects only the most attractive women to re… Full story

Fresh Off the Boat

Los Angeles

In the first part of the LA episode, Eddie rolls through Tehrangeles and shops for Persian rugs that cost as much as cars, eats brain and tongue sandwiches, and tests out magical saffron ice cream before ending the night at Little Tehran's most famed hookah spot. Full story

The Walkabout Is Cambodia's Sleaziest Bar

There’s something kind of heartening in the fact that there's one thing that can make the taxi girls, the motodops, and the Venn diagram of wildly divergent expat groups overlap in the middle of a hooker bar: a garbage bag filled with money. Full story

All the PDA in Salerno

Public displays of affection are part of the daily fabric of life in Italy. In America we are typically guarded when we publically express our affection for others, and it reads as petty and self-involved. Italians are not afflicted this way: Lovers barrel over each other in a gr… Full story

A Weekend in the Desert with No More Deaths

“The nature of the border itself makes it a strange place, causing confusion, dissimulation. No one really knows the truth of what really goes on there, we can only reconstruct it based on what we find,” volunteer Geoff Boyce told me. Full story

This Florida Cracker Lives in the Old bin Laden Mansion

About 20 miles from Disney’s Magic Kingdom sits another Florida kingdom of sorts, a 1928-built concrete block stucco mansion that looks straight out of a Billy Wilder film. It is surrounded by 13 acres of “Old Florida” views and has a bass-filled lake that would make an angler’s… Full story

Fringes

Bush League Rebels

On my first day embedded with the UN stabilization force in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, I visited a camp in the city of Goma set up to house rebel combatants who had recently surrendered. The facility was split along ethnic and administrative lines, with only a chain-li… Full story