What countries have you visited, and where was your favorite place?
England, Scotland, Iceland and Mexico. My favorite place is the Blue Lagoon in Iceland, a geothermal spa with milky blue, hot seawater from underground in a black lava field that looks like the moon, surrounded by green hills. There’s fine silica at the bottom to put on your face like a spa treatment and there’s a floating bar.
Elle de Lyons, 53, Switch Bakery on Cedar
China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Japan. Taipei is my favorite. It’s vibrant like Tokyo but with a Chinese mindset, with Confucian temples and Zen Buddhism. You get on a bullet train, and you go into a tunnel, and when you come out it looks like Shangri-La, with a temple up on a hill surrounded by green.
Joshua Bradley, 52, Owner, Switch Bakery on Cedar
The United States and Mexico. My favorite place is Mazatlán, it’s like Santa Cruz, but a little bigger.
Yoshdem Hernandez, 29, Buzz Sushi on Cedar
Canada, Mexico, France, Netherlands, Belgium. My favorite place was the Netherlands, the cities especially, the architecture of it all and how chill everyone was, everyone’s super nice.
Lucio Kim-Murakami, 26, Penny Ice Creamery on Cedar
Malasia, Singapore, Thailand, South Korea, Japan. I was lucky to see the Frida Kahlo exhibit in Moscow when I visited Russia. My favorite place was an ashram in Northern India. On my last day there, Ghandhi’s great-grandson visited and told us stories about his life with his grandfather.
Gakmun Cho Jones, 38, author of To Be Human and Long Ago When Tigers Used to Smoke
Canada, Singapore, China, Malaysia, South Korea. The most memorable place is Singapore. It is like one big shopping mall, but the entire world ends up there — a gigantic city on a small island where everybody gathers.
Tommy Tran, 41, Professor and Historian of East Asian History
