All Stories

Everything we've published, newest first.

The Taj Mahal at dusk, its white dome mirrored in a long reflecting pool lined with visitors

A tour of India’s Golden Triangle: Immortal beloved

Humanity divides in two, according to Vinee: those who have seen the Taj and those who have not. Seen from the tower where Shah Jahan ended.

By Igan D'Bayan · January 11, 2015
Rodel Tapaya in a cap and Marina Cruz in a grey suit, both in Art Fair Philippines 2020 exhibitor badges, smiling side by side in a gallery booth

Rodel Tapaya and Marina Cruz: Two for the road of art

Contemporary Filipino artists Rodel Tapaya and Marina Cruz on folklore, memory, and building an artistic life together in Bulacan.

By Igan D'Bayan · December 7, 2014
The Great Sphinx under scaffolding at Giza, with two pyramids rising in the distance

Rock of ages

Retracing the Holy Family’s flight through Egypt: cave churches, four monasteries in Wadi El Natrun, and a bible that floated up the Nile.

By Igan D'Bayan · November 23, 2014
A winged Cthulhu in a white dinner jacket salsa-steps across a lantern-lit rooftop café terrace, the Sphinx and the Pyramids of Giza glowing in Cairo’s sunset behind him

Salsa Night in the Land of Pharaohs

We are really nowhere men after a hard day’s night, but at this hour, by the tomb of Tutankhamun, there shall be dancing.

By Igan D'Bayan · November 23, 2014
Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band cover reimagined with modern rock stars around a floral ‘Music Is Life’ display

Get Your Kicks On Route 666

Noel Gallagher on his first guitar, the Cure’s longest set, a reporter who mistook Fergie for Apl.de.ap: an album of crazy diamonds met along the way.

By Igan D'Bayan · July 13, 2014
A technician in glasses works on the platter of a Technics SL-1200 turntable at a cluttered bench, surrounded by speakers, valve amplifiers and shelves of hi-fi gear

‘Rivo-lution’ no. 9

Rene Rivo is the Yoda of audio. The man behind Hyperaudio on hotrodding tube amps, tweaking Thorens turntables, and why vinyl never quite died.

By Igan D'Bayan · May 17, 2014
Parody of the Led Zeppelin IV album cover: a framed painting on a peeling wall of a robed Cthulhu-headed figure hunched under a bundle of audio cables

Further adventures in hi-fi: Or ‘And he’s buying a stereo to heaven’

Feel the derision of audiophiles once they find out you owned a piece of Bose equipment at any point in your life. It’s like the Mark of Cain.

By Igan D'Bayan · March 15, 2014
Dark illustration of a Scream-headed model maker painting a tiny graveyard diorama at a cluttered workbench, walls of numbered lit shadow boxes behind him under a sign reading 27 Dioramas of Horror Stories

27 or so encounters with the weird

Ghost sightings, haunted Parador hotels, and weird encounters in Malabon that prove the living are far scarier than the dead.

By Igan D'Bayan · July 28, 2013
A sepia spaghetti-western movie poster titled ‘Once Upon a Time in the East: The Adobo Western,’ with a poncho-clad gunslinger flanked by Filipino actors across a desert backdrop

Moviemov’s homage to Sergio Leone: How the East was won

Sergio Leone turned the tired cowboy movie into the Spaghetti Western, and its poncho-wearing ghost rode all the way to our own “Adobo Western.”

By Igan D'Bayan · December 19, 2012
The gold Dome of the Rock rising above the Western Wall and rooftops of Jerusalem’s Old City

Houses of the Holy

Floating on the Dead Sea, ten seconds inside the Holy Sepulchre, and a rabbi’s joke about the price of a phone call to God.

By Igan D'Bayan · October 14, 2012
A long-haired writer sits at a desk with a crow and a notebook marked Notes on Absence, ringed by numbered portraits of women under the hand-lettered title 26 Girlfriends I Never Had

26 girlfriends I never had

Twenty-six women, none of them his: near-misses, five-second flames and unrequited muses, ending with an art student called Racer G.

By Igan D'Bayan · July 29, 2012
Mock illuminated manuscript: a haloed chicken rises from a stone tomb before praying pilgrims, beside a scallop-marked Santiago de Compostela milestone

Tales of the Weird on the way to Santiago

A reanimated chicken, a gothic coop, a hostel room for snorers, and hammering on a hotel wall at 3 a.m. with nobody in the next room.

By Igan D'Bayan · February 19, 2012