Traveling, writing and writing about traveling

I recently took part in a "storytelling" event called Generating put on by the good people at Gas & Electric Arts. The point of the evening was to find regular folks with amazing stories and then have them tell them -- in an off-the-cuff manner -- to a crowded room. Lisa Jo at G&EA thought the story of my amazing/tragicomic trip to Cairo at the end of 2001 fit the bill. So I kicked off their first Generating event with a story that started out: "This is a story about a bad idea..." I'm told they recorded the evening, so if a recording becomes available, I'll share it here.
But the whole experience -- combing through my brain and attempting to render a story that I could go on for hours in 15 minutes -- was a pretty interesting one.
And it got me to thinking about not only my time over there, but the writing I did while in Cairo. It got me to dig up the web site, Dust Never Sleeps, that I was working on over there.
And the three "blog" entries I wrote:

1. The maiden installment: Landing face-first in the desert
2. Feelin' Chipsy
3. and the maudlin Don't nobody know how dry I am

It also got me thinking about the heretofore unpublished (save for the e-mail blasts to friends) writing I did a couple years later from Hanoi -- a little project I'd dubbed "Bring Tha' Hanoize" (BtHz). I managed to retrieve the three installments (two from good 'ol Gmail, which was just in beta at the time and one from Patrick, who never throws out an e-mail).
And I decided that I'd post them here, on my largely underused personal blog. I've found that the writing, which was done entirely in Internet cafes, is not as sharp as Dust Never Sleeps. Guess that's what happens when you're writing on the clock (and sweating through your shirt at the same time).
So stay tuned. I'll post "Bring Tha' Hanoize No. 1, The seriously jetlagged edition" shortly.