A great charm of the Ubud Writers and Readers Festival in Bali is being able to rub elbows with the incredibly talented attendees on and off stage. At a panel on the Karma of Comedy with James Roque, Lindsay Wong, Rhik Samadder and Maeve Marsden, I found myself sitting next to Lonely Planet founder Tony Wheeler.
During the session, Roque, an ethnic Filipino who grew up in New Zealand, referred repeatedly to his mother soothing herself with a bath bomb. Wheeler, a living legend of travel who has made the world accessible for millions of people, turned to me and asked, “What’s a bath bomb?”
Totally globalized native New Yorker and former broadcast news producer Muhammad Cohen is editor at large for Inside Asian Gaming and author of Hong Kong On Air, a novel set in his adopted hometown during the 1997 handover about television news, love, betrayal, high finance, and cheap lingerie. See his bio, online archive and more at www.muhammadcohen.com; follow him on Facebook and Twitter @MuhammadCohen.
, a novel set in his adopted hometown during the 1997 handover about television news, love, betrayal, high finance, and cheap lingerie. See his bio, online archive and more at 
Muhammad Cohen 