Years ago, we received a book called “501 Must-visit cities” as a gift. Despite sitting on the shelf amongst a row of much more specialized travel books, we’ve actually thumbed through the thing enough that it’s beginning to show a bit of wear. We go to the index and look up listings by country and […]
Our visit to Peru was an unexpected bonus, resulting from an unnecessarily arduous flight itinerary. Each of the flights between Montevideo and Asuncion included twenty-hour layovers in Lima. We took advantage of each of these with two custom day tours, including pickup and dropoff at the airport. Needless to say, this first visit to Peru […]
Dozens and dozens of countries visited over the years, and not one visit to South America. A friend of ours called it “The Dark Continent” because, over time it started to seem intentional. The truth is simply that between mileage runs to East Asia, visits there just kept getting pushed back. But the stars aligned […]
Some trips are an adventure. Marked by stress and the excitement of the unpredictable, these trips are something like work. At times, you might be able to appreciate an adventure when it is underway. Oftentimes though, in the moment, they can be marked with the discomfort of deprivation. Appreciation, really deep appreciation of an adventure, […]
The prospect of being stranded and overstaying your visa in a weird police state and facing huge fines or even jail time is… sobering. That’s exactly what we were facing at 3 am at the Ashgabat airport. Travel can be stressful, and arguments can happen even on otherwise very nice trips. I’d say most arguments […]
After seeing similar themes emerge in multiple countries, you might convince yourself that you’ve seen it all. And then… you visit a place so off the radar weird that you’re reminded of just how much there is to see in the world. Turkmenistan is one of those places. Over the years, my blog posts have […]
Traveling through Southeast Asia, we came to recognize something we referred to as “The Banana Pancakes Trail.” This is essentially a well-worn tourist circuit where one can stay in cheap hostels and make your way across several countries. Most hostels seemed to offer banana pancakes on their breakfast menu, not exactly authentic local cuisine, hence […]
When I read that all private parcel couriers had left Tajikistan, I must admit that I made some assumptions about the country. I assumed their departure was related to either remoteness or violence and instability. In actuality, they were ejected for not playing well with the dictator that has run the country since the fall […]
We’ve been through a few sketchy overland border crossings before. Come to think it, many overland crossings can seem a bit dicey at times. Crossing from Kazakhstan into Kyrgyzstan was definitely one of those times. We had just met our driver Hasan, who spoke zero English, that morning in Almaty. The drive to the border […]
I was pretty sure before even starting this trip that gaining any weight wouldn’t be an issue. It’s an active itinerary with a fair bit of walking and hiking, sure, but that can easily be offset by rich lavish meals on a daily basis. So that’s not the reason. The issue really is that Central […]
Day trips to nearby cities are a given. Occasionally we’ve been able to make a day trip to or through an adjacent country. Without exception so far, these trips have been overland. For this trip, we decided to try something new right at the beginning: visiting another country with a roundtrip plane ticket on the […]
One of the prize games in Japanese arcades is a variation of the quarter games you sometimes find in American carnivals. The concept is to push a stack of goodies over a ledge into a bin that you open during play. Like many well-designed, profitable, and therefore infuriating prize games, the game provides an illusion […]
Cat cafes are nothing new in Tokyo and have existed since at least the turn of the century. We’ve visited a couple of them. The concept has also grown popular in a number of other large East Asian cities. In terms of uniqueness as a business model, it’s possible that cat cafes have become a […]
Sometimes pictures don’t fully communicate the enormity of a landscape… a barren desert, an isolated island in open ocean, jagged mountaintops in a cascade to the horizon. The Mongolian steppe is another such place. The simplicity of grasslands, smooth and undulating like gentle waves into the distance, is an odd landscape to take in. The […]
This was our first trip travelling solo with our niece, who’s now six. Taiwan/Tokyo tested the waters with her parents accompanying. This was just us and Emma. It was primarily a week-long trip to Singapore over her spring break. We did take the opportunity to do a day trip into Puteri Harbor, Malaysia which was…. […]