travel more. experience more. live more.
Back in 2011, I stopped in Melaka Malaysia for a few days on my 3-month trip through Southeast Asia. I nearly fell in love with the town. Back then I noted that the town was on the verge of over-touristification. I admired the fact that Melaka was more or less a living, breathing town. Sure [...] Read more »
There is only one proper way to get to an island. I always feel like I’m cheating myself if I fly. To get to Japan, I knew I had to take the ferry. “But flights as nearly the same price.” One expat in Busan advised me. I wanted to take the ferry. It was my [...] Read more »
Two months ago, I thought I might be in South Africa during February. As it turned out, I was invited to Korea to spend the Lunar New Year holiday. It is one of the two most important Korean holidays and I’m fortunate to have spent it with a Korean family. This year, Lunar New [...] Read more »
When it was time to leave Olomouc, an under-appreciated city in eastern Czech Republic, I had an idea. Instead of going directly to Prague, why not take advantage of our Eurail passes and detour to another city before reaching Prague? I was a little disappointed having not been able to visit Bratislava during our three-day [...] Read more »
When travel seems to go wrong It wasn’t supposed to happen like this. We were supposed to stop in a small town in the foothills of the Tatra Mountains of Slovakia, rest for few days, work on our laptops, and enjoy some tasty Slovak food. So how did we end up in a pseudo-hostel sandwiched [...] Read more »
It wasn’t supposed to be like this. We were supposed to be in Paris yesterday afternoon, not riding this slower-than-TGV regional train with two transfers after a series of follies yesterday. I’ll take you back to yesterday morning. We had stayed overnight at a friend’s house in the village of Maureillas, in the foothills of [...] Read more »
There are few signs in Bordeaux that would lead you to believe that you are in sacred wine territory. There are the typical number of wine shops and wine bars visible to the visitor of an average French city. Arriving from Paris on the train, I only passed a few vineyards that I could see [...] Read more »
One of the novelties of traveling in Europe is the density of small countries and the ability to pass through most of them with absolutely no border controls. The small size of the countries also makes it not uncommon to allow the traveler to pass through more than one of these countries in the [...] Read more »
Thanks to Runaway Juno for handing me the baton in the blogger relay. Shaun and Erica at OverYanderLust are our Team Green captains who got things rolling. What we’re doing is sharing our 1st, 2nd, and 3rd favorite travel memories before passing it on to another blogger to do the same (and so on and so on). The [...] Read more »
Navigating our road trip to the Very Large Array At dusk the evening before, we made a scramble for free camping in The Box. There is little information for The Box Canyon along Route 60, both online and at the actual site. It is Bureau of Land Management (BLM) land, and that should be information enough. [...] Read more »
New Mexico: Land of Enchantment We left Great Sand Dunes after an early morning climbing to the top of these tallest dunes in North America. By 11am I saw the gigantic dunes shrinking in my rear-view mirror as Blanca Peak neared on my left. On the southern edge of the Sangre de Cristo range, [...] Read more »
Somewhere west of Tulsa the landscape really opened up. Long rolling hills stretched under grazing cows and the occasional oil pumpjack dotted the view. We’d later learn from Debbie in Perry that the wheat was about ready. Most of the fields were already cut but we saw a few of the enormous combines working to [...] Read more »
We left Lake Charles State Park before breakfast and made a quick stop at Lynn Supermarket in the small town of Lynn, Arkansas. It’s the kind of business that advertises “Old Fashioned Hometown Service!” in their window and greets each customer as he or she walks in the front door. They’ve also got the checkout [...] Read more »
We got a late start out of Nashville, chatting around the breakfast table until nearly noon. We stopped at one of Nashville’s oddities that is the Parthenon—an exactly two-thirds-sized replica of the real thing in Athens. The interior is closed Sunday and Monday, but it’s still cool to check out from the outside. We drove [...] Read more »
Even though I make an effort to avoid the interstate highways, we couldn’t avoid Interstate 81 through Virginia. It took us in exactly the direction we needed to go and it’s got to be one of the prettiest stretches of highway in the country. The part we drove paralleled the scenic Blue Ridge Parkway [...] Read more »
I’ve been road-tripping my whole life. It’s one of the quintessential American experiences. It’s something I want to revisit at different stages of my life. The road trip always manifests itself differently depending on your companions, the region of the country, and the speed at which you take yourself. In the tradition of Steinbeck, country [...] Read more »
For a balanced view of China I’ve published this post simultaneously along with the more positive: What I love about China (it’s not what You Think Not that I have to. But want to. More than once I’ve had this feeling: I just want to move on; want to go to another country. Want to [...] Read more »
93. He pencils in the only thing I can understand among the Chinese characters. He smiles and points to the man with a long grey beard and arching back behind me. I smile. He’s predicting that I’ll live until I’m old, just like that man. Good. He continues. I’ve got my left hand out, palm [...] Read more »