travel more. experience more. live more.
The Good The Places The Philippines has some incredible destinations. I’ll start with the phenomenal rice terraces of Banaue and Batad, high in the Cordillara Mountains of Luzon. For three days, I trekked among what I consider one of the grandest human construction achievements on earth. It is worth flying to the Philippines to see [...] Read more »
I had a great opportunity to get a behind-the-scenes look at local food preparation on a recent trip to Indonesia. The city was Yogyakarta. Yogyakarta is generally considered to be a center of culture on Java, the most-populous of the Indonesian islands. The restaurant: Gudeg Yu Djum, for Yogyakarta cuisine The folks at Gudeg Yu [...] Read more »
Throughout my travels, I occasionally bump into fanatical surfers. They travel the world, occasionally for travels sake, but usually a deserted beach with the right waves is the only thing on their mind. Nearly every one of these surfers has one county in their small handful of favorites: Indonesia. Although there are even more sought [...] Read more »
Bali Indonesia: An Intro to the Island of Gods Bali is an anomaly: a Hindu island in a majority Muslim nation (the most populous on earth, in fact, is Indonesia). It is an island so synonymous with tourism, that it’s hard to think of Bali without the word holiday. The island is still fairly exotic [...] Read more »
My chance to meet the Komodo Dragon Face-to-Face I had great anticipation for my visit to Komodo Island. Earlier in the week, our expedition to see the orangutan of Kalimantan had exceeded expectations. These lizards are enormous—the largest on earth—growing to three meters. They can weigh up to 90 kilos (200 lbs). They only live [...] Read more »
When I was younger, I always wondered what it would be like to look inside of a volcano. Well, in Indonesia, at Mt. Bromo, I found out. But first, I would see the sunrise illuminating Mt. Bromo. Our journey started the night before. Our bus had to park far down the mountain side before the [...] Read more »
Our flight landed in the central Java city of Semarang. Java is the world’s most populated island and is home to nearly 60% of Indonesia’s 238 million people. Consequently, it is one of the most densely populated places on earth. It’s like squeezing 138 million people into an area the size of Greece. When I [...] Read more »
My Europe Trip is being put on temporary hold—and for good reason. I’ve been invited to join a group of international travel bloggers for a two-week trip sponsored by the Ministry of Tourism and Creative Economy. In my previous trips to Southeast Asia, I visited much of Indochina, Thailand, and Malaysia—but never made it as [...] Read more »
$1.25 in Your Vietnam Budget for Travel 25,000 dong sounds like a great sum of money. And it is for your Vietnam budget! Here’s what it gets you in one of the world’s best value destinations: Vietnam. (20,000 dong = 1 US dollar) A bowl of Pho! Yum. This famous big bowl of beef noodle [...] Read more »
Trying hard not to dismiss Hoi An This has been a recurring theme in my travel. Show up in a historic town that the guidebooks describe as lovely and charming, only to find that it’s filled with tourists and touts and nearly all the local life has been squeezed out of the historic core in [...] Read more »
This photo essay is the visual accompaniment to my previous article: What it’s like in Luang Prabang. except this post tends to let the beauty and tranquility of the town shine. In my written description about what it’s like to visit Luang Prabang, I wanted to skip the travel literature glamour and just give you [...] Read more »
On our way south from China, we stopped in the town of Luang Namtha for a few days. It’s a popular place for travelers who are looking to do hill tribe treks in northern Laos. It’s an extremely laid-back and quiet town with a few guesthouses, cafes, and lively night market. One of the days [...] Read more »
I’ve written previously about my quest to become location independent and posted Using Chiang Mai as a Remote Workplace last year after stopping temporarily to work there during my travels through Southeast Asia. I wanted to continue to write about places that are well suited for digital nomads to set up shop temporarily. This time [...] Read more »
Overall my Southeast Asia trip was a great success. I witnessed incredible experiences, met extraordinarily friendly people, and saw how people live life in places that are very different from where I’m from. What went well Got a good mix of seeing places, people, and experiences. Managed the marriage work and travel together well, stopping [...] Read more »
I feel like my three months in Southeast Asia symbolically came to a close the moment I stopped a lone Cambodian school boy riding home on his bicycle and placed my camouflage trekking hat on his head. I crossed paths with him while cycling back from my second full day touring the ruins and temple [...] Read more »
The Herbal Sauna and Traditional Lao Massage in Vientiane turned out to be one of my best experiences during my almost one month journey through Laos. It was a great way to spend the last afternoon with my friend whom I’d just traveled the last two months through southeast Asia with. We had hiked through [...] Read more »
The Lack of Culture What I mean by lack of culture is the outside, in-your-face culture. If you’re a traveler it’s hard to find. Lao food, for example, is not readily available. The majority of cafes have one thing on the menu: sub-standard imitation Vietnamese noodle soup pumped up with MSG. I didn’t see any [...] Read more »
By Stephen Bugno Before visiting Laos I had images of gliding down rivers at an impossibly slow speed all the while enjoying both the view and necessary transportation with friendly locals. That was hardly the case. In fact, it describes only one of my four slow boat rides. The reality is, the slow boat is [...] Read more »