Happy Typhoon Day, Hong Kong!
It began as a joke. “We should be drinking at the Four Seasons right now!” Never mind that Hong Kong was in the midst of a “Typhoon 8” Signal, with “Super Typhoon” Usagi bearing down upon the city. This was what the Hong Kong Observatory (the government’s weather forecasting arm) declared to be the biggest […]
The Endangered City of Hasankeyf
What’s Turkey’s most incredible sight that most people have never heard of? A wonderful little gem called Hasankeyf, that every visitor to Turkey’s Southeast should put on their map right now! Don’t worry, I’ll wait here while you do it…. See, I’d never heard of Hasankeyf either until I found myself looking for CouchSurfing hosts […]
An Ode to the Mandi
Oh mandi. I don’t have words to express just how brilliant a creation you are. For the fact that you are so very simple and so very useful is just where your ingenuity starts to come in. You are, for folks with limited indoor plumbing, a saving grace. You are…a bucket. To Flush Many westerners freak […]
How to Cross from Turkey to Iraq by Bus
If you’re planning on traveling overland from Turkey to Iraq‘s northern Kurdistan Region (Iraqi Kurdistan), I’ve got news for you! The days of being forced to use the taxi mafia to get across the border are over! Instead, you can travel across the border in style on a comfortable Turkish bus! How does it work? Get Yourself to […]
Photo Essay: Inside Enigmatic Ani
I’m fairly loose with my travel planning, but when I stopped by the bookstore before going to Turkey, a was flipping through a guidebook and saw this photo: So strange. Just a wall, sitting there in a field of debris. I knew I had to make to make it there. So I made my way to […]
An Open Letter to Singapore
Dear Singapore, I have a confession to make. I never wanted to like you. Heck, I never even wanted to visit you! To me, you were always just some big, Western-style, static city at the tip of Southeast Asia. I thought you were a police state and that your famous ban on chewing gum was […]
Is it Safe to Travel in Iraq?
Mention “Iraq” to anyone who reads the newspaper regularly and they’ll probably get a troubled look on their faces. It feels like at least once a week or so, I see a headline about explosions ripping through Iraqi cities as sectarian violence flares. The perceived danger alone is why people give me this strange look […]
I’m Off to Indonesia!
27 hours. That’s how far in advance I booked the flight that I’m about to take. I sit here at San Francisco International Airport (SFO) about to board a flight bound for Taipei. That will be my home for the next 12 hours or so as I head off on my latest adventure, one which […]
Travel on a Whim: Help Me Plan an Impromptu Adventure!
What would you do if you could wake up tomorrow and literally go anywhere? What would it feel like to do something like that on a whim? To open a map and point to a place and say, “I’m going to go there!” And then, in the next few days, actually make it there? Travel […]