I’d been in Indonesia for almost a month, but most of my time had been spent underwater and at dive resorts, so I thought it was about time I checked out the more cultural side of this country. Yogyakarta sounded like the perfect place to start. Yogyakarta, which some have nicknamed “Yogya”, pronounced “Jog-ja”, is […]
I was transported from my hotel to the harbor where I joined a few others on a small “ferry” that transported us from the not-so-nice town of Sorong, to the isolated paradise called Raja Ampat, an archipelago of 1,500+ small islands, cays and shoals in Western Papua, Indonesia. Two hours later we arrived at the […]
Upon arrival in Indonesia on May 2, I spent a fun-filled 4 nights of partying in Seminyak, Bali with my friend Jess, who’d flown in from Kuala Lumpur for a long weekend getaway. She’s been coming to Bali for years and had a couple friends with villas that let us stay with them which was […]
The Philippines are made up of over 7,000 islands, most of which are quite spread apart, so I knew going in that trying to squeeze in a dozen of them in 3 weeks (they give you a free 21 day visa on arrival and I had to get to Indonesia anyway, so couldn’t stay longer) […]
After a crazy/fun/sketchy take-off from Tioman, we arrived in Singapore and headed to Natalya’s apartment. She had to run off to class, so I took the day to relax and catch up on emails/blogging and took advantage of her super-fast wifi to download a bunch of tv shows for future viewing. The next morning I […]
The day got off to a bad start as I mis-judged how long it would take during rush hour to get out to the airport and missed the cut-off to check in my bag by a few minutes. Unlike most airlines in the world, Air Asia was completely inflexible and not only wouldn’t let me […]
After a sad farewell to Mark and Darlene, Marc and I took a speedboat from Koh Lipe, Thailand to Papua Langkawi, an island in the very northwestern corner of Malaysia. The speedboat cost about $3 more than the ferry and was going to drop us off on the side of the island closest to the […]
I used 10,000 United miles to fly on Thai Airways from Vientiane through Bangkok to Phuket, which were miles well spent. There was no way I was going to do back-to-back overnight buses or trains to get there. My friend Marc, who I’d met diving in Dahab back in September, had decided to join me […]
The roosters woke me up early again and I stumbled down to Alex’s, my goto restaurant which served real coffee and espresso, which has been a rare find over the last several weeks that I intended to enjoy at pretty much every meal. I caught a tuk tuk to he bus station and was one […]
The border crossing between Vietnam and Laos was quick and painless, and the final 70 kms to Muang Khua went by quickly as the countryside was beautiful, and we were blessed by a brand-spanking new paved road, which shaved about 4 hours off of our ride that day. Nine of the eleven on the bus […]
The day got off to a bad start as I mis-judged how long it would take during rush hour to get out to the airport and missed the cut-off to check in my bag by a few minutes. Unlike most airlines in the world, Air Asia was completely inflexible and not only wouldn’t let me […]
We woke up early to have breakfast and met our tour group outside the lobby. Calvin and Albert pulled up in a massive beast of a vehicle/truck and we all hopped in. Today we were supposed to see the Falls first thing, so we were told we’d be refunded since we’d already seen in, and […]
I didn’t know what to expect when I landed in Dubai. I knew the UAE was a country that did everything over the top. I had heard about the indoor skiing attached to a mall, the air conditioners on the beach, and of course knew they had the tallest building in the world…the Burj Khalifa, […]
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