Bad Things
We arrived in Taipei on December 13th and left on the 18th to explore Alishan. On December 19th, 2025, a 27-year-old man threw smoke grenades and stabbed people in a Taipei metro station, killing three people and injuring eleven others. He then killed himself by jumping from a building. This […]
Taiwan: Shaking in Our Boots
It was an evening of our last day in Kaohsiung, and we were visiting the Dragon and Tiger Pagodas. Temples in Taiwan usually have dragons painted by one set of doors to indicate that those doors are used to enter the temple, and tigers by another set of doors, which […]
Day Lilies, Yuli Noodles, and the Mountain Mist
Of the four days in the East, we spent three days driving up and down the coastal highway. These days were filled with stopping at ocean viewpoints, exploring the shoreline’s rugged geoparks, and learning about local indigenous culture. But as we navigated through this narrow stretch of land, sandwiched between […]
The Wild, Wild East: Taiwan’s Enigmatic East Coast
Like Alishan, we considered cutting the East Coast out of our itinerary entirely. The region was remote, and it was a logistical puzzle to plan. Also, it was the only place in Taiwan where we needed to rent a car and potentially drive through what looked on the map like […]
Food. Taiwan. Must I Say More?
I wanted to write about the top 10 dishes we ate in Taiwan and quickly realized that the list was way longer than 10 and each dish deserved its own blog post, and this would quickly spiral into Two Cats Backpack Eats Taiwanese Food for Entirety of the Foreseeable Future […]
Hump Day in Oman
It was 5 am, and we were on the move. We got up in the middle of the night to drive out of Nizwa, a lively city full of neon signs and bustling markets, towards a dusty outpost town of Sinaw in the desert. The next thing I am going […]
Driving in Oman: 5 Pros and 1 Con
I must admit I was a little bit nervous about the prospect of driving in Oman. Driving in the Middle East is like a box of chocolates: you never know what you are going to get. On the one hand, you can get Turkey with its excellent network of roads, […]
How I Became a Fashionista
Back in 2011, when we were preparing to visit Egypt, it never even occurred to me that this would not be an average trip. And I am not just talking about ending up in the middle of the Arab Spring with violent and deadly protests happening three blocks away from […]
Welcome to Oman!
We arrived in Muscat early in the morning, having spent the last two nights in an airplane, the first flying from Chicago to Frankfurt, and 14 hours later, from Frankfurt to Muscat. Unsurprisingly, we were exhausted. We checked into the hotel, ate breakfast, and collapsed into bed. Four hours later, […]
Christmas Miracle in Frankfurt
It was 11:30 am and I was in the office, finishing my morning tasks and wondering what I was going to do for lunch. It was a regular day as any other, except we had a 9 pm flight to Munich and after a 12-hour layover another flight to Muscat, […]
The Cotton Castle in Türkiye
The first time I saw a picture of Pamukkale, I had no idea what I was looking at. Was it snow? Super white sand? White marble? Salt deposits? Was this natural or man-made? These questions were not answered until we physically got to Pamukkale, mostly because Victor insisted that I […]