Getting My Ears Picked in Taiwan

One of the pleasures of going to Asia, at least for me, is the massages.  Everywhere from Thailand to Vietnam to Cambodia, the massages are excellent, cheap, and widely available. From restorative foot massages after a long day of hiking, to full body deep tissue rubdown that leaves me in […]

Kaohsiung 高雄市: My kind of town

“Please just point to it on the map. Don’t try to pronounce it!” Julia pleaded with me as we approached a ticket counter at the Tainan train station to buy tickets to our next destination. The day before, she was chatting with her massage therapist and tried to tell him […]

Introductory Course: Taipei 101

All of a sudden, everyone knows what Taipei 101 is, after Alex Honnold scaled Taiwan’s tallest building with no ropes and no fear, live on Netflix. We were in Taipei a month before this death-defying stunt, and when Victor mentioned that we would visit Taipei 101, I had no idea […]

Hail Mary at Taoist Temple

“You enter on the right through the dragon door and exit on the left through the tiger door. And you never enter or exit through the middle door. That door is for gods.” We sat on a bench in front of a brightly colored Taoist temple with a rooftop looking […]

Taiwan: The First 24 Hours

The first 24 hours in Asia are crucial. This isn’t an easy 4-hour flight to Mexico City, where we get out of the airplane and hit the ground running, only occasionally stopping to marvel that just a few hours ago we were at home. It doesn’t have a mere 6-8 […]

Southeast Asia – No Happy Endings

By Julia / March 6, 2019

The only thing I love more than massages is cheap massages.  Sure, a luxurious spa with relaxing music, aromatherapy, essential oils, and a highly trained therapist who will definitely not grope you in weird places is nice.  I splurge on one every birthday.  But it just cannot beat an hour-long […]

Iceland in a van

By Julia / February 24, 2019

We had 6 days and about $1000 each.  “The tickets to Iceland are super cheap!” Victor called out from the couch, “$400 round trip for around Labor Day.”  In the back of my head, I could faintly remember an article I read about the recession in Iceland and how much […]

Guatemala – Strangest Place for the Best Coffee

By Victor / February 23, 2019

Guatemala, a country where coffee is the number three export after bananas and raw sugar, where coffee plantations are crowded by volcano ranges, and where thousands of people subsist by growing coffee, happens to consume some of the worst coffee in the world.  All of their flavorful coffee beans are […]

India – Food and Fast Food

By Julia / February 23, 2019

Both of us love Indian food, and the trip to India only reinforced our shared love for Indian spices, vegetable curries, flatbreads, and fragrant rice.  Friends warned us that we would tire of turmeric and cumin and coriander in every dish and that we would miss meat, but the only […]

McDonalds Everywhere

By Julia / February 23, 2019

Almost every country we visit has a McDonald’s.  And in every country we run towards it, as it beacons to us, weary travelers, with its golden arches and a free toilet.  Our routine is almost always the same.  We use the bathroom, I sneak in a picture of the menu […]

Cambodia and Thailand – Us vs. Monkeys of the World

By Julia / February 21, 2019

Everywhere in Cambodia, whether it’s the temples of Angkor, the caves of Kampot, or the countryside of Battambang, if you see tourists gathering with cameras while the locals are rolling their eyes, it can only mean one thing – monkeys.  Macaques are cute and photogenic.  They are also vicious assholes […]

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