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 […]
When the Night Falls: Night Markets in Taiwan
A few days before our trip, I was talking to someone who had previously visited Taiwan and their only piece of advice was straightforward and without mincing words: “Do not eat street food there.” This was completely unexpected. If they’d said, “Don’t go there under any circumstances,” that would have […]
Back to Asia: Discovering Taiwan
The last time we were in Southeast Asia was in 2019, which now seems like a lifetime ago. Our first trip to that region was Thailand in 2013, followed by India in 2014, Japan in 2016, China in 2017, Cambodia in 2018, and finally Vietnam in 2019. On our first […]
Guatemala – Strangest Place for the Best Coffee
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
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
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
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 […]
Cambodia – How to Cross the Street and Live
On our first morning in the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh, we were standing on the corner of a busy intersection, unsure of how to cross. The interweaving flow of scooters, bicycles, motorcycles, cars, tuk-tuks, and occasional trucks never slowed and never stopped. There were no marked lanes, they didn’t […]
Cambodia – Cooking Class, Insects, and Vegetarians
To avoid being “templed out”, we split our three-day Angkor Wat pass into four days. Two days of temple visits, one day of rest, and the last day of temple visits again. On the day of rest, we decided to take a Cambodian cooking class that included a market visit […]