The Mist, the Cloud, the Tea, and the Sunset: The Trails of Shizhuo

The hardest part of any itinerary is usually not where to visit or when, but for how long. There are always disagreements online over how much time each place deserves, with some people claiming to have fully explored everything in one day, while others take a week. And when it’s […]

Spilling the Tea about Alishan

Victor loves coffee, and this blog is a clear testament to that. There are so many posts about coffee tours, coffee shops, coffee destinations, conversations about coffee over coffee, and even hiking through coffee plantations. Yet if you were to go through our kitchen, you’d find at most two bags […]

In the Sea of Clouds

When we travel, we usually try to avoid pre-planning everything. By rigidly scripting every activity down to the minute, you can easily deprive yourself of genuine travel experiences, instead just following the “script”.  But that doesn’t work with sunrises and sunsets, especially if you want to catch them from a […]

Hugging Trees in Alishan

Alishan was giving me a headache. Trying to fit this mountainous forest into our itinerary was a challenging task. No direct trains from Taipei. No direct buses. Renting a car and driving up there? Maybe. But that wasn’t ideal. The most reasonable option was to get to the city of […]

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 […]

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 […]

Cambodia – How to Cross the Street and Live

By Julia / February 19, 2019

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

By Victor / February 17, 2019

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 […]

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