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 […]
Breakfast of Champions in Taiwan
One thing that never stopped surprising me about Taiwan is how you can be strolling down a sidewalk one moment and the next, you are suddenly in the middle of a busy restaurant. And I don’t mean just outdoor seating, which is common enough around the world. I am talking […]
Little Teapot Short and Stout
If your country historically has rocks and water in close proximity to each other, I will probably end up writing a post about it. Let me explain. Anywhere in the world where there are rocks and water, there will usually be deposits of clay, created by the breakdown of igneous […]
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 […]
The Happiest Pizza on Earth
We were in Kampot, walking around the main touristy street, when I noticed a strange abundance of Italian restaurants, to be more precise – pizza restaurants. All the menus displayed pizza and pasta and a few other Italian/Western dishes, alongside traditional Khmer cuisine. Every restaurant had the word “Pizza” in […]
Karlštejn Castle, Czech Canyons, and How I Almost Died.
Over the years, we’ve been in a lot of unfortunate, ill-fated, and plainly dangerous situations. We already posted about being attacked by monkeys and will soon write out how we visited Egypt in the middle of the Arab Spring, lost our luggage in Barcelona, and ignored all anti-mugging advice on […]
Southeast Asia – No Happy Endings
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
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
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 […]