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 […]
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 […]
Skipping Managua. Part II. Leon
One week after visiting Granada, we drove into its long-time rival-Leon. Like Granada, Leon is set in a breathtaking location. Approaching the city from the north, we counted at least six volcanoes on the horizon, all part of the Cordillera de Maribios. As we got closer, it became obvious that […]
Skipping Managua. Part I. Granada
One clear trend in our travels is that Central American capital cities don’t get much love from us. It’s just the way it is. In Guatemala, upon arrival, we left the capital, Guatemala City, without ever seeing it. In San Salvador, the capital of El Salvador, we spent only half […]
A Whole New Life
Start with Part I Here We were walking from Airbnb towards the livestock barns, and I noticed it wasn’t quite as dark as I thought it would be. As we were driving up the mountain, my fear of encroaching darkness made me feel that it was much later in the […]
Nicaragua: A Road Less Traveled
The dusk was setting quickly over Matagalpa, the little red and yellow coffee berries no longer visible on the branches of coffee trees lining the narrow, unpaved road steeply ascending into the mountain. The light of our headlamps jaggedly bounced up and down, as our tiny, rented Toyota Yaris struggled […]
Girls, Girls, Girls. Souvenirs: Part III
Back by popular demand, here’s Part III of our souvenir inventory (Part I and Part II are here). As we wrote before, we are very picky when it comes to souvenir shopping; yet, sometimes, we do bring souvenirs home. Most of the time, it’s something related to the culture, religion, […]
One Day in Comuna 13, Medellin
A while ago, I wrote a single post about paragliding in Medellin, completely skipping over the part where we went to Colombia in 2022 and spent five days in Medellin. Now that I have a few free weeks after finishing all Norway posts and before the next trip springs up […]