Me: “Bonjour”Them: “Yes, can I help you?”Me: “Uh yes…can I get combo #1 please… Merci.” I wanted to impress the locals with my rudimentary command of French but in the end, nobody had time to entertain a tourist. They just want to do their jobs and get on with life. Fair enough. Unless I was…
Sipadan/Mabul, East Malaysia
I love diving. I am a certified Open Water scuba diver. I love exploring lands but I also love exploring the world beneath the lands, a world where most of the world doesn’t see. At the beginning of December 2013, my original plan to visit the Philippines fell through due to Haiyan. As an alternate…
Sarawak, East Malaysia
Back in November 2013, I had originally planned to make a 1.5 week trip to the Philippines after spending a few days in Kuala Lumpur to attend my friend’s wedding. Then super typhoon Haiyan devastated the Philippines. Many of the destinations I had originally planned to visit were in Haiyan’s path such as Coron and…
Puerto Rico
Up until this point, my blog has always been about my long-term trips (2010-2011 RTW and 2014 South America) but I plan on writing about places that I visited the last few years and really enjoyed but never got a chance to highlight. Forgive me as I write from memory. Flashback to January 2013. I…
A Map for Saturday
All those years ago, before I started my first year-long Round-The-World journey, I watched “A Map for Saturday”. It was a documentary about the journey of a backpacker through his RTW trip and the people he meets, their experiences, and life on the road. It opened my eyes and prepared me (somewhat) for my own…
Cleaning up after getting home
I have a ritual which I enjoy doing every few months; go through all my things and downsize. This is part of my ongoing efforts to be a minimalist; buy what I need and fight temptation as much as I can for things I want. I’ve already downsized a few times and I’m at a point where I just can’t…
Ciao ciao, South America
Got back June 25th, 3 days to the day when I left. It was a 17 hour flight in total from Santiago to Dallas, with layovers in Panama City and Montego Bay. This was after spending 8 hours at the Santiago airport. People have been asking me which was my favorite place in South America…
Valparaiso
“Bohemian” is the exact word to describe Valparaiso. While Santiago is like someone who works 8-5 in a cubicle, goes home, makes dinner, watches TV, goes to sleep, and occasionally goes out for drinks with friends on a Saturday night, Valparaiso is like a heavily tattooed rock star who lives on nothing but drugs, booze,…
Mendoza
If you’re a wine person, then you have to visit Mendoza, Argentina’s wine capital and one of the top producers of wine in the world. I remember having the chance to visit the South African wine country but decided not to as I wasn’t a wine drinker but Mendoza was between Buenos Aires and Santiago…
Buenos Aires
Buenos Aires. One last city I had to tick off the list. I don’t know if there was anything in particular that brought me there but everyone I’ve met who has been there has told me not to miss it.