The Dominican Republic! Wow, what a beautiful place. And what a beautiful people! Our family decided over the summer that this would be the Christmas vacation of choice this year, and after booking a house for a week in Punta Cana, generously asked us if we'd like to tag along. The answer was obviously "duh" … Continue reading Strolling in Santo Domingo
Hello from Old San Juan, Puerto Rico! I am writing this slightly hungover. I can now say I've had rum in the world's rum capitol, and I never have to do it again. Drink rum, that is. I had one rum. Oh, head. When Seth and I left Vieques (the tiny island off the … Continue reading Puerto Rico: El Yunque and La Cueva Ventana
With every new place Seth and I go in Vietnam, I feel hit upside the head with happiness. So far (knock on wood), nobody has scammed us into giving them too much money, everybody has been really friendly and spoken reasonbly good English, the food has been amazing every single time, and the country itself … Continue reading Life’s a “Beach” – Hoi An and Whale Island
After our last night in Hanoi, we woke up early to catch the bus to Halong Bay. We hopped in a minibus with about 15 other people -- all cool and interesting from all over the world, between the ages of 23 and 45, and took the 4 hour ride to the bay. From there … Continue reading Pinching Ourselves in Halong Bay
We love Hanoi. This place rocks. It has all the modern conveniences we're used to (multiple constantly functioning outlets in the hotel, no power outages, I haven't squatted once to use a public bathroom yet!) and the weather has been completely clear since we arrived. So, we begin when Seth and I got off a … Continue reading Falling in Love with Hanoi
The last two days we spent trekking were awesome, and exhausting. The foothills of the Himalayas don't exactly have flat paths, so about 97% of the time you have to keep your eyes really focused on the ground so you don't fall (in a new record, I only got two bruises!). Dat view tho I … Continue reading Trekking Poon Hill, Hot Springs, and Chitwan
The night before our first trek out of Pokhara, we went out for dinner and ate wild boar curry at a happy hour at a bar we found which was playing live music and offered lounge chairs on the terrace overlooking the lake. It was dark, but we could still see little lights on the other side of the water of families who live in these incredibly remote areas on mountains.
We weren't in Osaka for very long, but as per our new usual, we still walked and walked until we couldn't walk anymore, then walked a little more. We eventually found Osaka castle, which was definitely the most impressive castle we saw in Japan. It was well-preserved and the walls next to the moat were … Continue reading From Osaka to Kathmandu: Welcome to the Third World
Tokyo is a really cool city. I was most impressed by how incredibly tourist-friendly it was. Usually when we were lost, we could count on being able to find a sign in English about where we were and which direction something was. That something was almost always the exact tourist attraction we were looking for. … Continue reading Lost and Found in Tokyo