Behind every smile is a pain, behind every pair of eyes a story that will break your heart. It’s hard to remember that sometimes, especially when we put up the ‘gram-worthy facades that make it look like everything is peachy-keen. Remember when Robin Williams died? It shocked everyone, that behind the mask of the Jester …
Writing
Christmas Letter 2018
It’s been a few years since I’ve done a Christmas letter. Perhaps that’s because my last one didn’t go over too well with relatives back home. Perhaps it was just the craziness of my schedule at the end of 2016 as I geared up for my third year in Korea. Perhaps it was just laziness. …
Rituals on the Open Road: Going Home
It’s always the greenness of the drive which gets me; after I’ve left the airport and merged on to I5, whether it’s northbound from Seattle or southbound from Vancouver. It’s so easy to take a color for granted, but such a concentration of it after an extended absence makes me realize what I’ve missed. The …
Farewell to My 20s!
Ten years. Looking ahead, it seems like such a long time, but looking back it’s amazing to see how the time has flown. It seems like such a short time ago that I was planning my first trip overseas. But then, when I think back to what I’ve done in that time, the span of …
Best Credit Cards and Checking Accounts for Travel
Traveling can be a daunting task, with so much to plan and prepare for before you leave. Making sure you have the best credit cards and checking accounts for your trip can be something that slips your mind. I’ve compiled a list of the ones I use… they’ve served me well on my trips! I’ve …
My Grandfather’s Coins
Travel is many things to many people. It is many things to me. But perhaps the thing I cherish most about travel is its ability to imbue meaning into other things. For memories of it to link to those of people and experiences, for it to entwine itself around the roots of who we are. …
Fear and Loathing on the Pamir Highway
It was an awful night. Trapped at the border station on the Tajik side of the Kyrgyz-Tajik border, my lack of acclimatization and over-exertions from the previous day had led to an intense bout of altitude sickness. I spent the night staggering from my bunk in the barracks to the pit toilet outside, alternating between …
Living on the Edge
This year, I’m going to be featuring some guest writers on my blog, other travel writers whose work has inspired me. Each person will be writing a post about the following question: What’s an experience you’ve had on the road which has changed your life?” The goal is to gather some intriguing tales involving the …
Forks in the Road
When I first started The Open Road Before Me, it was early 2011 and I’d just decided to quit my job of three years to take up teaching English in South Korea. I was burnt out and desperate for change, and addressed the problem by veering down a vastly different road from what I’d been …
Traveling as an Introvert
Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.” – Carl Jung Human psychology is fascinating, and it also happens to be something I know next to nothing about. And yet, even people like myself, with next to no knowledge of the field, know what it means when someone is described as an ‘introvert’ or ‘extrovert’. You …