Since breaking my leg last year, I’ve had to be a lot more mindful in regards to the toll hiking takes on my body. Intense stretches of downhill are enough to lay me up for days afterward, and an awkward fall can lead to serious re-injury. That’s why I purchased a pair of Cascade Mountain …
travel issues
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 …
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 …
Getting Your Alien Registration Card in South Korea
So, you’ve gotten a job teaching English in South Korea, and you might’ve even just touched down after doing a visa run to Fukuoka. Regardless, you’re stepping into a new world, but there are still a few things you’ll need to do before you can really settle in. The most critical thing is to apply …
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I Used to Hate: A Look at How Travel Changed My Life
The person I was 10 years ago was very different from the one I am today. Development and change are intrinsic to living and growing, but what’s happened to me over the past decade has been more than typical maturation. I’m still me, to be sure, but so many things that I thought defined me have …
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The Old Town of Lijiang
‘The Black Spot of China’s Tourism Industry’. That’s the moniker often given to the Old Town of Lijiang. Even travel guides mention it. The name has to do with the heavy-handed restoration efforts to local Naxi-style buildings and an influx of Han Chinese putting on traditional Naxi getup to give the place an ‘ethnic’ flair. Perhaps that’s a byproduct …
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 …
Tips on Traveling Alone and Not Going Crazy
It seemed an advantage to be traveling alone. Our responses to the world are crucially moulded by the company we keep, for we temper our curiosity to fit in with the expectations of others…Being closely observed by a companion can also inhibit our observation of others; then, too, we may become caught up in adjusting …
Christmas Letter 2015
The past 12 months have been strange ones for me, and for a number of reasons. It’s the first year in the past four where I’ve spent more time in my home country than overseas. It’s the first time since university where I’ve found myself living abroad in a country outside of Asia. And it’s …
Being American in Iran
I almost didn’t tell my family I was going to Iran. My mother and father worry for my safety, as parents do, and are sources of endless reasons why I shouldn’t visit certain destinations. They’d handled my ambitions to travel through Myanmar back in January 2013, and Mongolia that May. They’d done admirably well when I …