As we were strolling into the Fez medina at sunset the other night, strutting casually, feeling completely at home, we all laughed at a memory from six months ago. Way back in Buenos Aires in August (which seems almost like a different lifetime), we were warned that the train station is dangerous and don’t have […]
FIVE TIMES DAILY
Life in the Muslim world just sounds different than it does back home. Give a listen.
OLD DELHI RICKSHAW RIDE
On our first day in India, we climbed aboard a couple rickshaws to explore the narrow crowed streets of Old Delhi. We had been offered many rickshaw rides all over Asia and had always refused them, thinking they were either a waste of money or “that’s what tourists do” (though we are tourists of course, we […]
THE MANY FACES OF INDIA
India! It seems as if our entire journey so far has been leading us to (and preparing us for) India. Now here we are, toughened by our time in Southeast Asia and ready for anything. We had been warned of the intensity of India, the crush of humanity, the poverty, the mountains of garbage — and […]
HOW OTHERS LIVE: THE FLOATING VILLAGE
Throughout our travels, we’ve discovered a handful of villages (complete with schools, stores and hospitals) floating in the middle of vast bodies of water throughout Southeast Asia. The first was in Ha Long Bay, Vietnam. The second was a fishing village in Thailand. But we didn’t get to know either of these villages as intimately […]
SIX HOUR BUS RIDE
We could have flown from Ho Chi Minh City to Phnom Penh. The flight is less than an hour, but by the time you get to the airport, check in, wait, fly, land, collect your luggage, go through immigrations, customs, it’s much more than an hour. And we’d already flown 27 times. Besides the flight […]
SAY YES
Every now and then, the simplest lessons about life and travel and happiness and adventure can be boiled down to just a couple tiny words. For example:
REFLECTIONS FROM THE ROAD: OVERCOMING FEAR
One of the goals of our journey has been to overcome our fears. We’re not referring to any specific fears necessarily, but heading blindly across the planet is an experiment in confronting our fear of the unknown (and the unknown is the source of almost all fear it turns out.) Our family has grown much […]
TWO MINUTES OF THAI BOXING (IS MORE THAN ENOUGH)
From the moment we arrived in Bangkok, the guy behind the desk where we were staying asked “Are you going to see the Thai Boxing?” Frankly, we hadn’t even considered it. But on a balmy night, Mark headed off alone in a cab carrying a bag filled with way too much camera equipment to capture […]
WE ARE THE PANDAS
Welcome to China. In this remarkable, enormous, profoundly complex, indescribably polluted, yet weirdly beautiful country, one of the great claims to fame is the world’s largest population of panda bears. Visitors from all over the globe flock to Beijing and Xi’an just to catch a glimpse of these adorable creatures. When a panda is spotted, […]