What Dreams May Come – Those personal favorite moments that explicitly remind you why you went traveling in the first place.
- Call The Tripoli-ce! April 16, 2024It started normally just like any other monsoon: Get to JFK Terminal 1 early to check out all the lounges I can have access to, beginning with the VIP One lounge on Priority Pass to skip the security line. Then after security, I walk to Lufthansa Business which access I had after redeeming 80,000 miles from ...
- Nature’s Last Stand: It’s Only A Matter of Príncipe! January 8, 2024After a 10 day long roadtrip across the coast along the Gulf of Guinea and a day to recover in Accra, we flew out on an afternoon 4:10pm TP1527 TAP Portugal flight from Accra to TMS airport in São Tomé, one of the least visited countries in the world. But not before checking out all 3 ...
- “La-go”s to Nigeria! December 29, 2023We shall not be deterred by obscure visa rules! Despite numerous people having signed up and then become demoralized by the concerns over safety as a tourist in Nigeria, the 3 of us remaining — Letti, Sandy, and myself — decided to forge ahead to make it here anyway. If it weren’t so hard to ...
FML. – Moments where I /someone/something failed at life and it was pretty funny.
- Call The Tripoli-ce! April 16, 2024It started normally just like any other monsoon: Get to JFK Terminal 1 early to check out all the lounges I can have access to, beginning with the VIP One lounge on Priority Pass to skip the security line. Then after security, I walk to Lufthansa Business which access I had after redeeming 80,000 miles from ...
- Please Notice Me, Saipan! February 26, 2024From Palau, and having snuck in 4 hours of sleep from 8pm-midnight, we boarded the 2:05am United Airlines Flight #158 to Guam, landing at 5:10am underslept and miserable. Since Guam is a U.S. territory, transiting in Guam work as if you were entering the U.S. Therefore, you have to endure the through the whole visa/global entry/customs/etc. ...
- More Than Blood, “Badagry,” or Your College Degree… December 30, 2023With 2 full days in Lagos behind us, the 3 of us began our West Africa roadtrip westwards with a 2 hour and 45 minute’s drive from Lagos to Badagry. About half an hour into the drive, Sapphire Residences texted me on What’s App saying they just found I had left behind a bunch of important ...
This Is A Crisis. – Moments where I/someone/something failed at life and it wasn’t really that funny (at least at the time).
- Onboard the Choo-Chuuk Plane March 3, 2024Here we go! I finally get to experience the United Airlines famed Pacific island hopper in the other direction after taking a part of it 4 years ago. Probably the most burning question is where to sit: If you’re flying from GUM to HNL (eastwards), sit on the right side for all the legs and then switch ...
- The Pacific Island Hopper: UA 133/155 March 3, 2024Here we go! I finally get to experience the United Airlines famed Pacific island hopper in the other direction after taking a part of it 4 years ago. Probably the most burning question is where to sit: If you’re flying from GUM to HNL (eastwards), sit on the right side for all the legs and then switch ...
- Feelin’ Like A “Malabo”ratory Experiment January 13, 2024Our marathon tour and last foray across West Africa ends in Malabo on the island of Bioko, the capital city of Equatorial Guinea. From Douala, we boarded a ET913 flight at 12:35pm, landing in Malabo at SSG airport after only 20 minutes in the air at 1:20pm in the afternoon. We were able to obtain our e-visas ...
“No Serendipity, No Story!” (WTF Moments) – The most wonderful moments in travel are the coincidences we discover with other people.
- Call The Tripoli-ce! April 16, 2024It started normally just like any other monsoon: Get to JFK Terminal 1 early to check out all the lounges I can have access to, beginning with the VIP One lounge on Priority Pass to skip the security line. Then after security, I walk to Lufthansa Business which access I had after redeeming 80,000 miles from ...
- Can’t Stop Yappin’ About Yap Day March 2, 2024With Guam behind us, we flew on our midnight United Airlines flight 185 out to Yap of the Federated States of Micronesia, landing at around 1:30am in the morning. Yap is one of the 4 states of Micronesia and the land of stone money (more on that later), the original cryptocurrency. At the airport there’s only two ...
- Feelin’ Like A “Malabo”ratory Experiment January 13, 2024Our marathon tour and last foray across West Africa ends in Malabo on the island of Bioko, the capital city of Equatorial Guinea. From Douala, we boarded a ET913 flight at 12:35pm, landing in Malabo at SSG airport after only 20 minutes in the air at 1:20pm in the afternoon. We were able to obtain our e-visas ...
Way Way Off The Beaten Path – Totally out of the box travel experiences; you won’t find these experiences in any guidebooks.
- Sabratha-ised to Be Here? April 18, 2024On our third day from Tripoli we had breakfast and then began our way towards 2 hours northwest to Sabratha – one of the most important historical sites in Libya. The city dates back to 500BC and is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Among the numerous scattered houses of worship, churches, bathhouses, and saunas . . ...
- Keep Calm and Gharyan! April 17, 2024From Jebel Nafusa we arrived in Gharyan, considered the centre of Libyan resistance against the Italian invasion in the early 20th century. The locals here al;so had protested strongly against Gaddafi where they then suffered heavy bombardment by the Gaddafi forces. As of May 2011, the Gaddafi’s forces had shut down the water system and blocked food ...
- The Jebel Alliance Take the Nafusa Mountains April 17, 2024Today we drive 2.5 hours southwest of Tripoli to Jebel Nafusa / Nafusa Mountains. There’s a tank memorial along the highway, remnants of a battle here during the Libyan civil wars between rebel groups and Gaddafi’s forces. This mountain rises abruptly from the desert of Jefara to a height of over 968 meters, leading us to the ...
A Funny Thing Happened On The Way Around The World. . . . – Some stories simply can’t be categorized.
- The Sweet Is Never As Sweet Without The Massawa May 22, 2023We’re skipping ahead from Somaliland to Massawa today, but if you want to read about how we got into Asmara yesterday from Somaliland: read here. After arriving a day later than planned in Asmara from Somaliland and Addis Ababa we quickly had lunch in the capital and immediately drove out in the afternoon for a 120km journey to ...
- Love In The Time Of COVID-19: The Flu Shot September 15, 2020TLDR PSA (look how serious I am); Get the flu shot. While getting the shot may not entirely prevent you from catching flu, it’ll still dramatically decrease your chances of accidentally infecting or killing others (like grandma), or ironically dying from flu yourself. Before COVID-19, patients with flu symptoms would overwhelm ERs every year, all infecting one ...
- Knock-Knock-Nakh-chivan On Heaven’s Door: 2 Days In Nakhchivan August 29, 2018It’s time to shift monsooning back into higher gears — today we’re visiting Nakhchivan! A landlocked exclave separated from Azerbaijan by Armenia (or as some say, physically located within Armenia), but an otherwise autonomous region under the control of the Republic of Azerbaijan, Nakhchivan is similar to exclaves like Alaska (thanks Alan Sedgwick!) and on a level less ...
