The Monsoon Diaries: How to travel the world with no time or money -

Meet the Sundancers!

by Calvin Sun | January 2, 2026 | Introductions | 0 Comments

From a trip planned over a year ago after a bunch of friends joined me in Killington 2024, we are flying out to Park City, UT for our first time at the Sundance Film Festival for their final time in Park City, UT! Welcome back those returning with me for their...

Niger At Last: A Second Chance

by Calvin Sun | December 10, 2025 | Border Crossing, December 2025 Annex: Niger, Fail, Flying Fancy, Getting that VISA, How Did You Do That?, Layovers, Niger, Rules Are Meant To Be Broken, Way Way Off the Beaten Path, What Dreams May Come | 1 Comment

11 months ago, I sat on the tarmac in Niger's International Airport at Niamey, watching my trip evaporate due to visa complications. The Niger Embassy in Washington D.C. had stopped issuing visas to Americans entirely. But I don't give up. In late...

Yemen Day 4: Mukalla Drive

by Calvin Sun | December 5, 2025 | December 2025: Yemen - Hadhramaut Valley, Serendipitous!, Way Way Off the Beaten Path, Yemen | 0 Comments

Al-Mukalla Pulling ourselves away from a desert mirage paradise at Haid Al-Jazil, we swapped our armed guard at another checkpoint during the 2 hour drive to Mukalla. You point that thing away from me! After a long wait at one of the...

Yemen Day 3: Where Reality Surpasses Dreams at Haid al-Jazil-lion Miles Away From Reality

by Calvin Sun | December 4, 2025 | December 2025: Yemen - Hadhramaut Valley, Way Way Off the Beaten Path, What Dreams May Come, Yemen | 0 Comments

Haid Al-Jazil As the afternoon began to wane, we continued onto our accommodation for the night at the Haid Al-Jazil Resort Hotel, named after what it overlooks and its location perching dramatically on a cliff overlooking the Wadi Do'an. You'll find remarkably...

Yemen Day 3: Wadi-“we” Do’an Here?

by Calvin Sun | December 4, 2025 | December 2025: Yemen - Hadhramaut Valley, Way Way Off the Beaten Path, What Dreams May Come, Yemen | 0 Comments

Deep into Wadi Do'an From Shibam, we drove deeper into the Hadhramaut system, heading toward Wadi Do'an, a dramatic side valley that branches off the main wadi. Because of the recent military takeover of the local Hadrhamaut government yesterday, we had...

Yemen Day 2/3: Waking Up to A Military Takeover | Shibam Diggity – Where Are Skyscrapers Born? Here, in The Manhattan of the Desert

by Calvin Sun | December 4, 2025 | Crisis, December 2025: Yemen - Hadhramaut Valley, Travel Warnings, Way Way Off the Beaten Path, What Dreams May Come, Yemen | 0 Comments

Day 2 was supposed to start with a morning drive to Al-Mukalla, the seaport and capital city district of Hadramawt. But that plan aged poorly, because we woke up to this instead: Just like my morning of our last day in Kabul in 2019, we woke up to...

YE-ah-MAN! Yemen Mainland Day 1: Oh Sei-yun Can You See?

by Calvin Sun | December 2, 2025 | December 2025: Yemen - Hadhramaut Valley, Getting that VISA, How Did You Do That?, Way Way Off the Beaten Path, Yemen | 2 Comments

Let's just say being here to take this photo at sunset today was worth the wait: The Visa Maze: When Standard Procedures Is Anything But Standard Before you get in, you'll need an entry visa. As an American citizen in 2025, you'd expect the Yemen...

Grenada Más

by Calvin Sun | November 4, 2025 | Grenada, October 2025: Pirates of the Caribbean's At World's End | 0 Comments

🇬🇩 190 down. 3 to go. After our 3 day stay in Dominica, we took a long hour-and-a-half drive back to the airport from our Portsmouth lodgings, stopping for a quick photo opportunity along the way. Dominica's airport is tiny. You...

Dominica-n’t Miss This

by Calvin Sun | November 1, 2025 | Dominica, October 2025: Pirates of the Caribbean's At World's End, Way Way Off the Beaten Path | 0 Comments

From St. Vincent, we boarded InterCaribbean Airways JY 717 at 12:20pm. Their new airport, however, was built just 8 years ago and still has some operational quirks. The staff double-printed my first leg itinerary from St. Vincent to Barbados without including...

Dead Men Tell No Layovers: St. Vincent & The Grenadines in 12 Hours

by Calvin Sun | October 29, 2025 | Layovers, October 2025: Pirates of the Caribbean's At World's End, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines | 0 Comments

Fresh off a quick overnight in Grenada (courtesy of a free JetBlue voucher from last October's Welcome to Chinatown gala), we touched down at Maurice Bishop International Airport at 1:53pm. This marked the beginning of a 3-country Caribbean...

Meet The Penguins

by Calvin Sun | Oct 23, 2013 | Introductions

ANTARCTICA - MEET THE PENGUINS View Winter 2013 in a larger map I will be visiting 5 continents in 7 countries in 27 days. And while you may have heard enough about my upcoming trip to Antarctica, you haven't yet met the brave souls who are...

Come With Us To Antarctica!

by Calvin Sun | Oct 14, 2013 | Antarctica, Our Next Adventure

ANTARCTICA 10 days View 2012, 2013 Monsoon Diaries in a larger map They say it's like visiting another planet: Antarctica. For those of you who want an experience that's totally out of this world and to come back with stories to impress, this...

Meet The Vikings

by Calvin Sun | Oct 8, 2013 | Iceland, Introductions

Before our December trip to Antarctica, we're practicing with a 3-4 day visit to Iceland and during the peak season of witnessing the natural phenomena known as the Aurora Borealis. Iceland is considered as part of Western Europe and thus can be a very...

Mt. Starr And Manzanar

by Stephanie Quan | Sep 30, 2013 | California, Camping, Guest Posts, How Did You Do That?, Post-travel Reflections, United States

Two weeks ago, my lab group did a camping trip in the Sierras. We drove up on Friday to the East Fork Campground (9000 ft). Hiked up Mt. Starr on Saturday (Class II scramble. 7 miles round trip. 12825 ft). And drove back on Sunday. On the way back, I stopped in the...

The Panama Canal

by Calvin Sun | Jul 1, 2013 | Epiphanies on the Road, Fit for Foodies, Lessons Learned, Mo' Money Mo' Problems, Panama, Post-travel Reflections, Summer 2013: Central America

I never really got to sleep. By the time I posted the last entry, we were already out the door by 10am for Chinese-Panamanian dim sum, which according to our well-traveled guide Manuel (Tatiana's friend in Panama who showed us around last...

A Night In Panama City

by Calvin Sun | Jun 30, 2013 | Fit for Foodies, Lessons Learned, Mo' Money Mo' Problems, Panama, Summer 2013: Central America, The Nightlife, Walking Tours

After a truly awful border crossing experience earlier today, we were welcomed at the Albrook bus terminal with the hospitality of Tatiana, a Panama City native and who offered to drive us around her city. This would be the first time Tatiana and I would meet, as she...

Border Crossing From Hell From Costa Rica To Panama

by Calvin Sun | Jun 30, 2013 | Border Crossing, Costa Rica, Fail, Panama, Summer 2013: Central America

I've done quite a few overland border crossings in my travels, but none was quite as bad as the one I just did today from Costa Rica to Panama. This is probably as bad as it gets but today was probably way out of the ordinary and we were simply unlucky to get...

Frickin’ NATURE: Manuel Antonio National Park

by Calvin Sun | Jun 28, 2013 | Costa Rica, Fail, How's the weather?, Summer 2013: Central America, Walking Tours, Way Way Off the Beaten Path, What Dreams May Come

There's been a few recurring inside jokes we've been throwing around during the trip, one of them being nature's tendency to constantly amaze us, and at the same time screw us over. Today was one of those days where it tried to screw us over. Today we...

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