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...

Planning For 12 Hours In Saigon

by Calvin Sun | Jun 13, 2010 | Doctor in the House, Summer 2010: Southeast Asia & India, Vietnam

We just woke up and it's 6:30am in a brand new day in Saigon! A few hours ago we just said our goodbyes to Corinne (we miss you already!) and made our itinerary for 12 hours in Saigon. 12 HOURS in Saigon, you say? Yes, we can do it. This is...

Lessons In Transportation

by Annah Kim | Jun 13, 2010 | Fail, Summer 2010: Southeast Asia & India, Vietnam

Like Calvin said - we spent over 50 hours on three different sleeper buses on an epic journey down the entire coast of Vietnam. After getting off of the bus (and almost exploding in the process), here's the PG version of our response to the entire ordeal.

Views Of Vietnam From My Window

by Calvin Sun | Jun 13, 2010 | Summer 2010: Southeast Asia & India, Vietnam

So let's start with the down low. This is how cramped we were on the 50 hour bus ride from Hanoi to Saigon: But the views...

50 Hours On A Bus

by Calvin Sun | Jun 13, 2010 | Fail, Lessons Learned, Summer 2010: Southeast Asia & India, Vietnam

Instead of the expected 32 hours, we spent exactly 50.5 hours on 3 sleeper buses, stopping for at most 4 hours for a break. The bright side is that the vista outside our windows was gorgeous...for about maybe 6 hours out of the trip. Pictures of our ordeal to come in...

Update Before Hoi An

by Annah Kim | Jun 12, 2010 | Doctor in the House, Fail, Fit for Foodies, Summer 2010: Southeast Asia & India, Vietnam

So we still haven't found a computer to upload our photos and videos from... so sorry! I promise to upload all of the (really good) videos when we find somewhere to do so! But just a quick update... Ha Long Bay: We swam and kayaked among the karst landscaping and in...

Quick Pause

by Annah Kim | Jun 12, 2010 | Summer 2010: Southeast Asia & India, Vietnam

So - we have a "layover" between buses in Hue for four hours. The sleeper bus was nicer than expected but still takes an excrutiatingly long time. We will have at least another 26 hours minimum until we reach Saigon (Ho Chi Minh) hoping that the bus doesn't...

En Route To Saigon

by Annah Kim | Jun 11, 2010 | Summer 2010: Southeast Asia & India, Vietnam

We will be on a bus for the next 40 hours to Saigon (Ho Chi Minh) and will not be able to post or give updates. Wish us luck and that nothing gets stolen!!

Goodbye Hanoi

by Calvin Sun | Jun 11, 2010 | Epiphanies on the Road, Summer 2010: Southeast Asia & India, Vietnam

Goodbye Hanoi. Goodbye beating heart of Southeast Asia. Goodbye flash thunderstorms, and flash floods. Goodbye city of Ngoc Son Lake, Bach Ma Temple, Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum, and Water Puppetry. Goodbye countless hotels, hostels and free wifi. Goodbye steaming pots of...

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