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

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 | 0 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...

Getting Away With Robbinsville: The Akshardham Redemption

by Calvin Sun | October 6, 2025 | Camping, Layovers, New Jersey, October 2025: Camping in Robbinsville | 0 Comments

One of my more unique camping trips to have monsooned; this is what happens when you plan a camping trip months in advance just to visit a temple arguably worth seeing as a world-class destination. I was stuck at work all day Friday as Eddie took the initiative...

Just Sin-dou It!

by Calvin Sun | Feb 4, 2023 | Burkina Faso, February 2023: The Western Africa Hopper - Burkina Faso, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Guinea

We woke up this morning at 5:30am for a 6am departure from our hotel in Banfora, where missing breakfast became an afterthought as we drove out for an early sunrise boat trip on the Tengrela Lake. Trusting our fate to the lake, we paddled out to...

I Came Ban-fora Good Time!

by Calvin Sun | Feb 3, 2023 | Burkina Faso, February 2023: The Western Africa Hopper - Burkina Faso, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Guinea, Way Way Off the Beaten Path

After breakfast in Ouagadougou we set off at 7am for a grueling 10.5 hour drive to Banfora via passing through Dedougou and Bobo Dioulasso, with a handful of stops and a quick half an hour lunch. The ride was forced to be interesting over intense...

Burkina Faso La Ti Do!

by Calvin Sun | Feb 2, 2023 | Burkina Faso, February 2023: The Western Africa Hopper - Burkina Faso, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Guinea

I always follow through! I had originally planned to visit Burkina Faso last January right after my trip in Mali but when a coup d'etat took place in Burkina Faso's capital city on January 23, about 2 days before I was supposed to visit, I ended up deferring...

When The Grand Bassam Drops

by Calvin Sun | Jan 16, 2023 | Blitzkrieg!!!, Côte d'Ivoire, January 2023: Côte d'Ivoire, Layovers, Way Way Off the Beaten Path, Weekend Trips

With extra time and running an hour ahead of schedule after a late morning in Yamoussoukro, Dayo and I agreed to cram in a 4 hour onward drive and detour to visit Grand-Bassam: a UNESCO World Heritage site and town in the southeastern part of the Ivory Coast,...

Yamoussoukro: The Largest Basilica in the World

by Calvin Sun | Jan 16, 2023 | Blitzkrieg!!!, Côte d'Ivoire, January 2023: Côte d'Ivoire, Layovers, Uncategorized, Way Way Off the Beaten Path, Weekend Trips

The world's largest basilica . . . . . . just got SERVED. After a morning walking around the country's economic capital of Abidjan, we drove up 3 hours to reach Yamoussoukro, the political capital city of Côte d'Ivoire, by 11am,...

The First Month & Monsoon of the Year Is….ABIDJAN-UARY!

by Calvin Sun | Jan 16, 2023 | Blitzkrieg!!!, Côte d'Ivoire, Getting that VISA, How Did You Do That?, January 2023: Côte d'Ivoire, Layovers, Way Way Off the Beaten Path, Weekend Trips

The end of 2022 was coming around and nobody was yet taking up my offer to repeat our Caribbean adventure last January. So my gut started talking and I began to consider postponing the original plan in favor of a different excursion. Poking around options...

Meet the Ivoirians!

by Calvin Sun | Jan 11, 2023 | Blitzkrieg!!!, Introductions, Weekend Trips

Only 3 weeks home and we're going back to West Africa. I had announced this trip less than a month ago while in Dakar, expecting nobody to sign up. I'd only be in the Ivory Coast for a day, after all; who'd be crazy enough to join? Well, Gina “Million Dollar...

Besos From Bissau

by Calvin Sun | Dec 20, 2022 | December 2022: Senegal, The Gambia, & Guinea-Bissau, Guinea-Bissau, Way Way Off the Beaten Path

Bissau, the eponymous capital city of Guinea-Bissau. After a weeklong road trip across mid West Africa beginning in Dakar and as far north as the Mauritanian border at St. Louis, we rest our weary legs for 2 days here. From our lodgings at Casa Cacheu, we...

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