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...

Written in Stonehenge

by Calvin Sun | May 28, 2022 | United Kingdom

Our road trip through Wales begins! Starting from London we took Bolt/Ubers for LCY airport, picking up our pre-reserved vehicles at the airport car park. After an hour of registration hoops, forms, and processing, we set out through an hour of London...

You’ll Never Be “A-Lone”don!

by Calvin Sun | May 27, 2022 | Fit for Foodies, May 2022: Wales, Serendipitous!, United Kingdom, Walking Tours

Can you believe it? Nearly 160+ countries around the world in the past 12 years and I still have no real posts on London! And I think that's because to even start writing a post about London is to try to do my home city of NYC justice in a...

You’re Going to Miss … The French Polynesia

by Calvin Sun | May 23, 2022 | French Polynesia, You're Going to Miss It...

PRESS play and read the post with the music . . . You're going to miss almost, just almost, normalizing paradise now. Paradise on earth. Paradise never-to-lose because you've already tasted it so early in your life. When society tells you to...

Why Did the Chichen Itza Cross the Road?

by Calvin Sun | May 15, 2022 | Blitzkrieg!!!, How Did You Do That?, Mexico, Mo' Money Mo' Problems, Serendipitous!, Weekend Trips

Probably the most visited site in the world that I have never been, until this weekend. Upon a destination wedding invitation last year by my friend Norman Chen, whom I last saw when we stopped in Chicago on our USA Road Trip back in August 2020....

Meet The Wale-rs!

by Calvin Sun | May 12, 2022 | Introductions, November 2020: Baja California Sur

I miss the freedom and chaos of the open road. And from the USA, we jump the pond for an off-the-beaten drive across Wales. Our return monsooners: Jeanette “Chief Risky Driver” Wong: previous 4 time monsooner to Cyprus, The Balearic Islands, Sardinia, and...

“Port”land-of-Call

by Calvin Sun | May 2, 2022 | Fit for Foodies, Layovers, Oregon

On our roadtrip a year and half ago, we missed Portland while driving from Washington State through Oregon and I had decided it would be added to the list of "what should have been." On my way back from Polynesia, I felt that a layover involving Portland would...

The Yacht Week x The Monsoon Diaries: French Polynesia Days 7: Returning to Raiatea

by Calvin Sun | Apr 30, 2022 | April 2022: French Polynesia, Crisis, French Polynesia, Way Way Off the Beaten Path

Today from Bora Bora we set sail back to the main islands at 10am. And for 3 hours we braved the rocky seas as I watched the whole boat except me and our skipper Borna fall like flies. I hope my Disney and 90s throwback music helped. Hakuna Matata. ...

The Yacht Week x The Monsoon Diaries: French Polynesia Days 5 & 6: It’s Never a “Bor-a Bora!”

by Calvin Sun | Apr 28, 2022 | April 2022: French Polynesia, Crisis, Fit for Foodies, French Polynesia, How's the weather?, Serendipitous!, What Dreams May Come

After an epic regatta run, we made sure to stay up on deck to take in the view of our approach to the legendary and iconic island of Bora Bora. After all, a warm welcome from the dolphins at the reef pass is more than enough of a reason to stay outdoors. ...

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