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 | 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...

Announcing the World Premiere of our Short Film on Egypt 2019!

by Calvin Sun | May 21, 2020 | Egypt, Post-travel Reflections, You're Going to Miss It...

TLDR: The Monsoon Diaries has always been at the intersection of ethical healthcare + travel for a global community. As we continue to provide updates on the ground for COVID-19, we also must take steps to rebuilding a future and life of responsible and affordable...

Love In the Time of Corona/COVID-19 — Going On Offense & Silent Hypoxia

by Calvin Sun | May 14, 2020 | Crisis, Doctor in the House, New York

PSA: It's time to play offense on COVID-19 About 9 weeks ago I had written how in the middle of the tsunami of the first wave, the safest assumption (with the relative little information we had) at the time was that one should come to the ER only if they had a life...

Love In The Time Of Corona/COVID-19 — The End Of The First Wave

by Calvin Sun | May 7, 2020 | Crisis, Epiphanies on the Road, Introspection, New York, Post-travel Reflections

Stepped outside in the middle of my ER shift on Monday, April 13th to take a moment to myself when a passerby with a camera happened to be at the right place at the right time:I needed to breathe. I needed to know if I was still alive.A few weeks later and...

Love In The Time Of Corona/COVID-19 – The Plateau

by Calvin Sun | Apr 9, 2020 | Crisis, Doctor in the House

A PSA on what "Plateau'ing" really means for us. (TLDR: things seem to be calmer this week in the ER, but #dontfuckitup and #keepstayingthefuckhome) That things are getting "better" is a relative statement: You put sugar on poop, it's still poop...

Love In The Time Of Corona/COVID-19: Testing

by Calvin Sun | Mar 18, 2020 | Crisis, Doctor in the House

My PSA on COVID-19 testing: UNLESS it’s a life or limb threatening emergency (eg you need oxygen or ventilatory support), DO NOT GO TO, OR GET ROUTINE COVID-19 TESTING IN AN ER!!! What a week it’s been — I’ve worked the past 10 days in 7 different ERs in NYC....

The “Cabin-da” Woods: “We Are Not Ready For Tourism” | Everything You Need To Know About Visiting Cabinda!

by Calvin Sun | Mar 6, 2020 | Angola, Border Crossing, Cabinda, Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Doctor in the House, February 2020: Angola & Cabinda, How Did You Do That?, Rules Are Meant To Be Broken, Unrecognized Territories, Walking Tours, Way Way Off the Beaten Path

Primer on CabindaFormerly known as "Portuguese Congo" and no larger than the state of Delaware, Cabinda is a curious little region sandwiched between the Republic of the Congo and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Having endured a 30 year long struggle...

“Namibe”-tter Duo, I’ll Wait. Otherwise You Gotta “Lubango!”

by Calvin Sun | Mar 3, 2020 | Angola, Crisis, Epiphanies on the Road, Fail, February 2020: Angola & Cabinda, Way Way Off the Beaten Path

After some uneven back-and-forth kind of travel in the outskirts of Luanda yesterday, we "slept in" this morning until 8am before starting out day with a drive to Cacuaco for a stroll around a local fishing village. My gut feeling here was that since...

We Wanted To Go On A Safari, But Then They Told Us To “Kiss-ama” Ass!

by Calvin Sun | Feb 29, 2020 | Angola, Fail, February 2020: Angola & Cabinda, Way Way Off the Beaten Path

Not all travel days are going to be as perfect. After returning last night to Luanda, this morning we woke up bright and early at 6:30am for a drive to Kissama National Park, arriving there at 9am. Here in the park you supposedly can go on a...

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