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...

Let’s Get “Chinguetti” Wit’ It, Na Na Na Na Na Na!

by Calvin Sun | Jan 24, 2020 | January 2020: The Saharan Odyssey, Mauritania, Way Way Off the Beaten Path

After disembarking from a train journey of a lifetime, we drove out towards a campsite outside of Choum by 1am and spent the rest of the night in our tents. The stars here are unbelievable. When the sun rose at 8am, we woke up to a picnic...

MAURI-TRAIN-IA: The Ultimate Train Journey | The Mauritania Railway (“Backbone of the Sahara”, The “Iron Ore Train”, or “The World’s Most Extreme Railway”) | All Aboard the Choo-“Choum” Express!

by Calvin Sun | Jan 23, 2020 | How Did You Do That?, January 2020: The Saharan Odyssey, Mauritania, Public Transportation, Rules Are Meant To Be Broken, Way Way Off the Beaten Path, What Dreams May Come

Today we did a thing: We began in Nouadhibou where we picked up some supplies for the epic train journey ahead.If you're serious about this experience, you should definitely pack goggles, warm blankets, scarves, some sort of...

“Nouadhibou”-d Idea to Cross Over From Western Sahara to Mauritania!

by Calvin Sun | Jan 21, 2020 | Fail, Getting that VISA, How Did You Do That?, January 2020: The Saharan Odyssey, Mauritania, Public Transportation, Way Way Off the Beaten Path, What Dreams May Come

After relaxing in Dakhla for 2 night, we drove to the border of Morocco and Mauritania early this morning. About an hour into the journey we suffered a flat tire, which luckily took about 30 minutes to sort out thanks to a friend of the driver's...

Is There A “Dakhla” in the House?

by Calvin Sun | Jan 20, 2020 | January 2020: The Saharan Odyssey, Way Way Off the Beaten Path, Western Sahara

A path lined by ghost towns, yet all filled with life. After 2 nights in Layounne we hit the road for Dakhla City at 9am. We stopped briefly at the one hour mark for large herd of wild camels to pass us: And about 3...

Daayyum, They’re “Laayoune” It Down On Us! (Reaching Western Sahara From Morocco)

by Calvin Sun | Jan 18, 2020 | January 2020: The Saharan Odyssey, Way Way Off the Beaten Path, Western Sahara

Our plan yesterday: Why it's controversial (more on that later): Even more controversial? Our last night in Agadir . . . After nursing our hangovers and saying our goodbyes to Crystal, sorrowfully dropping her at the airport to...

Get Da Fuq “Agadir”!

by Calvin Sun | Jan 16, 2020 | Fit for Foodies, January 2020: The Saharan Odyssey, Morocco

After 2 days trying to give Marrakech a second chance and nearly giving up, this morning we drove on south to Agadir, with a one hour random stop at CrocoPark, a crocodile-themed park just outside of Agadir. Amusingly we took on an...

We Wish You A “Marrakech”-mas! (or Marrakech Me Outside and Marrakech My Ass!)

by Calvin Sun | Jan 15, 2020 | Fail, January 2020: The Saharan Odyssey, Lessons Learned, Morocco, The Nightlife, Walking Tours

From Casablanca, we arrived into Marrakesh, Morocco’s third largest city that continues to teem with sights and sounds that emanate from its historical medina. Although a frustrating place to explore for many travelers as if the rest of the country learned its...

In “Casa-” You “-Blanca” Out, We Got Your Back!

by Calvin Sun | Jan 14, 2020 | January 2020: The Saharan Odyssey, Morocco, Walking Tours

After 10 days in Algeria, we headed to Oran airport for the 2:20pm Air Algiers flight to Casablanca . . . . . . arriving at 3:40pm on an otherwise uneventful 1 hour and 20 minute flight. But just as a reminder as how Morocco had been a...

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