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...

Funafuti-‘imes In Tuvalu

by Calvin Sun | Jan 13, 2019 | The Nightlife, Tuvalu, Walking Tours, Way Way Off the Beaten Path, Winter 2018: The Edge Of The World / Least Visited Countries

Today we go off the map once again! We woke up nice and early this morning in Nadi, Fiji at 4:45am. From there we would make our 07:30am 30-minute flight from Nadi to Suva. There the plan would be to disembark, check-in, stamp out of Fiji, and...

Nadi A Bad Time To Try Real Fiji Water

by Calvin Sun | Jan 11, 2019 | Fiji, Walking Tours, Winter 2018: The Edge Of The World / Least Visited Countries

After delivering our postcards via the world's only underwater post office in Vanuatu, we then headed to the airport for the our 2-hour 4:00pm flight to Nadi on Fiji's main island of Viti Levu. There we said our thanks and goodbyes to our guide and now...

…But but but, “Vanuatu”-leave Port-Vila!

by Calvin Sun | Jan 9, 2019 | Fit for Foodies, Public Transportation, The Nightlife, Vanuatu, Walking Tours, Way Way Off the Beaten Path, Winter 2018: The Edge Of The World / Least Visited Countries

Oh Vanuatu, how I "Vanuatu-leave" this place. I know it's quite a stretch of a pun, but my blogpost title is meant to be read out loud! Let's begin. After 2 days in The Solomon Islands, we headed boarded a 3:05pm flight out for Port Vila,...

I Found My Honi-ara In The Solomon Islands

by Calvin Sun | Jan 7, 2019 | Fit for Foodies, Solomon Islands, Walking Tours, Way Way Off the Beaten Path, Winter 2018: The Edge Of The World / Least Visited Countries

Finishing up our 3rd day in Kiribati, in the late morning we headed to Tarawa's Bonriki International Airport to catch our flight out to The Solomon Islands. Let's just say the Bonriki International Airport is still a work in progress.This was the...

Kiribati: Land Of The First Dawn

by Calvin Sun | Jan 5, 2019 | Kiribati, Walking Tours, Way Way Off the Beaten Path, Winter 2018: The Edge Of The World / Least Visited Countries

After 6 days in Nauru, the world’s least visited country, we forced ourselves up early at 3:00am for a 5:15am Nauru Airlines flight to currently the world's 3rd least visited country: Kiribati (pronounced "Kiri-bahs"). We wanted to head in pretty early...

Nauru, AKA The Marooned Diaries – New Year’s Eve In The #1 Least Visited Country In The World

by Calvin Sun | Jan 3, 2019 | Getting that VISA, How Did You Do That?, Mythbusters, Nauru, Rules Are Meant To Be Broken, Way Way Off the Beaten Path, What Dreams May Come, Winter 2018: The Edge Of The World / Least Visited Countries

Above cover photo credit: Mikhael Chai -- thanks for that unplanned shot of me standing on the top of Nauru! I've already had my fair share of New Year's Eve celebrations in far flung corners of the globe:2010 in Cairo, Egypt2011 in Tijuana,...

The Marshall Islands: Home of Godzilla & Spongebob

by Calvin Sun | Dec 29, 2018 | How Did You Do That?, March 2024: The Pacific Island Hopper, Marshall Islands, Way Way Off the Beaten Path, Winter 2018: The Edge Of The World / Least Visited Countries

Another journey of a lifetime begins today: I head from one lonely part of the world to another.After a week of working overnight shifts at an isolated rural hospital in Rome, NY (about an hour out from Syracuse in upstate NY), I had an Uber pick me up...

Meet The Czechmates!

by Calvin Sun | Dec 24, 2018 | Introductions

Ann Wen, 7 time monsooner who first came along for Luxembourg, Australia, New Zealand, Oman, Qatar and Kuwait, asked if I would be free after my Dec 27-Jan 16 trip to the least visited countries in the world. Since she's never let me down, how could I? For "If you...

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