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...

Tuned Into Tunis, The Ramadan Edition

by Calvin Sun | May 31, 2017 | Crisis, Fail, How Did You Do That?, Rules Are Meant To Be Broken, Spring 2017: Italy & Microstates, France, Luxembourg, Malta, & Tunisia, Travel Warnings, Tunisia, Walking Tours, Way Way Off the Beaten Path, What Dreams May Come

This morning was time to say goodbye to Malta. ...And hello to Tunisia via a TunisAir Express flight! Except for myself and Samin, this is everyone's first time in Africa! The recent travel warnings in Tunisia have been minimal at...

Gozo A Gogo

by Calvin Sun | May 30, 2017 | Fit for Foodies, How Did You Do That?, Malta, Public Transportation, Spring 2017: Italy & Microstates, France, Luxembourg, Malta, & Tunisia, Walking Tours, Way Way Off the Beaten Path

After an hour playing the Game of Thrones at Mdina, we had our cab drivers meet us back at Mdina's city gates from where we drove over another 25 minutes north to the Cirkewwa Ferry Terminal. For about 4.5 euros each, we took the ferry to Malta's...

Landing At King’s Landing: Mdina

by Calvin Sun | May 30, 2017 | Malta, Spring 2017: Italy & Microstates, France, Luxembourg, Malta, & Tunisia, Walking Tours, Way Way Off the Beaten Path

After a day exploring Valletta, we woke up early to see the way overrated "The Malta Experience" and nearby Saint Elmo's fort before heading to the Bus Terminal and hiting a 20 minute cab ride to Mdina for 20 euros.Why Mdina? Well, have you seen Game Of...

Valletta, Malta: Winter Ain’t Coming

by Calvin Sun | May 30, 2017 | Malta, Spring 2017: Italy & Microstates, France, Luxembourg, Malta, & Tunisia, Walking Tours, What Dreams May Come

This morning was time to say goodbye to Ann, Joseph, and Mihaela in Luxembourg: The 6 of us remaining boarded a 10am, 1 hour flight from Luxembourg and had about an hour's layover in Munich before catching our connecting 2 hour flight to...

Keep Calm And ReLuxembourg

by Calvin Sun | May 28, 2017 | Blitzkrieg!!!, Fit for Foodies, How Did You Do That?, Luxembourg, Spring 2017: Italy & Microstates, France, Luxembourg, Malta, & Tunisia, Walking Tours, Way Way Off the Beaten Path, Weekend Trips

After a night in Paris, Ann, Joseph and I woke up at 7am to catch the 7:40am direct train from Paris Gare De L'Est to Luxembourg. Luxembourg boasts to be one of the world's smallest countries covering only 2500 sq km (about the size of Rhode...

One Night In Paris

by Calvin Sun | May 26, 2017 | Blitzkrieg!!!, Fit for Foodies, France, How Did You Do That?, Layovers, Lessons Learned, Public Transportation, Spring 2017: Italy & Microstates, France, Luxembourg, Malta, & Tunisia, Walking Tours

No, this has nothing to do with the movie (wait, what movie? You've been warned if you have no idea what I'm talking about), and no I'm not trying to be clickbait. This is my returning to a city I haven't been to in over 20 years and digging up the old...

You’re Going To Crave … Italy

by Calvin Sun | May 26, 2017 | Fit for Foodies, Italy, You're Going to Miss It...

You're going to crave starting off your day with the simple combination of espresso and croissants, sadly accepting that the closest you can get to "something different" back home is perhaps a chocolate-almond combination, but never a pistachio-creme...

Veni, Vidi, Venezia!

by Calvin Sun | May 25, 2017 | How Did You Do That?, Italy, May 2017: Romantic Italy & Microstates, Spring 2017: Italy & Microstates, France, Luxembourg, Malta, & Tunisia, Walking Tours, What Dreams May Come

What's equally surprising to having done Italy but not Rome, is also doing Italy but never Venice. Even though I've passed through Venice Marco Polo International Airport on multiple occasions with frequent intentions to see the city within...

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