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...

In Bruges

by Calvin Sun | Jan 20, 2016 | Belgium, Blitzkrieg!!!, Fail, January 2016: Amsterdam & Belgium, Public Transportation, Walking Tours, What Dreams May Come

I have to admit, the first time I ever heard of Bruges was when I saw the trailer to Colin Farrell's dark comedy "In Bruges" back in 2008. A little context for the post's title... The film makes fun of Bruges as a place "no one has ever heard of" but also...

The Monsoon Meets Amsterdam: An Unlikely Union

by Calvin Sun | Jan 20, 2016 | Blitzkrieg!!!, January 2016: Amsterdam & Belgium, Serendipitous!, The Netherlands, Turkmenistan, Walking Tours

I'm not gonna lie, I really liked Amsterdam. Despite finding a love for off-the-beaten-path locales like Venezuela & The Guyanas, North Korea, Iran, and Antarctica, every now and then travel can surprise you. One of those surprises...

The Georgian Military Road To Kazbegi

by Calvin Sun | Jan 12, 2016 | Fail, Georgia, Way Way Off the Beaten Path, What Dreams May Come, Winter 2015: The Silk Road

After checking out Stalin's birthplace and getting chased away by the Russian Red Army from the South Ossetian border, we headed back towards Tbilisi and made a detour heading north on the Georgian Military Road, a 212km long pass that...

Playing Chicken With South Ossetia & Stalin’s Gori Past

by Calvin Sun | Jan 11, 2016 | Crisis, Georgia, How Did You Do That?, Rules Are Meant To Be Broken, South Ossetia, Unrecognized Territories, Way Way Off the Beaten Path, Winter 2015: The Silk Road

After a 2-3 hour walking tour of Tbilisi at dawn, I hopped in my 9am car to Gori and the South Ossetian border. South Ossetia is infamous for being the Russian-leaning autonomous region that declared secession from Georgia and its allegiance to...

The City On A Hill: Tbilisi

by Calvin Sun | Jan 11, 2016 | Blitzkrieg!!!, Georgia, Walking Tours, Winter 2015: The Silk Road

From a one-way 4 hour Air Astana flight from Almaty to Tbilisi, I landed at 9:40pm right on schedule. Not only did I get an entry stamp on arrival, I was also handed a free bottle of wine (that's Georgian hospitality for you) by the passport officer...

From Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan To Almaty, Kazakhstan

by Calvin Sun | Jan 10, 2016 | Blitzkrieg!!!, Border Crossing, Fit for Foodies, Getting that VISA, How's the weather?, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Walking Tours, Winter 2015: The Silk Road

After a few hours exploring all that Bishkek in the winter had to offer, we drove 20 minutes towards the border between Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan, the busiest and largest border crossing in Central Asia. It's best that you do this border crossing on foot, a...

Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan

by Calvin Sun | Jan 9, 2016 | Blitzkrieg!!!, Getting that VISA, Kyrgyzstan, Walking Tours, Way Way Off the Beaten Path, Winter 2015: The Silk Road

From Dushanbe we flew on Somon Air (currently operating 2 flights a week from Dushanbe to Bishkek) for an hour to Manas Airport. Formerly known as Ganci Air Base during Operation "Enduring Freedom", it once housed over 2,000 US troops as they sortied...

Do The Dushanbe

by Calvin Sun | Jan 8, 2016 | Tajikistan, The Nightlife, Way Way Off the Beaten Path, Winter 2015: The Silk Road

After a one hour drive from the creepy haunted Soviet sanitorium, we arrived in Tajikistan’s capital Dushanbe. Formerly a small village known for its weekly Monday bazaar (the name “Dushanbe” means Monday), it gained global attention in 1920 when the emir of...

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