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...

No Typhoon Can Stop The Monsoon: Bali

by Calvin Sun | Dec 8, 2014 | Blitzkrieg!!!, Epiphanies on the Road, Fail, Fit for Foodies, How Did You Do That?, Indonesia, Introspection, Lessons Learned, Mo' Money Mo' Problems, The Philippines, Winter 2014: Extreme SE Asia

In the last post I described the massive risk we were taking rebooking a flight from the Philippines to Bali after a later flight of ours was cancelled because of the typhoon. Well, we made it. Not even a typhoon can stop the monsoon! After...

Escaping The Typhoon

by Calvin Sun | Dec 7, 2014 | Camping, Crisis, How's the weather?, Let me tell you a Story..., The Philippines, Uncategorized Stories, Way Way Off the Beaten Path, What Dreams May Come, Winter 2014: Extreme SE Asia

We're not in the clear yet, so keep your fingers crossed until we reach Bali. And even then, I'm not sure if typhoons affecting even a single country may spread to the entire Southeast Asia region. For more drama, read on... On our third and final day...

Another Day In Paradise

by Calvin Sun | Dec 5, 2014 | The Nightlife, The Philippines, Winter 2014: Extreme SE Asia

We hopped on our private boat again today….and…. ...that's pretty much all we did. We did nature. Jumped in for some snorkeling: Walked along the sandbar known as Snake Island: Poured rum into coconut we picked...

Typhoon…What Typhoon?

by Calvin Sun | Dec 4, 2014 | The Philippines, What Dreams May Come, Winter 2014: Extreme SE Asia

Despite warnings of inclement weather (like a freaking typhoon), we went out anyway, because, well, there was no typhoon. This is island hopping, on our private boat: Island hopping is exactly what it sounds like. We go from beach to...

“El Nido” Get To Paradise!

by Calvin Sun | Dec 3, 2014 | The Philippines, Winter 2014: Extreme SE Asia

Within 12 hours we went from landing in the bustling capital of The Philippines… …to partying all night at Prive… …to here: Getting to The Palawan Islands is neither simple or direct. Unless you’re booking a resort...

First Night In Manila

by Calvin Sun | Dec 2, 2014 | Serendipitous!, The Nightlife, The Philippines, Winter 2014: Extreme SE Asia

First night in Manila and the group is ready.What better way to make first impressions than to party it up the first night at Privé? Side story: Filipino guy next to me on the flight to Manila: "I think I've heard of you....Monsoon Diaries?" Me: "..."

Full Circles from JFK to Manila

by Calvin Sun | Dec 1, 2014 | Serendipitous!

One of the first photos I ever took for this blog was the one above of a little Filipina girl in Manila 4 years ago. I remembered thinking: What a badass. On The Monsoon Diaries' maiden voyage 4 years ago, I took an afternoon Cathay Pacific flight CX831 to...

Meet The Island Hoppers

by Calvin Sun | Oct 13, 2014 | Introductions

MEET THE MONSOONERS OF EXTREME SE ASIA Introducing the following monsooners (half of them are return travelers!) accompanying me on my December trip to Southeast Asia: [column width="47%"...

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