Traveling is a wonderful thing. I love experiencing new cultures, tasting new food, and taking a gazillion photos. But traveling also means staying in places where the quality of the bed you’re sleeping on can vary greatly. Since the main reason for booking a room is so you have a place to sleep at night, […]
On the outskirts of Dunedin is a place called Tunnel Beach. It’s a rocky shoreline with sheer cliffs and rocks jutting out of the water. We had one more day left in Dunedin before our flight to Rotorua, so Andy and I decided to go check it out on New Year’s Day. After some research, […]
Originally our flight to Istanbul was booked for early afternoon on the Friday before Easter, but a few days earlier we got an email from Turkish Airlines letting us know the flight time had changed. We would now be taking off around dinner time. It’s almost a three hour flight from Basel, Switzerland to Istanbul, […]
Culture shock comes in many forms, lurking behind unexpected corners, and attacking when you least expect it. I’ve experienced it on short trips, when the stress of travel hits and I just wanted things to be like they were at home. So I always knew I would have to deal with culture shock when I […]
When my time in Southeast Asia was over, I boarded a plane back to Germany for a much needed two week break in my round the world trip. I spent those two weeks mostly relaxing and spending time with Andy. We went to the Christmas markets where we enjoyed funnel cakes, glüwein, and something that […]
I’ll be honest, Luang Prabang didn’t really do it for me. It’s one of the highlights of any visit to Laos, and I did like the city, but I didn’t fall in love with it like most people seem to. Maybe five days wasn’t enough time. Maybe I had such high expectations because everyone else […]
For our trip to the rain forest of Malaysian Borneo to see the orangutans and proboscis monkeys, we booked a cabin bungalow at an eco-friendly lodge. It sounded like a pretty cool place, it had great reviews, supposedly they had internet/wifi (they said it was broken when we got there), the property was gorgeous, and […]
Once we were finally free of the Bromo Volcano tour, Amanda and I got in a mini van to Yogyakarta in order to see the temple of Borobudur. We were told the driver would stop in two hours for lunch, so that should have been 1:30PM. At 3:30PM, Amanda leaned over and asked me, “Did […]
Amanda and I didn’t plan much for our time on Java besides Borobudur, so we needed something to do to break up the distance between Bali and Borobudur. We did some research and decided Bromo Volcano sounded interesting, and so began our crazy transportation day from Bali to Java.
The day started off easily enough. We got up around 6:30AM, showered, finished getting our bags packed, ate breakfast, checked out of our hotel in Seminyak, and then hailed a cab. We told the cab driver we needed to get to the Ubung bus station. We repeated it a few times, he repeated it back […]