It always upsets me a bit to realize how little I know about the world. This realization springs up from time to time during my travels, whenever I stumble upon a certain festival or custom or religion that I had never before even had the slightest inkling that it existed. I recently took an organized …
Month: January 2012
It wasn’t too long ago that I wrote a piece featuring some of the themed cafes of Seoul. It turned out to be a popular post, so I’ve decided to write my first follow-up entry highlighting some other quirky cafes I’ve visited since then. Travel has always been a passion of mine, so I was …
The streets of Saigon have been eerily quiet the past couple days. Most of the city’s residents have gone to their hometowns and the ones that have stayed are busy eating and drinking with their families in their houses. I headed out to District 1 on New Year’s Eve to see downtown after dark. Although …
So, I’m back in Vietnam. Ho Chi Minh City, formerly known as Saigon, to be exact. Got an apartment. Got a cell phone. Got travel insurance. Got plenty of TUMS. Got a helmet. What I don’t got is a plan. Or blood pressure meds, which I’m starting to think that I’ll need to simply cross …
Christmas is a holiday that has always been widely celebrated, but it seems that only recently have many countries started to celebrate it on the same scale as we do in the West. The concepts of a commercialized Christmas are even starting to pop up in predominately Muslim nations like Turkey. It’s interesting to witness …
One never really appreciates their own culture until they spend some time away from it. Well, that’s the case for me, at least. As sad as I was to leave Korea, it had been 18 months since I had been home and I was eager to be with my family and friends. I was even …
Well, my laziness got the best of me my last few months in Korea. I stayed so busy trying to see people and places and saying goodbyes and shopping for souvenirs that I put the blog on the back burner. It was a farewell that left my stomach in knots and although I continued to …