From the very beginning of our planning, we expected our Asia leg to be the most exotic and therefore most memorable of our initial three long trips. What we didn’t expect was how many once-in-a-lifetime experiences we’d be able to pack in and how many of them we could only describe as “magical.” While so…
Category: Asia
FAQ – How Did Our Numbers Look for Leg 3?
Numbers are great for wrapping our heads around all the experiences we’ve had. So, here is our 3rd leg represented in numbers: Countries visited: 5, all new for us – Singapore, Cambodia, Thailand, Japan, IndonesiaCities visited (overnight): 9Number of hotels: 8Number of hotel nights: 17Number of apartments: 4Number of apartment nights: 68Total beds slept in:…
Bali – A Beautiful Mixed Bag
We had very high expectations for our two weeks in Bali. The town of Canggu has been #1 on Nomadlist, a website we use to help us estimate costs for places and get ideas on where to go, since before we left on our trip over a year ago. Over and over we’ve heard wonderful…
Extraordinary Osaka
Our life in Osaka was a funny mix of normal and amazing. We established an easy routine and were very comfortable in our small Airbnb apartment. We had perfect late spring weather throughout our stay and made a lot of time for activities – so much so that we left Osaka a little tired and…
Hiroshima by Shinkansen
We really wanted to visit Hiroshima for a number of reasons, but the main one was that we felt it important to confront the troubled history of what the U.S. did to this city in World War II with the atomic bond. Also, it is the setting for one of my favorite films and an…
Hello, Tokyo
Tokyo may be the most wonderfully strange, utterly magical city in the world. From hyper-efficient public transit to fun modes of serving food to throngs of people wearing suits to beautiful parks and temples to the shining city lights at night, we LOVED it. It doesn’t hurt that Tokyo is the capital of the most…
What We Did in Chiang Mai
When I wrote my first Chiang Mai post, we’d seen very little of the city beyond our neighborhood and done very little to experience Thailand beyond participating in Songkran. We found much more time for fun exploration in our last three weeks in Chiang Mai. We definitely didn’t do everything (we skipped the elephant sanctuaries…
Osaka: We’re Home
We arrived in Japan 10 days ago and I must say, Japan is meeting and exceeding every single one of our very high expectations. We settled right into our 4-week home in Osaka five days ago. I’ll catch up with posts about our experiences with Tokyo and Hiroshima and to wrap up our month in…
Getaway to Huatulco
About a month into our 7-week stay in Puerto Escondido, Chad and I started to get a little bored. We’d had some fabulous experiences – the Fiestas de Noviembre, a surf competition, releasing baby sea turtles at Playa Bacocho, releasing more babies before seeing mama-turtles nest on an unforgettable overnight trip to Playa Escobilla, and…
Chiang Mai: We’re Home?
We arrived in Chiang Mai, Thailand, last week with very high expectations for the city. Everything we read online, especially on sites geared toward digital nomads, spoke of it in glowing terms. But we were underwhelmed for our first few days here. Now we’ve found our groove in Chiang Mai, but we don’t have the…