I boarded a plane headed for a small fishing town located at the western end of Flores in the Nusa Tenggara, by the name of Labuan Bajo, with hopes of living out my Land Before Time dreams. Sadly, I wouldn’t…

Ladies, ladies, ladies. What is our problem? Seriously. Why must we hate on each other? Without so much as a “hello” or “my name is…” we’re giving — or in my case, getting — the death stare, straight out the…

The world is too big, too vast, to revisit places of our past, so when I go somewhere, I do so knowing that I’ll likely never see it twice. I think having that mindset helps me to be present and…

Island life. It’s what we dream of while sitting at our desks for hours on end sending emails, taking phone calls, and staring at spreadsheets, only to stand up for the occasional bathroom break or caffeine fix. We come in…

I was in sad shape by the time I reached my room. It’s almost as if I wanted to fit in — weathered, worn, exhausted and dirty. Thirty hours without sleep and three hours until check out, I needed to…

Throughout the years, I’ve subjected myself to some pretty hellacious conditions. The 41-hour bus ride from Mauritania to Mali, the feast on my flesh insects through the jungles of Congo, and the trek up Niragongo in the midst of a…

I roll over and stare at the glowing red from across the room. It’s December 25th at 2:38 in the morning. I close my eyes and I hear his voice on the other end of the line. At first, a…

Sometimes it seems that the more things change, the more they stay the same. The main Indonesian island of Java has seen a lot of change over the centuries — different colonizers, different politics, different religions. Naturally, each brings with…

After twenty-one hours of traveling, a late-night arrival, and a very delayed next-day domestic flight, I have finally landed in the lovely City of Yogyakarta in Central Java. Standing on the tarmac with the sun beginning to set, and the…

As we move through life, we’re constantly making promises to ourselves, especially in our younger years; some we keep, most we don’t. There’s the typical ones, such as, “lose ten pounds, cut out sweets, go to the gym five times…

When I touched down in Sri Lanka, I was expecting to find a smaller, quieter, cleaner India. I did not. I was surprised to discover that while these countries may share the same ocean, a love for curry, overly crowded…

Travel nostalgia often leaves me lost. It’s probably the most bittersweet feeling in my existence. I feel directionless, yet content with such an ambiguous longing. The paradox of ‘I wouldn’t trade this experience for the world’ and ‘I gravely wish I could…

Some make Lion Rock sound like Mount Everest. It’s not. The stone steps have been worn to a slippery dent in places, but unless you’re unlucky enough to ascend when it’s wet, or extremely out of shape, you won’t have…

On arriving at the temple’s gate, I was immediately put off by its gaudy facade. It felt like the entrance to Chen’s Chinese Chicken Buffet, and I questioned whether we were at the correct location. The gigantic Buddha with a…