Category: Featured

  • Budapest: All the Charm at Half the Price

    This Eastern European capital city has been on my list for a long, long time, and despite it being only a 3-hour train ride from Vienna (where I visit family often), I had still somehow never made it there. Budapest– which was formerly two cities, Buda and Pest — reminded me a lot of Vienna…

  • Sardinia: Look No Further for Your Next Destination

    I had never spent much time thinking about that “other” Italian island until last year when I was looking for a destination in Italy that would have pretty beaches but other activities to keep my husband (a hiker, a climber, but not a beach bum), my mom (a beach bum and culture enthusiast), and myself…

  • Yum: Hanoi’s Addictive Street Food

    Oh boy, where do I begin? Northern Vietnam had hands down my favorite cuisine of the 20+ countries we visited over the past year (note: I do not feel it would be fair to include Italy in the running for this title). While we’ve loved a lot of the Southeast Asian foods we’ve sampled, Vietnam’s…

  • Cat Ba Island: Taking the Plunge

    With our time in Vietnam running a bit short, and having gotten our exposure to the countryside and mountains on our motorbiking trip, and to city life with a few days in Hanoi, we decided what was missing was some time on the coast, so we headed to Cat Ba Island, home to a large…

  • Motorbiking in Northeastern Vietnam

    Before visiting Southeast Asia, we weren’t big motorbiking enthusiasts; in fact, Claudia’s motorbiking experience consisted entirely of a few anxiety-ridden hours in Europe many years ago, and mine consisted of crashing a small toy bike into a fence in Portland, Oregon in 2009. However, taking a multi-day motorbiking trip in the north of Vietnam is…

  • Monkey Business: Ziplining Through the Jungle in Laos

    Our first stop in Laos was a three-day adventure in the Bolaven Plateau in the southern part of the country. After an all day bus trip from Phnom Penh (Cambodia), we crossed the border and arrived in Pakse, a sleepy riverside town in southern Laos, from where the trip would start. We spent the next…

  • Crabs, Pepper, and Crumbling French Mansions: It’s What Cambodia Does

    Back home in Washington DC, one of our favorite summertime treats is to head toward the Chesapeake Bay and spend a day eating Maryland blue crabs until our stomachs are stuffed. So when we learned that there was a city called Kep on the eastern end of Cambodia’s coast whose waters were teeming with crabs,…

  • Siem Reap: The Final Push

    We gather all our patience, attention, and–yes–courage for the final push. It’s not going to be easy: slogging through the damp and dimly-lit passageways; pulling ourselves up the mountainous formations, the sun beating down hard on our backs. It’s like the final three miles of a marathon (or the final three miles of a three-mile…

  • Inle Lake: A World Afloat

    We pull our bikes up to a building offering longtail ferry transport across the lake. A genial old man with a huge smile welcomes us into the yard and offers us a seat on a bench while the boat is readied. Old Man: “Would you like some tea?” Claudia: “Sure, thank you.” Old Man: “Where…

  • Aung San Suu Kyi, Election Day, and The Mustache Brothers

    We were lucky enough to be in Mandalay for a historic event: a by-election in which Aung San Suu Kyi ran for a parliamentary seat, the first election she has stood in since 1990. There were 44 parliamentary seats being contested by her party, the National League for Democracy. We started spotting tee-shirts and other…