When people ask us, “If you could live in any city in the world, where would it be?” In Africa we’d say Cape Town, in South America…Buenos Aires, in Europe…San Sebastian, Spain, and in Asia it would be Chiang Mai, Thailand. There is something so loveable and liveable about this little northern city. It’s got…
Hanoi is an Asia metropolis at its most romantic. With strong Chinese and French colonial influences and plenty of Vietnamese pride, this 1000-year old city is a glorious blend of east and west, old and new. Hanoi would have probably wooed us on any given day with its pagodas, palaces, lakes, and markets but the…
Said to be the intellectual, cultural, and spiritual heart of Vietnam, Hue is full of palaces, pagodas, tombs, temples, and a dash of French colonial flair. It was the country’s political capital from 1802-1945 under 13 emperors of Nguyen dynasty and their decadence is largely what makes the area so beautiful. Just 80 miles from…
The pace and intensity that we travel even boggles us sometimes. We average about 2-3 days in each place and try to explore as much as possible–from local markets to monuments to mountaintops. Phnom Penh was a little different. The scruffy Cambodian capital does have some worthwhile sites, including incredible Khmer Rouge memorials, but really…
Japan may seem compact but when you add in the 160 islands of Okinawa it seems to stretch endlessly into the East China Sea. Like Hokkaido, Okinawa is a recent addition to Japan proper and was its own kingdom and trading epicenter until 1879. Feeling more like Hawaii than Honshu, this string of volcanic islands…
As close as you can get to Tibet without a separate visa, Meili mountain range feels like a piece of the heavens. Though we traveled three days deep into Deqing, China get here, Meili’s beauty is so accessible it felt too good to be true. Mountains like this usually don’t come without porters and oxygen…
Spanning 300-square miles and three eco-systems, Kenya’s Aberdare National Park has so much to offer that we stayed in two different sections just to do it justice. Unlike the open savanna of the Mara, this park has one of the most dense and diverse forests in the country–changing from jungle to bamboo groves to misty…
Seeing lions, leopard, rhino and is always a huge thrill but the Samburu region of Kenya is about so much more than the big five. Samburu, Buffalo Springs, and Shaba are three parks that come together connected by rivers, volcanic mountains, and golden waves of grass–and with a backdrop like this, everything seems to come…
Most first time safari-goers head for the famous Maasai Mara or Serengeti but for those in the know, Kenya’s Meru Park is where the wild things are. Five hours north of Nairobi, the landscape is unlike any other with bright red cotton soil, the multi-branch doum palms, and 13 winding rivers that draw thousands of…
There is an undeniable mystique about Zanzibar. At the time of planning our trip to Africa we admittedly didn’t even know much about it, except we had to go. Technically it’s a part of Tanzania and shares the Swahili culture that extends down to Mozambique, but we quickly realized it is a world unto itself….
Tourism touts like to throw the word “untouched” around, but if that statement was ever true about a place, it would be about Ibo Island. Pulling up to this 10-km stretch of coral in the Quirmbas Archipelago you see fisherman mending their nets, women in colorful khoi khois collecting shellfish, dhows floating amongst the mangroves…