[Recapping our trip, 179 days in] The day after Charley’s birthday, on Thursday, October 27, we headed to Taipei, Taiwan. I’ve visited China several times before, but this was my first time to Taiwan, officially the “Republic of China.” (This often confuses people; note that China is formally the “People’s Republic of China.”) We actually took […]
[Recapping our trip, 168 days in] After a very meaningful experience in Seoul, we headed to China on Sunday, October 23. After seeing friends in San Sebastian and Krakow, and family in Germany and Seoul, this was going to be our fifth chance to see people we knew. We decided to take the better part of […]
[Recapping our trip, 164 days in] We arrived in Seoul on Sunday, October 16, fresh off a flight from Busan. (Naturally, we used Chase Ultimate Rewards points, transferred to Korean Air, to give ourselves a nice free business class trip for the short flight north.) Far and away, Seoul has been the emotional climax of our […]
Myanmar is, hands down, one of the most beautiful countries we’ve ever visited. We started in Yangon, and had a wonderfully relaxing time wandering the streets and people watching. On our last day there, we took the Circular Railway, a train built in 1954 by the British, who were colonizing at the time. It now […]
Over the past few weeks, we’ve had an amazing chance to see some animals up close. In Nara, Japan, deer overwhelm the town, and greet everyone with a friendly bow (they’ve learned to do this to receive crackers). On “Monkey Mountain” in Kaohsiung, Taiwan, monkeys have grown so accustomed to hikers, that they just continue […]
On Tuesday, October 13, we left Osaka for Busan, South Korea, our second country in Asia. Charley has visited Seoul a few different times, and we wanted to be sure on this trip that we had the chance to visit a Korean city other than Seoul. Our time in Busan was really fun, the real highlights […]
On Sunday, October 9, we finished our time in the north of Japan and headed down to the second largest city in Japan, Osaka. We spent some of our time there relaxing, working on the blog at the time and seeing what the city has to offer. Overall, we really liked it, and we were really […]
After an incredibly luxurious flight there, we arrived in Tokyo on Sunday, October 2, and headed to our hotel, the Park Hyatt. While this hotel normally runs over $700 per night, remember that if you open the Hyatt credit card by Chase and meet a minimum spending requirement, you’ll receive a welcome gift of two […]
Taipei Pride might be my favorite Pride so far this year. In addition to enjoying the huge turnout (estimated at 80,000 people), feelings of pride were potent, and the tipping point for marriage equality felt closer than ever before. Taiwan is one of the most progressive countries in Asia, with a majority of its residents supporting […]
Just wanted to offer one quick update to the our last entry: Westerners are such a rare sight in Haining that a group of thirty of them walking around, including over half a dozen African Americans, triggered a lot of curiosity on Chinese social media! The day after the wedding, we were enjoying an incredible […]