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I arrived in Budapest yesterday afternoon and crashed at my hostel. Although I usually try to get out and do something to fight the jet lag, I just wasn’t up for it. The hostel, Budapest Bubble, I’m staying at is really small and personable. After grabbing some coffee at the hostel, I headed up to [...]

This one was probably the easiest to accomplish while traveling. You can’t travel solo and not make friends. You’re forced to make friends! ;) Anyway, my first friend of the trip is probably the most memorable as we’ve kept in contact through the rest of my journey. We had so many laughs through China and [...]

After taking a half day rock climbing class in Krabi, Thailand, I was hooked! So I signed up for a class at the Portland Rock Gym here in town when I got back. Since it was a fairly informal “class” in Krabi, it was nice to learn all the basics, like belaying.
Rock climbing is really [...]

I kicked the coffee habit while I was in SE Asia. Or maybe I just replaced it with tea? Or Tiger beer? Anyway, my morning headaches finally disappeared and then I found myself ordering coffee drinks at dinner as a treat instead of a necessity. Good on ya’ mate! ;)

I forgot about this one!  I left Portland February 25, so March 25 I was… sailing the Whitsundays in Australia! At this point in my travels, it felt like I’d been out of the US for ages. So long in fact, that I’d started calling it “America” instead of “the US”

I spent the night in Beijing, in a neighborhood close to the airport. It was funny being back in China. I wandered around the neighborhood and went to the grocery store to get snacks (and cucumber chips). After a day of exploring, I was back at the airport and on my flight home.
It was so [...]

We took the bus over the dancing road to Battambang yesterday morning. I did a moto tour when we arrived. We drove into the rural areas of Battambang and saw rice paper being made as well as rice noodles. Battambang is a very typical Cambodian city. There’s very little tourism and a lot of poverty. [...]

This morning we woke up at 4am to go see the sunrise over Angkor Wat (the main Angkor temple). What an amazing experience. We bought coffee from one of the little entrepreneurial Cambodian boys who arrived shortly after us. After the sun came up, we toured the temple, before getting breakfast at a nearby cafe. [...]

Yesterday morning we flew to Siem Reap. We’ll be here for a few days to tour the Temples of Angkor. Siem Reap and the temples is the main tourist attraction in Cambodia, so there are tourists everywhere! I haven’t seen this many Westerners since I was on Khao San Road in Bangkok. In the afternoon, [...]

We took a public bus to the Cambodia border yesterday morning. We arrived in Phnom Penh (pronounced ‘panom pen’ ‘p’ as in ‘pup’ and then ‘pen’) in the afternoon. As soon as we crossed the border, the poverty of Cambodia versus Vietnam was very apparent. There are beggars everywhere. After arriving, we went to a [...]