Now that Ana and I are firmly back from our six months in Southeast Asia, I feel compelled to reflect back on some of the technicalities of traveling. There will be more stories, but some aspects preparing for our trip were far more stressful for me than needed…and once on the road a bit more disturbing. You see, in the weeks leading up to the big trip with my niece Ana, I was a nervous ball of energy rocketing around St. Petersburg. Ana had never left the country before, so I orchestrated …

A year and a half ago I decided to upgrade from my trusty Canon point-and-shoot camera to something with a bit more flexibility…something that would give me the ability to play with manual settings, learn more about photography basics, and yet still take a great photo on automatic. And one that would fit in my travel bag.
I opted for the Panasonic Lumix GF series (a GF1 in fact, but there are only newer models now on the market). I’m a normal person, have no formal photography training and present this camera …

Murmurings from the large audience hushed as a clear and open darkness dropped over our outdoor theatre. The silence was far from absolute though as a breeze swept nearby leaves into a quiet song, a gentle lapping of water, and eventually the sweet notes of a string instrument drifting up from the distant water as the show began.
The boats paddled out from the edges of our riverside theatre and colored floodlights illuminated the distant limestone mountains in a myriad of primary colors accompanying the mood of the story. Back in 2008, I …

The wackiest ideas are often born from a single comment, an off-handed remark meant as a joke but then expanded into a full-fledged idea. This is precisely the case with my decision to jump around Jordan; my very first day in the country fellow travel blogger Jodi joked about my recent travels through China where I nailed a perfect jumping shot on the Great Wall of China.
And thus was born the self-proclaimed mission to jump at iconic, historic spots and wide open desert spaces around Jordan…pretty silly but it made …

I see a lot of gorgeous places when I travel, heaps and heaps in fact. About three months into traveling I decided I had to slow down because I was passing everything so quickly that waterfalls, monuments, temples? They all turned to mush in my brain. I couldn’t quite place some of the photos I was taking and that perturbed me…so I slowed down, paid more attention and stopped living through the lens of my camera ever single moment of my trip.
Okay, a bit of lie, I still photographed everything …

If you’re heading to Chiang Mai, Thailand and want a handful of the best things to do in town – well, you’ve come to the right place! I offer up a selection of my favorite vegetarian eats around town. The sights you shouldn’t miss, places to stay and even some of the more popular (and ethical) of the day-trips around Chiang Mai.

I’m going to miss my home-away-from-home and this wonderful city is well-worth of a visit when you’re traveling through Thailand.

A rose-red city half as old as time; though these words sound like the opening lyrics to a love song, they’re instead penned by a poet and speak of an ancient civilization that carved evidence of their history deep into the soft sandstone rocks jutting toward the soft blue Jordanian skies.

Wandering through the miles of sandy roads, the nubby domes of eroded mountains visible in every direction, I was overwhelmed the moment I stepped into this ancient civilization. How did they do it? Why did they carve such beautiful structures into the side of the towering rocks? And I wondered even more, since sandstone is so delicate, why is the evidence still here a full two thousand years later?

The hilltop holding Amman’s temple is unremarkable as far as hills are concerned; the things, Amman, Jordan is a city comprised of seven hills, and the one holding the Temple of Hercules isn’t taller than the others, it’s not greener, or more “hilly,” but yet this hill was the one chosen by the ancient Romans to hold the Temple of Hercules. And in hearing the name Hercules, in an instant my mind takes a fanciful wander through Greek history and mythology.

As the illegitimate son of Zeus and Alcmene, Hercules has long held a fascination for me…and likely not just me. Greek mythology paints Hercules as a human as much as he was a demigod, as strong as the Gods but riddled by earthly disputes and relationship problems.