What a floating village can tell us about Cambodia’s Future Nowhere does the modern world so quickly evaporate into the countryside than on the road from Siem Reap to Kampong Phluk. Siem Reap is a rowdy backpacker’s hub, a home base for exploring the massive temple grounds of Angkor by…

Khmer pop music blasts at full volume from a phone speaker behind me. A couple rows further back, two fashionably dressed girls chatter away, pure excitement in their voices. I assume they’re talking about their plans for the New Year celebrations that begin tomorrow, but the only word I can…

We haven’t even left Bangkok yet, and I can already sense it. My Southeast Asian experience is so far limited to an empty international terminal and an aging Airbus A320, but all the imaginations of my overactive brain are here. Our fellow passengers are mostly a mix of stoic middle…

When I think about travel in Jordan, the best word that comes to mind is established. Kira and I have spent the past few months mostly bouncing around different backpackers haunts. From the mountains and cobblestone streets of the Andes to Moroccan deserts and medinas, we’ve found ourselves to be…

Our white Land Cruiser rolls to a stop. We’re deep in the desert outside Merzouga, a Moroccan town known to travelers for camel rides at sunset and ATV tours across the impossibly-high rose gold dunes that line the horizon to my left. …

The mint tea is hot, strong, and sweet, and weirdly reminds me of a mint julep served hot without the bourbon. Thinking back to the gallons of bubblegum flavored Inca Kola I drank in Peru, plus the gallons of mint tea I’m sure to drink in Morocco, I laugh at…

First Impressions of a Reopened Morocco I’m listening to Zach Bryan as we land in Morocco. Maybe the music doesn’t fit the environment, but it’s a fun juxtaposition to the chaos that I know is coming when the plane touches down. The last four days have been a blur of airports and security screenings. We flew…

Confession time — my favorite part of hiking the Inca Trail wasn’t Machu Picchu. Don’t get me wrong, there’s a reason it’s a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and the people that voted it as one of the New Seven Wonders of the World knew what they were talking about. The…

Kira and I have been on the road, bouncing around Central and South America, for over five weeks now. We’ve been away long enough that both of us have had moments of wondering if, maybe, we’re starting to miss home enough to head back sooner than we planned. I’ve also…