I am often asked some variation of the question “What was your favorite country/place?”. I generally say “Switzerland and Indonesia”. Those are both amazing countries and we had many fantastic experiences in both of them. The reasons they generally bubble to the top when I need a quick answer are …
It’s that wonderful time of year when most of us start seeing reindeer on our screens, in people’s’ lawns, and generally taking over. We saw some at the zoo when we went for their lights display and my comment was “Oh good, I haven’t seen one of those in months!” …
The Terracotta Army is Epic. So epic I have to believe that some lost Grecian wandered to china, saw the Terracotta army and was inspired to invent the word EPIC. There are around 9000 figures. It’s not just soldiers, though there are more than 8000 of them, there are also …
One of the most common questions we get asked is “How did you manage to do this?”. The second most common variation is “What was your budget?”. It all started with financial preparation. We did two major things during the lead-up to our trip. Saving We saved about 50% of …
On October 14th we landed in Beijing. Our original intention was to tour China, Tibet, Hong Kong and Angkor Wat with Sarah’s mom and aunt and then hit Thailand and maybe another country before leaving in February, just long enough to reset our Schengen visas. Instead we spent 187 days …
Sarah and I were in Bali and had decided that we would like to climb Mt Rinjani, and active volcano on the next big island over, Lombok. We (possibly erroneously) determined that we needed to go with a guided tour and decided to use a company called Rinjani Fun Trekking. …
In the last 4 weeks we… Wound our way around the Cordillera Sky Loop in northern Luzon where we enjoyed incredible views, went caving, hiked mountains, met mummies, enjoyed a local festival and generally enjoyed being in the mountains. Hiked up Mt Pinatubo, the volcano that erupted violently in 1997, …
Sarah and I were excited to come see the rice terraces of the Philippines, and in particular those in the remote mountain village of Batad, reachable only by foot, either with a 2 hour hike or a more expensive ride and then a 45 minute hike, details here: http://www.alexinwanderland.com/2013/05/16/rice-terraces-of-batad/ …
The Kitchen If you’ve ever set foot in a Thai restaurant you may have guessed that one of the best things about Thailand is the food. Everywhere you turn there are tantalizing aromas leading to delicious flavors. So our friend Johan and I signed up for a Thai cooking class. …
One week of pre-school teaching in the bag and I thought I’d post a little update. Our schedule goes something like this: 7:30: Other staff arrive 8:00: Kids start arriving 8:30 Most kids present and playing 9:00 Group language practice with songs and letters and days of the week …