The drive from Dadal to Choibalsan was a very long slog. The muddy conditions didn’t last too long thankfully. As I got further south the ground got a little drier and the roads got a little smoother, relatively speaking anyway. At the risk of boring you with endless road pics, that really is what half or more of this trip is about. Seeing and experiencing the infinite expanse of grasslands that is Mongolia. I’ve been to some pretty remote out…
I’m at it again! Greetings and salutations from Mongolia in the central Asian steppe! After roughly 38 hours of flights and layovers I finally arrived in Ulaanbaatar, the capitol of Mongolia, extremely tired. The ride from the airport took a little over an hour in Ulaanbaatars notorious traffic, but I made it to my hostel, checked in and headed to the main square, Sükhbaatar Sq, just a couple of blocks away to wander around with what was left of the…
Holy crap… I’m at it again! I can’t believe it’s been a year and a half since my last international trip! What is a wanderer with cabin fever to do while waiting for the rest of the planet to come to their senses? This wanderer just said “whatever” and now, holy crap… I’m in the Balkans! At the time of planning, two of the countries I’m visiting on this trip were only two out of the six in the world…
Time just seems to fly by because another three month work assignment has ended and I’m already back to wandering the globe. This time I decided to explore some of the middle east, beginning in the capitol city of the kingdom of Jordan. It was called Philadelphia for much of it’s history and in the bible it’s referred to as Rabbath, but nowadays it’s Amman. It’s been a prominent hub of trade for thousands of years and consequently, conquered and…
I left Jeonju on a morning train bound for the capitol city of Seoul, where I started this adventure several weeks ago. I really underestimated how much there was to see and do here so I decided to spend a few days seeing the things I’d missed the first time before heading home. Also, many of the places I visited this time were way out on the outskirts of the city which allowed for a much more relaxed pace. To…
My departure from Jeju Island is yet another example of the awesomeness that is Korean public transport. An early bus from Seogwipo to the airport in Jeju City, a plane from there to Gwangju, a taxi across town from the airport to the Gwangju bus station, then a bus to Gochang, then another bus to Seonunsan Provincial Park. Once again it sounds very confusing, but once again, it was super easy. Before I talk about Seonunsan, though, here’s a picture…
A very quick one hour bus ride from Gyeongju and I’m now in the southeastern corner of South Korea in it’s second largest city, Busan. I was surprised to learn just a few days ago that South Korea had it’s own professional baseball league. There are ten teams scattered around the country, three of which are in Seoul, but one of them happens to be in Busan, so I decided to take in a game on my first night. I…
Greetings from the Land of the Morning Calm! That’s right, I am officially a Seoul man (couldn’t resist) and my Korean adventure has begun. Seoul has been the capitol of this peninsula for pretty much it’s entire history going all the way back to about 4000BCE. Several dynasties followed over it’s history, the most influential being the Josean dynasty from 1392 until about 1910. They’ve been conquered by Mongolia, China, Japan twice, there was a very famous modern war that…
After a two hour flight from Zanzibar I now find myself in not only the capital of Ethiopia, but the capital of Africa. To be honest, I didn’t know there was such a thing as the African Union until I started researching this trip, but it’s based here in Addis, as are the embassies from all over the world. Addis is a huge city with a lot of people, I mean a LOT! There’s obviously a lot of poverty and…
I woke up early one last time in Dar es Salaam and made my way through the busy city center, this time to the ferry port and boarded the very nice Kilimanjaro 3 bound for the island of Zanzibar. The Indian Ocean water around these parts, by the way, is just the most crystal clear blue you can imagine. You can almost see all the way to the bottom. After a two hour ride I reach the port of Stone…