Tag: Travel Posts

While there is still a great deal of world left for me to explore, I have to admit that I’ve managed to see many of the places I was really hoping to over these last few years. In the last 18 months I’ve visited Argentina, Uruguay, New York City, Ireland, Scotland, Oahu (Hawaii), Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Bali (Indonesia), South Africa, England, New Zealand, Brazil, Malta, Italy, France and Serbia. I also did a few trips around Canada, including Toronto, Ottawa, Hamilton, and Montreal. This year I really only had two goals in terms of where I wanted to visit. The first one is Machu Picchu, the Lost City of the Incas, located near the city of Cusco in Peru. The second place I really wanted to visit this year is Australia. My friend Vanesa (from Buenos Aires) has been telling me for years what an amazing place it is, so […]

Another year is almost upon us, and I thought a final post was in order. It was definitely an interesting year for me, the highlight (at a personal level) probably being a third surgery on my eye socket (which I was told four years ago wasn’t possible). But I also did a fair bit of traveling, and I thought a little photo-finish finale was in order for 2012. I hope everyone has a really amazing New Year’s eve – all the best to everyone for 2013.

As many people know, I tend to travel quite a bit – over the last 18 months I believe I have visited on the order of 13 or 14 countries. And while there are always interesting things to do in each new city or country I visit, sometimes I miss some of the comforts of home (such as english TV or movies). Back home when I am bored I typically watch Apple TV or Netflix. Unfortunately when I am outside of North America and I try to access Netflix I often end up with a message like this: One way I’ve found around this is to simply tunnel all my traffic through a VPN server in the United States. The service I use to do this is StrongVPN, and an account costs around $55 USD per year. The sign-up process only took me about ten minutes, and another five minutes […]

While I own several guitars, I previously have never attempted flying with a guitar. A quick Google search on the Internet reveals a lot of confusion about the process, as well as a few horror stories about damaged or stolen guitars. An infamous story of breakage ended in a viral internet video known as “United Breaks Guitars”: When I was in Argentina in 2011, I ended up having more free time than I thought I would have. In those moments, I really missed having access to a guitar that I could pick up and play. I went down to a local guitar store thinking I would buy something cheap, but it’s definitely hard going from a $1,000 – $2,000 guitar back down to a $100 one. Plus, I didn’t really want to deal with selling it when I was leaving. So for this trip I decided I would bring a […]

In just a few days I’ll be leaving for the city of Buenos Aires again. As people who read this blog know, I started off this great travel adventure of mine last year in that very city. At the time I was a pretty green traveler, and struggled with the language and figuring out how the city worked for the first month or so of my trip. I was frustrated a few times, and a little disheartened with how hard it was at first to meet people. But I eventually overcame most of those obstacles, and probably grew as a person in the process. When my three months were up in Argentina, I was looking forward to heading to New York and to Ireland. But I really enjoyed my time in Argentina, the people I met, and the culture I got to experience. Over the last year or so I’ve […]

Back when I was in Thailand, Scott and Sam gave me the official invite to their wedding in Cape Town, South Africa for March of 2012. I was actually really excited about visiting Cape Town, but after leaving New Zealand I was pretty much out of money and had a lot of expenses back home to deal with. But I decided it was important for me to go, so I bit the bullet and purchased a $1,500 plane ticket to Cape Town, South Africa, leaving from Las Vegas (flights are always quite a bit cheaper out of the United States, and I was going to be down there for my mom’s birthday anyways). Journey Cape Town is pretty much as far away from Vancouver/Las Vegas as you can get. My journey consisted of a 10 hour flight from Las Vegas to London, a 2.5 hour layover in London, followed by […]

In the fall of 2010, I decided I wanted to set out on a big travel adventure. At the time I had become a bit bored of life in Chilliwack, and wanted to take advantage of the fact that I can work anywhere with an internet connection and actually see some of the world. I sold most of my furniture at the time and put the rest into a storage locker. And almost exactly a year ago, I boarded a plane and headed to South America. I spent approximately eight months of this past year living out of a suitcase, bouncing between apartments and hostels, working from little remote coffee shops, and taking in as many experiences as possible. Without a doubt, it was an amazing year, filled with breathtaking scenery, amazing natural wonders, and great people. Coming back home has been a bittersweet experience for me, especially pulling my […]

In less than three days I’ll be vacating my little apartment here in Auckland and hitting the open road again. Most people told me beforehand that Auckland wouldn’t be that interesting, but I quite enjoyed my time here. Here is a summary about my four week visit to Auckland, New Zealand. First, I took two weekends worth of sailing lessons from a pretty famous New Zealander named Penny Whiting. While I still have a ways to go, I now have a Certificate of Sailing Competency, which should allow me to charter a boat on my travels if I want. Penny was a great teacher, and she’s well known for being a commentator during the America’s cup and other sailing events. She’s even been awarded a M.B.E. for her contributions to sailing – very impressive. Second, the pub scene in Auckland is pretty decent. It’s not like Portland, Oregon or anything […]

As per my last post, I was supposed to spend the weekend in Bangkok this weekend and then head to Auckland on Monday. But given how people are evacuating from Bangkok, I decided to try and change my flights around to get out before things get even worse. Thankfully most airlines (including mine, Air Canada) are offering free change fees on flights to and from Bangkok due to the flooding crisis there, so my ticket was eligible for a change. I tried calling last night to sort it out, but unfortunately due to the time change I didn’t get the ticket office in time before it closed. This time I managed to get it in time, but was originally told there were no flights out until Monday on Malaysia Airlines (which is the carrier I was on). I then asked if they could put me on another partner’s carrier instead, […]

I checked out my hotel in Ubud, Bali and made my way down to the airport. I gotta say, driving in Bali is one of the scarier driving experiences I’ve ever had. People are fairly ruthless on the roads, and most of the paid drivers are extremely agressive (passing in the other lane when there’s lots of traffic). You sort of have to trust that these guys know what they are doing, and do your best not to pay too much attention to what is going on. I heard that traffic might be bad, so I left the hotel early knowing I’d probably end up with time to kill at the airport. Unfortunately for me the free WiFi was pretty much useless, and there’s absolutely nothing to do in the airport other than buy duty free and eat a few token items. One thing that is a bit annoying is […]