Cities & Culture

About a month before we packed up our lovely little apartment in Cary, NC and headed out on this great adventure, we met a fellow resident named Vilma at the annual Christmas social. We’d all lived in the apartment community … Read More

Originally, we had planned to travel from Moscow to Istanbul, then work our way north and west as we explored eastern Europe. Unfortunately, a failed military coup and resulting formal declaration of a state of emergency left the country unstable … Read More

We pulled into the Moscow train station and set off towards the station entrance with our new Finnish friends. We chatted and walked in the bright sunshine when suddenly, the daughter interjected, “did that say Stone?” I wheeled around and … Read More

Naturally, while in China, we had to see the Great Wall. In an effort to escape the crowds, we signed up for two days of hiking with an organization called Beijing Hikers, whose trips tend to move outside of the … Read More

Our journey to Beijing was a long, 35-hour train ride from Hanoi, spanning two nights. It started off rocky when the person arranging our tickets was late dropping them off, leaving a cluster of us frantic and wondering whether we’d … Read More

Our evening arrival in Hanoi was somewhat less than stellar, as we checked into our guesthouse to find the room barely larger than a closet (I had reviewed photos online, and it had also received excellent reviews). Now, we’ve stayed … Read More

We looked over our remaining days left in Vietnam, and determined that we were either going to have to skip visiting one of the cities we had originally planned, or our last couple weeks were going to turn into a … Read More

To travel through a large swath of Vietnam, we opted for the country’s affordable and scenic rail transit. We took Vietnam Railway’s Reunification Express from the southern town of Nha Trong, all the way north to Hanoi, stopping at several … Read More

As we evaluated our filling passports, we began to worry about the lack of blank pages available for the full-page visas required by our upcoming countries. When we began the trip, we calculated out what we would need, but failed … Read More

Foreword: The following narrative details some events of the Cambodian Genocide. I struggled a lot with what to write, how to write… and even if to write about the immense tragedy and what we saw. Ultimately, I decided to share … Read More