dazuck

I can’t imagine there’s a much more dramatic juxtaposition of cultures than the one we created by flying directly from Delhi to Singapore. If India was like the summer camp with pre-teens running in crazed passion every which way, Singapore was the marching band practi...

From Thailand I reflected on what it means to be an American in America. In Vietnam I've learned more about what it means to be an American elsewhere in the world. This obviously includes the expected confrontation with the Vietnam war. And traveling with a group of ba...

I’m now ~1 month into hopping around Asia, and losing my bag in Malaysia has forced me to confront the mounting evidence: I might not be so good at this whole travel thing (yet). So, instead of a list of ‘pro tips’ I’ve put together a series of my early missteps learni...

I might have a bit of a reputation for crazy plane delays, re-routings, and other bad luck on long journeys. Nik might have even worse luck than me. So we should probably have been more prepared for a less-than-smooth trip from Bangkok to Amritsar, but a comedy of erro...

Most of this blog will aim to be my reflections rather than FOMO-inducing travel stories and photos. This post will be an exception.

While we were waiting in Bangkok, our friend Rob sent us a string of messages from Amritsar that amounted to "We met the best host ever o...

Now, the reason we were in India to begin with: the Indian wedding. Must have been a good friend to come all this way, right (hey - even from Thailand it’s a decent flight)? Nope, we knew all of 1 person at the wedding before this week and had only just learned the bri...

Okay, so now we’ve been shuttled in by Air India, around Amritsar by Pratham, and the wedding by Kunal. Is our group still capable of traveling when we have to do things for ourselves?  I haven’t mentioned this yet, but while we were there the entire country was out of...

It’s 97 degrees and whatever the humidity is, it's sticky. We are outside the gleaming royal palace in Bangkok but cannot enter as the palace is closed this month. Still, thousands and thousands of Thais are waiting in black clothes. They will be there for hours. Stand...

“What doesn’t kill me makes me stronger,” said Nietszche (and Kayne). Jon Haidt studied whether this adage holds true, and unsurprisingly ‘it depends’: we can grow from setbacks if we successfully make sense of them, specifically by answering: “Why did this happen?” an...