To check out another part of Bangladesh, I went bird watching with a couple colleagues on the northern border near India, in a wetlands area named Tanguar Haor. Before I moved to Bangladesh I had heard that it was the best place for bird watching in Asia. The whole country is a river delta. The Bradt guide says "If you're supremely adventurous or a keen birdwatcher (perhaps both), Sunamganj is where you'll want to head." It also mentions that it takes four days on a boat to do the round trip from Sunamganj to Tanguar Haor, staying on the boat at night and waking up surrounded by birds in the wetlands. A haor is a large depression in the earth, which creates a wetlands area. Water trickles in from nearby rivers and rains fill the depressions. ... read more

I was very fortunate to have my friend Anisa travel all the way from Montana to Hanoi for Christmas. She stayed past when I had to return to Dhaka for work, but we managed to see and do a lot during our travels together. We started with a rough itinerary: Day 1: Arrive in Hanoi on Christmas. Eat a giant Christmas dinner. Day 2: Recover from jetlag (Anisa had to get used to a 14 hour difference) and eat phở. Day 3: Eat phở and take night train north to Sapa. Day 4: Explore the town of Sapa and see if the locals eat phở. Day 5: Hike the mountains above Sapa and check hill villages for phở. Day 6: Explore local foods in the market and sample varieties of phở in Lao Cai, take night ... read more

This was an amazing vacation and I loved every minute of it – even when there were leeches involved. My week in Malaysia centered around a trip to the rainforest; I finally got to see a real tropical rainforest and all the wildlife that goes with it. I’ve always loved reading adventure and travel books, and wondered what it would be like to actually be in the rainforest, looking up into the face of a gibbon, following elephant tracks or watching an orangutan settle into her nest. All of that happened last week. I wasn’t even in a wildlife park, just out in the forest near the Kinabatangan River. I flew into the city of Kota Kinabalu, on the northern edge of the Malaysian side of Borneo. The island is divided by the nations of Malaysia, ... read more

My first few days in Dhaka were filled with settling into my new apartment, but afterwards I did make time to go out with some of my new colleagues to explore the city. Since we arrived at the end of Ramadan we found empty streets and many closed shops. Some parts of the city are eerily abandoned. I am enjoying it immensely. Gone are the traffic jams that greeted me when I first arrived at the airport. It is a relaxed introduction to the bustling city: Dhaka Light. For one outing we visited the boat docks where ferries unload passengers and ships unload cargo via little boats. We “rented” a couple boats and paddled around until it started to rain, then boarded empty ferryboats to wait it out. It was fun seeing the city from the ... read more

Some experiences just can’t be photographed. Some are too magical to be captured. Turkey is a beautiful country and all the places I have traveled around here are very picturesque. However, my most recent trip to Olympos was just different from my other vacations around Turkey. For one, it was a short weekend get-away to the beach. I left Istanbul after work on Friday and flew back on Sunday. Also, Olympos is known more for the lifestyle than the historical ruins. I went there to get out of the city, relax and enjoy my last vacation in Turkey before I leave at the end of this month. Living in Istanbul with its centuries of fascinating history has instilled in me an automatic visit to any nearby ruins. Saturday morning I dutifully walked to the ancient city ... read more