Hello my darlings! From this point on for a dozen more countries or so, I found my path leading away from the rustic, agrarian immersion I had been traversing thus far, and wending towards sunny beaches, restaurant food, hot showers, and other things that cost money. To put it another way, after the intensity of…
Something that has repeatedly made a strong impression on me this year is the obstinate subjectivity of the human ability to process time. Particularly in the latter seven months of my trip, I often found myself blasting through weeks and months at a time as if they were seconds, and yet, the 20 minutes I…
I must apologise in advance (again) if the rest of my writing changes in tone or detail from here on out. 12+ months and 22 countries later, I've officially survived my grand adventure, and am now writing from memory, iPhone photos, and some sparse notes. This should be the last post covering my time in…
Upon recent re-inspection, I decided to split up the preceding entry. Just in case anyone still wants wants to read everything I write, I'll try to supply it in more bite-size portions. And now, food cont'd.: Aside from roti and ciya, the food in Singada was much the same from day to day - simple…
I think I must preface this post with an assurance that the irony of my ending my last entry with a “more details coming soon” spiel is in no way lost on me. Because that was literally four months ago. I could blame a number of circumstances for this lapse: contracting typhoid, making friends, a…
Alright, Nepal. Here we go. I would like to preface this post by saying that being a westerner writing about a developing country is not easy. I strive for candidness in all of my writings on this site, and this is no exception. But I would like to note that I am by no means…
If my first farming experience in Taiwan was anything, it was a completely different animal from my second farm. Having made my inquiries rather hurriedly while feeling lonely in a museum lobby, most of the farms I contacted for the second half were chosen based on the criteria of wifi access and the presence of…
My first WWOOF host in Taiwan was in the outskirts of the city of Taichung, which is located in the west, near the middle of the island. I flew into Taipei around 1:00 am, and after some less than enjoyable back and forth with immigration about where I'd be staying, I finally got a bus…
The next day kicked off with renting a car for some of us, and traditional indigo dying for others, including myself. The dying studio, run by a middle-aged woman with minimal English but enthusiasm to make up for it, was small and had an odd smell to it, which I soon learned to identify as…
One of the best things to be said about my time in Yakushima is that, no matter where I travel from now on, the weather will probably feel manageable by comparison. That isn't to say that it wasn't still a relief to be engulfed by the air conditioning in our Kagoshima hostel room, but I…
She's Gone Off Again 