19,000 Days – Page 3 – Make Each One Count

May All Beings Be Happy- 10 Days of Silence, a Lifetime of Happiness

On a beach in Koh Tao one hot April afternoon, Chris turned to me and asked if I’d be interested in doing a 10-day silent meditation retreat. Honestly, it sounded too long-haired hippie for my liking and while I’d heard 80% of successful people meditate regularly (thank you Tim Ferriss), I didn’t know how or why people did it. And then Chris told me it was free. What? Ten days of no spending and complete budget

19k Laos Southeast Asia Travel

LAOS! Luang Prabang and the Most Beautiful Water I’ve Ever Seen

Having just finished our amazing month in Vietnam, we hopped on a bus in Hanoi and made off for their landlocked neighbor, Laos. Normally the transport is not worth commenting on…but this one is. Because the bus was 26 hours long. TWENTY SIX! That’s a full day PLUS TWO MORE HOURS for all you math aficionados. Despite the fact that it was a sleeper bus and we had the back seats (which albeit it shared with

19k Travel

Dogs Dogs Dogs- This Post was Bound to Happen Eventually

I’ve spent a good twenty-six years of my life obsessed with dogs (or wanting to be a dog) and this trip has bid me the opportunity to meet some really great canines. And so this post just had to happen. The Dog Post. One of the biggest struggles of going rogue for ten months is being away from my four legged buddy, Bubba. He comes up in conversation more than any other member of family and

19k Southeast Asia Travel Vietnam

Our Amazing English Students of Hanoi – It’s Not Goodbye, It’s See You Later!

Having been prototypical tourists much of our time up Vietnam’s coast, we decided it was time to mix things up a little bit in Hanoi. A couple days before our arrival we hopped on HelpX.net to evaluate our options. To be honest, I was expecting more of the farm-related opportunities that are so frequent elsewhere in the world – maybe we’d help with a rice paddy? I had no idea. But that was not to be

19k Southeast Asia Travel Vietnam

Insanity on the Roads, a Resulting Bus Accident & Sand Dunes – Central Vietnam

After our stay in Dalat we continued north along Vietnam’s Highway 1 passing through Mui Ne, Hoi An and Hue. We had a nice time at each – ate good Pho, met great people, drank bad drinks and saw beautiful things. But nothing overly spectacular…so it’s getting thrown into one post. My apologies for the click-bait title, I’ll start there. The roads of Vietnam are insane. Absolutely insane. Other than those very baseline survival rules that

19k Southeast Asia Travel Vietnam

Vietnamese Love Their Motorbikes (And Happy Water) – Dalat

We started our month in Vietnam with a nice, four day stay in Ho Chi Minh City (aka Saigon) – pretty uneventful other than Jenna meeting a fellow Clemson grad while we were out at a reggae bar one night. Small world. We purchased a ‘hop on, hop off’ bus ticket that would take us north from HCMC through 5 cities, the last of which was Hanoi, Vietnam’s northern-lying capital. Side note: this ticket, covering nearly

19k Cambodia Southeast Asia Travel

Cambodia’s Painful Past & Sad Present – S21 and the Killing Fields

Now before I get too in depth into our experience I must submit one caveat – we were only in Cambodia for 5 days total. Not nearly enough time to acquire an accurate view of any region of the world. The reflections below are simply my initial thoughts from the people we met and the experiences we had in our short time there. The night after our whirlwind tour of the beautiful temples of Angkor near

19k Cambodia Southeast Asia Travel

From Desktop Background to Reality – The Temples of Angkor

For the longest time at work my desktop background was the following… The silhouette of Angkor Wat at sunrise. Nothing else so purely symbolized travel for the 3 years I sat at my desk in Baltimore than this very scene. I envisioned waking up in the darkness, making my way through dense, steamy rainforest to finally break through a clearing and have this majestic scene stretch out in front of me. Now that we had landed

19k Malaysia Southeast Asia Travel

Taman Negara – Rainforest Canopy Walks, Floating Restaurants and Leeches…So Many Leeches

Having our previous two hiking attempts foiled – the first in Nepal and the second in Yogyakarta after the trail we were supposed to take up a volcano was closed because a local fell in (yes, fell into the volcano) – we were determined to get back into the wilderness. In KL we had done some reading on that country’s crown jewel of National Parks – Taman Negara – and decided that’s where we’d end the

19k Malaysia Southeast Asia Travel

Kuala Lumpur & Batu Caves – This Post Is Mostly About Thieving Monkeys…And Queso Dip

After our wonderful stay in Indonesia we hopped on one of Air Asia’s delightfully cheap flights destined for Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia’s shiny, ultra-modern (oil funded) capital city. We spent a couple days in KL wandering around its glitzy shopping malls and pristinely manicured parks. One afternoon our bus was accosted by a man who appeared to be the Muslim equivalent of the Westboro Baptist Church – his ranting was in Malay but based on the fact

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The Negative Momentum Spiral of Death: How to Identify & Manage It

Senolytics, Aging & the Fight Against Disease-Causing Zombie Cells

Comparison is the death of joy (especially on social media)

What I’ve Learned (So Far)

You can only dream of what you can imagine

My Experience with the 5-Day Fasting Mimicking Diet

May All Beings Be Happy- 10 Days of Silence, a Lifetime of Happiness

LAOS! Luang Prabang and the Most Beautiful Water I’ve Ever Seen

Dogs Dogs Dogs- This Post was Bound to Happen Eventually

Our Amazing English Students of Hanoi – It’s Not Goodbye, It’s See You Later!

Insanity on the Roads, a Resulting Bus Accident & Sand Dunes – Central Vietnam

Vietnamese Love Their Motorbikes (And Happy Water) – Dalat

Cambodia’s Painful Past & Sad Present – S21 and the Killing Fields

From Desktop Background to Reality – The Temples of Angkor

Taman Negara – Rainforest Canopy Walks, Floating Restaurants and Leeches…So Many Leeches

Kuala Lumpur & Batu Caves – This Post Is Mostly About Thieving Monkeys…And Queso Dip

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