Sri Lanka has heart. I think if you asked me what I liked most about our time there, it would be that: this earnestness, this particular openness that I can only describe as heart. Very few countries seemed to open themselves up quite so willingly as Sri Lanka did for us. Everywhere we went people […]
There’s an old saying that the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach. That may be all well and good, but I say that fair is fair and this credo should be extended to all world travelers regardless of gender… especially when they’re traveling in Sri Lanka! Sri Lanka is a country whose […]
As a travel blogger, the hardest part about visiting beautiful and fascinating countries is almost never the travel part. (I say almost, because sometimes you have days like this one…). No, the difficulty always comes in writing about these places. The more beautiful they are, the harder it seems to be to do justice to […]
In the past few years, something of an obsession has developed amongst travelers (both short-term annual vacationers and less conventional long-term ones) in “living like locals” when abroad. It starts before we even embark on our journey, with carefully pruned packing lists so that we aren’t outed on sight alone as the foreigners that we […]
I can only assume that when Anderson penned those words of wisdom, he hadn’t been traveling around the world for 20+ months. One of the realities of being a long-term traveler means you rarely travel the fastest or easiest way to your destination, because fast & easy usually don’t come cheap. When every dollar saved […]
When we launched 20 Years Hence, we called it a travel blog because that was what everyone else with a blog similar to our own was doing and the mantle fit well enough. What else would you call a site meant to document the adventure of a lifetime? Very quickly, however, we realized that as […]
**UPDATED** We have our winner! Click through and/or scroll down past our examples to find out who we thought shot the best face of a nation! Thanks to everyone who entered, we’re really happy with the great response! True to the travel plans we revealed in our last post, we have been madly darting around […]
A few months ago, I began alluding to (and explicitly mentioning… subtlety is rarely my strong suit) the fact that Tony & I will be winding up our trip and heading home this summer. I didn’t go into detail about why this was happening, in part because I didn’t really think anyone other than the […]
“Holy Crap! That’s an elephant!” Setting down my cutlery and contorting my body around Tony’s to gaze out onto Nong Khai’s main street, I confirmed that his assessment of the situation was indeed correct. There, amidst the trundling tuk tuks and zippy motorbikes, a mid-sized pachyderm plodded down the street while roadside vendors and diners […]
From the moment we arrived at our first destination in Laos, it was there, beckoning us. Strolling along the Mekong, or sipping a cold beer at one of the many riverside bars, our gazes would turn towards the setting sun, and our expressions would freeze into ones acute with longing. Often we’d peer out from […]
It may have taken us 19 months of traveling, but we finally made it to Laos. Who can say why it took us so long to finally make it to this sleepy little country—we had heard such great things from so many people about it, and yet whenever logical travel plans would send us to […]
Wandering the streets of Luang Prabang, I realized once and for all why the old saying is “Variety is the spice of life” and NOT “Variety is the spice of Laos.” Our fifth destination in the country and often the favorite amongst visitors, Luang Prabang is a town that is meant to impress… and yet, […]
For most travelers, Luang Prabang is the highlight of their visit to Laos. Declared a UNESCO heritage site in 1995, the town is known for its charming colonial streets, dazzling wats, early morning alms ceremonies, a fabulous night market, and an impeccable dining scene. Take a languid ride down the Mekong or hop in a […]
A few weeks back, I was chatting on Facebook with my good friend Simona. We’ve been friends for nearly a decade at this point, having met during our final semester of university and bonded (initially) over our mutual love of Oasis. As if to make up for lost time, we crammed years worth of friendship […]
I strongly believe that every place we have visited on this trip has come with some kind of lesson attached to it. Whether it has been hard lessons like learning when to fold in China or positive ones like discovering just how good most people are, not a day—or destination—goes by on this trip where […]