I’ve been writing this blog since 2019, and travelling a lot longer than that. This page is the index — organised by place, with links to what I wrote while I was there.
I’m writing this from Siem Reap, Cambodia, which has been home since the end of 2025. Before that it was Vietnam for about six years, and before that Atlanta, where I ran a circus.
Everywhere listed below is somewhere I’ve been. Places I’ve researched carefully but haven’t reached yet have their own section further down — I plan a lot of trips, including ones I haven’t taken.
Travel Destinations : How I Got Here
I didn’t discover travel in my thirties and write a blog about the awakening. It started early and it was never framed as anything special.
As a kid my family took me to St. John and Tortola in the Virgin Islands, up into Canada, and up and down the US East Coast. None of it was documented — this was the era of film cameras and nobody writing anything down. But it set the baseline: getting on a plane was normal, and other countries were places people lived rather than places you looked at.
The rest filled in over about twenty years. Two months across Italy in 2001, the last year of the lira, with my older sister.
Then, not long after art school, I was living in Providence, Rhode Island when my aunt and uncle asked if I wanted to crew their sailboat. We left Mobile, Alabama and made Key West, where the mast broke and we sat for a week waiting on the repair. From there it was out through the Bermuda Triangle, out to the 51st, and then a long run south to St. John in the US Virgin Islands, where my aunt and uncle lived. Somewhere between one and two months living on open ocean.
It remains the only trip I’ve taken where the destination was genuinely optional. You go where the weather lets you.
In 2005 I went to Burning Man for the first time. Hurricane Katrina made landfall while I was out on the playa with no signal and no news, and I came back to a country in the middle of a disaster. Seven days off the grid is not a long time until you find out what happened during it.
Then Atlanta, where I spent a decade founding and running the Imperial OPA Circus and the Circus School of Atlanta — which is its own kind of travel, and taught me more about logistics under pressure than any trip has.
Somewhere in there I shot photography on tour with Cirque du Soleil, and in 2017 I was backstage crew on the Ringling Bros. final tour — I was there for the last show the circus ever performed. I wrote a book about that.
In 2019 I sold the circus school, closed everything down, and flew to Vietnam. I haven’t had a fixed address in the US since.
Cambodia — Where I Live Now
I landed in Cambodia at the end of October 2025, spent the first stretch on Koh Rong Sanloem, and moved up to Siem Reap around Christmas. I’ve been here since.
Living in a temple town is different from visiting one. You stop counting the temples and start noticing which cafés have working air conditioning in April. Most of what I’ve written about Siem Reap comes from that angle — the practical stuff a visitor gets wrong.
- How many days you actually need — three is the sweet spot, and I explain exactly why
- The Angkor Wat dress code — it’s enforced, I’ve watched people get turned away at the top
- When to go — month by month, with the trade-offs stated plainly
- Where to stay — six areas, and who each one suits
- Things to do in Siem Reap — local picks, not the tour-desk list
- The botanical gardens — free, empty, and almost nobody knows the back entrance
- ABCs and Rice — what $590 actually buys at a school outside town
- Heartprint Hub — eleven years of work behind one café
- Expat life in Cambodia — the honest version, including the parts that wear you down
- A month on Koh Rong Sanloem — island living, reality-checked
Vietnam — Six Years, and How It Ended
I lived in Vietnam from 2019 to 2025 — Hanoi first, then Hội An, then Da Nang for most of it. I started a nomad community there and ran bar crawls. It was the longest I’ve stayed anywhere as an adult.
It ended badly. A visa I’d been told was being sorted never was, the overstay caught up with me, and my re-entry was refused. I can’t go back until 2027. I lost the apartment, the deposit, and most of what was in storage.
None of which changes the fact that Da Nang is a good city and these write-ups still hold. Just know they’re a record of a place I lived, not a place I’m in.
- Danang Climbing Gym — the city’s first bouldering wall, with prices and hours
- The Mui Nghe hike — a hard scramble on the Son Tra peninsula most visitors never find
- Hai Van Pass at sunrise — by motorbike, early, before the tour vans
- Bladi — Moroccan food in a Vietnamese beach city, and it works
- An Nhàn — a gallery and coffee house worth an afternoon
- Chic Chillax, Hoi An — out in the rice fields, away from the lanterns
- Thien Mu Pagoda, Hue
- Suoi Khe Ram — a mountain stream an hour out of the city
India
Early 2022, on the same run that took me through Spain and Greece. I flew into India from northern Greece and spent about a month at the Swasti Yoga Centre in Pune on a workaway arrangement — a bed and food in exchange for work — then went on to Mumbai.
I was not a yoga person when I arrived. I was still not really a yoga person when I left, but I understood a great deal more about why other people are.
- Travel day, Greece to India — snow in northern Greece to landing in Pune
- Yoga in India — a week into living at the studio
- Swasti Yoga Centre, Pune — the place itself, honestly assessed
- A birthday and my first Indian cinema — an experience I was not prepared for
- An afternoon in the park — on making friends abroad
- What I read about India before going
Thailand
Bangkok and the south, in pieces, across several years — including a long stretch in 2024 waiting on a visa that never came.
- The Amulet Market — a riverside market almost no tourist walks into
- Krabi Urban Forest — a boardwalk through mangroves, free, empty most mornings
- The Monkey Trail, Ao Nang — a shortcut between beaches with a monkey problem
- Wat Tham Suea — 1,200 steps to a tiger cave temple, and the climb is no joke
- Old Town Phuket — the quiet surprise
- Patong — a mixed verdict, honestly given
- Songkran, Bangkok vs Siem Reap — I’ve done both, and they’re not the same festival
Portugal — The Fisherman’s Trail
October 2025, with my sister Brenna. Nine days end to end: Lisbon down to Porto Covo, then four walking days along the Alentejo coast — 20km, 15km, 22km, 18km — finishing at Odeceixe, then Lagos and back to Lisbon.
Seventy-five kilometres of clifftop sand track. It is harder than the elevation profile suggests, because most of it is soft sand and there is no shade.
- Day one: Porto Covo to Vila Nova de Milfontes — 20km, fossil cliffs
- Almograve to Zambujeira do Mar — 22km, the longest day, and the sandwich that changed everything
- Zambujeira to Odeceixe — 18km through cork oak, and the trail’s end at the river mouth
- Wine in Silves and Monchique — the Algarve inland, away from the resorts
- Lagos to Lisbon by train
- Last day on the Algarve coast
Greece
Athens and the north, in 2022, on foot mostly. Greece is where I did the most walking and the least planning, and it worked out better than it had any right to.
- Athens to Thessaloniki by train — timings, cost, and whether it beats flying
- Across Athens and up Lycabettus — the whole city on foot in a day
- The HS Velos museum ship — a destroyer with a genuinely strange history
- Changing of the guard — schedule, where to stand, how long to give it
- Pedion tou Areos — the big park nobody sends you to
- The Trigonion Tower, Thessaloniki
Spain
Madrid in early 2022, mostly on foot and mostly hungry.
- The Temple of Debod — an actual Egyptian temple, in Madrid, for free
- Almudena Cathedral
- Eating vegetarian in Madrid — harder than it should be, but doable
Indonesia
Java, 2014, on my first solo trip through Southeast Asia. The photos survived better than my notes.
- Mount Bromo to Kawah Ijen — two active volcanoes, a 3am start, and blue fire
- Yogyakarta — Prambanan and the old town backstreets
Puerto Rico
2016, two weeks, visiting my little sister Brenna on the west coast. Landed in San Juan, based out of Rincón, and drove the island coast to coast. My parents came out for part of it.
- Puerto Rico, coast to coast — two weeks of beaches and jungle
Italy, Switzerland and Germany
2001, the last year of the lira. Two months with my older sister Carianne — roughly a month backpacking around Italy, then a month living in Venice while I took a printmaking and drawing course at the Scuola di Grafica off the Grand Canal. We finished with a week through Switzerland and Germany and flew home out of Milan.
It predates this blog by eighteen years, so there’s nothing written up yet. It’s on the list.
New England and the US East Coast
Connecticut is where I’m from — Winsted, in the Litchfield Hills. The New England coverage is the deepest on the site because I keep going back.
- Connecticut fall foliage — peak timing and where to actually go
- Connecticut Renaissance Festival
- Hammonasset Beach State Park
- Haystack Mountain
- Burr Pond State Park
- Saville Dam, Barkhamsted
- Bethlehem Garlic Festival
- Boston — a photo essay, textures and angles
- The Last Train — backstage on Ringling Bros.’ final tour, 2017
Places I’ve Researched and Want to Reach
I do a lot of travel planning. I’ve driven across the United States, I help other people plan their trips, and I keep a long running list of places I want to get to myself. Researching a destination properly — the routes, the costs, the timing, what’s actually worth the detour — is something I enjoy on its own terms, separate from the trip.
So some of the guides on this site cover places I haven’t physically been yet. They’re researched carefully, they’re written to be useful, and every one of them sits high on my own list. When I get to them, they become first-hand write-ups like everything above.
If you ever have a question about a page on this site, or about how I put something together, send me an email and say hi.
Where I’m Going Next
Cambodia for now. Vietnam is closed to me until 2027, which reshapes the next couple of years more than I’d like.
Beyond that, the list is open — and the best trips I’ve taken came from someone telling me about a place I’d never considered. So: where should I go?
