So here I am, way up north on the island of Luzon in the city of Vigan, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Vigan's claim to fame is that it's still here. It's one of the few remaining historic, Hispanic cities in the Philippines that didn't get bombed by the Japanese in World War II. It's pleasant enough to have a look around, but after traveling through Latin America, the possibility of getting excited over old cathedrals and cobblestoned streets is about zero, unfo...

Welcome to the Philippines! My first piece of advice for anyone arriving here in Manila is get ready for a traffic congestion nightmare and don't judge the country on this first impression. I thought I'd seen bad traffic in Lima Peru but it's way worse here. So the first thing I decided to do was leave. I'm taking a bus north to anywhere they will take me. When I showed up at the bus terminal, everything was booked thanks to a long holiday weekend for Chinese...

Yangon is Myanmar's biggest city and former capital. After the last cyclone, they built a new city somewhere else for the government but no one really lives there yet. All the pitfalls of big city living are here: too much traffic, too many people on practically nonexistent sidewalks, and too much noise and pollution. The airport is well connected, however, so it’s a necessary stop and worth a couple days to have a look around. Without a doubt, the Shweda...

Happy New Year 2016 from Ngwe Saung! Don't worry, I can’t pronounce it either. So my new observation from Myanmar is that the locals get motion sickness before the bus even starts to move. I call this phenomenon Vomiting Burmese Roulette. For the rest of us, this creates an uncomfortable, mystery-like environment where everyone is on the lookout for when and where the next gacking local will be depositing his or her lunch. All we can do as foreigners is t...

Moving on from Nyaungshwe, we headed south through the old capital city of Yangon (they recently moved it) and made our way to Kyaikto, also known simply as Golden Rock. We heard mixed reports on this place, mostly negative, but for some reason we were determined to see it. This is one of holiest Buddhist sites in the country and thousands of pilgrims arrive daily to do their thing here. The crazy thing about this rock, other than that it's completely covered wit...