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Mongolia is a big, beautiful, rugged country. Let me be honest, I wouldn’t recommend Mongolia as a place to travel. It’s like one giant camp ground, and camping is cool – but it’s roughing it. If you want to rough it the whole time you’re in a country, then Mongolia might be for you. But if you have some romantic feeling that Mongolia is an untouched, natural paradise where you can sleep in a tent, then relax in a resort hot tub, or update your blog on your iPad about how rough it is, showing off pictures on Facebook about riding camels in the dessert, drop the fantasies now.

If you’ve already bought a motorcycle and ridden across Cambodia, or went trekking in Afghanistan for 2 months, then yeah, go check out Mongolia. You’d probably like it. I’m not going to expound too much on the negatives. Just know that it’s rugged, and prepare for one long camping experience (yes, including your time in the capital).

The Good Memories

- Riding camels in the Gobi dessert
- Riding horses across dunes
- Watching a 16-yr old kid lean off the side of his horse in full-gallop to scoop up a hat from the dessert floor to show off his skills
- Experiencing the first warm rays of sunlight peaking over the mountains in the cold dawn in the Gobi
- Getting lost in the sea of sparkling stars that wash across the crystal clear night sky of Mongolia Continue reading →

Singapore can be done in a day and a half. The best thing to do is to stay in Little India and visit Chinatown.

In Chinatown, visit the Buddha Tooth Relic Temple and Museum just down the street from the Sri Mariamman Temple (Hindu), which isn’t far from the Jamae Mosque (Muslim). That’s Singapore in a nutshell – a harmony of cultures.

At the Buddha Temple go upstairs to the free Buddhist museum on the 3rd floor. They have tons of Buddhist relics from around the world and have done a good job telling the story of Buddha in a designed path through the museum. Take your time. Read a bit. Learn a bit.

Then hit up the stairwell and sneak up to the roof. You’ll find a lush rooftop tropical garden surrounding a large Buddhist prayer wheel. Grab the wheel, walk in a circle and make a prayer. It’s okay. You’re allowed to be there.

For lunch, go behind the museum to the Chinatown Complex (food hawker center). There are 1,000 food stalls. Take a deep breath and find a stall that sells ‘chicken rice’. When I was there it was #172. It should cost S$3. Wait for it. Make sure to take the little tray of red sauce. The dish will look bland – you will be surprised. Continue reading →

Never said I wasn’t lucky. Here’s a short review of some of the things I did, places I visited, and people I hung out with in 2010. This video was inspired by Jdre‘s 2010 Year in Review. (no offense, Jdre)

From Snowboarding near Vale, Colorado at Veckman’s wedding, to Mexico, Tokyo, Korea, Malaysia, Singapore, and Cambodia. I’m a lucky son-of-a-gun. Check out the video below.

The song is Little Secrets by Passion Pit

You can buy this song here – http://amzn.to/fDliBn
and the album here – http://amzn.to/eW0Hzb

This may sound obvious, but your passport is critically important if you plan to travel between countries. The first 10 or 15 countries you visit, this will be obvious. But be careful not to drop your guard just because you haven’t lost it yet. This was my mistake.

Breakfast coming from Seoul. Lunch coming from Beijing. Dinner in Bangkok. It was the beginning of another sure-to-be-memorable vacation abroad. Plans included rock-climbing in Vietnam with Mixto and Huevos (aka the plumbers), whom I hadn’t seen in over 2 years since volunteering together in Peru. Then, planned to meet Taylor and his girlfriend, Nina, who I hadn’t seen since graduation from college together. These were four people you can’t help but be excited to see.

Well, my excitement got the best of me, and after only 5 days rock-climbing with the plumbers on Cat Ba island near Ha Long Bay in Vietnam, I left my passport at the hotel. I was about 2 hours into a 4.5 hour bus-boat-bus-bus (4B’s) trip back to Hanoi when it dawned on me that my passport was no longer in my possession. The next morning I had a flight booked to Bangkok to meet Taylor and Nina before Christmas. Guess I won’t be making that flight! There’s the second $100 down the drain for the trip (I had also just lost my pocket video-camera the day before, but there’s no story to that- I’m clearly just a bumbling fool).

So, I run through the options in my mind:

Get a new passport from the Embassy in Hanoi
Make the 9 hour round-trip journey on the 4B’s to secure my passport in hand
Have the plumbers give my passport to a stranger taking the same 4B’s trip one-way to Hanoi, and meet that person at the bus stop

What would you do? I’ll give you a hint – 1) getting a new passport theoretically can take a day, but the new Vietnam visa for that new passport can take a week. 2) The 4B’s trip includes a 2.5 hour stint in a bus with a horn that sounds every 4 seconds or so the whole way (I’m not exaggerating). It is unbelievably unbearable.

So, yes, I contacted the plumbers, and asked them to give my passport to a group of travelers making their way from Cat Ba to Hanoi. I know this sounds risky, but I trusted the plumbers would know how to find good people. Even if they gave my passport to the only group of travelers making the trip that day. By the time they responded to my email, they had already sent it.

“Your passport is with a group of 3 people. Two European guys wearing Thai-pants, and a stunning blonde in an orange skirt. They’ll look for you at the bus stop. Godspeed.” That’s why they’re plumbers. This should be easy. So I hop on a moto-taxi and ride to the bus terminal to meet three very conspicuous travelers.

I missed them. I was there 15 mins before their bus was supposed to arrive, and stayed for an hour through 2 more buses from that company. No white guys in Thai-pants, and zero blondes in any color skirt. Now what?

I moto-taxi back to the hostel that’s letting me crash even though legally they’re supposed to have my passport on file to let me stay there. I get on the internet and find the back-up plan.

Plumbers: “If you don’t find them, enable anyone to search for you on Facebook. That’s their backup plan if they don’t see you at the bus station.” Good news – the plumbers built in a backup plan. Bad news – I had my security settings too high. So I had to change those real quick, which I did. After loosening the Facebook restrictions a test search revealed a whole BUNCH of people with my name, but none of them were me! So I changed my f-book name to my full name which of course, is on my passport. I thought the travelers could find me that way. So I waited. And I waited. Waiting… waiting… nothing. No message. What more could I do? This sucks!

So then, I had the idea to send a message to all the people with my name at the top of the f-book search list to tell them the situation and with a direct link to my f-book account. As I was sending the message to the 3rd possible me, I got a friend request from a stranger! Yes! That was the girl in the group!

I immediately accepted, sent her an instant chat message… nothing… so, I quickly sent her an f-book message… nothing. So I waited…. and waited… then she signed off! Nooooooo!! Nothing! No response!

She found me! But then she didn’t send any message or give me any information so I could meet her and get my passport back. So I had to wait more. By now I had been waiting for my passport for more than 5 hours.

There was nothing I could do…. I found her email on her f-book, and sent her an e-mail. That was it. That was everything. I couldn’t do anything else but wait for her to respond to one of the many messages I had sent. She was somewhere in the same city as me, with the key to my exit from the city, and I couldn’t find her. And ultimately, I had nobody to blame but myself.

One last thing… I knew what she looked like – she was described as a ‘stunning blond girl’, so I walked around the city just looking for a girl that fit that description. It was hopeless. Hanoi is way too big! I actually walked around the main backpacker-hostel-guesthouse area more than 10 times just hoping to spot her and her two friends, or to have them spot me… nothing.

I was so sad. But this is supposed to be a fun trip. There’s no use in being sad, but there was nothing I could do. I kept checking f-book and my email…. Nothing. 11:30 pm rolls around and I’m tired. There’s nothing I can do. So I go to bed dreaming of a message in my Inbox for the morning. I wake up, anxious, hopeful, but also helpless. It’s Christmas Eve in Hanoi. I’m hoping Christmas will come early.

I check my e-mail… nothing. I don’t know how to express helplessness, but this is what I felt. Utterly, and completely helpless. There was nothing I could do. There are two cheap flights out of Hanoi to Bangkok. One leaves at 9:10 AM, and the other at 11:10 PM. I had already had to skip one that I had purchased. Now, I had to wait to buy the next one until I got my passport. Time is ticking and I’ve got no passport. I eat breakfast. Check my e-mail. Nothing. Walk around the block. Check my e-mail. Nothing.

I don’t want to waste another day in Hanoi, especially Christmas Eve – by myself! So, I look online to see what there is to do in this city. The War Museum is the only interesting thing in the city, so I decide to walk there. But first… I check my e-mail. Nothing. Damn.

So I walk 40 mins to the War Museum, after getting lost for a split-second. At the gate, I ask the guard if this is the Museum, because it’s not as obvious as I thought it could be. He replies to me in broken Vietnamese-English, “Clo Munday, Fryday.”

Excuse me?

“Close Monday, Friday.”

I look at my watch. Today is Friday. The museum is closed today. I walk around a second, find the ticket booth, and it says in English, “The museum is open every day except Monday, and F__day.” The “r” and “i” were missing, but I got it. No museum for me today.

Now what? I don’t have any choice but to walk all the way back to my guesthouse. So that’s what I do. I check the internet, and there’s a message! Uh-oh! Is it her? Yes, it is! I read it! She’s online right now. I quickly send her an instant message on f-book. No reply…. waiting. No reply. She has given me a phone number. But it’s not a Vietnamese number. It’s a German number. Then she signs off! Nooooo! I get on Skype and call the German number. Ring… ring…. ring… ring… ring… “halo?”

YES! Finally!! She’s at her hotel. I tell her to wait 6 mins, hop on the back of a motorbike and go straight there. The three travelers are outside waiting for me. I walk up trying to hide my excitement. One guy sitting down in a relaxed position, says to me nonchalantly, “looking for this?” as he holds up my American passport. “Yes, sir I am.” They smile and he hands it to me. Finally, I have my passport back!! I thank them and chat for a minute, but I’m anxious to get out of Hanoi and on to Bangkok to meet Taylor and Nina.

I stop at a backpacker hostel around the corner and hop online to buy a plane ticket. It’s off to Bangkok Christmas morning on the 9:10 AM flight on AirAsia. Merry Christmas!

Losing your passport is not awesome. Getting stuck in Hanoi is not awesome. Don’t lose your passport. I know this sounds obvious, but it’s something that sucks so bad, it doesn’t hurt to keep it in mind.

PS: There’s always a silver lining – yes, that’s the ‘stunning blond’ who had my passport. The plumbers didn’t know it at the time, but she’s a German model. Merry Christmas!

Korea’s breathtaking beauty can sometimes sneak up on a foreigner. The people of Korea however, sometimes have the beauty of their country down to a science. Naejangsan National Park just north of Gwangju is well-known throughout Korea for its vast expanse of trails lined with Japanese maple trees. These maples put on a display of shades – reds, oranges, yellows, and burgundies – every Autumn, and Koreans know exactly when to take in this annual ritual.

The weekend of November 6-7 was not a festival – it was simply the best weekend to see Naejangsan in all its glory. Considering that Korea is a country only as big as Indiana, yet containing more people than all of California and Indiana combined, that more than 70% of people live in apartments, and that there are only so many places to go outside of one’s apartment, you’ll should believe the next statement. On Saturday, more than 80,000 people visited Naejangsan.

As Warren so deftly put it, “Americans watch football on the weekends; Koreans go to mountains.”

That’s twice as many people as can attend a sold-out Boston Red Sox game. Warren and I drove to Naejangsan at the peak time, and ended up parking in Parking Lot 4 out of 5, which was more than 2 km away from the entrance of the park. It was seemingly absurd how many tour buses from Seoul, Busan, and Gwangju we saw in the parking lots of this National Park. I repeat, this was not a festival. This was not an event. There were no celebrity appearances. The celebrities were the leaves of the trees. The stages were two Buddhist hermitages, and two temples.

So, if you come to Korea in the Fall and want to experience a unique facet of the Korean culture, then ask somebody the best time to go to Naejangsan. If it’s a weekend in the Fall (probably November), then go, and experience the masses. But if you prefer a more exclusive experience, then visit Naejangsan in the Winter after a snowfall. Either way, Naejangsan is worth a visit.

For more photos check out my Flickr album.

Tenggol Island is a lesser-known island sitting of the east coast of Malaysia. The more well-known Perhentian Islands in the peninsular northeast and Sipadan Island off the east coast of Borneo steal the glory from little old Pulau Tenggol.

Well, when Jack and I took a trip to Malaysia last Summer, we wanted to experience the world-class diving Malaysia has to offer. Knowing of the popularity of the Perhentians, we asked our respective Malaysian friends about quality dive spots with fewer travelers. Pulau Tenggol was the response. Continue reading →

Our first meal fresh off the plane in Kuala Lumpur (KL), Malaysia set the stage for the rest of the trip. Mr. J Chan, a friend I met 2.5 years ago in New Zealand, was nice enough to pick us up at the airport and take us directly to lunch. J Chan told his friends that he was going to take two Americans for their first meal in Malaysia and asked what they recommended. Multiple friends suggested he take us to eat banana leaf rice and better yet, most suggested one restaurant in particular. So that’s where we went.

Banana leaf rice is a seemingly simple dish. First, your “plate” is a banana leaf, rolled out in front of you like a placemat. Then a generous scoop of rice is plopped in the middle. Next, come an assortment of curry sauces and vegetables. That’s the basic dish, and it’s meant to be eaten with your hands.

Not wanting us to miss any of the good stuff, J Chan felt it a good idea to order a bit more. So, our meal had the addition of fried spicy calamari, fried chicken, and fish. One difficult, yet fun, part of eating the meal was trying to do so the traditional way – with only your right hand. As an American, it’s not a way of eating that I’m used to, but in actuality, it’s a more practical way of eating once you get used to the correct method. (Hint: scoop the food onto your fingers, and push into mouth with thumb)

Here’s a video we filmed on Jack’s iPhone of us eating banana leaf rice. (sorry for the low quality – hit the four arrows to go full screen):

What the heck is a Hawker Food Centre? First and foremost, it’s the one place you can’t miss if you travel to Singapore (or Malaysia). Secondly, it’s delicious, cheap, clean food served food-court style. The problem is that Hawker Food Centres (HFC) can be a bit overwhelming if you don’t know what you’re getting into.

There are several HFC’s all over Singapore in Little India, Chinatown, and elsewhere, so it’s not that hard to find one. What you might find difficult is choosing the best food stall to order from when there are so many choices, most of which look delicious. So here’s the best way to attack the HFC’s.

1. Decide what you want to eat.
Do you want chicken rice, char kuay teow, satay, or fish ball noodles? The last thing you want to do is get stuck wandering around an HFC trying to decide among all the options. Everybody else will know exactly what they want, where they’re going, where they’re sitting, and how to do it all. This only makes things worse for you if you don’t. I recommend chicken rice – it looks simple, but if you choose a good stall, you’ll be amazed how delicious it can be.

2. Choose a stall serving what you want.
Rule of thumb – look for the places with a queue. The locals know what’s up, and if they’re waiting in line, it’s because it’s worth it. Also, look for the busy cooks. The chefs standing around aren’t busy, which tells you a lot. The best stalls sometimes even sell out of food completely, so don’t be afraid to go earlier rather than later.

3. Order the dish and then sit down.
You can sit anywhere there’s a sit. Don’t worry about sitting close if the nearby tables are taken. The hawkers will bring you the food. If you’re out of view, point to let them know.

4. Pay when you get the food.
If you’re a foreigner, they might let you wait until you’ve finished eating, but it’s standard practice to pay when the food comes.

5. Don’t worry about cleaning up.
In Singapore, there are specific people paid to keep the HFC’s clean. As you’ll soon notice, Singapore is a very clean city.

Bonus Step: Watch the video the below: Know Before You Go. It’ll give you a few images of the Chinatown HFC in Singapore.

One of the highlights of traveling to Korea is getting the chance to eat authentic versions of the variety of delicious Korean cuisines. One of my best buddies from America, Jack, visited me last week in Korea and much of his experience revolved around what would eaten next (interspersed with a lot of hiking).

I plan to do a more thorough post expounding upon some of the must-try Korean dishes in the future. For this one, I’ll let Jack’s pictures, videos, and voice do the explaining.

Eating Our Way Through Korea (video)

Haejangguk, or pork spine stew, is one of the top 3 Korean dishes you’ll want to try if you visit Korea. It’s known in Korea as the best hang-over cure, and restaurants specializing in the dish are often open until the early morning hours.

The tenderness of the meat combined with the spicy red-pepper spices and vegetables make this dishes one of the standards that I eat in Korea. It’s never hard to find a haejang-guk (pronounced hay’-chong-gook) restaurant in any town in Korea. Just act drunk and tell any passing Korean “pay go pah yo” which means “I’m hungry.” They’re bound to direct you to a haejang-guk restaurant.

Now, there’s a subtle art to eating the dish. It’s brought to you in a steaming hot pot usually with some spinach draped over the pork bones boiling in the broth. Don’t be alarmed by the bones – you’ll be eating the meat and tossing the bones aside.

Here’s how I eat it – and my recommendation for how you should eat haejang-guk.

Step 1: Remove meat from bone. Do this by holding a bone still with your spoon (or fingers) and scraping the meat down into the broth with your chopsticks. Some will fall easily, others will resist.

Step 2: Remove bone from soup. Pick the mostly meat-bare bone from the soup and place it in the empty white bowl. While picking at the other bones, this one will cool, allowing you to pick it up with your chopsticks (or fingers) and gnawing off the last bits of meaty goodness. Yes, it’s worth it.

Step 3: Enjoy. Wait a second for the soup to cool. Eat the kimchi’s sides while you wait. Try each of them and figure out which ones you like the most. Then, grab your spoon and dig into the haejang-guk.

Hint: Spoon a little rice before dipping into the broth. “Mah-she-tah” – “delicious!”

Enjoy the video below of us eating two different types of haejang-guk, the traditional pork dish, and a seafood version with clams and crab.

Kuno Stories

Tag Archives: Travel

Mongolia is Rugged

What to Do in Chinatown Singapore

2010 Year in Review (video)

Losing My Passport in Vietnam

Fall Colors in Naejangsan National Park

Scuba Diving off Tenggol Island

How to Eat Banana Leaf Rice

How to Attack a Singaporean Hawker Food Centre

Eating Our Way Through Korea (video)

How to Eat Pork Spine Stew