It’s safe to say that this year has been the craziest of my life. Last year at this time I was living the dream as a backpacker, doing things like island hopping around the Philippines, exploring ancient temples in Indonesia and eating my way through the culinary wonderland that is Malaysia. It sounds perfect, but the reality is that…
From the moment I found out I’d be moving to Jakarta, I started scouring travel blogs and websites for all the places I’d like to visit while living here. While I have a sort of love-hate relationship with Jakarta, I realize that I couldn’t be luckier to be based in Indonesia. Indonesia is a massive archipelago…
The first time I went to Ubud, I spent less than an hour there before deciding that I needed to leave as soon as possible. I’m not sure if it was the Eat, Pray, Love mentality, the overpriced organic restaurants, or the plethora of yoga studios, but after spending only 24 hours in the city, I…
A responsible person probably would have found a job before they actually moved to Indonesia. That’s the proper order to do things. But, no one said that I was responsible. In all fairness to myself, I found out that I was moving to Jakarta only three weeks before I arrived. Suffice it to say, I didn’t have a…
There a lot of quirky things about living in Jakarta but the one thing that I cannot get used to is Indonesia’s trash problem. To be specific, the overuse of plastic bags is the number one thing that drives me crazy about living here. I’m from California and I am, admittedly, a bit of a hippie. But as…
When I say I’m obsessed with all things travel, I mean it. I’m the type of person who will watch any movie or any TV show as long as it has something to do with travel. A bad horror movie that’s set in Colombia? Count me in. Andrew Zimmern is eating something bizarre in Peru? Hell…
My recent move to Jakarta, Indonesia, was a sudden one. I literally had three weeks’ notice to move across the world. My few weeks back home in California were spent shopping for hard-to-find items, freaking out about what to pack and cramming in visits with family and friends. Time flew by and I barely had…
I’ve now been on the road for exactly one year. It’s crazy that so much time has passed so quickly. And it’s incredible that a year’s worth of travel has now evolved into another year abroad. The past year has been a whirlwind – to say the least. It’s very easily been one of the best years…
When I arrived in Colombia I was pretty nervous that I wouldn’t be able to live quite as frugally as I had in Southeast Asia. My goal was to travel on $40 a day. But I had major doubts that I would be able to float myself on a backpacker’s budget. After spending a couple weeks in Bogotá…
I’m Justine, a 30-something freelance writer and California native who set out to travel around Southeast Asia in 2013 and basically never left. Since then I’ve lived and worked in Jakarta, Indonesia, Phnom Penh, Cambodia, Beijing, China, and Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. I now live in Dubai! Seriously, this wasn’t the plan. But I suppose for those who…