Seat of Our Pants

On This Special Day

We have some things we need to get off our chest…
 
We’ve lost Bacon.
 
We’re never coming home.
 
We hate traveling.
 
We’re discontinuing this blog.
 
Jaime refuses to write anything personal about herself ever again.
 
Martin has stopped being a nerd.
 
Alright – that last one made this obvious. Anyone that takes a school picture like this one, sadly never recovers.
 
Instead of [...]

Bacon Finds a Lady

Things got a little hot and heavy with Bacon and a lady friend a few night ago.
 

 
I can’t help but be reminded of when Martin and I first met.
 

 
Just sayin’.

It’s The Simple Things in Life

Simple pleasures, such as eating fresh vegetables and unpeeled fruit, were a staple in my life before this trip. Granted, I didn’t usually give them much thought. Why bother being grateful about eating a freshly washed lettuce leaf or unpeeled carrot? It’s no big thing, right?
 
Well, no, actually it’s a privilege. You see, we haven’t [...]

Backpacking and Social Media e-Interview

We were recently asked to participate in a study on how new technology has impacted the backpacking culture. Here are the questions and our answers. If you’re a backpacker and would like to add your input, the researcher (Mr. Cody Paris at Arizona State University) would be grateful for your contribution. Just send your answers [...]

Oh, the Unfairness of it All!

Traveling in India throws unexpected things your way more often than not. Flying, I’ve come to learn, is no exception. Take for example the security lines. Since men and women have the right to be frisked by members of their own gender, the lines are segregated by sex. Fair enough, but what about the fact [...]

Food: the Endless Road Adventure

This post comes with apologies for the lousy out-of-focus picture, but bear with me: there’s a story behind it.
The other day we went to restaurant Sachin in Tezpur, Assam. I was feeling a bit bored by restaurant food in general and Indian food in particular, so I decided to order myself a nice hearty tomato [...]

A Dumb Moment

We both woke up at 3:30 AM and looked at the dawn-lit windows of our hotel room.
“Funny, it’s daybreak already”, said Jaime.
“Yeah, weird, it was light already at 2:30!”, I replied.
Next thing we knew, the alarm went off at 4:30. We looked out through the still dawn-lit windows. Our early sunrise was the front porch [...]

Martinism no. 3

 
 
“Stop talking poo-poo kah-kah from your mouth hole.”
 
-said after I said something totally brilliant (memory doesn’t serve what it was, but I’m sure it was brilliant)

Bacon Blogs

We’ve been pretty lax about featuring Bacon on this blog lately, so it wasn’t much of a surprise to find our proud Swine at the keyboard today, chopping away at a post of his own.

 
 
He is a multi-talented pig, our pig.
 

Martinism no. 2

 
 
“Being married to you is not like an endless litany of sorrows.”
 
-said during a game we play in which we try to find the most non-committal way of saying that we love each other

We’re Locked In Now

Well folks, this traveling by the Seat of Our Pants has been great, but there comes a time when some planning needs to take place. We have some big flights in our future and needed to get them booked while we could still afford them.
 
So the credit card is rip-roaring hot from all the cyber-swipes, [...]

Martinism no. 1

 
 
“Alright, that’s it! From now on, I’ll be doing the thinking.”
 
-said after I lead us into a dead-end street in Bagan, Myanmar

Road Laundry

When your backpack has space enough for exactly three outfits, you learn to mix and match with abandon. Martin’s pair of coral-colored pants (a laundry accident in KL months ago) and a blue striped shirt work perfectly together. Of course they work!
 
When you have only one black shirt, which everyone knows goes with everything, [...]

Book Report: Norwegian Wood, by Haruki Murakami

The term ‘Cult Book’ is generously awarded to nice-selling niche books, most often by the author’s own publishing house. Haruki Murakami’s Norwegian Wood, however, is one of the true cult classics – a story that has managed to transcend its temporal and geographical setting and speak to multitudes of readers. By now, it has sold [...]