From Rockland County, New York.
Left home December 1, 2005 to travel the world. Returned July 26, 2007. A total of 20 mind-blowing, eye-opening months.
Launched droptheworld.com on April 30, 2008 with fellow traveler and blogger AlanZ. We are the site behind the blog-to-book icon on the TravelBlog control panel.
July 25th 2007
Well, time to go home. In the end, my trip lasted 603 days. I've been to 23 countries and boarded 31 plane flights (my bag was only lost by an airline once). About 10 months were spent in New Zealand where I had 3 different jobs. I've read about 30 books, taken 10 hours of video footage and I'm guessing about 6,000 pictures. And I did it all with no broken bones and only one trip to jail. So I guess I should wrap up the last two weeks of my trip and put this blog to rest. My final week in Sweden was great. It's a beautiful country, and it's pretty cool that it never seems to get totally dark at this time of year. At 10:30 it's still rather bright and even in the ... read more
July 13th 2007
When we last left off I was in Ferrara. Going there to visit Marcello was a very spontaneous decision that turned out to be a highlight of my trip. As soon as we got to his place we set up a table on his patio and decorated it with fresh crostini bread, pasta with homemade pesto, prosciutto, and a bottle of nice cool white wine. Just a typical lunch. Followed by some espresso of course. Then his mom gets home and inquires as to whether I would enjoy some fresh spaghetti alla vongole for dinner tomorrow night. Gee, let me think. Already I am so happy I am about to cry. After our lunch Marcello gives me an extra bicycle and we pedal around Ferrara for a bit and make our way to his cousin Christina's ... read more
June 22nd 2007
After 18 months on the road, I finally made it to Europe. My delirious flight from Kuala Lumpur to Vienna went smoothly, after fortunately realizing at the last minute that it left at 2 am on June 3, not 2 pm. Missing that flight would have been such a pain in the ass, not to mention costly. It was a little sad and, oddly enough, a bit intimidating to be leaving Asia. But of course at the same time I was also really excited to get to Europe and it hasn't let me down. It's pretty cool to have a couple of months to do whatever the hell you want on an entire continent. The mentality of travellers in Europe is a bit different than Asia though. Most people in Asia/Australia/New Zealand are long term travellers ... read more
June 2nd 2007
After leaving Indonesia, I returned to Malaysia for the second time during my trip. It was almost a year ago to the day and it was pretty cool to be back in Kuala Lumpur, walking around the same streets remembering all the good times. I had 6 days before my brother Richard came to meet me and had a lot of fun meeting new people and playing lots of pool. But since I'd already seen most of what I wanted to see in KL (nice not to be bothered with too much sightseeing sometimes), I planned on visiting the city of Melaka for 2 nights. So after a few days in KL I hopped on a bus for the 2 hour ride south and spent the day walking around the city. However, after 5 hours of ... read more
May 13th 2007
Well, after finally ridding myself of my frickin job (again), I'm back on the road. For the last 30 days I've been bouncing around Indonesia, specifically Bali and the tropical Gili Islands. My first stop was Kuta Beach where I met back up with Alan for the first time in 6 months. Kuta is the most popular travellers spot in Indonesia. It has really good food, nightlife, and plenty of really pushy people trying to sell you dumb shit. It's also a surfing mecca. Not that I surf, but a billion travellers rocked out in Billabong gear and using the word gnarly can't be wrong. So Alan and I spent some time there catching up, wandering around, and hitting the bars. After a few days we went to the town of Ubud which is about an ... read more
March 2nd 2007
Okay, so maybe this won't be the most exciting entry but fuckit. Life is kind of normal these days. Well, not really normal. But more normal than it's been. I guess. And honestly, I really don't have the energy to properly explain what this experience of living and working in Auckland has been like. So I'll just stick to the basics and talk about nonsense, and save the rest for when I publish my memoirs. New Year's was fun. But that's old news. Really, I haven't gone anywhere too far lately so there's not much travel to talk about. We go out. We hang out. We took a sailing trip to some islands around the harbor. We go to the beach. I learned to cook awesome spaghetti carbonara. My iPod battery is all screwed up. We ... read more
December 29th 2006
But of course, I knew there would be consequences. Complete disregard for any sort of balance between work and play must have its price. Ignoring the need for an income and living purely on impulsive and often completely irrational desire for over a year straight surely cannot go unnoticed. It hasn't. Coming back to Auckland over 2 months ago by myself, feeling very world-weary and with my trip fund depleted, was almost as big a shock to the system as was leaving New York in the first place. I needed a job. For real this time. And not minimum wage either - waiting tables for $6.70 USD per hour before taxes would get me nowhere. It took awhile for the implications (resume) of that (interviews) revelation (desk job) to sink in. It was as if overnight ... read more
October 20th 2006
Well ok technically I am back in New Zealand now, I didn't have time to get this posted before I left Asia. We left China on the 16th and flew to Bangkok from Beijing, and now it's the 20th and I am in Auckland. But mostly this blog is about China. That place is freakin crazy, and so I figured I'd get the last entry from Asia posted before anything nutty happens here in NZ. Returning to Bangkok a few days ago was great, I have a new appreciation for that city after the countries we've just been through. It also marked my 4th stay there along my haphazard travel route in SE Asia. It's amazing, Bangkok is a city that offers so much and still remains so cheap. And I kinda know my way around ... read more
September 25th 2006
We're in Hanoi, just got here this morning after a 14 hour overnight train ride. Since my last entry we have been moving relatively quickly through southeast asia. Alan and I have until October 16 to be in Beijing for a flight back to Bangkok, and we are definitely not used to operating under a deadline. But funds are running low, and I'm not done travelling just yet. I needed to figure out what to do after Asia, so I decided to get a work visa and go back to New Zealand to get a job until I save enough money to do South America. So we've had to budget our time to make sure we see what we want and get there in time. We spent roughly another week in Laos after my last entry. ... read more
August 30th 2006
Yeah we're in Laos. It's really nice, great scenery and great food. Lots of French influence on the cuisine here - cheeses, baguettes, croissants, etc... And everything is super cheap. It's amazing. But it's been a while since my last blog entry, so I have a bunch of stuff to catch up on. Basically, after renewing my Thai visa I went with Alan to Chiang Mai on an overnight bus from Bangkok. It was a 12 hour ride but we actually got a bit of sleep and met some people so it wasn't that bad. So this was my second time in Chiang Mai, the first being when I was there several weeks ago with my mom. This was a bit of a different experience though. Maybe because we were robbed. I thought the guest house ... read more