We flew to Cairns, Australia for a chance to get up close and personal with the Great Barrier Reef. Cairns was a really lovely town with a beautiful waterfront “esplanade” (or promenade, as we would probably call it) and an amazing public pool. However, most visitors come to visit the Great Barrier Reef and this was of course the highlight of our visit! We signed up to visit the reef with Silverswift, one of the companies that offers diving tours. At…
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Our trip to Koh Tao started with a 5:00am taxi ride to the Lomprayah bus stop near Khao San Road where we took a 6 hour bus to Chumpon and a nearly two hour catamaran ferry to Koh Tao island. It was a long travel day and recent bad weather made the ferry ride particularly rough. Ferry staff started passing out plastic bags as soon as we sat down and many passengers around us put them to good use. Thankfully…
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If they’re not already, the Azores Islands deserve a spot on your vacation short list. These Portugese islands are in the Atlantic Ocean, about a three hour flight from the mainland (or a 5 hour flight from the East Coast USA). The islands are accessible, affordable, easy to get around, beautiful, and so much fun! I can’t recommend a trip here enough. For this trip, I was traveling with my pal Katharine. Unfortunately, John didn’t have enough time off work to…
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In November 2016, we hopped on a flight from New York to Shanghai and spent what would become 9 months traveling full-time. The journey was nothing short of incredible and filled with people, places, and memories that we will share for the rest of our lives. Now that we’ve had time to reflect on our adventures, we want to share some final trip stats, reflections, and favorite photos – enjoy! By The Numbers Packing: here’s a look at what was in my…
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We couldn’t believe it when we crossed into South Africa, our last stop before heading home! Ah! We had about a week to explore a bit of the west coast of the country. We ended the trip in style with lots of wine, beautiful hiking, and, of course, animal activities! Wine Country Our first stop in South Africa was at a a family-run winery/camp ground called Highlanders. The owner Sparky (who hilariously has a dog named Ben) organized a wine tasting…
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When Jen left us after our visit to Angkor Wat, we had to decide what to do next. We had about 2 weeks unaccounted for before heading to Australia and New Zealand. We thought about continuing on to see other parts of Cambodia and toyed with the idea of heading to Malaysia for some scuba diving. However, we kept hearing great things about Sri Lanka and decided to get out of Southeast Asia to experience something different. We are so glad we ended…
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Our friend Terri, who I’ve known since high school, joined us for nearly two weeks in Thailand and we had so much fun together! We met up in Bangkok to start our journey and spent some more time in the city at the end of her visit. Bangkok is enormous and a city it would take forever to get to really know. We had a blast scratching the surface to learn more about what it has to offer. Our first…
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Kenting was recommended to us by my cousin Carolyn who lived in Taiwan for a year. We were originally thinking of staying in Taipei for a week and doing some day trips from there, but are so glad we instead opted to spend some time in this fantastic beach town! We arrived in Kenting around 6pm on a Wednesday to a bustling night market lining the main street where we stayed. After dropping our bags in our room, we went…
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Hello! We’re John and Kelly. We got married in August 2016 and two months later left our jobs, moved out of our apartment in Baltimore, and kicked off the adventure of a lifetime. We traded our wedding hashtag (#jkweregettingmarried) for this blog to share adventures, tips, stores, and pictures from around the world. We traveled full-time for nearly a year, visiting 20 countries in Asia, Africa, Oceania, and North America. Along the way, we fulfilled some major bucket list dreams…
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