Less and longer: a few words of wisdom on traveling right

So you’ve saved and budgeted for your trip and now it’s finally time to plan your itinerary. Six months of travel time stretches out before you like a magic carpet. So many opportunities to explore exotic locales! So much time to explore all those places on your bucket list!

Ahh, your bucket list… How many boxes will you be able to check? You have six months. Why not do the Inca Trail, explore Patagonia, go shark diving in South Africa, eat dumplings in China, climb Mount Kilimanjaro, go to a full moon party in Thailand and find yourself at an Indian ashram? Hell, you should probably throw in an Italian cooking class and a camel riding in Morocco for good measure. It all sounds great. Until, of course, you hit the brick wall of reality.

Inside a hellish bus for a heinous ride through Nepal

Travel can be hard, frustrating and draining. You start to think about that into your second day into a thirty-hour bus ride in Nepal where the space between the seats was apparently designed to be perfect for two-year-olds and there’s a box of meat rotting in the back. Or when you arrive in your fourth Tanzanian town and every single local is trying to cheat you for forty times the proper cost of accommodation. Or maybe when you get violently sick in the middle of the wilderness with no hospital (or road) for days. These are the times when you start to appreciate two magic words: less and longer.

Less really is more. Don’t stack your itinerary. It’s far better to spend two months than two weeks in any given country on your list. And in that country it’s far better to spend two weeks rather than two days in any given city or destination.

By doubling down on particular places you kill two birds with one stone. First, because you’re in one place for a long time you’ll find that perfect beach bungalow owned by the local mayor’s family and get invited to a massive wedding party where you make friends for life. If you were only there for two days you’d probably be at that guesthouse with decent but outdated reviews from Lonely Planet that now has a cockroach infestation.

Second, you minimize your exposure to the bane of all travelers: logistics. You don’t spend half of your time in country on a local bus. You don’t discover that your fourteenth taxi driver rifled through your bags. You don’t loose you luggage on an avoidable regional airline flight. You've taken six months off, use that time wisely: with less and longer you'll interact more with locals, enhance the quality of your experience and maintain very healthy levels of personal relaxation.

Basically, you’ve taken the work out of the travel. By staying longer in each place you actually get a feel for the local life there instead of blazing through in a series of photoflashes. As you get ready to plan your trip, doing a country a month would be a good rule of thumb. You may not check as many boxes but you’ll learn a lot more about yourself, a lot more about the country you’re visiting and a lot more about the true meaning of fun!


Co-posted on www.eliotpeper.com

Gourmet extraordinaire and desert camping in Nevada

Desert camping isn't for everyone. Conditions can be harsh, especially for peak heat times in the middle of summer. Without natural sources of water and shade, dehydration and sun poisoning could easily happen. Extreme self-reliance is the best way to survive and lack of preparation could have devastating consequences.

A very fancy desert (Dubai)

Good thing we're not everyone and we love extremes! For our first week back in the United States of America, we decided to go desert camping for a week, in the middle of the northern Nevada desert. We had actually planned on going there before we left on our 6-month sabbatical and paid $380 each to secure our spot for our tent. Usually, camping is never that expensive. However, this type of camping is as unique as it gets so we had to commit eight months in advance to it.

We're talking, of course, about Burning Man: absolutely, 100%, one of the most epic events we have ever attended in our lives. Burning Man is very hard to explain so it is best to just go see for yourself. The reason it's so hard is because the event becomes what you want it to be. Many people bring their children for a family experience, many people come to do ultramarathons and others, like us, come as foodies, not knowing what to expect but excited about everything.

Our two good friends spent all summer planning for Burning Man. One of them, in particular, planned everything in insane detail and we had everything from 1,000 baby wipes to superglued seals on every single car window to keep the majority of the playa dust out.

All four of us are total foodies so we went on very fun food shopping sprees and prepared meals in advance. We packed the 'obvious' camping food such as canned beans, corn, rice and curries in pouches, but we also packed exciting foodie treats. We were thrilled to find bacon jerky and purchased the Costco size bags of that amazing treasure. We brought two huge logs of goat cheese, a large wedge of Manchego cheese, an entire wooden box stuffed with smoked salmon from Seattle, garlic and jalapeño stuffed olives, a case of V-8 fruit and veggie juices and our home mix of hemp and almond granola with raisins.

Preparing the lasagna sauce

Eliot made a gallon of home-made cold brew coffee and Drea made cinnamon tea soda syrup. We also made two pans of home made lasagna with beef and de-cased Italian sausages (Drea did this by hand), an entire head of garlic and a dash of nutmeg to give it a Bologna twist. Our friends made an amazing summer gazpacho with tons of parsley, lemon, Tunisian olive oil and refreshing cucumbers plus at least two dozen juicy home-made meatballs in an amazing home-made tomato sauce (peeled AND seeded tomatoes!). Oh and let's not forget their tasty garbanzo, parsley, parmesan cheese salad.

We showed up at Burning Man and were in awe for at least 144 hours. The dry heat suppressed our appetites a bit but we still found time to indulge in decadent meals. Thanks to our extremely detail-oriented friend who planned 99% of our journey to the desert, we were able to keep our pre-made meals frozen solid with the 50 pounds of dry ice we stuffed in three coolers.

The Man

De-frosting was super easy: we took out the containers in the morning and by dinner time, they had naturally thawed. We ate the gazpacho and garbanzo salad cold and then heated up the lasagna and the meatballs on the propane camp stove. Our other campmates brought a healthy kale and broccoli salad and we destroyed it our first night. We also indulged in the best home-made grilled cheese sandwiches we've ever had! Part of the secret was toasting the bread on both sides and using three layers of cheese (we're getting hungry just writing this!).

Fire cyclones as the Man burns on Saturday

Burning Man thrives on a gift economy and we were lucky to have delicious treats along the way. At Burning Man, you give. The gifts we received were absolutely fabulous. As far as food goes, we had Montreal-style smoked meat sandwiches (think gourmet smoked/corned beef and spicy mustard) served by our Canadian neighbors, fresh ground coffee used to make legit Vietnamese iced coffee (ice is a highly coveted item at Burning Man), emperor's tea from China prepared in front of us at a formal tea ceremony (the tea had to be smuggled into the US because it is worth more than gold by weight!) and cheese fondue straight from a fondue pot!

We will try to make this a yearly event for us and we look forward to the foodie events we missed: bacon bloodys, morning hash browns, home-made pickles, massive barbecues and whatever else we are bound to walk or bike into.

Co-posted on www.eliotpeper.com

Robot Heart Party

Awesome Playa Sunset

Biking around, checking out art exhibitions everywhere

Mango sticky rice in a climbers' paradise

Approaching Tonsai

“For the stone from the top for geologists, the knowledge of the limits of endurance for the doctors, but above all for the spirit of adventure to keep alive the soul of man.” --George Mallory, British mountaineer 

We were really tired of spending Ramadan in Muslim countries. It turned into a real hassle in Maldives and Indonesia so we made a game time decision to seek out the Buddha instead. Luckily Thailand isn't too far from Sumatra so we jumped on a quick flight to Krabi via Kuala Lumpur (KL). This, of course, wasn't part of our budget plan but we decided it would be worth it nonetheless.

Our evening spent in KL was surprisingly fun. We stayed in the budget friendly Chinatown area and explored the local night market for street eats and cheap gear for Burning Man later that month. Then we zipped back to the airport and hopped over to Krabi. 

We stayed in Tonsai, part of a series of three beaches on an isolated peninsula on the Andaman Sea that doesn't have road access. Visitors have to take the traditional long-tail boats from Krabi beach to get out there. We wandered around for a while in the jungle up behind the beach searching out places to stay. Tonsai is the cheapest of the three beaches on the peninsula but we were still surprised at the costs. 

Our guide only climbed barefoot

Lucky for us, the week turned out to be indeed well worth it. We signed up for a three day lead climbing course with Basecamp Tonsai, the most reputable climbing operator in the area (German-managed). Before starting our sabbatical we had spent a year climbing three to four days a week in a climbing gym in San Diego. Climbing in Tonsai blew all of that away.

The rocks in Tonsai are absolutely epic. Spires of limestone jut thousands of feet up from sparkling tropical ocean and verdant jungle. We were there in the 'wet' season and it rained for about three hours total for the whole week were there. There are a lot of overhangs so even if it rains a lot of the rock stays dry. There are tons of bolted routes for sport climbing and literally thousands for trad, which attracts some very serious climbers. Even during this low season, most of the decent places were pretty full and the majority of the best climbers we saw were from Spain, Australia and England. 

Eliot leads a beach route

We had a blast learning how to lead climb. For the uninitiated, lead climbing is when you set up your own safety ropes as you make your way up the rock. It means you often take longer falls than you otherwise which alters the psychology of your climb: you tend to be more risk averse. We climbed all day every day and even tried deep water soloing, climbing without safety but jumping off into the ocean. Unfortunately on the last day of our class Drea took a dangerous fall and hurt her ankle. It could have been a lot worse so we racked that up as a win.

The other rockin' thing about Tonsai is that once you're done scaling rocks, you get to gorge on delicious Thai food and wash it down with Eliot's favorite: Thai iced tea! We gobbled up mountains of mango sticky rice to fuel our climbing adventures and look forward to returning to Tonsai to sharpen our skills some more!

But we had a flight back to California via Singapore scheduled for the next week. Some might say it was the end of our trip but we thought it was just the beginning. We were headed to Burning Man.

Co-posted on www.eliotpeper.com

Drea's about to fall

Drea's awesome belay attitude!

Eliot fends off local mozzies

Not bad, not bad at all

Deep water solo territory

At last, Thai iced tea...

Unstoppable appetites during our 48 hour stay in The Little Red Dot

Isn't it amazing that there's such a place on earth that's only about 270 square miles in size (yes, this includes all the reclaimed land), can't really grow much of anything because the whole island is a rock, is home to about 5 million people and has more than 3,000 restaurants? That's approximately 11 restaurants per square mile!

A mighty and flavorful little city

With so many places offering so much food, it's the perfect destination for non-stop eating, drinking, savoring, sampling and tasting. Plus, every type of palate and wallet will find a suitable place: from the lavishly expensive at over $400++ for dinner for one (plus, plus, of course is for all the extra taxes on top of the restaurant price) according to a local blogger, to the deliciously cheap at just a buck fifty for one of the most famous local delicacies.


Ever since Drea first visited this foreign land back in 2005, it has always remained the best hub in the world for food and every time we visit, it never disappoints. Singapore offers just about every type of food and is the foodie's Shangri-La. Which is exactly why, if we can help it, we always try to make Singapore one of our long connections or short-term destinations when traveling throughout Asia.

So, what's the big deal with food in Singapore? Well, let us count the [eight] ways:

1. Thirsty much? Singapore has an amazing selection of tropical fruits so you can grab any type of exotic fruit juice no matter where you are: soursop, lime, mango or kumquat are extremely refreshing. Tea and coffee are great alternatives if you crave a little energy: grab yourself a kopi-o (black coffee), kopi-c (coffee with milk, "c" was originally for Carnation milk in a can) or Eliot's favorite, tea tarik (pulled tea). On a budget? pop into any 7-eleven and grab an iced milo or an unsweetened green tea.
   

   

   Tea Tarik with mushroom and cheese roti paratha and fish curry sauce: Breakfast!

   
   
2. Love fruit? So do we. In Singapore you can find the most amazing selection of tropical fruits including: the local favorite durian, which we still find repulsive and don't even recommend you try unless you're feeling very, very adventurous, the queen of all fruit, mangosteen, juicy rambutans, lychees and longan (or lamyai), jackfruit (tastes like Starbursts!), jambu which looks like an apple but tastes more like a pear, green guava with powdered plum or the magenta dragon fruit among dozens and dozens of others.
3. Breakfast time? Grab yourself a roti paratha stuffed with cheese, potatoes, mushrooms or bananas and dip it in your pick of chicken or fish curry sauce. Or go local and grab a kaya toast set. Kaya is a coconut based jam and you can eat it on seriously buttered toast and dip it in soft boiled eggs with a drop or two of dark soy sauce.

   

   Kaya toast with chunks of butter

4. On a budget? Two words: chicken rice. For less than $5 dollars, you can snack, lunch or dine on a plate of chicken rice: it's just roasted chicken on top of rice cooked in chicken broth. This national dish is sold at nearly every food court and its simplicity (similar to Italian food!) is what makes it so damn irresistible. Make sure you get it with the special spicy sauce!
   

   

   Chicken Rice! Don't forget the sauce!

5. Ready to have your mind blown? Grab yourself a pepper crab! Pepper crab is another national dish: whole crabs are served smothered in an insanely peppery, dark thick sauce that infiltrates every little crevice of the claws, legs and body making the crab meat amazingly juicy and flavorful.
   

   

   Peppery pepper crab

6. Ready to have your mind blown again? Three words: Xiao Long Bao (XLB)! Although not a national dish, we were just ecstatic that Singapore hosts Taiwan's famous Din Tai Fung at several locations. For those of you poor souls who have never gone through the XLB experience, make it one of your life's priorities. These dumplings are delicately stuffed with pork and soup. Yes, soup, so that once you bite into them, you experience an explosion of flavor and delight. XLB isn't unique to Singapore by any means but we just really wanted to write about it!
   

   

   The XLB experience

7. In the mood for soup? Grab a Laksa! This one is definitely Singaporean (and Malay) and it consists of a thick coconut broth typically served with shrimp, sliced fish cakes, boiled eggs, thick rice noodles and fresh sprouts. This is a heavy one so it's fun to share if you want to keep on eating.
8. Want to grab a light snack? Try popiah! This insanely crunchy but non-greasy spring roll is stuffed with fresh veggies, shrimp and dipped in peanut sauce. For a meatier snack, grab some satay. These meat skewers are originally Indonesian but are found everywhere. Enjoy with rice cakes, cucumbers, onions and dip it in spiced peanut sauce. For a more traditional Chinese snack, grab a simple rice bun stuffed with braised, tender juicy pork belly and a lettuce leaf (gotta make it healthy somehow!).
   

   

   Popiah

   

   Pork belly bun

   

   Satay

Believe it or not, we ate every single thing on our list above (and then some more!) during our 48 hour visit to Singapore. Next time you look at a world map, just remember that there is indeed a small country underneath that red dot capital marker where multitudes of lucky visitors and residents experience some of the best variety of quality food the world has to offer.

Co-posted on www.eliotpeper.com

And then some....

So lucky our visit coincided with Singapore's food festival!

Kwai Tiao - delicious noodles w/oysters

Feasting at Din Tai Fung in addition to our 30 XLB order!

Did we mention Singaporeans are really friendly?

Boiled, soft peanuts

Fancy chicken rice with crispy tofu and braised greens

On an island on a lake in a volcano on an island

Coffee, volcanoes, civil war, orangutans, epic surfing and the epicenter of the 2004 tsunami make Sumatra a well-known island in Indonesia. However, it is not very popular with tourists (yet) probably because of the lack of infrastructure and fear of something going down in Banda Aceh where most of the violence occurred several years ago. 

Padang: great for food! But that was about it

Sumatra is a great place to visit but perhaps not during Ramadan. Although food was generally available to non-Muslims (and those Muslims who decided to cheat), it was tough to find good food. 

In spite of this hiccup, we still had a lot of fun especially because one of our good friends from California came out to visit. The top two destinations in Sumatra, in our humble opinion, are Lake Toba and Pulau Weh. As a side note, the biggest trap in Sumatra, we found out, was the Mentawai islands, one of the world's surfing meccas. The locals have taken advantage of the surfing fame and charge insane prices for food, lodging and transportation. A simple 10 minute round trip on a local wooden boat to a surf break will cost you $200 US dollars and most people buy instant noodles in Padang, the launch point, because local food is outrageously expensive. No thanks!!

Joyriding around Lake Toba

Lake Toba, on the other hand, is an amazing destination just a couple of hours outside the terribly crowded and polluted city of Medan. Lake Toba is actually a lake inside the crater of a giant volcano and it is, in fact, the world's largest crater lake. An island called Samosir sits in the middle of this crater lake and is larger than all of Singapore. 

Tuk Tuk, a small village on Samosir, is home to the Batak people, one of the few Christian communities in the world's largest Muslim country. 

Batak architecture 

Batak culture is very unique and they have their own architectural style, consisting of beautiful wood carvings on large roofs dominated by red, black and white colors. The island has many lake front guesthouses, great cafes and lots of delicious little hole-in-the wall restaurants. 

Chilling and kayaking on the lake (with Guiness on board!)

Each night, you can enjoy fresh, locally caught fish which is barbecued to perfection, along with an ice cold beer plus fresh fruit salad for no more than $6 bucks total. The fish at Lake Toba was definitely some of the best we had in all the countries we visited (up there with Masqouf in Dubai and the fresh fish in Zanzibar) due to its freshness and the slow roast preparation over coals. 

The lake is surprisingly clean and really fun for swimming or kayaking. Our day activities consisted of lounging by the beaches on the lake, taking a cooking class (Batak cuisine was one of the best we had in Indonesia), renting bikes to explore Tuk Tuk, hiking up to see the small lake on the island on the lake in the volcano on the island or grabbing scooters to see the incredible views from the top of the island. 

You can easily spend two weeks on this awesome lake eating like royalty, relaxing and exploring.

Pulau Weh's pristine waterfall

Pulau ("island" in Indonesian) Weh is an awesome little island off the north coast of Banda Aceh. Banda Aceh itself was a very nice city and we wouldn't have minded spending a little more time there. Anyway, Pulau Weh sits very close to the epicenter of the 2004 tsunami and is a gem of a spot. 

The humidity is remarkably low and temperatures are not too high, making the weather in Pulau Weh extremely pleasant. Pulau Weh is a big island, completely covered by dense jungle where tons of monkeys and snakes thrive. 

There is a beautiful waterfall tucked away in the thick of the jungle but accessible by foot and there's even a local 'volcano' where sulfur hot springs abound. A tour of the whole island can be done one a scooter in just a few hours.

The view from the top of Pulau Weh's hills

The fame, however, behind Pulau Weh is its awesome diving and snorkeling. The northwest part of the island has the best beaches and diving spots so we parked it there for almost three weeks. Although the local reef suffered very intense damage and bleaching from a freak rise in water temperature back in 2010, the abundance of marine life is amazing and definitely makes up for the lack of color. 

Fine diving with the folks at LumbaLumba

We saw some of the largest schools of parrot fish we had ever seen, there was a honeycomb eel the size of Eliot (he's 6'3"!), sea turtles, reef sharks, psychedelic crazy looking octopi and hundreds upon hundreds of colorful little reef fish all over the place. 

Unfortunately accomodation was mediocre at best and the food, unfortunately, is just average. However, we were lucky enough to find lodging at the only Italian restaurant on the whole island for our last week. Drea got to practice her Italian with the owners and their ridiculously cute multi-lingual child. We ate heaps of lasagna, pasta puttanesca and drooled over some of the best tiramisu ever. 

Tiramisu madness at the one and only Italian restaurant: Bixio

Pulau Weh sucked us in a little bit and we suddenly realized we were running out of time. Although we would have loved to go white water rafting on some world class rapids that apparently rival the Karnali in Nepal and hiking on some of the volcanoes north of Lake Toba, we couldn't make anything work because of the craziness of the week after Ramadan. We can't wait to get back to Sumatra during a different time of the year so we can avoid Ramadan, find some cheaper surfing spots and get our paddling on!

But for now, we were going to escape to the nearest Buddhist country: Thailand...

Co-posted on www.eliotpeper.com 

Our backyard for a week @ Pulau Weh!

High on Ceylon tea

It was hard to leave Arugam Bay. The warm ocean water, the chill surfer vibe, excellent food at Ram's and delicious breakfasts at Happy Panda kept us there for as long as we could push it. Eventually though, we knew we needed to start heading inland because we had spent nearly three weeks on Sri Lanka's north and eastern coastline.

Home made okra, eggplant and, oh, papad fried in ghee!

With one more week to go, we had little time to see one of the highlights of this awesome little country: the tea country!

Both of us are really into tea and we wanted to go tea tasting and hike around all the tea estates we had heard about. We had to take a series of small buses to get to Ella from Arugam Bay, which naturally ended up taking all day. Upon arriving, there was a cool little guesthouse tucked away in the hilly portion of the town. We were greeted by a nice pot of home-grown ceylon tea while the owner made us a delicious home-cooked vegetarian meal consisting of okra and eggplant curries, dal (lentil) and rice. For about $2.50 each, we ate all we could, still had left-overs and went to bed happily stuffed.

The train tracks that lead to Ella Rock

Ella has a chill vibe and is a great little place for outdoor activities. There's a great half-day hike that starts by following train tracks carved into the hillside. Half-way through, you can climb down to see a waterfall that flows underneath the tracks all the way down to meet one of the rivers in the valley several hundred feet below.

After the waterfall break, we continued our trek and a very nice local barefoot man asked us if we needed help getting to Ella Rock - our final destination. Feeling a bit cocky we politely declined his offer and kept on walking. We missed our left turn and the very same man caught up to us and recommended we follow him. We walked through beautiful tea plantations and rice paddies and our friend signaled that he'd be happy to take us to the top.

With the very nice local barefoot man at the top of Ella Rock!

It turned out we did not really know what the hell we were doing so we welcomed our new guide. We thought it would be a slow hike up the steep slopes all the way to the top but we couldn't have been more wrong. Our friend practically ran up these very, very steep slopes and we got our asses kicked. We were huffing and puffing and trying really try to keep up with him. The terrain was rocky, uneven and very steep and the fact that our friend had no shoes, didn't bother him or slow him down one bit. It actually reminded us a lot of the incredibly fit sherpas and porters in Nepal.

Ella Rock view on the way to Little Adam's Peak

The final destination at Ella Rock was magnificent. The top of the hill overlooks the entire little town of Ella, all the tea estates, the hills rolling away towards the east coast. Plus, we could see several waterfalls flowing down the mountains. We thanked our guide and gave him a tip for his excellent services. He smiled, thanked us and went sprinting down the hill.

Directly across from the top of Ella Rock, we saw Little Adam's peak, our next hiking destination. It's nothing like the real Adam's Peak (or so we hear) but fun nonetheless. The 360 degree views from the top of Little Adam's peak was a treat although it is much lower than the top of Ella Rock.

Fresh pressed Ceylon tea with custom hourglass

From Little Adam's peak, we saw the beautiful tea estates of 98 acres, a fancy-pants resort with a swimming pool, restaurant, bungalows and, well, 98 acres of tea. We took a break and sat on their outdoor deck, nested in the midst of thousands of tea plants with excellent views of Little Adam's peak and more rolling hills of tea. They served delicious Ceylon tea in individual french presses with an hourglass that got the steeping time just right.

To Eliot's delight, the restaurant boasted its use of fresh and locally sourced milk for the ceylon tea so he decided to order a full glass of it. Drea had to try a little and we both agreed that it was the damn finest milk we had had in a long while!

The glass is always fuller... with fresh milk!

The tea adventures continued as we did a short little hike to one of the only green tea factories in Sri Lanka, conveniently located close to 98 acres. The tour of the factory was fascinating and the smell of green tea was amazing! We got a great deal by getting a quarter of a kilo of Sri Lanka's finest Gun Powder 3 (GP3) for less than $5 bucks.

Although there is not a whole lot more to do in Ella, it's definitely worth a one or two night stop. Plus, you are really close to Haputale, another magnificent little town where you can watch the sunrise and enjoy some of the best 360 degree views in all of Sri Lanka (if you're lucky and don't' get fogged in!) at the famous Lipton's Seat. If you do decide to go, we recommend heading out there early and hiking the 6 kilometers of tea paths all the way to the top instead of cheating and driving up in a tuk-tuk.

"Unfortunately" for us we had to leave Sri Lanka because our visas ran out and we had to hop on a short plane ride to this little country you may have heard of... the Maldives!

Co-posted on www.eliotpeper.com

The amazing tea country views from Lipton's Seat in Haputale

The waterfall break at Ella

Tea paths throughout Ella