After a week of bliss bubble yoga retreat, we’re on the road again. With no-one doing all our cooking, planning, exercise enforcement and entertainment, it’s back to navigating and discovering the wonders of Northern Thailand on our own (with two dear friends from Vancouver). First stop – Chiang Dao, a winding 45 miles (90 minutes)…

At 5:30 am the soft melodic gong ripples the darkness. I’ve been half-awake for a while, listening to the remaining echoes of the nighttime frog chorus ceding to the vibrations of pre-dawn stillness. Sarah and I embrace wordlessly, quickly dressing in the dark and slipping out into the cool air. Barefoot along the long wooden…

We took the longest route in modern history to get to Thailand. Thanks to some life curveballs – dental work, sick son, revised Christmas plans – our simple (and nonrefundably-purchased) ticket across the Pacific from Vancouver to Thailand turned into: Vancouver-Albania-Philadelphia-CostaRica-Chicago-Montreal-Pittsburgh-Philadelphia-NewYork-AbuDhabi-Bangkok-Chiang Mai! Last chance to be a neck-craning New York tourist Halfway there – another…

For our first new adventure of 2026 we choose the exotic tourist mecca of… Pittsburgh! Home of many championship sports teams, voted America’s most livable city in 1985, and a decayed steel empire – surely those three claims to fame merit a week of our lives? Really we’re here housesitting and spending a final week…

Looking for a cool (minus 20!), fun place to celebrate New Years with family who live in New Brunswick, Philadelphia, Vancouver, Costa Rica, and (us) everywhere? Montreal fits the bill. Yes, we’re at that stage where we magnamoniously fly everyone (kids & partners, grandma, Costa Rican neice) to somewhere awesome, rent a funky airbnb with…

525,600 minutes – how do you measure, measure a year? In countries (12), in flight miles (33,763), in busses, cars, and ferries (10,875 miles). In carbon emissions (9 tonnes), in blog posts (46) and subscribes (106) How about money? (Our theory that we can live in less expensive countries cheaper than owning a house in…

On Wednesday morning, 10-year-old Ashley shuffles into the Quaker meeting house for 45 minutes of silent worship. She pauses at the entrance, scans the room for friendly faces, then hesitantly walks up to an already crowded bench. The children squeeze even tighter together, shuffling bums over to make space for another friend. Monteverde is that…

How to know you’re in bed with the right woman in the right place? When you wake up at 6:30 to a hard rain and you both want to rush out for a walk before you miss it. You can easily spot tourists in Monteverde. They’re the ones wearing clear plastic garbage bag ponchos. Even…

I seem to have three gears when it comes to venturing into the cloudforest out my Monteverde back door. On fitness days I jog, straight up those steep paths that have me winded within 2 steps and gasping and burning within 2 minutes. This is the run I did two or three times a week…

“Have you ever had fun with your facial hair?” asks the guru of our men’s retreat. This seemingly casual flippancy belies deeper questions of ownership and masculine identity. College Rick tried the pathetic scraggly look, knowing it looked ridiculous. Grad School Rick had long-enough chin hairs to string a globe bead into it, thinking it…