Gabe's Travel Babble

As I said in my previous post, this summer has been a bit different from the patterns Jessica and I have established over the past 15+ years. In the past, Septembers were for working -- the first real push of the school year after getting through the introductory first week or two. But, in the Registrar's Office, September is just ...

So...this summer has been a bit different than recent years. Having a job really gets in the way of travel. As you may recall, I quit teaching in the fall of 2023 and just started working at UCSC in March. With only a few months under my belt, I didn't really have a lot of vacation time saved up. But, ...

Author's Note: I intended this to be one long post. It's four. Mostly because I uploaded too many photos. If I kept it as one, the photos won't load at all. So, please enjoy the beauty of the Southwest...(Link to post #2, Link to post #3, Link to post #4) Another note: If you have trouble with any of the ...

From Laos, we flew down to Phnom Penh, Cambodia. Our main goal was to see the Khmer ruins near Siem Reap, further to the west, but as I mentioned earlier, Jessica was doing a tiny bit of research on this trip, so we went to the capital for her to do a quick interview and to generally check the city ...

After our at-first-adventurous-and-then-incredibly-gorgeous introduction to Laos, the next week-plus there just continued to cement it as one of the most amazing places I've ever had the chance to visit. We left off just as we were arriving in Louang Phabang (aka Luang Prabang and other English transliterations)... Louang Phabang has a population about the same size as Santa Cruz (~55,000), ...

After our hiking adventures around Sa Pa, the next four days were dominated by transit as we made our way first by bus and then by boat across the border from Vietnam into Laos and then down the Nam Ou river to Louang Phabang. While we knew we were taking a slightly unconventional route in crossing the border, we didn't ...