SEALED WITH Adventure

Phuket, Thailand has been on my bucket list since I was a teenager. I'm not entirely sure why or even how it came about. Despite growing up on the beaches of Hawaii, it seemed exotic and exciting. I've traveled to Thailand's capital city of Bangkok a few times this year, but still my heart was calling for its seaside escape. With family in town for the Thanksgiving holiday, it seemed like perfect timing to take a long weekend getaway. The travel time on both ends combined fel

We have our old college friends visiting us here in Vietnam for the second time since we moved abroad. Since they have already seen a lot of Saigon, we wanted to take them along to enjoy some beach fun to one of our favorite getaways. Nha Trang is a short 1-hour flight from Ho Chi Minh City - and a beautiful 30 kilometer drive from the Cam Ranh International Airport. The taxi ride along the curvy cliffside though a little daunting, offers stunning sea views. Once again, we st

I turned 35 in April. The night of my birthday, we flew out on a red-eye to explore the Philippines for 10 days. We were off to a rough start with little sleep and a grumpy toddler, but we survived the short flights and arrived pretty early in the morning to our hotel, Princesa Garden Island Resort & Spa on the island of Palawan. You can read my full review on TripAdvisor if you're considering a visit to Puerto Princesa. The primary transportation in the small town was by "tr

Matt and I spent our first mini-vacation away from our little one just a 4-hour drive from home in the beach resort town of Mũi Né. It's a charming coastal fishing area along the East Sea in the Bình Thuận Province in southeast Vietnam. A long holiday weekend was the perfect excuse to enjoy the sunshine and grown-up only time as we joined two other couples to help celebrate our friend's fortieth birthday! We arrived around mid-day and found a Jamaican-inspired beach bar for l

With family in town again, we were excited to take them along for a weekend trip to the beach. This time, we flew to the Vietnamese island of Phú Quốc located in the Gulf of Thailand just south of the coast of Cambodia. We spent 3 nights at the Mercure Phú Quốc Resort and Villas enjoying the sandy beach, calm waters, and warm sun! It was a wonderfully lazy and relaxing time visiting with some of our favorite people. And...we loved Phú Quốc so much, we're returning for Christm

Beach trips are fast becoming one of our favorite things about living in Vietnam, and we just finished our second trip to Nha Trang within a year. This time, the weather was perfect! At just the tail end of the high season, we had blue skies, sunshine, and relatively calm waters in the East Sea. It also wasn't overly crowded despite following a national holiday. We spent our mornings playing in the sand and surf, and our afternoons walking along the palm-lined promenade. Larg