Travel Archives - Page 5 of 5

The Ethnicity Question

May 29, 2015 rubymary Comments 20 comments

After years of being uninsured in the U.S. (and a few more years of having third-world equivalent healthcare in China), I finally received fully covered health benefits through my new job. In fear of medical bills and non-preventative coverage, I went years without a standard check-up. When I got my shiny new insurance card, I booked the first appointment I could to get tested for–well, everything. After all, I was fully covered.

“It looks like your application is incomplete, Ms. Mary O’Connor,” the secretary smiled sweetly. “You’ll need to answer a couple of quick questions before you can see the doctor.” read more

Life in Los Angeles is Killing Me

February 17, 2015 rubymary Comments 29 comments

My alarm buzzed at 6:00AM, waking me out of my deep slumber. I fumbled in the darkness of the early morning to shut the alarm off and begin yet another 12+ hour day of work and commuting.

Originally, I didn’t want a car. I wanted to just get by with a bike, a ride form my boyfriend every now and then, and the trains—yet it was impossible. The distance from my boyfriend’s house to the train station was 20 minutes away by car, which is almost 90 minutes away by bike. Thus I was forced to lease a car, which costs me a ridiculous amount of money every month. An asset I honestly don’t want, but is impossible to live without in the United States. read more

The Best Place to Visit in America

February 9, 2015 rubymary Comments 14 comments

My favorite vacation in America is a place I have been trying to escape from my entire life, yet found a whole new appreciation for upon my return back to the United States.

It’s a state with not one, but five national parks. It hosted the winter Olympics and is known to have “the best snow on Earth.” It’s home to what some would call an over-zealous and somewhat strange religion.

Yes, my favorite U.S. vacation so far is not San Francisco, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, or even Boston: read more

Why I Travel

January 19, 2015 rubymary Comments 10 comments

There’s a scene in the movie Wild that stuck with me.

The protagonist is on the road. She’s exhausted. She has only taken the first few footsteps into her journey, but already she feels the weight of the road. Can I do this? Is this what I’m supposed to be doing? Have I gone crazy?

And then she stoops down, pulls some sagebrush from the road, rubs it in her fingers, closes her eyes and deeply inhales the scent.

The scent of the Earth. The scent of the journey. The scent of the world itself. read more

Merry Christmas from Salt Lake City!

December 29, 2014 rubymary Comments 8 comments

For the first time in five years, I’m spending Christmas at home. I’m not flying in on a 13 hour flight from Tokyo or Shanghai. I’m not spending Christmas in China and Lunar New Years in the states. I’m actually home during the holidays, and it’s a wonderful feeling.

I flew into Salt Lake City on Christmas eve and was greeted to a white blanket of snow on Christmas morning. It was the perfect Christmas present to my morning.

Although I’m spending the holidays in the United States, the month of December hasn’t felt much like Christmas because of Los Angeles. read more

First Time to the Grand Canyon

December 16, 2014 rubymary Comments 6 comments

I’ll admit it.

Until recently, I had never been to the Grand Canyon.

This was my first time to the Grand Canyon. Although I was only a mere state away in Utah, I never made the drive down south to visit America’s unofficial landmark. When I told people abroad that I had never journeyed to the Grand Canyon, I was met with pure shock and looks of horror.

My parents weren’t much for the outdoors (my mom grew up in Saigon, my dad in Boston), so the mere fact these two city slickers moved to outdoorsy Utah is still a very, very big mystery to me. I was one of the few families that didn’t go skiing, didn’t go camping, and didn’t go hiking. I was always cooped up at home reading a book, painting, or watching the news with my dad. read more

Beached Out in Thailand? Go to Khao Sok Jungle

May 27, 2014 rubymary Comments 4 comments

Call me spoiled, but after almost two weeks of this..

I thought: Enough. I can only lounge on a beach and read a book for so long. I need some exploration. Adventure. Excitement. And besides, if I drink anymore cocktails on this beach I’ll turn into the drunk that passed out on the shore and washed out to sea.

I want to see more than the beach. I want to see a part of Thailand no one else dares to explore.

I want to go to the jungles of Khao Sok.

Khao Sok made it into my itinerary mostly thanks to the word of my well-traveled Italian friend: read more

Thailand: Beaches, beaches, and more beaches

April 21, 2014 rubymary Comments 1 comment

My best friend of over 20 years was in Thailand for a Pharmacy study abroad program, thus sparking the entire idea of me going to Thailand before my exit from China. After her gruesome 30 day course involving lepers, TB, getting smacked in the face with a ping pong paddle and elephant “sanctuaries” that reminded her of concentration camps, she was in desperate need of some R&R on the beach–and that’s exactly what we got.

Krabi, Just Go There

In southern Thailand, there’s few places that have escaped the wrath of tourism–Krabi included. I thought that Krabi would be a quaint, little seaside town that housed a few hostels and maybe some 5 star hotels–but man, was I wrong. Krabi is completely saturated by the tourism industry, with shady bars at every corner, hostels on every street and people trying to flag you down with cheap tours to go island hopping every 5 minutes. read more

Revisiting the Vietnam War

January 12, 2014 rubymary Comments 9 comments

During my visit home over the holidays, my dad and I sat at the bar table sipping white peony tea. He was nibbling on a cinnamon roll, I was snacking on some leftover Goi Cuon (Vietnamese spring rolls) my mom made earlier in the evening.

My father fought in the Vietnam war. It’s where he met my mother.

There are a slew of Vietnam veterans scattered throughout the country, but few managed to bring back a local from the war torn remains of Vietnam. Even fewer of these couples managed to keep their relationship together through the final, and most difficult hurdle: Culture Shock. Even if Vietnamese woman were to escape her homeland and be with the GI of her dreams in the supposedly “happily ever after” ending following the Vietnam war, many of them experienced extreme culture shock from their new American home and intercultural marriage, and few could adapt to the foreign world they were living in. This is best portrayed in the movie Heaven and Earth, where after ten years of marriage the Vietnamese wife of a GI leaves the safe haven of the USA and, eventually, goes back to Vietnam. read more

A Funeral in Bali

October 28, 2013 rubymary Comments 1 comment

I try to keep this blog strictly about Japan and China, but just this once I’m going to go off the beaten path and write about my Bali adventure.

To be honest, I never intended to go to Bali in my entire life. If it wasn’t for this Indonesian waiter that proposed to me at 17 and asked me to live with him in his newly constructed house in Bali (a story for yet another time), then I probably wouldn’t be able to point Bali out on a map. I was completely unfamiliar with that area of Southeast Asia and now, I thought, it was a prime opportunity for learning. read more

The Ruby Ronin

Connecting China, Japan, and the World

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