Matterhorn Materialization

5 a.m. in Zermatt. I finally turned off the snooze button after who-knows how many times it had rang. Our legs were aching and our eyes were unbelievably sleepy from all the tiredness in Austria a couple days ago. Zermat was our second city in Switzerland, and it has been for several days since we […]

India: the Good, the Bad and the Should-I-go (Part 2)

The Bad Sanitation issue was crazy! How people navigated their vehicle was mind-blowing! And the smell was overwhelming! I gave out a quick review to all my friends that visiting India was as if you were going back in time to Indonesia about 20 years ago. A place where motorcycle guys or bajaj or local […]

India: the Good, the Bad and the Should-I-go (Part 1)

Capital W-H-Y and huge question mark were people’s reactions when I shared my intention to travel to India by myself. Friends and families questioned my sanity (and bravery) to venture to a place where 1.4 billion people were residing. The idea to travel to India was very much correlated with unimaginable crowdedness, overwhelming smells, questionable […]

Darimana? Dari Hong Kong?

Stealing the trademark from Indonesian famous slang that loosely translated into “are you kidding me?” – as to question the absurdity of ideas. However goofy it was, I found the term perfectly captured the overall experience me and my friends had during our short visit to HK. The idea of it came simply from free […]

A Halt in Hallstatt

Austria was not only about its musical renaissance or Baroque architectural beauty, there were many places where nature of hills, lakes and idyllic old village were prominent and worthy of a visit. The next day on our Austria trip, we went into the otherworldly Hallstatt. It was a 2-hour trip by bus from Salzburg. From […]

Salzburg: Perfect Cadence

Inseparable. Term that came to mind when talking about Salzburg and its classical music counterparts. It was the birthplace of none other than Mozart. His music had moved thousands of people across generations worldwide, even the unborn ones – as famously advertised for pregnant moms to closely listen to his composition. Growing up, Mozart was […]

Mark Denmark on Next Embark

Q: What do you know of Denmark?A: 1. Place where Lego is born 2. Hygge way of living 3. Butter cookiesQ: Planning to visit there?A: Well yeah, someday! It’s on the bucket list somewhere.Q: How about tomorrow?A: Oh what? Pretty much how it went when the realization hit us that we were only a week […]

Zombieless Train to Busan

For the average-knowledge person like myself who knew Korean culture by flashes of movies and Buzzfeed suggestions on Youtube, the word Busan rang in my head with correlation of the famous apocalyptic film that had that word in its title, Train to Busan. A great film, and lots of zombies. It seemed to me that […]

Japan, again

One had traveled in a period when he lost track of the whereabouts of his saving. And mine was last year, when logical reason was defeated by impulsiveness of travelling ideas. In the span of seven months, I managed to travel to no less than six countries and more than a dozen cities, even half […]

Bromo: Jazz me up!

When the third time is a charm, one can wonder what the fourth might be. This trip served as the fourth time for me visiting Bromo because #whynot. What lured me most was the event of Jazz Gunung that held annually on the Jiwa Jawa Resort. By all means, if we already spent the time […]