GoMad Nomad Travel

A short ferry ride from the small city of Kratie lies one of Cambodia’s best kept secrets. What looks like the far shore is actually a narrow island in the middle of the Mekong River dotted with rice fields, a few houses, and some of the friendliest people I’ve met in all of southeast Asia. [...]

This week’s Photo of the week comes from Juno Kim of RunawayJuno.com  “Do you have any window seat left?” is the typical question I ask at the ticket check-in counter. Like many other travelers, I prefer a window seat. Maybe because it’s slightly more private than an aisle seat, or I don’t have to move [...]

When I posted my Vientiane images to my Flickr album, my father commented to me by email that “Vientiane was often in the news in my college days, but there were never pictures.” Well, Dad, here are some pictures. None are spectacular, but my point is to give you some visuals so you have a [...]

“Humans sleep through the best part of the day,” the world famous nature photographer, Hannu Hautala, told me last week in an interview. “The best light is between sunset and sunrise.” And he’s not wrong. At 1am last week this was the view from my bedroom window. Needless to say, I couldn’t sleep with a view like [...]

          After crossing the border from Thailand we immediately boarded the slow boat bound for Luang Prabang. Riding a slow boat in Laos is one of those things you don’t want to miss while traveling in this land-locked country with over 4,600 miles of navigable waterways. Because slow boats are the [...]

Chiang Mai is a city of temples—over 300 can be found in and around the city in a variety of architectural styles. Chiang Mai is the center of northern Thailand’s tourism industry, rich with culture and tradition and plenty of tours leaving for the rest of the north and attractions surrounding the city. But you [...]

No visit to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia is complete without visiting the Skybridge of the Petronas Towers. When the towers were completed in 1998, they were the tallest buildings in the world at 451 meters, holding that title until 2004 saw the completion of Taipei 101 reach a height of 509 meters. Malaysia was understandably proud [...]

One of the most lively and interesting places in Singapore is Little India. Vastly different from the rest of the island, Little India is a neighborhood of shops spilling onto the sidewalks. Saris, flowers, CDs, trinkets, spices, vegetables are all being sold. Not only are the colors striking, but so are the sights and smells. [...]

While traveling in Borneo I visited Sepilok Orangutan Rehabilitation Centre. Even though I saw an orangutan in the wild, I still wanted a chance to observe these amazing “men of the forest” from a closer distance. You could get a sense from the mesmerized onlookers (the homo sapiens), that all were thinking the same thing—just [...]

Kampong Ayer is made up of 28 water villages on both sides of the Sungai Brunei in Brunei. It is home to 20,000 residents. The houses are built on wooden, and more recently concrete, stilts. A boardwalk high above the water surface connects many of the houses. To see more of Kampong Ayer, hire a [...]

My first afternoon in Bangkok I wandered around the back streets of Chinatown. Here Bangkok looks much as it did 100 years ago. Markets abound in the side streets and alleyways in between and around the two main parallel boulevards of Yaowarat and Charoen Krung. In Chinatown you’ll find everything from herbalists and gold dealers [...]

Here is some street art from the Columbia Heights and Adams Morgan neighborhoods of Washington, DC. The District of Columbia is one of the most underrated cities in the United States. Besides several great museums, most of which are free (the ones of the Smithsonian, anyway), there are the various neighborhoods, each with its own [...]

  One of the highlights of Nicaragua, Ometepe Island, or La Isla de Ometepe, should not be missed on a trip through Nicaragua. Get to the island on a ferry boat ride from Rivas, crossing the choppy waters of Lake Cocibolca. The twin Volcano peaks Concepcion and Maderas rise out of the lake and dominate [...]

This week’s Photo of the Week comes from Juno Kim of RunawayJuno.com Lake Tekapo is a small town in the middle of the South Island of New Zealand. It is usually a transit place to or from Dunedin because there is nothing exciting to see or do there. However Lake Tekapo became my favorite place in [...]

These photos were taken at the khachkar field in Noratus, Armenia. It is the largest such concentration of these carved memorial stones, known as khachkars, anywhere in the country. A few years back I was lucky enough to visit an Armenian-Russian friend of mine’s extended family living in Armenia. The Armenians are some of the [...]

Big skies, wide open spaces, imposing mountains; this is Colorado. These photos were taken in or around Great Sand Dunes National Park—the most underrated National Park in the United States. I’ll never forget the image of the glowing orange sun in my rear view mirror as I drove down from Poncha Pass into the valley [...]

This is the throne hall of Changdeok Palace. The immense room, known as Injeong-jeon or Hall of the Benevolent Government, was used for holding formal functions of the state. It stands out among the other elegant architecture of Changdeok Palace. The palace, located in a hilly section north of dowtown Seoul, was a favorite residence of Korean royalty. [...]

Georgian culture is completely inseparable from their orthodox Christianity.  The land and people have been Christian since the 4th century.  People walking past a Georgian church stop, face the church, and cross themselves before continuing on their way.  The interior of the churches are dim with painted icons of saints and the holy family on the [...]