We whirled by and I almost missed him. I had seen him two weeks earlier in some other valley on some other stretch of road, just barely on the pavement. The drive from Paro to Thimpu used to take 2.5 hours. It was down a valley to a confluence and then up the other waterway, […]
Welcome back to WPIG the pig, a voice of reason in the world of travel. This episode: Tyler Dillon sits down with Alex Zglinski, Trufflepig’s trip planner for Japan. They dive deep into Alex’s early connection to Japan, what keeps piquing his interest in Nippon, and coastal stories from his latest research trip there last […]
It’s genuinely hard to stay concise when you’re a full-blown mythology nerd, but here we go. I’ve been obsessed with mythology since I was a kid, the Greeks first (obviously), then the Norse. The Romans… well, I treated them like a Greek reboot with planet names, and I stand by it. So stumbling into a […]
I’m writing to you from a small island in the Andaman Sea. The floor-to-ceiling windows fold away completely, blurring the line between inside and out. There’s a boulder not twenty metres offshore that I swam to yesterday. Now, at high tide, it’s barely breaking the surface and a single bird is perched on its tip, […]
There’s nothing I love more than a snoop and a nosy around a grocery store in a foreign country. To me, this is the litmus test of a country’s true grit, and the quickest way to tap into how it ticks. What fresh produce is out, what brands do they carry, what else can I […]
You know that feeling when you’re coming down with something? That specific brand of misery where your body aches, your throat feels like sandpaper, and even your hair hurts? You drag yourself through the day, and all you want is to be horizontal, crawl into bed and disappear under a mountain of blankets. But first, […]
Growing up, one dish that was synonymous with my Filipino family’s birthdays or holiday gatherings was pancit canton. Pancit canton is a hearty, stir fry noodle dish packed with crunchy vegetables, a sweet soya sauce base and mixed with delicious pork belly. My dad has perfected his pancit canton recipe after my grandmother passed it […]
I think I mixed up my packing lists. I packed my bags for five months’ working remotely in hot and humid Southeast Asia, to meet some of our team on the ground, and explore further into the region I love the most, so why did my hockey skates take up the most room? Hockey has […]
Welcome back to WPIG the pig, a voice of reason in the world of travel. This episode: a conversation between two trip planners on a mutual love for Asia. This is a ramble and a dive into travel memories and mental landscapes, and if you have ever wanted to meander the streets of Hanoi or […]
For two days in mid May each year, Sri Lanka turns into a be-laterned island of colour and food, music and gifts. Vesak is a wonderful Buddhist festival that commemorates the birth, enlightenment and passing away (parinivarna) of Gautama Buddha. It’s observed at the full moon of the lunar month Vesakha, which generally falls in […]
We are walking through a winding courtyard which, as far as I can tell from all the monks moving quietly around us, must lead to a temple. “Here it is!” my friend calls out to me in my reverie, so I turn. Ah! The coffee shop. In my meditative state, I’d walked right past it. […]
If you’re anything like me, you’ve read somewhere that Japan consists of four islands and you’ve assumed that’s the lot. If so, you’re short by about 14,121. Yep, you read that right. Japan has more islands than Greece, revealing unexpected and enticing facets of the culture. So when a friend in the Land of the […]
A trip to Japan is always a promise of culinary adventures. The country is home to arguably the best fish and meat in the world, some of the most ludicrously pampered fruits you’ll ever lay eyes on, and a culture where cooking is elevated to an art form. It’s also a place where food safety […]
Kathmandu! Say it out loud. Feel it roll and fall out of one’s mouth like a pebble down some glacial river. The sounds of named things in Nepal; Dwarika’s, Phaplu, Lo Manthang. I can’t stop saying these words, whispering them to myself in a jet lagged state, over and over like a madman tourist. I […]
In a few very bumpy turns in the road up from Pokhara, languages and religions shift, landscapes morph, weather patterns evolve, and then you are in a wee corner of the geopolitical map of Nepal called Mustang, but you have entered a larger cultural region that stretches across Tibet and Xinjiang all the way to […]
We had finished dinner and the rain was setting in when I decided to put on my biking kit and head up the mountain pass. The valley I was in, the Phobjikha Valley, at 10,000 feet, is a sanctuary for the Black neck crane, a medium-sized crane in Asia that breeds on the Tibetan Plateau […]