The one thing I quickly learned about Africa, on my first trip, was just how astonishingly different the various countries in this continent can be from each other. So very vastly distinct, and nothing would remind me of this more than traveling from Nigeria to Namibia: nations living on the same continent, but that might…
View More
Nigeria wasn’t supposed to happen. My eight-country Africa jaunt was going to start in South Africa and end in Kenya, with the six countries along the way nowhere near Nigeria. I’d had this trip planned for ten months, and everything was set. It was only about three weeks before the big journey that I realized…
View More
First Impression: The Women of Jordan, Stunning. The Uber Drivers, D!cks. A Jordanian co-worker back home warned me that the beauty of the women here would captivate me. She wasn’t lying. Before we even took off from Al Najaf, Iraq, the flight attendant-stunners aboard my Royal Jordanian flight confirmed the caution I’d received. Same with…
View More
Honestly, before stumbling upon the greatest shop that I’ve ever seen in an airport last week, I would’ve never even thought this would be a category. I mean, airport shops? I’ve never been even slightly intrigued by them. Sure, I’ve seen some cool gift shops, and the electronics stores in Panama’s Tocumen airport are pretty…
View More
Reject Well damn. I’ve never been able to take rejection well, so when I received news that Iran had turned down my visa application, I was crushed. “Dear Randall, Unfortunately your visa was rejected.” That was the email from the tour company in Tehran that had submitted my documents to the government on my behalf….
View More
Rough Relations At first I didn’t understand why I couldn’t find a direct flight from Baku, Azerbaijan into Yerevan, Armenia. Both were big cities, with big airports, each with lots of flights and routes. You’d think a nonstop Baku-Yerevan flight would be a no-brainer. But I’d soon learn that the two countries weren’t exactly the…
View More
So Much to See, So Little Time Azerbaijan was part of a whirlwind seven-country jaunt that would start in Turkey, run through the Caucuses and end up in The Middle East. As usual, I had a lot to see, and only a little time to see it, and working with flights on these trips are…
View More
If you’ve done any traveling throughout Africa, you know that obtaining visas for many of the continent’s countries can be a hassle. And while eVisas are finally starting to be slowly rolled out (like for Uganda, Kenya, etc.), the old method of actually having to send your passport and documents into an embassy for processing…
View More