So we may be broke, but the best things in life are free: nature, friends, and a fine challenge – like climbing a fucking waterfall in the Thai jungle!

One day.

Wake up. Late morning. Light, cool breeze.

Take a walk. Rent a motor bike for the first time in your life. Lie and say you have ridden before. Take the fuck off on the open road with no direction. Learn you are quite skilled at riding said motor bike.

See live tigers interact with people. Crack the fuck up as they cuddle with the wild animals. Feed koi fish. Take off on said motor bike again. Drive indiscriminately into the Thai jungle with no sound but the music of said jungle.

Share some rice wine with your newly formed motor bike gang – “The Chicken Leg Gang” – and some new awesome friends at a dimly lit outdoor patio. Barefoot – as is the custom.

Get invited to a house warming party for an Italian expat. Revel with men, women, and children from all over the world and learn phrases in three languages, three dialects, and seven accents.

Get in a truck. Drive. See a fucking lone elephant! Scream and point. Witness your camera man eat shit as he practically fractures his coccyx on the asphalt after leaping from the moving vehicle. Witness his awe inspiring recovery as he then bolts to film the elephant. Cherish the 4 second clip he captures.

Take your motor bike to an awesome reggae bar. Meet more people from more places. Dance on benches with beautiful women. Listen to live music.

Drive motor bike back to guesthouse on a lone stretch of dark road, through an alley, past a Buddhist temple, and dismount.

One day.
Best day.

“Man Trip!” is what we found ourselves triumphantly proclaiming all during our 2 day long weekend getaway into the jungles of Tena a few weeks back.  (more…)

As we reported earlier, our camera was stolen recently.

You can probably imagine that it’s kind of hard to make a show about living abroad without a video camera.

And so much has happened! Laurene quit her job, Ryan and I took a boat ride on a lake named after a guinea pig, Ryan and Freddie went to the coast, I found a job, Laurene started looking for other jobs, Ryan got thrown into a jail on wheels, the boys went on an Indiana Jones adventure in the jungle, the World Cup began. And so on. All those little things like Life.

While the powers-that-be behind Jet Set Zero have been researching every possibility to get us a new camera as soon as possible, they’ve encountered headaches and hurdles like customs, duties paperwork, and exorbitant shipping costs.

Enter creative solution #1: Find a courier to fly down with the camera.

I jumped on the horn (ok, the internet) and contacted my best friend Amy Cao, a food writer and blogger in NYC. Would she be available to fly down to Quito with the camera on a moment’s notice? An email response from her later, it was a done deal.

She arrives tonight into Quito, and the show will go on!

Food writer Amy Cao arriving in Quito soon!