Recent Entries

• The Tale of Two Travelers

  by Jay Hon Tue at 8:59 PM

  Same money. Same Thailand. One week or two. Sam and Alex are made up. Everything they spent is not. Every price below is a real January price in Bangkok and Chiang Mai, sourced at the bottom, and the two trips are built from my Bangkok guide and my Chiang Mai guide, which are the same places I go...
• 13 Alcohol Facts Every Traveler Should Know, Sober or Not

  by Jay Hon Tue at 12:33 PM

  I was researching the Laos leg of my Mekong trip and found out that the thing that killed six tourists in Vang Vieng in 2024 was not the river or the roads. It was the alcohol. That one fact turned into a week of reading, and most of what I found was stuff nobody mentions before a trip. Some of it i...
• The Money Got Me the Ticket. Sober Friends Are Getting Me Ready.

  by Jay Hon Aug 8

  This is part 2 of a three-part story: the fund that paid for it, the prep you're reading now, and the trip itself. A few weeks ago I was showing off my October plans, and instead of "that sounds amazing," a couple of my friends asked the same quieter question: okay, but have you failproofed it? If...
• The Dream Vacation Fund

  by Jay Hon Aug 6

  This is the true story that inspired SoberTripBuilder. There's a photo I took in the Philippines, about four months into a trip I wasn't sure I'd ever take. It's just a quiet morning, the light doing something you can't plan for, a place I'd never have seen if a few things had gone differently a ye...