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Abandon the Cube Travel Journal
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Abandon the Cube is a great resource for travel guides, tips, shared experiences, and to travel vicariously with Mike and Lauren - two American travelers searching for adventure.
Recent Posts Tagged With 'asia by land'
The Easiest Countries to Travel
Slightly cleaner than average Chinese train sleeper car After reading through some of our polls people have participated in throughout the site, I thought it would be a good idea to share some of the information. A while back we found tha...
Mongol Rally News Update
Mongol Rally Logo Planing for the 2010 Mongol Rally is in full swing at Abandon the Cube. We’ve set up a page on our website: Mongol Rally to enlighten folks on our team’s progress, how to donate online, and more about Mercy Mongolia, our...
Saint Thomas
Saint Thomas Saint Thomas, of the US Virgin Islands, must have been a beautiful island….once. Or perhaps we were unfortunate in that the area we explored looked like it had once been a military base because all of the buildings are low to the groun...
Funchal Island
Island Flavor Our cruise ship stopped in Funchal Island, owned by Portugal, which is a small island filled with wealth people, everything has to be imported, and nothing but bananas is produced there. The ship stops at this particular island because...
MSC Cruises Review
Deck View We took a 17-day cruise from Venice to Ft. Lauderdale on the MSC Poesia, which had stops in Italy, Tunisia, Spain, Portugal, Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico and the USA. We got a last-minute discount deal, which resulted in our tickets being ro...
Top 5 Mediterranean Locations
Olympos – Olympos is a relatively concealed and close-knit community of hostels and beach-style tree-house cabanas. Very few tourists visit the location, which is filled with backpackers, hippies and Europeans trying to get in touch with their inne...
Slovenia and the Creepiest Castle
We arrived in Ljubljana, Slovenia’s capital, three hours after departing Zagreb, the capital of Croatia. The train was a lovely design with six seats to a cabin with a sliding glass door. We had an extremely friendly Croatian lady in our cabin who ...
Sarajevo Flourishes
Our bus ride was somewhat of a highlight as far as nigh transportation goes. We were on the top floor of a double-decker bus, in the very front seats. This gave us an amazing, panoramic view of Serbia as we departed. We were exhausted from sleeping o...
The Night Train to Bulgaria
We decided to take the night train from Istanbul at 10:00pm across the western boards to Bulgaria. We planned to disembark before Sofia in Bulgaria’s most relaxed city, Plovdiv. The train pulled into the station in Istanbul an hour early and we beg...
Ephesus is Still Alive
Us infront of the Library in Ephesus After posing ridiculously on all of the old ruins and monuments we could find in the three ancient cities and camping for the night, we woke up to the sound of an alarm at 6:00 AM so we could get the rental car ba...
The Three Ancient Cities
Priene, Miletus and Didyma are three rather impressive ruins along the Aegean Coast that are smaller than Ephesus, but were important pilgrimage or economic sites in their day. We decided to rent a car from Selcuk and drive to all three of the ancien...
A Journey to Try One’s Patience
Lauren in a bus Although we had made a pact never to take another night bus, we found ourselves booked on the 12:30pm bus from Fethiye to Aydan, where we would connect with a mini bus at 4:30am to Selcuk, which is 3k from Ephesus. Things did not go a...
12 Islands Cruise
Coast We arrived in Fethiye and were immediately hit by how relaxed the city seemed. Boats lined the coast, which was on a steep hill overlooking the water. A castle sat lazily on the top of the hill, and beautifully preserved stone crypts dotted the...
Olympos is Paradise
Matt Exploring We experienced a taste of what hell must be like on the overnight bus from Cappadocia to Olympos. What was supposed to be an 11 hour ride turned into a 14 hour ordeal that resulted in three grumpy backpackers sitting on a pile of their...
Cappadocia Living in Fairy Towers
We arrived in Cappadocia extremely excited and giddy, having seen the fairy towers out the bus window. We checked into the Traveler’s Cave Hostel, on the fringe of town, which landed us a three person cave room carved directly out of one of the spi...
Ankara to Cappadocia
On the evening of the 26th I found a shuttle to the airport and waited for Matt, my friend since 1st grade, to arrive in Ankara. Lauren waited in the hotel room and worked on her several writing contracts. Without thinking, I had brought a pocketkn...
Reaching the Capital, Ankara
Ulus, Ankara Having enjoyed our time in Safranbolu, but eager to get out of a town that was little more than a giant tourist trap complete with cliché souvenirs and overly friendly people trying to rip off any traveler who isn’t used to be wary ev...
Ottoman Culture Survives in Safranbolu
Old Ottoman Museum We arrived in Safranbolu, named after the plant Safron, around 8pm and instantly realized our bus driver, who was to deposit us in the downtown area, had overshot the landing point by 2k. He pushed us out the door and tossed us our...
Sinop, A Taste of the Med on the Black Sea Coast
Trabzon and the magnificent hanging monastery of Sumela disappeared in the distance behind us as we boarded yet another bus heading West. Our goal was to go from Trabzon’s main bus station to the Samson station, half way to Sinop along the Black Se...
ATC Joins the Mongol Rally 2010
Lauren and Mike landed a team in the Mongol Rally 2010! We’re in the process of picking a few team members, looking for sponsors, and planning our route. You can follow all of our progress via the blog, but we’ll also be creating a Mongol Rally p...
A New Traveler Joins ATC
Here at Abandon the Cube we’re always happy to hear other traveler’s adventure tales. We’ve met a lot of great people along the way, and admire (with tears of jealousy) some of the insane routes people have chosen. But now we’...
Kutaisi, Georgia and the Bagrati Cathedral
Kutaisi, Georgia offered us some much needed rest after city-hopping for the previous few days. The minibus dropped us off at a random bus station, which was of course, not even on the Lonely Plant maps. It would be so difficult traveling witho...
Kazbegi Mountain
Kazbegi is a mountain town nestled smack dab between South Ossetia and Chechynia, in northern Georgia. All around this peaceful and beautiful valley wars rage off and on while the serenity and peacefulness of this particular town and the surrounding ...
Baku to Tbilisi on the Night Train
We only had a five day transit visa for Azerbaijan. It is a relatively small country and while we would have liked to stay longer than five days, the visa was 130$ for 30 days or $20 for five days, so we took the later and decided to see as much as w...
Top Sites of Baku and Azerbaijan
Azerbaijan, being currently in the middle of an oil boom, is as expensive as Europe. We were confined to Baku because we only had a few days on our transit visa. We talked with other travelers about the best sights and heard about the James Bond Oil ...
Baku – The Ancient City with a New Face-lift
We arrived in Baku at 1:00am and disembarked from the ferry with a sigh, it had been an amazing trip, and although it was over 30 hours from boarding to alighting, we were sad that the ‘cruise’ was over. By the time we got through the ridiculousl...
Ferry from Turkmenbashi to Baku – Part 2
Having returned to the ferry terminal after our morning attempt failed and we had decided to enjoy the day with a nice swim, we were dismayed when we arrived and found the parking lot empty. The woman who had talked to us earlier smiled and gave us s...
Ashgabat to Turkmenbashi and Leaving Turkmenistan by Ferry
Having heard and read countless horror stories of the ferry situation from Turkmenbashi to Baku, we were eager to try for ourselves. Many a tried and tested traveler has waited for these infamous ferries only to give up and fly across the Caspian aft...
Ferry from Turkmenbashi to Baku
Here is the process you must follow when trying to get a ferry, since many people want this information and no one else provides it in one place: 1) Put your name on the list as soon as you arrive. The list is a little notebook sitting on the counter...
The Re-Packed Packing List
As you know, we’ve spent the last two months in Turkmenistan putting back on some of the weight we lost in Kazakhstan, and relaxing in the desert sunshine. While on holiday in the least hospitable deserts in the world, we took the downtime as a...
