On our first full day in Hamilton Island the day before Chris’s cousin’s wedding, we decided to take a hike to the tallest mountain of the island called Passage Peak. It didn’t seem that strenuous from the description of it, but as soon as we started, I realized how steep the walk was and immediately became tired within just five minutes. It didn’t help that it was getting hot and sunny very quickly. When we stopped at Hilltop Lookout, which is the first stop that overlooks Cats Eye Beach and the resort area, I was all at once exhausted and impressed by the view that when we left to continue going up the mountain, I left my DSLR on the bench at the lookout point. I did not even realize I didn’t have it around my neck until we reached the mountain’s peak, when I asked Chris if he could hand me the DSLR. Then, I immediately went into freak-out mode and started running down the hills…. and went the wrong way. A New Zealander island worker ran into me, and I asked if she had stopped at the lookout point and seen my camera. She immediately became worried and decided that she’d come down the mountain with me on another route, to then come back up with me to get to the Hilltop Lookout (Kiwis are the kindest, nicest people on earth). She said if we didn’t find it, she’d take me to the Los and Found on the island to report it missing. Chris eventually called me and said he got the camera, and so she left me to continue her hike (on her day off… I felt so bad, but she insisted it was fine).

That’s the thing about a place like Hamilton Island. It’s privately owned and an expensive place to visit and spend a holiday. So chances are very slim that anything you have left out unintentionally will get stolen — because who else wants a random low-grade DSLR, anyway? Now, if only people everywhere could be that honest.

And thank God nothing happened to the camera because we’re both idiots and haven’t backed up the memory card since last November. I’m so behind on photos and scrapbooking.

I’ve never been on a piece of land where cars were not allowed until we arrived on Hamilton Island today after a short layover in Sydney. Only commercial vehicles are allowed on the privately owned island of Hamilton Island. If you need transport, you have a few options: 1) walk, 2) bike, 3) catch the shuttle bus, which supposedly makes regular stops at major points throughout the small island, or 4) rent a golf buggy. We rented an apartment for our three nights here for the wedding, which came with a golf buggy hire. Even though I haven’t driven it yet, riding in it is so much more fun than being in a car. They have very limited speeds, so it’s not like they could do that much damage, and you can call out to other passersby and buggies quite easily while on it. This is the type of transport I’ve been missing out on all my life.

And to make things even better for the environment, golf buggies are electrically powered. Take that, cars.

Traveling to Australia from the U.S. always feels so strange, especially since you lose a day in transit. This time, we left on a Saturday to arrive on a Monday. What happens to Sunday? How do I compensate for Sunday via my 1 Second Every Day app/videos? One day, it’s Saturday, then suddenly it’s Monday. One day, you’re in a corn syrup infested obese person’s and Trump land, and in the next, you are in grass-fed cows, sheep, and kangaroo land. How does it only happen in about 20 hours?

This will be my sixth time visiting Australia. Every time I come back, it’s like a real home away from home, except this time, I won’t be going back to Melbourne, but to Hamilton Island for the first time. I can always expect a lot of Chris’s family’s excitement at our arrival, and many hugs and kisses along the way.

I never seem to get that type of excitement when I arrive in my own home.

So AA’s Twitter responses were paltry. Then, their original email response was unacceptable. So I responded with an additional email with even more details and told them their response was egregious and ignored the core concerns I had, and they called me to formally apologize… and also gave me 15,000 miles to help me reconsider moving my loyalty elsewhere (which is what I threatened. You have to threaten businesses to get what you want. This is a capitalistic world we live in here in the U.S.). So I got the compensation I wanted. And we’re even filing a claim through the travel insurance provided by our credit card to get our hotel reimbursed.

It feels good to win and be vindictive.

Airlines should really be banned from allowing such tight connections. Our flight from Bozeman down to Dallas was delayed for weather reasons, and so that caused us to miss our connecting flight back to New York. Then, in one of the most appalling airline customer service experiences ever, we were denied compensation for our hotel or meals, and treated in a condescending manner by an airline agent and even her supervisor.

It’s all right. I attacked them on Twitter, then told the Executive Platinum AA agent on the phone about the experience, then wrote a detailed account of our encounter to AA’s customer relations portal. I will get what I want out of these people – they have no idea who they are messing with.

When it comes to the national parks of the United States, everyone loves to talk about wanting to visit Yosemite, Yellowstone, or Rocky Mountain National Park. At least one of them would be on the average person’s “bucket” list if s/he enjoys nature and natural scenery even in the slightest bit. All that makes sense since Yellowstone was the first national park of the U.S. (and the world), Yosemite is easily accessible in California, and Rocky Mountain is famous… for its rocky mountains. But what about national parks that are lesser known? Are they somehow less worth visiting or exploring?

Take Seoul or Jeju Island in Korea, for example. Ten years ago, Jeju Island was pretty much unknown to most of the non-Korean population, and it was famous only domestically for being the honeymoon destination spot of Korean newlyweds. I knew about it then only because of the Korean dramas I watched alongside my Taiwanese dramas, and because I had a Korean-obsessed friend who studied abroad in Seoul for a semester and traveled around the country every chance she got. Travel magazines and people who make an annual international tri once a year never visited Seoul much then. Now, it’s on the top destinations list for pretty much every travel publication, and people rave about Seoul, its nightlife and shopping scene. Jeju Island is also a destination that tops the well-traveled wander’s list, as so many articles mention it.

I resent judgments that certain national parks, cities, or countries of the world aren’t worth visiting. Some just have yet to be discovered by the rest of the world. And why would you just want to visit places that are oftentimes talked about and constantly visited – so you can be like the rest of the masses who do what “everyone else is doing? Wouldn’t it feel good to go some place that was gorgeous, untouched, where in a decade or two, “everyone” started going to and discussing, and you could say you’d already been there before the local environment started dying due to our carbon footprint and the hoards of followers started coming?

That’s why Grand Teton was so incredible. It’s known for being untouched, with flora and fauna that have continued to exist for the last thousands of years because of lesser human foot and car traffic. It’s what makes the place special, and it’s also a reason Glacier National Park is so spectacular (even though global warming is causing the glaciers to slowly melt away permanently, but that’s another story for another day).

We’re dedicating about a day and a half to Yellowstone National Park. This park is massive, and you could probably spend weeks exploring it, not to mention hiking all the day-long trails and camping out here. But, we don’t have time for that, so we’re making do with what time we have. What was surprising in a good way to me was how accessible Yellowstone is. They really make it handicap friendly by creating boardwalk ways to see the majority of the major sites, whether it’s for the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone, the Grand Prismatic Spring, or any of the dozens and dozens of geyser/spring spots throughout the park. You don’t need to hike to see any of these things; you can just walk right on up. Old Faithful geyser even has benches that wrap around the geyser so that you can comfortably sit and wait for the geyser to erupt, which the visitor center has approximations of time of eruption for (and is actually really accurate!).

Old Faithful wasn’t as dramatic as I thought it would be. Maybe it’s because it’s slightly overhyped in general, but it didn’t shoot up as high as I imagined, nor did it even last that long. I was underwhelmed by it compared to other great sights to be had in the park overall. I actually preferred watching the Castle Geyser erupt more, mainly because it’s far longer, it’s not predictable at all, and, it’s actually much older than Old Faithful.

And because Yellowstone is the park of geysers, everywhere we went, it smelled like sulphur/rotten eggs. It was a very surreal experience to be surrounded by all these live geysers that could literally erupt at any second without any notice. Without even realizing it, both of us probably smelled like sulphur the entire day. When we came back to our hotel to rest for the night, I had my evening shower. As I washed my hair, I could smell the sulphur in my strands as I shampooed, and the stench was so strong!

We’re starting our national parks trip at Glacier National Park in northern Montana. We’re so far north in the U.S. that we’re literally just miles away from the Canadian border. Glacier actually spans both Canada and the U.S., just that once you cross the border and go through Customs, it’s called Waterton Lake National Park (of Canada). Glacier is the pristine and much overlooked little sister of Yellowstone, since most of the time when tourists are coming out to Montana and are not local or coming from neighboring states, they are primarily going to see Yellowstone, as it is the first and oldest national park of the national park system, and because of that one of the most famous. When we decided to go to Yellowstone, I knew I wanted us to at minimum also visit Glacier, especially since based on photos I’d seen of it, it would have much in common with what stunned me about Banff in Canada, which was the sparkling turquoise lakes and the endless snow-capped mountains and glaciers. The saddest part about Glacier is that it is slowly dying; in the early 1900s, 100 glaciers existed here. Today, we have only 30 left. I hope more and more people will visit (and not cause harm) to this place of beauty. What’s this place going to be called once the last glacier permanently melts due to global warming?

What I didn’t expect us to do during this day visit to Glacier was pick up some hitchhikers while in the park. Granted, we weren’t on some random road in the middle of nowhere and were already in the park, and it was a married couple with serious hiking gear plus their friend, who happened to be a missionary spreading the gospel through China, but visiting. We were walking back from some lake overlook, and they made some friendly conversation with us and explained that they mistook the timing for the free (and severely unreliable) national park shuttle buses, and asked if we could drive them to Logan Pass, which was where we were headed already. Otherwise, they’d have to walk all the way to Logan Pass, which was quite a long distance from where we were at that moment. We relented, cleared the backseat of the car, and in exchange, they gave us all their tips about Glacier. The couple met and fell in love as summer workers right here in the park 12 years ago, and though both not from nearby, moved here and have decided to settle here. They are regular day hikers in the park and literally know it like the backs of their hand (they were able to recite exact heights of mountains to us and tell us all the little nuances of each, plus the hiking trails, which were helpful for us to know given our limited time).

Walking around the park with the bits of hiking we had time to do, all I could think was… wow. They loved this place so much after meeting and working here that they both decided to uproot, move, and settle here. And now they have a five-year-old child at home (with his parents who even decided to move here, too!). That is true love for a place, no doubt. It reminded me of the story I recently read on my college travel Facebook group’s page, where one woman grew up going to Glacier for one week every single summer for about 15 years as a child, and once she and her siblings left for college, her parents relocated to a small town right outside of Glacier so that they could enjoy the national park year-round.

And this place smells so good. I kept thinking about that beautiful, fresh forest scent as the day went on. Places like this have the power to really change people and their life decisions. That is just so magical.