Travel
7 Continents x 50+ Countries x 300+ Cities
Contrary to what you might think, Dave is not all business! He’s been fortunate enough to travel the world with a deep sense of curiosity.
This page is not meant to be a perfect travel guide. It’s a visual scrapbook of some of Dave’s favorite places that remind him what a wonderful, weird, and beautiful planet we live on.
Featured Countries
China
Egypt
Italy
Myanmar
Pakistan
Asian Americana
The Ellis Island of the West
Angel Island, California: Asian immigrants were detained, interrogated, and often humiliated at Angel Island, where many carved poems into the barracks walls. The site exposes how immigration law helped define race, citizenship, and belonging in modern America.
Chinatown on the Mining Frontier
Mai Wah Museum, Butte, Montana: Chinese immigrants built lives around mines, laundries, stores, and noodle parlors in Butte, leaving artifacts inside the Mai Wah and Wah Chong Tai buildings that reveal how Asian communities endured exclusion, labor, and frontier America.
The Camp That Resisted
Heart Mountain, Wyoming: Heart Mountain was one of ten World War II camps where the U.S. government incarcerated people of Japanese descent, holding more than 10,000 Japanese Americans behind barbed wire between Cody and Powell. It highlighted the injustice of being drafted to fight for a country that had stripped them and their families of freedom.
The Town Built By Chinese Americans
Locke, California: Chinese immigrants built Locke in the Sacramento Delta as a rural community of shops, homes, schools, and gathering places. It matters because it preserves a rare physical record of Asian American self-determination in a country that often denied Chinese immigrants land, safety, and citizenship.
Rock Springs,
Wyoming
Rock Springs, Wyoming: In 1885, white miners attacked Chinese miners in Rock Springs, killing 28 people, wounding others, and burning homes. The massacre is critical because it reveals how Asian labor helped build America while also facing lethal racism, exclusion, and scapegoating.
Chinese Culture
The Founder of the Chinese and Yin Yang
Taihao Fuxi Mausoleum, Henan: Fuxi is revered as a founder of Chinese civilization and traditionally credited with inventing Yin Yang and Bagua. The site connects origin myth, cosmology, and ancestor worship to China’s enduring search for harmony, pattern, and order.
The Ancient Roots of Chinese Writing
Oracle Bones, Anyang, Henan: At Yinxu, Shang dynasty diviners carved questions into turtle shells and animal bones, creating China’s earliest known writing. These inscriptions reveal a civilization already wrestling with kingship, ancestors, warfare, weather, ritual, and fate.
Where Combat Becomes Spirit
Shaolin Kung Fu, Henan: Monks at Shaolin forged martial arts into a path of discipline, meditation, endurance, and spiritual self-mastery. The tradition reveals how Chinese culture joined body and mind, turning combat into philosophy, performance, and devotion.
China’s Mountain Fortress
The Great Wall of China: Soldiers, laborers, and dynasties built and rebuilt the Great Wall across mountains, deserts, and frontiers to defend China’s heartland. The site reveals how architecture, empire, sacrifice, and national memory helped shape the idea of Chinese civilization across time.
Where the Dao De Jing Entered the World
Hangu Pass, Henan: According to tradition, Laozi composed the Dao De Jing here before vanishing westward, giving humanity one of its most translated wisdom texts after the Bible. The site marks where Chinese civilization imagined power yielding to humility, balance, and the Way.
Favorites
Where Mountains Meet the Sea
Amalfi Coast, Italy: Cliffside villages cling between mountains and the Mediterranean, where lemon groves, ancient roads, and maritime towns turn landscape into art. This coast captures Italy’s gift for transforming beauty, history, and daily life into wonder.
The World at the End of the Earth
Antarctica: Icebergs, glaciers, and endless white horizons create a world that feels untouched by time, where silence becomes almost spiritual. The continent reveals Earth at its most extreme, reminding us how small, fragile, and awestruck we are.
The Alpine Sea of the Sierra Mountains
Lake Tahoe, California/Nevada: Snow-capped peaks rise above one of America’s clearest alpine lakes, where granite shores, pine forests, and blue water feel almost unreal. The place captures the West’s rare mix of wilderness, wonder, and restorative escape.
The Lost City Above the Clouds
Machu Picchu, Peru: Inca terraces, temples, and stonework rise above the Andes, revealing a civilization that fused engineering, astronomy, and sacred landscape. The site captures humanity’s drive to build meaning where earth, sky, and memory meet.
White Light Over Aegean Blue
Santorini, Greece: Whitewashed villages rise above a volcanic caldera, where blue-domed churches, cliffside paths, and sunset light turn the Aegean into a dreamscape. The island captures Greece’s gift for blending myth, beauty, and history into unforgettable wonder.
