The Long Way Home
Welcome to our small corner of the internet.
This blog is for our friends and family — the people who encouraged us, supported us, cheer us on from afar, and make us want to share every possible moment of our journey.
If you just stumbled across us, hey and welcome. We are Erika and Alex. We spent years working hard in our respective enterprise jobs. At the end of 2025 we stepped off the corporate ladder, and made 2026 the year of a shared and long-held dream: traveling around the world together.
Everything here is ours: the words, the photos, the opinions, the food notes, the good days and the messy days. We are not influencers, not sponsored, and we're not trying to polish travel into a highlight reel.
Tracing our steps
Follow the route to see where we've been, and click the markers to dive into our field notes.
Field Notes
Vĩnh Long
A peaceful retreat in the heart of the Mekong Delta
Vĩnh Long is not the most famous name in the Mekong Delta, which is part of why we wanted to stop there. It's a small city that sits between branches of the Mekong River,…
Sa Đéc
A city of flowers and history in the Mekong Delta
Sleeper buses in Vietnam are not messing around. Shoes off and into a plastic bag before boarding, a private bed with a blanket, pillow, water, a small TV screen and a privacy curtain, all…
Rạch Giá
Our gateway to the Mekong Delta
Many of you have asked why we have dedicated so much time to exploring the relatively untouristy and seemingly less interesting Mekong Delta, rather than the other, more well-known parts of Vietnam. The reason…
Phú Quốc: Vietnam arrival mode
... and why our favorite Vietnamese island turned out to be such a disappointment
Even though Phú Quốc began as a blur of airports, our excitement was hard to contain. There were only two things on our minds during the seven-hour flight from Doha to Hồ Chí Minh…
Doha: A city built to impress
A short stopover between Europe's winter and Vietnamese summer heat
And it all started. Just like that, we found ourselves getting off the plane after the first part of the journey that is going to change our lives. The flight from Vienna to Doha…
Vienna Departure: The first day of our adventure!
This is it! The first flight, the first step of our journey.
Alarm at 5:30am, a couple of snoozes. We had to be out the door of our hotel close to the train station in Vienna before 6:30am, to make it to our train to the…
