The Adventures of Nicole

Updated July 2026, How to Get a Chinese Tourist for US Citizens was originally written in July 2018 Have you tried to get a visa for China and had to navigate or make sense of anything on the Chinese Consulate or Embassy websites in the USA? Have you tried to call any of them for clarification? Well, if you haven’t I’ll save you the ball-ache by telling you that their website...

Updated July 2026,Visiting the Lava Tube in Mojave National Preserve was originally published in November 2023 Whenever I make the call to my parents to announce that I’ll be paying them a visit, they frantically search through their archive of adventures nearby their (newish) home of Pahrump, Nevada, trying to find some neat new things to show me. So on my most recent visit…...

Updated July 2026, South Luangwa National Park, Zambia was originally published in December 2020 South Luangwa, located at the eastern end of the Great Rift Valley, was a highlight of my trip through southern Africa a few years back. It seems that most who visit Zambia never go beyond Livingston, the town on the mighty Zambezi and home to Victoria Falls. If you’re looking for...

Updated July 2026, Rasht Valley, Travel Guide, Tajikistan was originally written in November 2019 It took me five trips to Tajikistan before I finally made it to the Rasht Valley. The little-visited region of the country had been on my radar since 2017. To be fair, the Rasht Valley is a bit inconvenient to visit with the closed to foreigners Tajik-Kyrgyz border at Karamyk, so...

Updated July 2026, Visiting the Orangutans at Semenggoh Wildlife Center was originally written in August 2015 One of the main attractions for visiting Borneo for me was having the chance to see orangutans. After quite a bit of research (I know, very unlike me) trying to determine where we wanted to go while in Borneo, we decided to base ourselves out of Kuching in the Sarawak...