“You should probably go to Korea. You’re young. Have fun.”
– A man who didn’t hire me

There are two ways to reach Canada from East Asia: a short way back, and a long way.

That’s not a metaphor. One is roughly 10,799 kilometres; the other is 15,444. According to one online distance calculator, when I tried to drag the location marker across to Toronto from Busan, over Europe instead of the Pacific, by the time I reached Greenwich Mean Time it simply suggested flying over the North Pole instead, which I guess would have been more aeronautically logical.

This is the story of the time we took the long way home—four months of trains and buses stitched together by one-way flights and scenic detours.

It’s a collection of pure, honest travel stories: in Brunei, witnessing the contrast of the golden mosques against burnt-down water villages; in Malaysia, meeting a karaoke DJ with dreams of pop stardom; in Jordan, camping in the dead-silent desert without a tent; in Iceland, glimpsing a faint aurora borealis from a remote farm on the edge of the world.

This is a book for lovers of the erstwhile Paul Therouxian, Jan Morrisian travelogues neglected by a world of blog diaries and listicles. It’s a book about the essence of travel, embracing the fact that good travel is hard, and indulging in it allows you to appreciate home in a way you never could before.

You can buy the ebook on Amazon here.