Vacations Blog

Elliott, Min and Alex have all given their introductions, so now it is time to tell you a little about me. I was born in Tennessee, a state in the southeast part of the U.S., and home to Al Gore. I now live in California, on the west coast of the U.S., and now also home to Al Gore (detecting a trend?). No… I am not stalking the former vice president. I do share some of his ideas, like improving the environment, and I believe there is no better way to instill a desire to preserve nature than to experience its beauty and wonder first hand. I think traveling outside your familiar surroundings and your comfort zone can be an education as well as an adventure.

Living in San Francisco provides me with a wealth of cultural and historical nourishment, (not to mention amazing views) but it also gives me easy access to completely different settings. Two hours south, I am on the beaches of Santa Cruz; three hours east, I am in the mountains surrounding Lake Tahoe. I have also been blessed to live in very different parts of the country such as Florida, Texas and Utah. Moving around a lot has given me an appreciation for different climates and cuisines, but it has also taught me that stereotypes are for the mentally lazy – there is always something to learn or discover.

San Francisco, California — Marina District

I am excited to be building a travel product from the ground up. Having worked in other online start-ups as well as the travel industry, I have an appreciation for the limitless possibilities the web brings to the traveler. Whether it’s a 2 day road trip or 2 weeks abroad, I want to give you the tools to inspire a great experience and prevent any pitfalls.

Hello World! Min Guo here and I’m proud to be a Kango!

Different from my fellow Kangos – Alex, Elliott and Allison, I am Chinese (Cantonese), born and raised in the Canton (Guangdong) province of China. I have been to 41 cities around the world (see map below) and currently reside in Shanghai with my husband. My favorite city is Hong Kong where I went to graduate school for system engineering and worked as an analyst for a web-based Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system.

I believe the Internet is one of the greatest inventions of 20th century. I remember the first time I connected to the World Wide Web back in 1998. In the era of Web 1.0, ICQ was very popular on campus for us to communicate with people from all over the world. I enjoyed chatting with “strangers” from all over the globe.

Entering the Web 2.0 era, blogging has become a more dominate social networking tool. I posted my first blog post (in Chinese) at 10:37 on July 12, 2005 when I lived in Mountain View, CA. I blogged about the trips I took in the United States, sharing my trip preparation, ideas, tips and photos. Soon I was tagged as Featured Blogger by my blog service provider. I was very excited that people in my home country found my travel blog and photos were interesting. Maybe as my fellow Alex has put it: “one’s love for travel comes from both nature and nurture.” People are attracted to and curious about different travel experiences and ideas as well.

So there’s a bit about myself…. I am excited to share more travel experience and ideas! Come along for the ride!

Following Elliott’s self-unmasking last week, I would like to tell you all a bit about myself, and where my passion for travel originated.

I believe that one’s love for travel comes from both nature and nurture. When I was 10-12 years old, my parents took my older sister and I to Europe for a few weeks three consecutive summers. I was more fascinated with Europe’s openness towards sexuality, the countries’ colorful currencies (pre Euro), and the prevalent passionate soccer (my sport at the time) culture, than the museums and castles we visited. Looking back on these trips a decade later, it’s clear that my exposure to foreign cultures at a young age planted the seed of international curiosity, which has since bloomed.

I am a recent graduate of the USC undergraduate business school (Marshall). During the second semester of my junior year, I studied abroad at the eminent Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. This was an eye-opening experience! It allowed me to both take a break from the Los Angeles bubble, and experience life in one of the world’s most bustling cities.

Hong Kong’s location, relative to the rest of Asia, makes it an ideal port for the ambitious traveler. I was wise/fortunate to schedule class four days a week, allowing for extended travel weekends. During my four plus months abroad, I traveled to China three times (Guilin pictured below), Kyoto, Macau, Ho Chi Minh City, Bangkok, Phuket, Siem Reap, Singapore, and Kuala Lumpur. Traveling with fellow students, we found cheap last minute flights, slept in $6 (USD) hostels, took daylong non air-conditioned bus rides, and sampled street food. Foreign travel is thrilling, enriching, and tiring, but above all things, addictive!

Kango will revolutionize and simplify family, romantic, and themed travel. I am excited to be involved in the development and publicizing of the site!