AsiaSteps.com was started by Kevin Maes and Tamar Hadar in preparation for their third trip to Southeast Asia in the winter of 2007-2008. Kevin and Tamar simply love to travel and some of the greatest experiences they share are when they are exploring far off lands together. For them, discovering new places is about seeking out new feasts for the senses, meeting new people and feeling free. Asia offers all of this in abundance and that is why they’ve chosen to discover Asia one step at a time through the creation of this travel blog.

Kevin Maes

Kevin first got his start traveling after college graduation when he backpacked around Europe and lived and worked in Paris for a total of 14 months. He has worked extensively in the travel and tourism industry, everything from youth hostels to 4-star hotels and the Visitor Information Center of the San Francisco Convention & Visitors Bureau.

Kevin has worked on websites and on writing travel content for the Internet for over a decade. His experience with online travel writing started in 1999 when he was a member of a 5 person team traveling through Central & South America, Africa and the Middle East writing educational content for The Odyssey World Trek for Service and Education, a San Francisco based non-profit organization. Since then Kevin has worked in the hi-tech industry in Tel Aviv, Israel and most recently in New York City.

Although Kevin was born in Saigon towards the end of the Vietnam War, he has made it his mission to become re-acquainted with his homeland as an adult since his first trip back to Vietnam in 2001. Kevin has taught technology in Ho Chi Minh City, traveled from city to countryside by motorcycle and has become a big fan of exploring Vietnam’s neighboring countries in the region. The 2009 trip to Singapore makes 42 countries that Kevin has had the opportunity to visit.

Tamar Hadar

Tamar has made international travel a personal priority ever since she was a teenager when she first set her mind on visiting and living in Paris. She traveled extensively in Europe and made her dream come true at 20 for one of the best years of her life. As a connoisseur of art and culture, she became increasingly interested in the history of China and graduated with a degree in East Asian Studies with a focus on Mandarin.

Tamar’s love for traveling in Asia led her to seek work in Vietnam where she recently worked for five weeks as a consultant for Mobile Services Solutions – a communications technology startup located in Ho Chi Minh City. Tamar’s international lifestyle has kept her feeling very much at home in cities like San Francisco and New York City with their diversity and abundance of cultural influences, especially those from Asia. Working and traveling in Southeast Asia is something she looks forward to over and over again.

When Kevin and Tamar are not traveling in Asia they are busy working as web developers and consultants in NYC and are co-founders of TEK 212, Inc.