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32 posts tagged asia
A mouse in the bathroom
You know you’ve been living in Asia a long time when nothing about finding yourself locked in a small bathroom with a terrified mouse scurrying about the floor upsets you.
I’ve never met as many adorable kids as I have in Southeast Asia. In each country I’ve been to, most of the kids I’ve met have been incredibly friendly, happy, and fun-loving, completely winning me over every time.
These are some of the kids I met during and after my trek with Ying through the Hmong villages of northern Vietnam. Heart = melted.
The girl with the sparkling clean colon
I’m not sure if I’m a masochist, a romantic revisionist, or if I actually did enjoy not eating anything for a week in Thailand, but I’ve decided to end my time in Asia the same way it started: with a detox.
I’m in Chiang Mai right now, headed to Bangkok later tonight for a day or two in that intense, crazy city that I’ve actually grown quite fond of. After that I need to hop on over to Burma to refresh my visa-free entry stamp (while people flying into Thailand get 30 days without a visa, those entering via road get a woefully inept 15), and then I’m returning to the first place I fell in love with, Koh Phangan.
Last time I did a detox on this island I went 5 days without eating, bookended by a few days of a raw diet, and got daily colonics. It was an interesting experience, to say the least, but for some reason this time around I feel the need to outdo myself, at a different retreat. This detox will be 7.5 days of fasting, with colonics TWICE a day. Did I mention I might be a masochist? Stay tuned.
this about sums up my experience of Laos
Kuang Si falls, just outside of Luang Prabang, Laos. And this wasn’t even the most impressive part of it…
Five weeks traveling through Vietnam: how much it cost me and how you can do it cheaper
I had heard mixed reviews from travelers who had backpacked through Vietnam, and at one point I was 90% sure I would skip it on this trip, but at the last minute decided to go for it, and it ended up being the only country I actually extended my visa to stay longer in. Vietnam is freaking huge and there’s a lot to love about it (of course some not-so-lovely things as well, more on that later), but all the sights took a bigger bite out of my bank account than the last few countries had. I got really good feedback after my last budget post, which reviewed my expenses over the first 4 months of my trip, so I’ll keep doing posts like these as I continue to travel.
So, without further ado, here’s what I spent during my 36 days in Vietnam, with and without a few extra expenses.
Life is too important to be taken seriously
I’ll be honest with you: when I bought my one-way ticket to Bangkok, the ticket that started it all, I was kind of drunk.
It’s not that my sober self wouldn’t have made that decision - I’d been talking about wanting to travel for months. But that’s all it was at that point, talk. And it’s so easy to talk about it, it’s very abstract, especially in America, and nobody I know would say that they wouldn’t want to travel - in theory - it’s just that it was never the right time, you know? Very few people I know have given up tangible opportunity in their 20’s to pursue something so financially irresponsible. You know, the economy and all that. Or I wish I could - I just don’t have enough money right now (as if there is some magic sum of savings that would make this decision responsible). Maybe I want to go to grad school. I have this great apartment and these great friends. Or I’m doing well in my job and I can’t just not work. I mean, I have to think of my future right? Why quit while I’m ahead?
These were all arguments my superego’d sober self had trotted in front of me, totally valid reasons why it just wasn’t the right time to leave. And I mean, they were all correct, it wouldn’t be responsible for me to just not work when I could, when I could be advancing my career and saving for retirement, or whatever. And I loved my friends and my city - I had a good thing going back in California.
Screw it.
This world is pretty ridiculous sometimes.
A lot of guides in Southeast Asia carry around notebooks or letters of handwritten recommendations by people they’ve given tours to, and they’ll show you the ones from your home country when they find out where you’re from. Today I was talking with this woman about possibly doing a trek with her and she showed me a letter written by another American girl who had trekked with her last month.
I took a look at the signed name and realized that I actually knew the girl (Kabryn) who had written it; we’ve never met in person but had messaged via this blog when we were both in Indonesia and we’ve chatted a few times since. And now, in some little mountain town at the far north of Vietnam, three months, millions of people, and thousands of kilometers later, I was reading her handwriting describing the amazing experience she had with this woman. We never tried to meet up or take the same route but somehow our paths found each other anyway, through this lovely woman, in a town full of them… I guess after all, it really is a small world.
Ubud, Bali: talented artists, gorgeous rice terraces, and the Curse of Julia Roberts
Beautiful，scenic Ubud.
A place popular for its cultural diversity and history, its great supply of local artists, the beauty of the many rice paddy hills that surround it. And lately, much to the chagrin of its large expat community, as the titular LOVE in Elizabeth Gilbert’s bestseller memoir and subsequent Julia Roberts movie “Eat, Pray, Love.”
Halong Bay, Vietnam. Worth the hype.
The devil wears nada: Not sure if you need it? You probably don’t.
“Is that” and they point to my 34-Liter “Weekender” Deuter pack, “your ONLY bag?” They’re always a bit incredulous. ”And you’ve been traveling for FIVE MONTHS??”
It is. It’s a lesson every traveler will learn - you don’t need all the crap you’re planning on bringing. I anticipated my overeagerness and so bought a bag that would physically limit the amount of things I could carry. It’s currently filled, but if I needed to, I probably could eliminate about half of it.
Getting off the beaten path on a motorbike trip of central Bali
I’ve said it before (OK, I’ve said it a lot), but one of my favorite things to do on this trip is to rent a motorbike and get lost in a new location. I’ve seen some of my best sights that way, and my expectations of what I’m going to see are always proven wrong.
In Ubud, Bali I went to a shop to rent a motorbike and was presented with two options, one regular bike and one “fancy” one. I automatically went for the cheaper one, but as the merchant was getting my paperwork ready, and after staring ever more longingly at the nicer one, I decided screw it, let’s get classy. The bike was too charming to resist so I stopped trying, paid the extra 10,000 rupiah (about $1), and took it out for an adventure.
