So many countries, not nearly enough time

I've tried to write again 100 times since the islands, but whether it's been running to a new city or country every 48 hours or lack of sleep from not sleeping properly in the hostels in each place, I haven't been able to formulate a thought. Southeast Asia is a really different place to travel than I had anticipated. This trip is also very different this time around for me too though. In 2011 I had dreamed, saved and upon making it to South America, I felt I was actually living a dream. Places i had stared at pictures of and stories from blogs I had subscribed to and read every word of. It was different. I was looking for an experience. Asia is more of a rite of passage, a place mostly everyone I know has traveled through at one point or another, so I felt the need to see all of these places up close - albeit this trip came at a weird time in my life. I hated what I was doing - my job description changing incessantly day by day. Having to work for people that shouldve been fired before they even started (well, at least one of those). Feeling like I was in a real-life version of Atlas Shrugged, dealing with brainless second handers daily. Constantly fighting to do things that shouldn't have been a battle, but were exactly that, withh my only solace being my daily coffee breaks with the select few people I grew close with during the last year. I was burnt out. I was physically and emotionally exhausted. Not to mention my personal life being stagnant, after finally eliminating a couple of bad repeats from my past that should have been buried long ago. This didn't help me to figure out who or what I'm looking for any more, and at 30 I'm supposed to know this. But years of letdowns and trust issues have bubbled together to make me not even want to try anymore. So my obvious answer is leaving. Now that I'm here, whether I like a place or not is greatly determined by my mood. There are countries I think I'm going to love because everyone had told me I would. And then of course my expectations are too high and I can't leave fast enough. And then there are the places that I've spontaneously decided to go just to deviate from the backpacker route, and have felt more at peace. I'm questioning things about myself on this trip. Everywhere I go that I planned I seem to want to be somewhere else. It's been hard to just sit back and enjoy things, so I've had to continue to not plan ahead and have any expectations, which allows my ADD - ridden self enjoy things. There have been a few occasions where I've found myself grinning from ear to ear, fascinated by my surroundings and truly living in the moment. Watching elephants paint masterpieces, taking a cooking class and creating my own Thai curry, and bike riding through the Temples of Angkor have made this journey worthwhile. But once Becca left, I found myself not really trying too hard to meet other people, which makes other experiences kind of boring, since there are places you really can't enjoy solo. It's crazy, because back in NY I savor the times my plans cancel, thrilled to have a moment alone to do something like take a yoga class or just wander aimlessly through the park with Foxy. Here, when im by myself I don't seem to know what to do with myself most of the time. Ive been fortunate to meet a few people, but the times I haven't have made me realize that solo travel isn't really for me anymore. Asia is hard for me to navigate. I get frustrated way too easily. Certain places, like Vietnam, I think i would have despised myself. I luckily hadAdams roomie from college who's been living in Hanoi for the last month to bring me around and navigate through the streets of the Old Quarter. It was wonderful to not have a clue where I was or where I was going, and whether we were looking at Ho Chi Minh's preserved dead body, chilling with locals at a nightclub that I graciously described as a recreation of my high school spring break with the cast of Miss Saigon, or pulling up plastic stools on the sidewalk amongst the locals to eat dishes that i couldnt be positive of their contents, I had a fantastic time exploring northern Vietnam. I loved witnessing the differences between North and South Vietnam, as well as the lovely little towns in between (ok, the one town Hoi An that I went to. I would up skipping all of the rest in lieu of going to Beijing to see the Great Wall and a panda or two, which resulted in a day long fiasco of having to rearrange all of my plans once I realized I didn't have the required visa to enter China but could play around with their 72 hour visa - free scenario. I will say the nicest thing about this trip is really having zero expectations and simply going with things, trying to entertain myself as much as possible and not give any thought as to what I might do once I get home. I've played with driving cross country with Foxy, starting my travel site for real, working part time at Lululemon on smith street, meeting my friend in Spain after his 500 kilometer bike ride from France, or popping over to Seattle since I've never really seen it minus my dinner at the space needle. So since I haven't really provided any highlights from the trip aside from a handful of pictures on Facebook, here's a quick run-down of some of the things I've loved and hated over the past month:

Love:
Angkor wat temples
Authentic Thai food
Masea elephant camp
Night markets everywhere
Getting up close and personal with tigers
Zip lining in Kanchanaburi
Bike riding to the beach in Hoi An
Learning how to eat every food imaginable with chopsticks
Cooking class in Chiang Mai
Eating an entire meal and realizing I only spent $2
Climbing to the highest point in Luang Prabang to watch the sunset
Relaxing one of the most beautiful beaches in the world
Figuring out how to navigate an entire country in under an hour
Singapore Universal Studios!
Going to the Bangkok airport 4 times and refusing to venture into Bangkok
Pizza hut trip in Hanoi!
And most recently, tutti fruitti self serve froyo in saigon!!

Things I could have lived without:
A pathetic attempt at a purse snatching in Kuala Lumpur
Getting ripped off by taxi drivers with rigged meters
Feeling like a walking dollar sign as I walk through any market
Crossing streets in Vietnam. I don't know how I haven't been hit by a motorbike yet, or why they don't believe in traffic lights!
The lack of chocolate everywhere :(
Some of the Thai islands being way too commercial
Missing Breaking Bad and PLL!
Hostels with roaches and lizards crawling around. I'm too old for this!!
A monsoon in Laos that caused a hole in my hotel room
Chinese people. Sadly, mostly all of them traveling. No offense to any of my Chinese friends!
The constant layer of dirt on me at all times the second I walk outside. Mostly in Vietnam. I know NY isn't the cleanest place in the world but this is insanity.

After Saigon I head to Hong Kong and then Beijing, and then home!

Whirlwind Asia adventures

This week has been such a blur there hasn't even been time to attempt to write it all down. I've been in SEAsia for less than a week and it feels like months. We haven't stopped moving since the minute we stepped onto the train at Penn station. After a 24 hour and 20 minute multi-plane ride, we arrived in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. Now I have to say, before I even left the airport I realized the desperate need to make my travel site come to fruition. The notes I had were thrown together bits and pieces from emails from friends who've been to the area, and crossed out itineraries that others informed me made no sense. My vaccination doctor graciously informed me that my trip was backwards since I was in and out of Malaria zones and had to keep going on and off meds (oops).

So we arrive in Phnom Penh, after taking way too many Cambodian Reals from the ATM and finding out they are actually on the US Dollar. We checked into our hotel and went straight to the Killing Fields. Sounds like a somber way to begin a trip, however Cambodia has a sad, recent history of genocide by the Khmer Rouge and the Killing Fields is now a memorial to the 3 million Cambodians who were slaughtered in the late 1970s. It was awful to see up close; I felt terrible for not knowing more about it but truthfully it just want really covered in school. This is part of why I love traveling, learning more about the world and history of different regions. We

went from there into the town centre, found someplace to eat, and then jet lag got the better of us. I'm pretty sure we slept for 18 hours but with the time difference I can't even be sure what time my body assumed it was. We wanted to be refreshed for Angkor Wat, and truthfully since I eat practically nothing, skipping dinner here isn't the worst thing in the world.


In the morning, we flew to Siam Reap, home of the Angkor Wat temples. This was one part of the trip that everyone yelled at me I screwed up. My most trusted travel advisers swore I would need 3 full days in Siam Reap. We had 23 hours, due to mine and Becca's combination of a tight timeframe (until I quit and had all the time in the world) and our ADD. We rented mountain bikes and set off for the temples. Angkor Wat was breathtaking. The temples were spread out for miles, which is where the bikes came in. There was so much attention to deail in the carvings and images, we were in awe. Now I did comment on Facebook that Angkor Wat rivaled Machu Picchu to me. I have to make a correction here. Machu Picchu changed my life. It seems tacky, but I never cared about history or foreign civilizations until the enigma of Machu Pichu was laid out before me after our 4-day adventure where I physically, mentally and emotionally challenged myself, and met my travel guardian angel who opened up my eyes to all the possibilities I has before me but was too blind to see.  It started to downpour while we were there, so we ended up hiding near one of the 'restaurants' I.e. shacks which chickens running around that small Cambodian children assumably killed in the back to serve in our curry dishes. I've heard claims that Cambodian children will melt the heart of even those terrified of children, and safe to say the stories are true.

I fell in love with a 4 year old Cambodian girl who could count from 1 to 10 to show us all of the dirty postcards she had for sale. Becca gave her 5 real - 25 cents more than the asking price -and she ran back to her sister elated at her newfound riches. The smile on her face both made me smile and return but also feel a pang of guilt, because this child was doomed to poverty and 25 cents was really a small fortune to her, and here we are on the other side of the world just taking another extended break from our not do unfortunate lives back home. But I don't think I'll be adopting any Cambodian babies anytime soon, despite my little epiphany that some kids are alright.
We spent the rest of the day riding through muddy puddles from ruin to ruin and exploring the temples. One was where they filmed Lara Kraft Tomb Raider. Another had monkeys on the road there which made me jump off my bike in the middle of the road screaming in joy. I freaking love monkeys and after seeing Cohen's 8000 pictures of every monkey species in all of Asia it finally convinced me I had to go! We loved Angkor Wat, pictures to follow if I ever find a computer.
The rest of Siam Reap was quite nice. We went to the night markets and I had a 'massage' where little fish came and did something along the lines of bite you. I had no idea if this was a good or bad idea but it was $3 and came with a free Coke Zero.
The next day we were off to Kanchanaburi. This place I should have realized was far when the hotel quoted us a price of $180 to have a taxi pick us up at the airport. And no one I know has ever been there except Adam who thinks he has been but isn't really sure and doesn't remember it. We got in a cab ready to go on our 2 hour journey. 4.5 hours later we were still in the car, completely lost, and accidentally drove over the border to Burma. We had arranged to stay the night in a floating hotel, which cost us more than our entire trip combined, but it sounded amazing so we tried in our nonexistent Thai to explain where we were going. Eventually we got dropped off at a dingy dock, where someone called for a canoe to bring us to our hotel boat. We were at the end of the world (I mean, BURMA?!?) but the hotel was pretty and since we were in the middle of nowhere we had to accept it. My debit card didn't work at the airport which was slightly concerning since there was no wifi to contact anyone, but it all got sorted out. We were able to do the Treetop Adventure, which was a series of zip lines/swings/wooden bridges through the woods at the Burmese/Thai border.

The next day of Kanchanaburi we spent hiking through Erawan National Park to the waterfalls, petting tigers at a Tiger Temple, and riding an elephant (reminder to self, google what it means when an elephant vibrates. We're pretty sure he didn't love me sitting on his head like the guy forced me to do for a 'good photo'. We were meant to stay in a tree hotel the second night, but since the 'quaint' town of Kanchaburi was actually larger than the state of NY, we said f it and hopped on a bus back to Bangkok. I have nothing to say about Bangkok because all I've seen of it is the worst traffic in the world and the inside of both airports. Their taxis are pink,  which is great, but I'm fairly certain after the islands I'm going to head straight to Chiang Mai and avoid Bangkok entirely. We are currently in Railay beach which was voted one of the top 10 most beautiful beaches in the world, which it is, but I'm too tired to write about it now. I have to go back to my research on if I should spend the week I had allotted to heading to Kho Tao to get scuba certified, or skip it, hike a bit in Khao Sok national park and add a couple days in Malaysia. Big decisions here. I wish I could stay longer than the 6 weeks! Maybe I can figure something out for after I get back. I wish I hadn't bought this stupid apartment and could just teach English for a while in Buenos Aires, or just keep traveling. Bad move trying to be a grown up :) off to bed, more pristine beaches await us at the Kho Phi Phi islands tomorrow!

It's Official!

Round Two of my world travels is right around the corner! I put in my notice with SHAPE yesterday, and in two weeks I'll be on a flight to Cambodia.  Followed by Thailand, Laos, Vietnam and Hong Kong!  I didn't know if I'd be able to swing doing this again, but after a lot of thought and realization that it was time to part ways with work, my two week vacation got extended.  I'm so excited - it will definitely be shorter than last time but I'm thrilled to finally learn to scuba dive, sleep in a treehouse and visit a tiger temple and elephant camp! 2 years to the day that I came back from South America, I'll be back at the airport starting my next adventure :)

I hope they have llamas in Asia...

...because that's where I'm headed next!  Since I've mostly maxed out South America (minus Venezuela, which I'll get to at some point), it's time to start hitting up a new continent. So in July/August, I'll be heading to Cambodia, Thailand and potentially a third destination. Most likely Laos.  Since planning a trip to this part of the world which I know little about is difficult, it's made me think even more about starting that travel site I've been obsessing over since 2011. One of my travel friends who's also been super invested in the idea has potentially found someone to help build it out. So maybe the next time I plan a trip, it'll be that much easier. In the meantime, Wikitravel and my group of SE Asia backpacker friends will do the trick. Hopefully someone can teach me how to say "I'm allergic to soy" in Thai ;)

Overcoming travel fears

Its been a year and a half, but I'm finally making it back to complete the trip I never finished.  There's been a lot of unfinished travels, of the physical and emotional nature, but I know ill get there someday. Sometimes its just not the right time.

I remember how scared I was after having a knife held to my neck, broad daylight, people mere meters away on the street; yet there I was left behind, a frazzled heap on the floor, empty, robbed and defenseless. Going to Colombia then was a nonoption. I couldn't walk around by myself without jumping if someone so much as made eye contact with me.

Sometimes I think I'm invincible. I was at a point then where I did feel just that. I had no cares, no responsibilities, no restrictions, and no one could touch me. I was proven wrong, but in a way maybe it was a lesson to keep me in check and teach me that I have to pay attention to the world around me.  Now that I'm going back, I'm over my fear of Colombia, hopefully.

My four months were amazing, but I always felt that it was a brief glimpse of more to come. I went through a period of a few months last year where I allowed someone to convince me I could do it again, but longer and on a much larger scale. While everything this person told me was essentially a lie, the one thing that was true was that this is in my future. I don't know when the right time will be, but I feel it coming soon. I have a Google doc that has been updated every day, with tidbits of information of every place around the world I was meant to see. This will continue to be updated until the point in time when the stars align and something happens that allows me to take this journey.  New York is my home, but its never been big enough for me.  There are 1,000 places to see before you die, and I'm nowhere close to crossing them all off. I know, because that too became a Google doc ;)

I suppose the next fear I'll have to overcome is choosing more wisely who I can let convince me of anything and be allowed to join me.

Vive Colombia!

Very exciting news - I'm finally going to finish up the lovely continent of South America next month!  I just booked a trip to Colombia for late February - 10 days in Bogota and Cartagena.  Since I had to cut Colombia out of my initial trip, I've regretted it every day for the year and a half ever since!  I can't wait to go back to my favorite continent in the world!  Last year's vacations got a little bit messy - I had to change and cancel and remake all of my plans, but all worked out for the best since I ended up having a great time in Mexico at one of my best friend's weddings, and then took a small trip to Iceland in December.  Iceland was a really unique place, and contrary to popular belief I only came across two vikings and one Bjork (and she didn't even sing).  I'm going to the NYT travel show this weekend to find out as much as I can about Colombia, and also start gathering research for my (hopeful) trip to Thailand, Vietnam and Cambodia some point in 2013!
Separately, I don't think I ever noted this in here but - the book the Lost Girls - the one that inspired me to take this whole trip in the first place?  Well, it turns out that Amanda Pressner, one of the Lost Girls, actually works at my company!  One of my coworkers saw that I was a Lost Girl of the Week on my Facebook page and made the connection and introduced us.  We went for coffee and talked about both of our trips, and I felt like I was meeting a celebrity since I had read her whole life story and essentially followed in her footsteps.  And I loved that we're both at AMI now, and also both recently bought apartments in Brooklyn Heights!  Such a small world!

Travel Means Freedom

I subscribe to a ton of RSS feeds and blogs.  Skimming through my travel blogs one day, I came across a contest for a book, Travel Means Freedom.  The publishers were looking to create a book with contributions from a travel community, looking for 2-page stories about how travel means freedom to you.

I submitted my entry, Machu Picchu & Me, telling the story about my trek to MP with Becca, and how it opened up my eyes to extended travel and wanting to experience more of what I'd seen, and how a simple 4-day hike in the mountains turned me on to changing everything I knew; quitting my job, giving up my apartment and backpacking through South America.  I found out on Friday that my entry was picked to be in the book!  Which is so exciting, because while I've had a dream of extending my blog and filling in the MANY missing pieces I didn't have time to write about while down there and turning it into a joint book with Becca (From North to South and Somewhere In-Between), I haven't had any time to actually sit down and do this.  So in the interim, until I find the time to actually make this, I'll be able to share a little piece of this amazing experience with the world.

Thank you to the people at Travel Means Freedom for picking me to be a part of this!!
If you want to pre-order the book, here's the link!

http://wegetthere.com/travelmeansfreedom/pre-order/