Natural Nepal: Once is not Enough

A few months ago, I sat at my desk and began trip planning for the months that lay ahead of me. After a beautiful yoga class in Koh Samui, Thailand, I began to wonder if there was a cheap way to do a yoga retreat in Southeast Asia. Of course, there were plenty of yoga resorts that offered retreats for thousands of US dollars (which for the record, I don’t have lying around) and plenty of others that offered weeks or months-long stays (time, which for the record, I didn’t have available) but, while searching options on bookyogaretreats.com, I came across what seemed like the exactly the opportunity I was looking for. A four-night, homestay, yoga retreat in the Kathmandu countryside of Nepal: practice yoga twice daily with Yogi and Brahman, Rajan, who will also lead you on hikes through the jungle and mountains. Plus, get home-cooked, organic meals from his wife and mother as you stay with them like a family in their home. How perfect?! Even better? The price for the entire stay was only $100. Almost $300 cheaper than any other yoga retreat I could find, and with the opportunity to live locally for a few days and be with a family.

Instantly, I called my mom to ask her what she thought about it. My mom traveled to Nepal during her J-term in 1986 with two friends from college. She has always reminisced fondly about her time spent in this beautiful, backward country. Because I knew she had been there and loved it 32 years ago, it made it feel extra special that I stumbled upon this opportunity to visit as well. She obviously thought so too, because as soon as I told her I was thinking about booking the homestay, she started crying on the phone; I knew I had to go.

A month or two later, I was on the plane and on my way! Over the last five months, I have grown very accustomed to tiny and terrible Air Asia planes, so I felt like a princess sitting on a spacious Thai Airways flight! I was spoiled with in-flight entertainment, food, and free drinks– what a luxury! I decided to watch the Disney movie Coco, about a young Mexican boy who wants to be a musician. Like mother, like daughter… I guess we feel touched easily because somehow I found myself wiping away tears after only the first half hour.

Stepping into the Kathmandu airport, I couldn’t help but laugh a little. My mom had warned me that Nepal was so far behind the rest of the world but I had figured, that was 32 years ago and surely it had modernized loads since when she was here. However, even with necessary modernizations, this was still by far the most basic airport I had ever been in. Luckily, I had brought along extra Thai Baht because when I arrived, the only ATM available was out of order and I had to pay $25 for a tourist visa and get money to pay my taxi driver! So, I ended up having to pay the visa fee with my last $25 US dollar bills I had in my wallet and exchange my Thai Baht for Nepal Rupee.

The homestay I was visiting had offered to arrange for a taxi driver to pick me up from the airport and transport me to their home, which I graciously accepted since I had no idea how else I would get there. However, standing outside of the airport, I didn’t see anyone holding a sign with my name, or the homestay family’s name, or anything that looked familiar. I didn’t have any phone service with my Thai SIM card and the airport didn’t even have wifi so I couldn’t send an email or text, so I had no options other than just to wait and trust the system. I was thankful I had arrived in the middle of the day instead of in the middle of the night.

Finally, after about 40 minutes or so, sensing my helplessness from across the street, a driver walked over to ask me what I was waiting for. He introduced himself as Prakash and then lent me his phone to call Rajan at the homestay and figure out where my driver was. Extending his kindness further, he told me to come sit with him across the street and he would help me find my driver. It’s situations like this where one has to just rely on their intuitions. Whenever I am forced to put my trust in a complete stranger, I first listen to whatever gut feeling I’m getting from the person and second think of what my mom has told me (and herself) countless times since I started this journey, “Most people are good people.” So, I went to sit with Prakash and his other friends across the street, and I am still so thankful he approached me to extend his assistance. Right before my plane took off that morning my mom had sent me a text that said, “Nepal will take care of you.” And Prakash did just that. Whenever his other driver friends would come over to pester me and say, “I’ll take you. You can come with me, only 7 dollars,” he would give them a playful shove and tell them to go away; I had a driver coming. Eventually, when my driver did finally show, Prakash asked for a tip for his help which I was happy to give him.

The homestay was perfect from the moment I arrived. I was greeted by some of Rajan’s family on the porch, smiling hellos from other guests staying there, and a visit from the family’s friendly kitty. Situated on the mountain-side, the home consisted of a few different little buildings. Two with guestrooms as well as rooms for Rajan’s family members, one for cooking food, one for eating food, and one for practicing yoga. Rajan and his family take care of everything for their guests and give up most of the space in their homes for their guests’ rooms as well. They are friendly, selfless, kind and loving, and they treat you like part of their family while you stay there. While you are more than welcome to simply come and relax, you are also welcome to join in with some of the family’s daily activities. My first day there I helped Rajan’s father cut onions and bag buckwheat on the roof. Many people enjoy helping Rajan’s wife, Niru, and his mother cook in the kitchen and learn some authentic Nepali recipes (plus some original family recipes!)

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Each day at the homestay has a similar structure:

7:00 AM: Tea time!
Staring the day early, we woke up around seven every morning to a cup of homemade tea. Niru and her mother-in-law made the tea from a collection of their own spices, so it’s one of a kind.

7:30 AM: Neti Pot Time!
Rajan fully believes in the power of the neti pot. If you’ve never heard of one, it’s a little device that resembles a watering can that you stick in one nostril and tilt your head. Then, you let the water run into your nose and out the other nostril to clean out your sinuses. They’re growing in popularity in the U.S. too. I’ve tried it before because my mom has one, and I tried it here too, but I can never get the water to run to the other side and always just end up with a nose full of warm water.

8:00 AM: First Yoga Time!
Yoga classes, both morning and night, always begin and end with three deep breaths followed by Om, a traditional mantra or meditation technique. Rajan explained there are actually three sounds to Om, A – OO – MMM. Om is known as the universal sound because the vibration the sound makes represents the movement of everything around you in nature. “Like a bee buzzing,” said Rajan. Then we sang “Shanti, shanti, shanti,” which means peace. Here is an example of the mantra sang one way, but it is a little different than how Rajan teaches it.

Then, Rajan will lead you through a series of long yoga positions and stretches: warming up your muscles, faces, eyes, everything. The middle is marked by a few rounds of sun salutations, taught slightly different than what I’ve become accustomed to in flow classes back in the U.S. Then, he leads you through some balances or strength positions, sometimes helping you with more difficult headstands before you end with some meditation and breathing exercises again. Some of Rajan’s breathing techniques were very new to me. One, in particular, was interesting that involved closing one nostril while you inhaled through the other, then switching and exhaling through the opposite. Depending which nostril you inhaled or exhaled through, Rajan said you could make your body feel warmer or colder just by breathing this way. The whole class ends up usually lasting 1.5-2 hours.

9:30 AM: Breakfast Time!
Breakfast is the one meal of the day that differed from other meals the most. Niru and Rajan’s mother are fabulous cooks, and you will never go hungry here with Niru always popping in the door to make sure everyone has had seconds or thirds, of everything they want. Most of the meals are prepared with ingredients fresh from the family gardens and all meals are organic and vegetarian. Before eating, Niru always gets beckoned by the guests to come sing the mantra. I videotaped it the final day, and although I never got the hang of all the words, I always enjoyed hearing Niru sing it before we ate the food she so lovingly prepared for us. In the video, you can also hear Rajan’s version of “Om Shanti Shanti Shanti” at the end of the mantra.

Some of our breakfast meals consisted of: Riki kur (potato/flour pancake) with chutney (paste/sauce with Indian spices), a flat pancake topped with honey, beetroot paratha (flatbread), and always a side of fruit (bananas, apples, watermelon, Japanese melon) and tea. Niru’s beetroot paratha was one of the best things I ate during my entire stay.

Riki kur, chutney and fruits. The green one is the “Japanese melon” Rajan grows them in the garden but didn’t really know what they were. They tasted like a melon-tomato cross.

11:00 AM: Hiking Time!
After you let your stomach settle for a little while, Rajan will lead you on a hike through the jungle and mountains in the surrounding areas. Rajan knows lots of different trails and sights and does his best to lead everyone somewhere new most days. The hikes I got to go one were to:

1. The Monkey God temple
   The hike starts out steep but isn’t long and Rajan leads you through the jungle on the way back down. A holy man lives at the temple on the top of the mountain here, and I talked to him about his pet dogs for a little while.
   

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2.  Waterfall in the forest
   We spent a good hour lounging in the sunshine next to the waterfall after a quick dip in the cold, refreshing water. This is also where I picked out a rock to make into a necklace back at the homestay!
   

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3. Vajrayogini Temple (I think…)
   The longest of the hikes by far, an 18km trek up the mountain, down the mountain, through the Sankhu valley, and up another mountain to a temple at the top. This hike was HARD. Steep climbs with lots and lots of stairs uphill, but worth it. It feels good on your muscles and there’s plenty of opportunities to take breaks and catch your breath. Plus, passing women carrying heavy baskets full of wheat and hay from their heads will make you reevaluate just how tired you really are.
   

   

   

   

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   On the stairs going up the final mountain, you’ll pass a sacrificial area at a smaller temple about halfway to the top. When we passed, a sacrifice of chickens was happening and a stream of blood was flowing from the sacrifice. I was so focused on marching forward that I barely even stopped to process what was happening (probably for the better) but on the way back down, after the ritual was done, I took more notice of the smell of iron and red stained stones surrounding the area. At the top temple, there was also a goat tied tightly to a post in the middle of a town square-like area and Rajan said that goat was also most likely being prepared for sacrifice as well.
   

   

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4. There is a small family of monkeys that live at this mountaintop temple, and you can buy cookies to feed them in order to increase your good karma, which we did. Before heading back down we were also blessed by the holy man, but that of course came with a price in order to receive your good merit.
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1:30 PM: Lunch Time!
After hiking, lunch will be ready for you to devour as soon as you get back! Lunch always consisted of chapati and daal baht (unleavened flatbread and lentil soup with rice) with some pickled or curried vegetables (potatoes, cauliflower, green beans…) and, of course, tea.

Chapati (already ate oops), daal baht, and veggies

2:15 PM: Rest Time!
The time between lunch and evening yoga is time to rest, read, or explore as you wish. I did all of these on different days. One day I napped, one day I read in the yard with the cat, one day I fell asleep in the sunshine on the roof of the house, and one day a few of us decided to take the local bus into the neighboring town of Bhaktapur to visit. You have to pay $15 USD to enter the city, which seemed a little steep but I hadn’t spent money on anything else the entire week so I figured, why not? It was fun getting to be in a city, as I had spent a lot of time in the countryside up until this point. Bhaktapur is still recovering from destruction from the 2015 earthquakes, but you can still see some of the famous temples and go some souvenir shopping. We basically walked the city in a giant loop.

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We stopped for drinks and snacks at a little coffee shop where I got to try beef momos (dumplings) [Correction: These dumplings were actually Buff momos, made from Buffalo Meat as eating beef is regarded as a crime. Thanks to the reader who corrected me!] that were absolutely delicious. I could’ve gone for some more of those, oh wow.

Momos

It was quite an experience riding the local bus. The way there we had to stand, packed like sardines, for the 20-minute ride into the city. On the way back, we sat for awhile on one bus before being asked to move to a different one because the drivers wanted passengers who were traveling farther away so they would have to pay a bit more. Our tickets were only something like 15 rupees.

5:30 PM: Tea Time!

6:00 PM: Second Yoga Time!
Getting ready for the nightly yoga, the routine followed the morning class almost exactly. Rajan is an incredibly experienced yogi, and his classes are not easy, but he encourages everyone to listen to their own bodies and since I was always the most inflexible one in class, that’s just what I did. Luckily, although I’m not highly experienced at yoga, I’ve taken enough classes to know some of my own limitations and modifications so I was able to keep up without a lot of struggle.

8:00 PM: Dinner (and a movie) Time!
After yoga, the night always ends with everyone having dinner together again. Our dinners were fantastic, and always just a little different from the last. We had: Pulau (coconut, date basmati rice dish), gundruk (fermented leafy greens), curd (sweet yogurt), chapti and daal baht, ladyfingers (okra), and kitchari (lentils, rice, butter, spices).

Pulau with veggies and daal

My third night there, Rajan’s nephew had an idea to set up a white sheet and projector in the yoga studio so we could sit on the floor and watch a movie while we ate dinner! The whole family and all of us guests got pretty excited about it so we ended up watching After Earth with Will Smith the first night and liked the idea so much, we did it again the next night and watched The Terminal with Tom Hanks. Both nights, Niru made a giant batch of popcorn for us to share. You can imagine my excitement; popcorn is my favorite food ever. Even Niru’s popcorn tasted Nepali, it was perfect.

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The entire homestay was everything I hoped for and so much more. You really feel at home here with Rajan’s entire family. From playing games with his son in the yard to learning Nepali words from his dad on the front porch, they’ve done a beautiful job of making their guests feel comfortable in their home.

In my bedroom, there was one simple poster that hung on the way from the Nepali tourism department that said, “Natural Nepal: Once is not Enough.” I was sad to leave, but if there’s one thing I realized from my short stay in Nepal, it’s that once definitely wasn’t even close to enough. Of all the incredible places I’ve traveled, Nepal is first on my list of places I feel the strongest desire to go back to and spend more time in. Truthfully, I’m already mentally working on planning a trip to come back with my mom in the near future so we can experience it together finally. So, to both Nepal and Rajan and his amazing family, Thank you, and I hope to see you again soon!

You Can See the Stars in Bali

Although I knew it would be a short, fast trip, Gabby and I decided to squeeze in a weekend trip to Bali. I had heard from so many other travelers how much they loved Bali, and after being recommended a sunrise volcano hike that sounded incredible, I knew I had to add it to my list.

At the airport, I couldn’t help noticing that out of all the countless flights I had taken in the last five months, this one would definitely be the one with the most westerners so far. So many backpackers headed from Thailand to Bali… I don’t know why I was surprised. Getting cheap flights involved also getting oddly timed flights, so we arrived in Bali at 1 a.m. on Thursday and went straight to our hostel in Seminyak. There were a few too many loud, drunk, messy Europeans there for my taste, but I tried my best to sleep as long as possible.

The next morning, Gabby and I woke up and got ready to spend some time on the beach! A short walk later, we followed some signs for the “Potato Head Beach Club.” We had to get our bags checked by various security personnel three times and ask “where is the beach” twice, but we somehow ended up at this super nice, beachside resort with an infinity pool and bar and restaurant. After a couple hours lying on the beach and playing in the giant waves, we went back to the club and had some drinks in the pool. It was a relaxing afternoon.

 

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After showering and getting changed (we were covered in sand in every single place possible), we took a long walk to the beach in the other direction of the hostel; I really wanted to catch the sunset over the Indian Ocean. We got there right in time, and it was breathtakingly beautiful. There were tons of people enjoying the beauty and water and sun, and dogs were running everywhere and playing. We sat on the beanbags at a little beachside bar and had a Bintang (the local beer) and once the sun went down, I smiled to myself as I watched the stars begin to shine through the leftover light. Bali has stars! We took a motorcycle back to the hostel, I was so tired at this point I wasn’t even sure I’d make it to my bed.

 

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It was a good thing I went to sleep so early because the next morning was our sunrise volcano hike, which I was so excited about! However, we’d have to wake up at 1 a.m. to be driven to the base of the volcano so we could start our hike at 4 a.m. I slept most of the car ride there and then was blessed with the greatest cup of coffee ever at the meeting point at the base of Mount Batur. Around 4, we began our trek up the volcano. I had been expecting it to be a pretty easy hike, but it really was tough! It was disorienting hiking in the pitch dark with nothing but the glow of our flashlights. However, the entire hike up to the top, the main issue was that I kept tripping over my own feet because I couldn’t stop staring straight up. THE STARS!! Between clouds, city lights, and pollution in Bangkok, I hadn’t seen stars like that in months. It was incredible. I would go back to Bali just to see more of those stars. It made me so excited to be able to see skies like that every night again back in Wisconsin. The higher we hiked the more unstable I felt as well. I was so happy once we reached the top.

 

It was surprisingly cold at the top. I was shivering, but we got there right in time to see the sun pop over the top. As it got later, I looked down at the town we started at two hours before and realized just how high we had walked. I also noticed there was a lake at the bottom… it was so dark when we started I didn’t even know there was a lake. We got some bananas, a tangerine, a banana sandwich and hard boiled eggs for breakfast at the top. Plus, took tons of pictures and warmed up over the hot steam seeping out from the ground.

 

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The hike down was tedious as the gravel/pebble pathway slipped with each step I took. I could feel my muscles tensing as I tried to hold back and take each step slowly and carefully, all my legs wanted to do was run down as fast as possible. Eventually, I gave up being careful and did just that for the last mile down the trail. It was the most freeing feeling, just flying down the trail as fast as I wanted to. Running downhill made the uphill a little more worth it (I finally understand some of my mom’s #OneBlessing running tweets. However, I still have to get on board with the “running the uphills” part of the deal.)

 

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We napped on the van ride back to our hostel, finished checking out, grabbed some coffee and tacos for lunch, then took a Grab to our next hostel, in Ubud. Our next hostel was an absolute dream. Our bunk beds were almost the size of double beds, there was a pool and yoga and breakfast included in the morning, plus a great little cafe attached… I was in love. We spent the whole rest of the day lounging by the pool in the sunshine, and I began (and finished a few days later) reading The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.

 

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The next morning, we woke up for our 7 a.m. yoga class near the pool. My muscles were stiff and sore from the long hike yesterday, so yoga felt great. After a complimentary breakfast, we ordered a Grab to take us to the Tegallalang rice terraces. We watched tourists pay to swing on giant swings that hung over the edge of the terraces and walked around in the heat for awhile. But, we were both sore from our hike the day before and already worn out from the sun, so we didn’t stay much longer than to just see what the place was all about.

 

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Getting a Grab is relatively difficult in Bali. It seems the local taxi services have formed a  type of mafia and are out to discover and ruin Grab drivers. I’m not perfectly certain of the details, but there are areas that Grab drivers will refuse to pick up tourists out of fear or local taxi drivers that might be nearby. And often they will message you multiple times to make sure you don’t have too many bags, are waiting exactly where you entered your location, haven’t told anyone you ordered a Grab, and will get in the car as soon as they show up. I don’t know what happens to a Grab driver if they are discovered, but it seems very serious. So, that being said, we were unable to get a Grab from the rice terraces to the waterfall, where we wanted to go next, because of how many local taxi businesses were surrounding the area. I let Gabby take the reins negotiating with the local taxi drivers for a price to the Tegenungan waterfall. I hate negotiating, I’m so uncomfortable with it, I have no poker face and I cave or get freaked out way too easily… Gabby does a much better job than me with it. But the drivers we were talking to were friendly and not intimidating which made the process a lot easier. After some discussion, we managed to talk a driver into taking us for a reasonable price, as well as agree to drop us off at our hostel again when we were done. Compared to some of the beautiful waterfalls I had seen in Thailand, this waterfall’s water wasn’t nearly as clear or blue or beautiful, although it was large, powerful and impressive.

 

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Afterward, we had another chill afternoon of reading, tanning and swimming at the hostel pool. I was starting to understand why so many people chose Bali to do absolutely nothing but vacation at. It’s a beautiful place to lounge.

Our last morning in Bali, we decided to walk down the Monkey Forest Sanctuary. It’s a large space with tons of monkeys, that are noticeably less pesky than the ones in Lop Buri, I might add.

 

We practically had another full day in Ubud, since our flight wasn’t until 9 p.m. that night. So we spent it relaxing and doing some window shopping before getting a Grab to the airport. I know there’s so much more left to explore in Indonesia, and I left feeling like it was a place I could see myself needing to come back to in order to really feel I’ve experienced the real thing. But, for now, Bali you served as a perfect vacation from my loooong trip that has been studying abroad. So, thanks for allowing for naps in the sun and beautiful morning hikes, it was just what I needed.

From North to South: 11 Days in Vietnam

The Thai New Year (Songkran) provided me a good two-week break from my classes mid-April, and almost all of my friends already had previous plans: traveling with family or boyfriends or solo travel plans. So, after some research, I decided to book a tour through Vietnam. I ultimately decided to do a Geckos Adventure, 11-day Vietnam tour as it was one of the cheapest options, and I’d be traveling with only other 18-29 year-olds. Although I kind of felt like I was cheating my adventurous-self by not doing the trip alone, I knew the saved cost and stress of figuring out transportation between each city and accommodations was worth it, and I was excited to get to travel with and meet a whole new group of young travelers like myself. Plus, as well as being cheaper than most tours, Gecko Adventures makes a point to use local guides and take its travelers to local restaurants/tourist locations to make sure your money is going to reliable and sustainable places that will help local economies, which I liked.

The weekend before leaving, I spent in Bangkok celebrating Songkran. During Songkran, tourists and locals alike flood the streets with water guns and hoses and white, clay paint as a way to wash away the misfortunes of the past year. I was overjoyed that my good friend Sam Ness happened to land in Bangkok right before Songkran to begin his few weeks of touring in Southeast Asia. So, I spent most of the afternoons at the water fights and most of the evenings at whatever bar Sam was playing at that night. Plus, I was happy to get the chance to get to try lots of great restaurants in the area throughout the weekend.

Ready for Songkran!

Haven’t had delicious pasta like this in MONTHS. I was in heaven!

Fried seabass, egg, vegetable roll and grilled veggies for breakfast.

Churros and hot chocolate ohhh myyyy.

A caesar salad wrap!

Sam Ness in Bangkok!

Gabby and I after Songkran

The night before I left for Vietnam, I couldn’t sleep a wink at the hostel. Not only was I a little worried about making sure I had everything I needed in order, there was an older Korean woman sleeping in the bunk below me that was snoring so loudly. My flight was at 6:30 am, so I had to leave for the airport by 3:30. By 2 a.m., I still hadn’t been able to sleep due to the snoring below me so I just packed up my stuff and decided I was pulling an all-nighter. Thankfully, I checked my ticket once more before I left for the airport because I was getting ready to order a Grab to the Suvarnabhumi airport when really my flight was out of Don Mueang! With that big mistake thankfully avoided, I arrived at the airport way too early and napped for a few minutes here and there on the bench as I waited for my flight.

Hanoi:

Our tour began in the capital city of Hanoi. When I arrived it was rainy, and I was absolutely exhausted. The currency (Vietnamese Dong) was so confusing because everything was in the hundreds of thousands. After getting money out of the ATM, I freaked out a little when I typed 2,000,000 dong into my currency converter app and typed an extra 0 and thought I had taken out $800 USD worth of dong instead of $80. My taxi driver was a little confused where my hotel was and ended up dropping me off a few blocks away, so I had to lug my suitcase down the road and around the corner in the rain.

I was so tempted to just sleep in my bed the entire afternoon. But, I only had one day in Hanoi and so instead I forced myself to grab my camera and my backpack and explore the city. Right around the corner from my hotel was a little, local market that had some very interesting smells and sights. As I was walking through, something at a little, meat vendor down the road caught my eye and made me sick to my stomach. It was the type of meat they were selling. Standing across the road, wearing my “Dog Mom” hat, I stared with my chin dropped as I watched a lady with an entire roasted dog selling bits and pieces to some others in line. I had always thought the jokes about eating dog and cat were just terribly offensive and racist jokes insensitive people who knew nothing said (Don’t get me wrong, they still are.) But, it didn’t really even dawn on me that people might actually eat and sell dog openly. Being the world’s biggest dog lover, I was so traumatized by this and spent the rest of my afternoon with it on my mind (I couldn’t eat anything until almost 6 p.m. that day.) Worried I’d encounter this commonly for the next two weeks, I did some research and learned that eating dog is really only a thing in northern Vietnamese cities, mostly in Hanoi. Plenty of people go their entire trips without encountering it at all, I just got unlucky and was in the wrong place at the wrong time. The more I thought about it, the more I tried to reason that it’s a very different culture and to many people, it’s no different than eating pig or cow or sheep. But I couldn’t help thinking about it every time I saw someone with a cute pet puppy around the city.

I don’t know if it was the dead dog or the rain or almost being killed by motorbikes everywhere I walked or the person I saw sitting on the side of the road bleeding out from his hand or simply the nasty smells I caught so often as I walked down the street, but Hanoi was the first city I’ve visited in my entire four months in Southeast Asia that I can truly say I disliked and would never want to go back to. Something about it felt off to me. The people didn’t come off as friendly, the streets were practically unwalkable due to size, upkeep, trash and crazy driving… it just wasn’t the place for me.

However, its redeeming factor for me was that the day I got there happened to be graduation day for the universities in Hanoi, so streets that were typically full of cars and bikes were blocked off for the activities and there was tons of families and games and music. This made for a great opportunity to take photos: lots of great expressions and action. I saw some dance crews making K-Pop dance cover videos, children playing with bubbles and balls, couples walking along the lake, parents driving their kids in tiny, remote-controlled cars, and graduates taking hundreds and hundreds of photos with their graduating classes. Everyone seemed to really be enjoying themselves and their families, and that almost made up for everything else I disliked about the city for a little while. I had decided to do my finally photography class project on Vietnamese culture, and Hanoi really saved my project because my professor liked my photos of the people so much! So for that, I am grateful for this city.

I met with my Gecko group for the first time that night at the hotel. There would be 12 of us: me, two paramedics from New Zealand, my roommate from England, one other American girl from LA, a Canadian, and the rest were Australians. The local tour guide for our trip was a middle-aged Vietnamese man named Phat. He called our group the “Phat Boy Slim Group!”  (Always with an exclamation point.) We all went out to dinner together and, although I still hadn’t slept in over 30 hours and I was running on fumes, decided to join everyone else on the walk over to a jazz bar to get to know each other a little better. I slept like a log that night, nothing could’ve woken me up.

Halong Bay:

We woke up around 7 a.m. the next morning for our bus ride to Halong Bay. I was most excited for this part of the trip as we’d get to spend the night on a boat on the bay tonight. After about 3.5 hours on our private minibus (I slept soundly the entire first half), we arrived at the Halong Bay piers and boarded our cruise boat for the night. I was so surprised by how nice it was! I had been expecting to kind of rough it in hard bunk beds or something, but our cabins were big with the comfiest bed I’d felt in months.

We had the entire boat for just the 12 of us and a chef and bartender on board with us. We cruised the bay all day and stopped to visit a cave and a beach, and we were fed lunch, dinner, and breakfast on board — all absolutely delicious! We spent the evening enjoying the sunset from the top deck and then playing circle of death and drinking some beers before all heading to bed. I had a fantastic nights sleep, once again.

Halong beer, Pork, rice, oysters, tofu, spring rolls and more!

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One odd moment happened while exploring the Sung Sot cave. A man, who I believe was another local tour guide for a different group (but I could be wrong), asked me where I was from. I told him I was from the U.S. and he replied, “Congrats. You just dropped 200 missiles on Syria.” Luckily, I didn’t quite hear him (someone else nearby repeated it for me), because I would’ve had no idea how to respond.  While I understand that Donald Trump is not the best face for global relations for our country and that shines a negative light on all Americans’ intelligence and compassion, I also sarcastically had to joke around with my tour mates later that of course, it was me who had a quick phone call with Trump that morning to give him the go on dropping the missiles. Personally, yes, that entire attack was my decision, and I did it all while in Vietnam– I am very powerful.

In the morning a group of us woke up early again to go kayaking around the bay. I was ultimately so happy we woke up early because we got the bay to ourselves for a few hours before the other groups of tourists began their kayaking tours as well.

While Halong Bay was no doubt beautiful: the islands seemed to go on forever and we saw some amazing white jellyfish and the water was a vivid turquoise, it also made me really sad to see how many tourist cruise boats were allowed there every single day. While kayaking, I saw trash and the effects of pollution everywhere. Ironically, on our kayak tour, we stopped at a cave called Virgin Cave (because “it is beautiful like a virgin,” according to Phat) and I saw a Durex condom wrapper floating along the shore. Seeing the obvious effects of tourism on such a naturally beautiful place made me feel guilty for being there and contributing to its demise. I hope the Vietnamese government starts to regulate the use and destruction of Halong Bay more soon in order to keep it a naturally beautiful spot in Vietnam.

Hue:

From Halong Bay, we took the bus back to Hanoi with a little time to get snacks and dinner before our first overnight train adventure to Hue. Once again, I was pleasantly surprised by the condition of the train! The cabin was small but it seemed clean enough, we had all prepared for worse. However, the A/C was blasting all night, and I was the level of cold where I would wake up because my muscles were so tense from shivering, even with three layers on, so I was very happy to get off the train that morning.

The rest of the group had decided to do a bus tour of Hue from a local guide since, you guessed it, we only had one day in the city. I decided to come along too because I figured if everyone else was, I might as well too. Our guide was nice and knowledgeable, and we toured a local market, got to see conical hats and incense being made, saw some American war bunkers and one of the Nyguen dynasty king’s tombs, we walked through the Imperial City and, highlight of the day, got to eat lunch made by a local family in the citadel.

Handmade incense sticks

All of the feasts that had been given to us as part of the tour so far had been incredible. This family also was making their own homemade, “medical” rice wine, which we were told a shot of would make us big and strong (“like the king with 500 wives” we had learned about today, according to our guide) But all it really made any of us accomplish was a whole lot of coughing and choking — it tasted about as good as it looks.

Fried morning glory, meat, rice, soups, and more!

Local Huda beer

Rice wine

It was interesting learning a little more about the impacts of the Vietnam war on this part of the country. Hue, being close to the border between North and South Vietnam had strong American soldier influence during the war. Our tour guide specifically said these soldiers were there to “protect the border against the North.” He also made a point to mention that in Vietnam, they let bygones be bygones and try to “forgive but never forget.” It was hard to tell if he was saying this because he truly believed it or because he was an educated tour guide who knew his tours consisted mainly of Westerners who feel good hearing that their harmful actions have fewer consequences than they truly do. At the base of the king’s tomb stood a large temple that we were not allowed to enter– work crews were just beginning to clean and restore it from bombing during the war. In the Imperial City, we could see bases of buildings that once stood but were wiped out from bombs. Our guide also pointed out the bullet holes in the stone walls around us. It’s beyond humbling being in a place where an entire country is still recovering from destruction your own country participated in and knowing back home a majority of the U.S. citizens’ lives aren’t affected in the least.

Temple with bomb destruction from war

 

Hoi An:

We took our private little bus from Hue to Hoi An, stopping at pretty views and sites along the drive. We also stopped in Da Nang for banh mi, a vietnamese baguette with veggies and bbq meat and chili sauce, at a local bakery.

Oyster Habitat at Rest Stop

Da Nang Beach

Overlook Rest stop

Overlook Rest stop

After checking into our new hotel, we walked around the city for a little while. Hoi An had a great feel to it. All the buildings were yellow and blue and color surrounded me everywhere. There were tons of fun, artsy shops lining the streets. Although it was hard to ignore that the town was obviously catered to tourists like me, I liked that the town made for amazing photography opportunities.

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While taking photos that day, two ladies with their fruit baskets saw me and stepped in front of my lens and smiled. I smiled at them and began to walk away, but before I could turn they had their fruit basket on my shoulder, tea hat on my head, and took my camera right from my hands! Of course, after snapping my (unwanted) photo they asked me to buy some fruit. Deciding to be nice, I told them I’d take some bananas… which they wanted to charge me 200,000 dong (almost $8 USD) for! After some back and forth, I finally handed over 150,000 and walked away thinking these had better be the best damn bananas in the world.

One of the great things about the city is the plethora of tailors available everywhere — and they work quickly, cheaply, and efficiently. I decided to have a nice skirt made for me.  Phat recommended a place called Blue Eye and after doing some comparison price shopping I decided to go there. My tailor’s name was Ann, and she was the sweetest person in all of Hoi An. I wasn’t sure what exactly made me decide I wanted it, but I think I was inspired by all the beautiful, bold color in the city. I got to pick my design, length, fabric, and pattern; I got to add pockets and they sized me to make the skirt fit perfectly. In under 24 hours, my skirt was made just for me! As I was paying, Ann asked me, “Are you happy?” I told her I was very happy. She said, “Good, if you happy, I’m happy.” 10/10 for customer service and for making me a beautiful skirt I can take home with me to remember Hoi An.

The next morning, I wanted to wake up before sunrise to take photos of the town without the hoards of tourists. It was a great decision. My friend Haley got up with me and the two of us walked down to the river. Although the sunrise itself wasn’t super colorful, it was fantastic seeing the town with just the locals awake with us. We were greeted by everyone with smiles or waves and able to actually get photos of the town without anyone in the way.

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The rest of the group was paying for a $25 biking tour through the local village, but, in an effort to save some money, Haley and I decided to rent bikes from the hotel for $1 and explore the countryside. I can honestly say this was one of the happiest moments of my entire trip — freely exploring such an incredibly beautiful place. We passed a man lounging on his water buffalo along the side of the road and stopped to take a photo. Before we knew it, he had Haley on his buffalo and me following soon after. Of course, like my favorite banana ladies, we had to pay him for our involuntary participation but it’s ok, my $5 goes much further for him than for me. Haley and I biked through some rice paddies and through a little fishing village down to the beach and then back. We were sunburnt and soaked in sweat by the end, but very happy too. That afternoon we shopped a little and found Bahn Mi Queen, the world’s best bahn mi shop. I do not say this lightly. This was possibly the best sandwich I have ever had in my life. I mean it, my mouth is watering just thinking about it.

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Although I loved Hoi An, it’s a small town and besides shopping or biking, there wasn’t a ton to do. I was happy for all the picturesque photo opportunities and happy to do a little souvenir shopping, but by the time it was ready to catch our next overnight train out of the city we were ready to move on as well.

Nha Trang:

Even though Phat had warned us many times that the second overnight train would not be as nice as the first, I was slightly horrified when I first walked into our cabin. The beds had obviously been slept in before us and the sheets were definitely not cleaned. But the worst part, our cabin had a mosquito infestation. I thought Haley’s top bunk was covered in little pieces of fuzz when I first walked in there were so many mosquitos covering the mattress. One of the other girls on the tour gave me a bottle of bug spray and warned me, “be careful — it’s really strong.” But I was a girl on a mission to not sleep in a swarm of bloodsuckers all night. So, with Haley on the top bunk, I closed the cabin doors and just began spraying everywhere. I made clouded the entire tiny room. It wasn’t until I could taste it going down my throat (yes, I know how unhealthy that is and I’m sure I took a few years off my life) that I finally stopped and opened the door — bad choice. My cloud escaped into the hallway and the rest of our train carriage complained for the next twenty minutes about how bad it smelled. Oops…

On the bright side, I killed all the mosquitos…

When we arrived in Nha Trang that morning, we had about twenty minutes to change and freshen up then it was on to our snorkeling tour. The tour included a visit to a local island as the first stop. This was kind of weird to me, to just walk through local villages as a giant tour group. It felt like we were taking advantage of people just living their everyday life. I feel weird walking through a local street with a tour guide explaining how the local people live, right in front of the local people. It’s a very odd way to distinguish that there are differences in how we are all raised, and it made me uncomfortable. I enjoyed many aspects of the tour, but these types of activities were one of the things I despised. It’s one thing to explore a local village on your own, but to have a guide walk you through one makes it feel too much like watching other humans in a zoo. We did stop briefly at a little daycare center and the children were really excited to see us. One little girl held my hand and stroked my nail polish, she was so intrigued by the color, I wished I could’ve sat there and painted all their little nails.

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We snorkeled and swam in the water for a while in the early afternoon then had lunch and drinks on the boat. I was amazed at the amount of food they could cook for us right on our small, basic boat. And it ended up being one of the tastiest meals I had the entire trip! All of our drinks and cocktails were included in the price of the tour, so two others and I decided to get the most out of what we paid for and took advantage of the free beer. We spent about an hour just floating in the water, drinking beer and cocktails and enjoying the sun while everyone else napped on the boat or did some more snorkeling. This goes down as the second moment of pure bliss I had this trip — I was a little buzzed, I was with great, hilarious people, and I’m always happy when I’m in or near the water.

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The next day, we decided to spend the day at the mud baths, which is supposed to be a big thing in Nha Trang. It was an odd experience… You start by going into the mud bath, which is warm and grainy. It felt strange to willingly pour it all over myself. After soaking in the mud, you sit in the sun and let it dry on you, then you wash it off. After the mud, you have a few sessions in different warm, mineral water pools and hot tubs and such. We ended up spending most of the afternoon here. The mud is supposed to have magic healing powers. It’s also supposed to make your skin feel really soft… I’m not sure it had either of these effects on me, but hey — I’ll do anything once.

That night, before our next overnight train adventure (which I was dreading after the previous one) we decided to get something for dinner close to the hotel. Phat recommended a vegetarian place across the street and told us he’d come with us and order us the best meal. Oh wow… I saw the first plate coming out and almost stood up and walked out. Nothing but a pile of bitter vegetables I didn’t recognize with a pile of oddly flavored tofus on top of some white rice. Everything was cold; I’m sure it was cooked hours ago, and it was so so not tasty. None of us finished even half of our plates, besides Phat — he ate everything. We walked down to a bakery a few blocks away (for the second time today) to get a second dinner.

Ho Chi Minh City: 

I didn’t really have big expectations for Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon). I had read it was chaotic and dizzying and truthfully didn’t think it would be much different from other cities I had been too, so I was pleasantly surprised by how much I liked Saigon! We arrived super early in the morning, but unfortunately, we couldn’t all check into our own rooms to sleep because check-in wasn’t until the afternoon. So, Phat walked us over to a local bakery and we got some breakfast and coffee.

I had been somewhat lazy with exploring the last few days, I really didn’t end up seeing much of Nha Trang, so I had done my usual research and a little planning for HCMC to give me optimal adventure and photo time in the city. Opting out of the $40 tour of the Chu Chi tunnels, I decided to spend the morning at the War Remnants Museum instead. Of course, this was a difficult museum to spend the day in, being an American and all. It was interesting seeing the war we know as “The Vietnam War” as “The American War” instead.

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The exhibits made little mention of America being teamed up with Southern Vietnam against Northern Vietnam, instead of making it clear that the history is rewritten that the war was the U.S.A. versus Vietnam. There was one room dedicated to MAG (Mines Advisory Group) on the efforts being made to clear up areas affected by unexploded landmines, which did shine a light on the U.S. attempting to reconcile the past. Still, I often wished I had my dad with me while I was looking through the rooms to help me understand how much influence Vietnam’s government might have on how the stories of the war are told here today. Either way, it was impossible to ignore the destruction we caused by participating in the Vietnam War. One room, in particular, made that clear: an entire exhibit dedicated to the effects of Agent Orange, the herbicide we spread across the country. The effects of agent orange have caused cancer, death, mental retardation and physical deformations you can’t even imagine — but you don’t have to at this museum because they have pictures to show you. And, unfortunately, agent orange is not just harming those alive during the war, but effects have been found in children two generations after those originally impacted.

I actually teared up reading a letter one second-generation agent orange victim wrote to President Obama when he was elected into office. Would someone even bother writing that letter to President Trump today? What’s the use when he’s already decided “shithole countries” don’t deserve his help or time?

After the museum, a group of girls came with me to visit a place I had been recommended by some other friends: A nine-story apartment building that used to house military officials had been converted into nine floors of cafes, art galleries, boutiques, and bakeries. We had fun exploring all nine floors before deciding to hit up a burger shop on the third floor to sit and enjoy some A/C for awhile.

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After some time cooling off in the hotel, I was joined by some others to explore a market and park nearby — with my camera in hand, of course, since I was still frantically working on my final photography project.

I found the market quite amusing. It was absolutely packed and every vendor was selling basically the same things. As we walked through the aisles we were hounded with people peaking around the corner and calling out, “Hello miss, you buy?” or “What you look at?” “You want t-shirt?” We couldn’t walk past anyone without having something called out at us. I couldn’t help but laugh at the whole thing. It was like celebrities trying to walk down the red carpet past the paparazzi.

The park was beautiful. I stopped for awhile to watch a game going on that was something like a mix of badminton and hacky-sack. I don’t know what the name was, but it was impressive to watch! Then, I stopped to photograph a group of men playing badminton nearby. After a while of watching them, they approached us and asked if we wanted to play with them during their water break. Seeing we weren’t very good, they set up another net just for us and lent us some rackets so we could play too. It was a perfect way to kill a few hours, and the men were so kind.

On the walk back to the hotel, I noticed a group of younger adults and teens sitting around in a circle smiling nervously at us from a distance. I had seen that face before many times here in Thailand; it is the “I’m about to ask you to speak with me in English and I’m very nervous so please be nice” look. I’ve gotten it by students practicing their English or working on an assignment in malls, grocery stores, restaurants, temples, you name it. Sure enough, a few of them approached us and told us that they all met in the park sometimes to practice English, and they wondered if we’d come talk with them for a while. We were in no rush, so we agreed and sat and talked about where we are from, where we had been, our favorite foods and more. They said most of the time when they try to ask tourists to come talk to them, the travelers cross the road or keep their eyes down; they act like they are going to be mugged! When we got up to leave, they were so appreciative we stopped that they gave us each a little paper fan to take home with us as thank you gifts. Of course, we had to take a group photo for their Facebook page too.

That evening we all went out for one last dinner as a group and went to some of the nearby bars to dance. Luckily, I was still able to get to bed early!

The next morning, the final day of the tour, a few of us met up for a brunch, then got ready to explore again. I had read about a military resale market I wanted to check out nearby. This was a very interesting find. Everything from old combat boots to old wartime journals and random bundles of family photographs, along with as much hardware, screws, bolts, nails and tools you could ever want, was sold here. I couldn’t figure out the authenticity or value of some of these items… If they were really from the war, why were they being sold in this little, sketchy warehouse instead of being displayed at a museum?

Then I walked us over to this street that was supposed to be an art market. However, when we got there all we found was a street of old antique shops that were of no interest to any of us. Oops! Deciding we were already hot and tired so there was no reason to turn around now, we took a long walk to the Notre Dame Cathedral and stopped along the way to do some souvenir shopping (I’m adding in here that I bought Austin a gift because I know it’ll drive him crazy to not get to know what it is, hehe.) Haley and I got some pho at a restaurant called Pho 2000 before heading back to the hotel to say our goodbyes. Pho 2000 has an interesting history. Its slogan is “Pho for the President” because its claim to fame is that President Bill Clinton stopped by their restaurant for a bowl of pho in the year 2000. It was a huge deal because he was the first U.S. President to visit Vietnam after the war, so it’s really kind of a beautiful story. I laughed a little thinking how if Clinton went to a restaurant in the states, that restaurant would more likely be trying to cover it up for the rest of forever instead of creating their entire brand around the moment.

After saying goodbye to all my new pals, I ordered my Grab to the airport. Although I loved my Vietnam adventure, I was so excited to get back to my apartment in Thailand. It was a weird feeling to only be able to picture my flight home taking me back to Bangkok. It was much harder to imagine going back to Wisconsin at this point. However, everyone else I was traveling with got to fly home at the end of their trip. They were excited to see their beds and dogs and moms and it made me a little sad to not be flying home to my bed and dog and mom too. But soon enough… I had Bali, Nepal, and Hong Kong to look forward to still! As well as an amazing two weeks traveling with Austin too. Still, so much good stuff to come! I’ll see Wisconsin, and everyone I love soon too. Until then, miss you all and can’t wait to see you soon. Thanks for reading!

Nothing like Longtail Boats to Cure a Little Loneliness

Since lots of my friends had prior travel plans in recent weeks, either solo or with family, last week I found myself in a predicament: a weekend with no plans and no one to travel with. But after exploring Thailand and the surrounding countries every week for the past three months I was confident I’d be absolutely fine traveling alone for the weekend, the only question was where did I want to go? Looking forward into my planner, I realized I didn’t have any other weekends that would work out well to visit Phi Phi Islands, a place I had on my bucket list since I first started researching what the heck was in Thailand, so this weekend seemed it would be the absolute perfect opportunity to explore.

I booked my flight into Phuket and figured out some accommodations (sadly pretty expensive on the Phi Phi Islands for a very basic dorm hostel) and was surprised a little that I actually had some nerves about the trip. After a short hour flight, an overpriced hour taxi to the pier and then a two-hour ferry to the islands, I had finally arrived! I was stunned walking down the ferry towards my hostel. The entire little town was settled between two giant limestone cliffs, and I’ve never seen more brilliantly turquoise waters.

View from the pier

View from the pier

My hostel was extremely small and sandy everywhere, but it would do. After getting my whereabouts, I decided to hike down along the water about 30 minutes to Long Beach, a beach that had been known for having blacktip reef shark sightings. The walk was beautiful and the beach itself was gorgeous, however, one downside of traveling alone on the beach is you have to leave your stuff unattended. I found myself a little too distracted to snorkel and search for sharks because I kept checking up on my backpack to make sure it was still safely where I left it.  The sun started to set, and I so I figured I should hike back before it got dark.

A little swing at a beach side resort

Sunset on the Andaman Sea

Sunset at Long Beach

Exploring solo!

As the sun set on one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever seen in my whole life I was surprised once again at how homesick I felt. I missed Austin and my family and Charlie and Karma and wished more than anything I could enjoy the beauty with them. It was a tough night, and for whatever reason, I felt myself on the verge of tears for most of it. I wanted to just go settle in my bed in the hostel and watch Netflix and feel at home, but instead, I made myself stay out just a bit longer. Knowing I needed to eat something for dinner, I wandered down along the water and found a little place called the Happy Hipper Bar that had someone playing live music on an acoustic guitar and seemed chill. Trying my best not to cry over my french fries as the singer sang Country Roads, Take Me Home and Leaving on a Jet Plane, the mood and tone of the bar took a sudden change when all the waitstaff suddenly got on stage and announced there would be a fire show. Nothing to distract you from missing home like a group of upbeat, high-energy Thai men playing with fire! In the end, I actually got sucked into “volunteering” to participate in exchange for a few shots of flavored vodka from the bar. It ended up being just what I needed to lighten the mood for the night and remind me that each of the incredible experiences I’m having, including missing the people I love so much, are new, exciting, unique, and beautiful and truthfully those moments of sadness are just as important as the moments of joy and wonder.

“Thai Fireworks Show”

After those few free shots at the Happy Hippie Bar, I fell asleep soundly through the entire night. The next morning I woke up feeling refreshed and spirited. I planned to hike up the hill to see the Phi Phi Islands Viewpoint. I had read there were two ways to get up: 1. By stairs (The most common and fastest route) 2. By local road (The less-traveled and longer route.)

Of course, I chose option 2, and I was so happy I did! One thing that had been bothering me about the island was that the town itself was completely built for and ruined by tourists. The souvenir shops all sold the same things, the restaurants and bars had Western food and names (labeled Thai Pancake instead of Roti, Serving hamburgers and fries everywhere, etc.), and I saw more tourists than Thai people by far walking around. And it obviously was beginning to take a toll on the natural beauty of the island when people traveled here and didn’t treat it with the respect it deserved, for example, littering in the oceans.

Cats rule the streets around here. Each cat has a shop and each shop has a cat (or two or three!)

However, on my hike up to the Phi Phi Viewpoint, I didn’t see a single tourist. Instead, I walked past Thai construction workers building new resorts, local neighborhoods and homes, families gardening alongside the road, mothers doing laundry in their front lawn, and tons of lizards, beetles, and other interesting insects. I’m not sure how long I ended up hiking (45 minutes maybe?) but the pathway, although paved, was sparsely marked so every so often I’d ask a local I passed by if I was going the right direction and get verification from a head nod and smile. The sun was beating down on me and my entire shirt was soaked with sweat but I felt really, really happy getting the entire trail basically to myself. Finally, arriving at the top viewpoint, I paid my entry fee of 30 baht to a man working the ticket station with a couple cats surrounding his desk. As I started up the last few stairs to the viewpoint, one of the cats decided to join me on the climb. However, much to my surprise when I looked down it wasn’t a cat hiking alongside me but a little monkey! She really was hiking with me too, waiting for me at the step ahead of me. That being said, she was probably just hoping I had some snacks in my backpack I could share (or she could steal if I was uncooperative.) The Viewpoint was worth the hot climb for sure. It was a stunning view of the town between the two rock formations. There was a little cafe at the top where I helped myself to a mango lychee smoothie and sat and enjoyed the view for a little while.

At the top!

Phi Phi Viewpoint

Mango Lychee Smoothie

That afternoon, I had decided to book a snorkeling/island tour at one of the numerous tour agencies. It was so hard to figure out which one would be best or would give me the most value for my money so, in the end, I went with one that was fairly cheap and had an English-speaking guide. In all honesty, I just picked it because the girl in line in front of me picked it and was alone too, so I was hoping at the very least I’d know another solo traveler was with me! It turned out it was just me and her who booked the tour, so we had the entire longtail boat to ourselves! She was a kind, quiet, girl from Belgium, and we had a comfortable amount of talking & silent times throughout the day. It was very enjoyable. Our “English-speaking” (barely) tour guide was nice and had a happy smile.

Our tour included Monkey Beach, which was mainly a lot of monkeys sitting on rocks waiting for tourists to feed them. We were both a little monkeyed-out after seeing so many throughout Southeast Asia that neither of us needed much time here. Then we went to a lagoon and swam and snorkeled a little. This lagoon had tons of colorful fish, sea urchins, coral, and sea cucumbers!! I had never seen one before, I can’t say I honestly thought they were a real thing but they look like giant, rotting turds on the floor of the ocean. It was so fun to swim so close to these fun colored, tropical fish. I had never seen a coral reef before or swam so close to so many tropical fish, so I really enjoyed snorkeling. Plus, this was some of the clearest water I had ever seen. Unfortunately, I forgot to pack my GoPro (I know — the one place on Earth a GoPro was literally created for.) So you’ll just have to trust me that it was gorgeous under the water too!

Boating into the lagoon

This photo truly has no edits – the water really looks like that!

Then we went to another bay, a less-clear water but supposedly this one had blacktip reef sharks in it! I wasn’t exactly sure what I was supposed to be looking for so I missed them. Others snorkeling there at the same time as us did say they had spotted some though!

Sandstone Cliffs

Chilling on the Longtail

Then we went to the famous Maya Bay, featured in the Leonardo DiCaprio movie The Beach. This beach, however, has been so decimated due to tourist overload that they are actually closing it off from all tourists this coming June until September to give the coral reef time to recover. With almost 5,000 tourists a day, it’s long past time to give Maya Bay some much-needed rest and restoration. I’ve never seen the movie, so seeing “The Beach” wasn’t super necessary for me. However, you really can’t book a tour through an agency that doesn’t take you here, so even those who don’t really care to see it will end up here, which made me feel guilty contributing to the masses of people who have destroyed the once natural and untouched beauty of this bay.

Wading back to our boat before sunset

Maya Bay

Maya Bay

After, we went back into the ocean and watched the sun go down. Our guide had cut up some fresh pineapple for us to enjoy. Then, in the dark, we were able to snorkel once more with plankton. I was expecting the plankton to glow more, but instead it kind of just resembled glitter in the black water when you waved your arms in front of you — still cool to see I suppose but not really necessary.

Sunset on the Andaman Sea

Sunset on the Andaman Sea

Sunset on the Andaman Sea

Sunset on the Andaman Sea

Back at my hostel after the tour, I wasn’t tired but also knew I had no interest in joining some of the others for the giant parties on the beach. I already did that once for the Full Moon Party and, although fun at the time, that was about enough for me for the rest of my life. So instead, I walked over to a Mexican place a couple blocks away and helped myself to an extremely overpriced, giant margarita, a pile of chips and guac, and some chicken fajitas. They had nothing on La Mexicana but they subsided my consistent Mexican craving for the time being.

Lanterns lining the streets and trees around town

Afterward, I went and sat at another chill, beachfront bar and drank a beer. My favorite cheap Thai beer is called Singha, so that’s usually my go-to unless Chang is significantly cheaper. I started reading a book here called If Your Dream Doesn’t Scare You, It Isn’t Big Enough on the Kindle app on my phone. This book was great as it was so comforting to read about another solo-woman traveler who has struggled with and also loved some of the same things I had struggled with or loved myself while traveling. Knowing all of my confusions and uncomfortableness and also wonder and happiness was all normal made me feel better. One of my favorite excerpts from the book so far is…

“It just reinforced my need for acceptance and patience when faced with obstacles, delays or changes. Embracing this perspective was one of the hardest lessons travel forced upon me. I had been spoiled by American expectations — that if I paid for it, I would get it immediately; that schedules were meant to be followed; and that I should have 24-hour access to everything I wanted.”

Another one I can really connect with is…

“I had left my culture to explore others, only to find that this vantage point compelled me to examine my life in America.”

I don’t pretend that every moment of my experience has been glamorous or beautiful or that I feel strong every second. I face a lot of frustrating moments, and I miss home often. Somedays I’m bored and others I’m overwhelmed, but mostly, I’m really happy. But it is all so worth it. It makes the entire experience more memorable, and I know I’m learning more about myself and the people around me this way. And I kept reminding myself that I chose to study in Thailand because it would be uncomfortably different. When I chose Thailand, I knew I was going to be living somewhere absolutely different than anything I had ever known, and that’s what I get every single day.

The next morning, it was already time for me to leave the islands! I had enjoyed my few short days here, especially when exploring the natural beauty, but with the touristy city and the overpriced everything, I was ready to leave too. I was headed back on the ferry to spend an afternoon and night in Phuket before going back to Bangkok. I had booked a hostel in Old Town Phuket, which I ultimately was sooo glad I had decided on! I was far away from the “touristy, get drunk on the beach” part of town and instead in this really charming, artsy area that reminded me a lot of Georgetown in Malaysia. My hostel was absolutely beautiful and had a little cafe attached. Walking down the street you could pop into handmade jewelry shops, art galleries, cafes, dessert bars, and even an English bookstore! On one of the neighboring streets, I found the greatest cone of homemade salted caramel popcorn ice-cream I’ve ever had — it was perfect. I was so happy exploring here.

Homemade Ice Cream in Phuket

Chinese Influence in Old Town Phuket

European Architecture Influence in Old Town Phuket

A Wonderful Bookstore! I Spent a few hours here!

I also decided to take a motorbike taxi to the Chalong Bay Rum Distillery during the afternoon for a tour. The distillery was really tiny with a gorgeous outdoor bar. It was fun to learn how and why they produce rum in Thailand. Thailand is one of the world’s largest producers of sugarcane. While most commercially produced rums are made with molasses, at Chalong Bay they make their rum with 100% sugarcane. Every single one of the Chalong Bay Rum bottles are hand-filled (using a ruler to get the exact measurements correct) and all the stickers are put on by hand too. With the tour, I got a mojito and free tastes of their rum (flavors: original, lime, Thai sweet basil, cinnamon, Keifer lime, lemongrass.) I got the original, cinnamon, and lime down before I was pretty done with drinking rum straight, although I will admit it was much smoother and easier going down than any Ron Diaz I’ve ever had! I’m officially 21 in the states so here are my celebratory drinks.

Mojito

Rum

The distillery arranged a taxi driver back to my hostel for me, and she was an incredibly sweet young mom who wanted to talk the entire way about why I was there and where I was from and what I was doing and how her son doesn’t like speedboats and more. For the rest of the night, I chilled at the cafe in the hostel and drank a beer and read my book, and although I may not have gotten the typical Phuket experience, I wouldn’t have wanted it any other way.

My flight the next morning was at 5:30 am, and it could take almost an hour to get to the airport. No matter how many times I explained I was only flying to Bangkok, everyone thought I was going back to the U.S., so I ended up getting a taxi to pick me up at 3 a.m., even knowing this would give me way too much time at the airport for a domestic flight. I was unhappy to wake up so early because my bed at this hostel was so comfortable, but even in the middle of the night, my taxi driver gave me a big smile and wave when I stepped out of my hostel. He had the trunk open and ready for my luggage and laughed when I showed him all I had was a small backpack. And although I would’ve been satisfied driving in silence or even taking a little nap, my driver wanted to chat! And he chatted my ear off in wonderfully broken English the whole way to the airport. I felt bad not being able to give him a tip when he dropped me off because I’m sure he was really hoping his friendliness would get him one, but everything in Phi Phi and Phuket was already so crazy overpriced, including taxi rides that I just couldn’t swing it. Clear sailing through the airport, about 30 minutes later I was ready to head home — a successful first solo trip finished and feeling fulfilled as I had continued to learn tiny, but important lessons with everything I did.

Cambodia: A Lesson in Compassion

I think I’ve come up with fifty different ways I’d like to start this blog post in the last few days. As always, I began mentally writing it from the moment I hopped in the taxi to get to the airport. I’m just not sure if my usual post style is right for how much of an impact Cambodia had on me. But, I’ll write as I reflect and try to find the words I need to internalize my experiences. I only spent four days here, but Cambodia still managed to touch my heart in a way no other country has yet.

Arriving in Siem Reap was a lot like arriving anywhere else. We (Gabby and I) stood in lots of lines to go through all the customs and security measures necessary, I withdrew money from the ATM, and found a drive to the hostel. My two nights in the hostel at Siem Reap came with enough stories to be its own blog post entirely, and I don’t want the craziness of those stories to take away from how powerful this trip was for me so I will save them for another time. But I will say, for how terrible my nights at this hostel were, it really says something for Cambodia because I still absolutely loved this trip.

 

Funky Flashpacker Hostel (No, not recommended but pretty sky)

 

In Siem Reap, we spent the day exploring a maze of temples thanks to a tuk-tuk driver we hired as our tour for the day. All the lesser known temples were the ones I really enjoyed. Baphuon was my personal favorite because there were so few people there and the restrictions of where you could explore were basically nonexistent. The view from the top was incredible and it felt the most authentic with fewer distractions from large tour groups. I’m not even sure of the number of temples I walked through (or the flights of stairs I climbed) exploring the old ruins of Angkor. It was hot and long, but it was a great day. As amazing as Angkor Wat was, I’m keeping this paragraph short because as stunning and interesting as the temples were, the most important moments of the trip, for me, happened in Phnom Penh.

Baphuon

Baphuon

Bayon

South Gate

Angkor Wat

Angkor Wat

Angkor Wat

Bayon

Bayon

Bayon

Bayon

Bayon

bayon

Angkor Wat

Angkor Wat

Angkor Wat

The bus from Siem Reap to Phnom Penh was supposed to take five hours, but ours somehow took more like seven. Our bus ended up having lots of locals riding it who requested stops in the countryside or surrounding area. The A/C was janky and my seat was broken so it leaned further and further back everytime we hit a bump, but once dusk hit and the sun wasn’t boiling me through the window anymore, I started to really appreciate my view of the Cambodian countryside through my bus window. We passed home after home (usually built lifted on stilts) in small rural villages. I saw men taking care of their skinny, white cattle and teens biking vigorously down the road, kids sitting in their dirt yard playing with each other and plenty of women selling fruits and snacks along the roadside. The sunset on this night was particularly beautiful, and if it hadn’t been for the moving bus I would’ve captured a better picture. I found myself falling into a little trance just observing everything go by and wondering what it would be like if the bus stopped, and I could just get out and stay awhile.

 

Sunset over the Cambodian countryside

 

Coming off the bus, we were approached by a tuk-tuk driver offering to take us to our hostel. He also asked if we’d like him to take us to the Killing Fields and Genocide Museum in the morning — the two places we really came to Phnom Penh to see. We knew we had the option of booking a van with people from our hostel, but our driver (his name was pronounced Sa-coon, but no clue how to spell that) was so kind and, of course, told us if we hired him we would be helping his children get an education. True or not, you can’t really say no to giving someone’s child a better chance at an education. So, we made plans for him to pick us up in the morning and be our driver for the day.

The next morning, Sacoon was waiting for us outside with a huge smile on his face. In my last two days in Cambodia, I had really begun to notice the smiling faces of every Cambodian person I met. Thailand is called “The Land of Smiles,” but from my experience, Cambodia could also be taking this title. In Thailand, I find so many people are shyer and more reserved. Often, if I approach someone, I’m met instantly with a look of fear, because the person knows I’m about to ask them something in English and it’s intimidating for them if they don’t feel confident in their language skills. I was even turned down at a restaurant once, and while I’m not positive of the reason, the only one I can come up with is because the waitress was scared to attempt to communicate with me. However, in Cambodia, almost everyone I met was excited to speak with me and even if we didn’t talk, we often shared smiles and a head nod. People weren’t afraid to chat with me in English and liked to ask where I was from and what I was doing there. Little kids smiled and waved to you at the market; a monk even initiated a conversation with me at one of the temples in Angkor Wat! If you’re like me and have the habit of looking at passengers in other cars while you’re riding in a vehicle, it’s a very awkward habit to have in Cambodia because almost all the “cars” are tuk-tuks or motorbikes, so looking around you just come face-to-face with another person — but even those moments were usually met with reciprocated smiles. And so I was really feeling connected to Cambodia, simply due to the friendliness and outgoingness of so many of the locals I was encountering.

At our first stop, the Killing Fields, I tried to prepare myself for the tour I was about to take, but little did I know how little I knew about the mass genocide Cambodia experienced during the Khmer Rouge regime in the 1970’s. Here’s what I learned over the weekend…

Killing Fields Monument

Killing Fields

The Khmer Rouge was a communist party that took power of Cambodia for four years during 1975-1979. The leader, Pol Pot, had a vision of bringing Cambodia back to its rural roots. In doing so, the Khmer Rouge killed 1-3 million people, almost 1 in every 4 Cambodian adults and many children as well. How, exactly? Here’s my best understanding…

While fighting the Vietnam War, a war the U.S. claims to have immersed itself in to fight a communist takeover in South Vietnam (we all know this war is largely disputed, but I really can only stick to the basics before getting incredibly confused), the U.S. was also bombing Laos and Cambodia. This war the U.S. refers to as “The Secret War.” But in the words of the genocide survivor who narrated my tour that day, the war was absolutely no secret here in Cambodia, it affected the lives of many every single day. After a while, due to bombing and landmines, the Cambodian countryside became increasingly unliveable and unsafe, thanks to U.S. bombs, so they flocked to the cities for resources.

With the political situation in such a desperate place, Cambodians living in the capital city, Phnom Penh, were joyous when the Khmer Rouge marched into the city to take over, hoping it would mean better lives for all. It was less than three hours later that the Khmer Rouge began forcing everyone living in Phnom Penh, and every major city in Cambodia, to leave and return to the countryside. This was Pol Pot’s attempt at cleansing the country and returning it to the “old people.” Not only were millions of lives lost during this mass exodus from the cities, due to starvation, exhaustion and sickness, the Khmer Rouge took it in their own hands to take the lives of anyone they felt threatened their party. Some of the qualifications of a threat were: living in the city, being educated, being an artist, doctor, business person or journalist, Buddhist monks, wearing glasses, or having soft hands. According to the Khmer Rouge, “It is better to kill an innocent by mistake than spare an enemy by mistake.”  Ironically, in the end, this genocidal, communist party was defeated by combined Cambodian and Vietnamese troops. The Vietnamese troops were communist as well. The depressing irony is, the communist party the U.S. decided to fight (Vietnam) was the party that saved Cambodia from their own communist party.

This is where the Killing Fields steps in as one of the two main sites in Phnom Penh on genocide tour. When I arrived at the Killing Fields, I was taken back by how peaceful and beautiful the area was. Nothing like you’d expect of a place with a name like Killing Field. After buying my ticket, I was handed a pair of headphones and a little walkman-type device — this would be my tour guide for the next two hours. The audio for the entire tour is narrated by a survivor of the genocide. He begins the tour by stating all the family members he lost during this time — it’s most of them. Throughout the tour, he is joined by other survivors who give their own personal stories or stories of loved ones. The set-up of this tour couldn’t be more ideal. For something so heartbreaking and horrifying, it’s nice to be able to take it at one’s personal pace. The narrator warns his listeners when stories get extra graphic in case they don’t think they can listen or want to take a seat to hear it. It also keeps the grounds serene, quiet and respectful.

The sound device used to listen to the tour

Respect for the Victims

 

Benches along the walkway so that visitors could sit to reflect and listen to their tour

 

The Killing Fields were sites used for the Khmer Rouge to execute truckloads of prisoners suspected to be threats to the party. While there are thought to be thousands of these sites around Cambodia, some that haven’t even been discovered or reached due to landmines, the one outside Phnom Penh was one of the largest and has been dedicated as the main memorial to the lives lost at these sites.

Warning-Graphic: As I walked through the memorial, I listened to bone-chilling stories — chemicals used to kill the bodies and mask the odors of decaying flesh, the farming tools that were used to smash skulls and slit throats, the political music that would blast during executions so neighboring farmers wouldn’t hear the screams and suspect what was going on, a woman who was stripped and raped by 12 of the Khmer guards. The stories, each somehow worse than the last, were terrible to listen to.

 

The jagged edges of the palm branches were sometimes used to slit the throats of prisoners

 

At one point, you encounter this great, giant tree in the center of the property. Next to it, is a sign informs you this was the tree the Khmer guards used to bash babies and children against to kill them. The Khmer Rouge has a saying, “When pulling out weeds, remove them roots and all,” meaning that if one member of a family was killed, the entire family, including children, must also be killed to minimize the chance of anyone taking revenge on them later.

Bracelets left as blessings

the Killing Tree

the Killing Tree

After killing their suspects, and sometimes even before the victims were truly dead, their bodies were thrown into giant pits of bodies, soaked in chemicals, and left to rot. Sunken areas on the ground are still visible throughout the entire site, and while the site has been excavated and many bones and skulls have been recovered and preserved, there are still clean-up crews that have to walk through the land every few months to gather new pieces of bones and clothing that have resurfaced from the pits over time.

The Killing Fields

Bits of cloth surfaced from the pits

A mass grave

Many of these larger skulls and bones are organized and displayed in the monument built out of respect for the victims. There are 17 levels of bones, the first ten of skulls and the last seven of jawbones, hipbones, rib bones and others.

Ten levels full of skulls sorted by age, way of death, and gender

Look closely, you can see the levels of skulls

Skulls from the mass graves

Sorted by how each one was killed

When I finished my self-paced tour of the grounds, there were no words. We went back to our tuk-tuk in silence, and he seemed to know there was nothing to be said either. So, he drove us to our next stop, the S21 Genocide Museum. The entire ride there I couldn’t help but look at every single thing we passed differently. Hundreds of thousands of innocent victims had made the same exact trip almost fifty years ago; I was making a tourist trip, and they were making a death trip. It amazed me to see both how profound the impact was still on the society and yet also amazed at how lightheartedly everyone I met seemed to live their lives. As we drove from the Killing Fields to S21 it really became real to me how there was probably not a single person in Cambodia who hadn’t lost someone, if not everyone, that they cared about and loved during this time.

S21

S21 Building A

S21 was once a high school in Phnom Penh, but the Khmer Rouge made it into an interrogation and torture prison when they took over the city. Of the estimated 14,000 people who spent time in this prison during those four years, only 7 ever came out alive to tell their stories. One was an artist who dedicated the rest of his professional career to creating paintings that depicted the lives of the prisoners here. The tour of S21, set up in the same form as the tour of the Killing Fields, was just as, if not more, difficult to take. In this tour, you were able to walk into the rooms where the last 14 prisoners were murdered before the prison guards fled when the Vietnamese troops came in to take back the city. Vietnamese journalists found the bodies bloodied and tortured and took photos of each, which you can view in the rooms that they were found. The floors have been cleaned since, but are still stained from the blood. This tour feels so real because so much of the prison has been kept in as close to its original conditions as possible. As one of the seven survivors tells his story, you can step right into the prison cell that he spent his time in.

 

One of the rooms where the Vietnamese journalist found one of the dead bodies

 

Once again, walking out of the museum, I didn’t even know what to say or think, I needed to reflect on all this. However, walking to Sacoon, a nearby tuk-tuk driver started waving and smiling at me, so I waved back. He asked me where I was from. Understandably, after spending the entire day learning about the horribly dark past of this country, and the United States’ less-than-innocent role in creating an opportunity for the Khmer Rouge to take control, I was a little embarrassed when I admitted that I was from the states. However, the man just smiled wide at me and began to flex his muscles as he said, “Ooooh. Very powerful!” I just smiled back and kinda shrugged a little. He continued, “U.S. #1…. but Cambodia #2!!” I laughed out loud and said, “That’s right, that’s right!” Which just overjoyed this man. He started shaking my hand vigorously and then pulled me in to kiss both my cheeks. This was one of my favorite interactions I had with anyone in Cambodia. It really hit me that this was a striking difference between how most of America and many smaller countries around the world approach these situations. In the U.S., when someone says they are from a place we’ve been known to not have the best relationships with in the past, like Middle Eastern countries, many American’s initial reactions are to approach with hesitancy and judgment. But here, this man’s initial reaction was to approach with love. Sure, argue that education about foreign relations might be different in these smaller countries… but even still, he was not afraid to show the utmost friendliness and compassion to me, no matter where we were each from, and it was one of the best moments I’ve had in Southeast Asia so far.

To those of you who stuck around, thank you for reading this even though it’s not fun to hear. In one weekend, I learned so much and became so passionate and enraged about something I knew little to nothing about days ago. We spend so much time focused on the horror of the Holocaust in our U.S. education that we don’t tend to take the time to acknowledge that similar human atrocities have taken place, and still are taking place, in other parts of the world as well. If I had the opportunity to travel back and spend more time in Phnom Penh talking to locals and hearing more stories, I would in an instant without a doubt. I’ll be posting more photos on Facebook soon and eventually, might get around to telling those hostel stories (we’ll see…)

How to Turn a Class Project into a Day Trip 101

I have wanted to spend some time at one of Bangkok’s famous floating markets for a while now, but between my weekend trips, I hadn’t found the time yet! When my photography professor assigned me an editorial photography project, I decided this would be a great opportunity to visit Amphawa, take some photos of the market-life in Thailand, and also work on my school project all in one.

The markets around Thailand have been one cultural difference that has really intrigued me. Of course, Madison has its beloved Farmers Market, but beyond sunny, Saturday mornings around the capital square, I’ve never really had the chance to live in a place that relies so heavily on markets for its economy to function. And it’s fantastic being able to browse through loads of cheap and tasty items all in one place while getting a better look into Thai culture through the items being sold at each vendor. So, for my editorial photography project, I knew I wanted to try to capture the spirit of one of these markets. Ultimately, I chose Amphawa because I had read it was still one of the more authentic floating markets. By floating markets, I mean that the market is set up right alongside (and on top of) the Amphawa canal. So many of the vendors sell and cook the food right in their little canoes.

 

Amphawa Floating Market

 

Cooking prawns right inside their boat!

 

 

Amphawa is only open on weekends, so I knew I’d have to work to find a time that would make sense to go. I have midterms scheduled for next week, so I wasn’t planning on going anywhere big this week and decided it would be the perfect time to take a study break and make the trip to see Amphawa. I was texting Austin about it and he said, “Cool. Do you have any other plans for the day?” And I actually laughed a little when I wrote back, “This will take all day.” At that point, even I didn’t actually understand just how long of a “day-trip” this would be.

We (Gabby and I) planned to hop on a van into the city in order to catch another van shuttle from there to Amphawa. My photography professor had told me that I could catch a van from Victory Monument, so that’s where we were headed. However, as I read more about Amphawa on the way there, I found one blog post that said all vans from Victory Monument had been discontinued as of 2016… great. Not to my surprise, when we arrived an hour later, we were told there were no vans to Amphawa here. No worries though, Victory monument is located right under the Skytrain (BTS) line so we could catch a train to the Mo Chit bus terminal. Somehow, neither Gabby or I was paying any attention whatsoever, and we ended up taking the train the opposite direction and had to do a 180 switch around at the next stop.

Finally, arriving at the Mo Chit stop, we got off and looked around for vans. We were pointed towards a shuttle bus stop by some locals that would take us a few blocks away to the Mo Chit terminal. Once we got there, we just started asking around, “Pai Amphawa?” Sometimes we were met with blank stares, sometimes just a hand gesture in a different direction. Fourth or fifth try, finally a man told us his van would take us to Mae Khlong “4 km [away from] Amphawa.” Ok. It was already almost 2 p.m. when we finally left the city. I dozed off for awhile in the back of the van but when I woke up I was being asked to exit the van at a gas station. In Thailand, whenever they fill up the van shuttles they make everyone get out before they pump any gas. I’m not sure if there’s a fear it will blow up or what the reasoning behind it is, but at the gas station a friendly Thai man started talking to us and told us that he too was headed to Amphawa, so he would show us how to get there. When we finally arrived in Mae Khlong, we walked through the railroad market. This is another super interesting market in the area, and one I hope to return to another day. The market situations itself right along and on top of the railroad tracks and when the train comes through periodically throughout the day, the vendors just pack up their stuff, leaving just enough room for the train to sneak by, and then go about their business.

 

Mae Khlong Train Market

 

Unfortunately, we didn’t get to see the train come through but just looking at the space, I couldn’t imagine how a train snuck through this market! We continued following a local boy through some side streets and alleyways to an area where we could pay some pickup trucks to take us to Amphawa. I was so thankful that we had some local help because I’m not sure how I ever would’ve figured this out otherwise. In the back of the pickup truck, the helpful local Thai man was happy to tell us all about Amphawa, his family, terrorists in Indonesia, Siamese twins (“They each got married! Two wives! And had children! Look at it on Youtube!!”), and anything else that popped into his head as conversation topics. We finally arrived at Amphawa around 4:00 p.m. I was already tired, and I hadn’t even begun the actual work yet. If you ever read that it only takes 1.5-2 hours to get to Amphawa — IT’S A LIE!

However, excited to finally be here, I instantly began taking photos. I figured that the more photos I took, the better chance I’d have of having at least five I can turn into my professor later. And through the lens of my camera, I really loved taking in this quaint, little market space. Seafood and delicious-smells lined the crowded boardwalk that weaved through the market. I was especially tempted by all the fresh, Thai desserts and sweets I was watching be freshly prepared.

Grill Master

Wok Master

After wandering back and forth on both sides of the market, my tummy was rumbling and I was little fried as far as photo inspiration. Gabby and I decided to sit at one of the waterside “restaurants” and ordered some pad thai with fresh shrimp and coconut juice (served in the coconut meat). This was actually the first coconut beverage I’ve had since coming to Thailand, believe it or not! And they are everywhere, so that’s a huge surprise. Unfortunately, it turns out I’m still not the biggest fan of plain coconut, although I really wish I was because it looks so fresh and delicious at almost every market I go to.

 

Pad Thai with fresh Shrimp and Coconut Drink

 

After dinner, it was close to 6 p.m. and we knew we had about two hours before the final bus back to Bangkok left. We decided to pay for the longboat tour of the canals. Since it was getting later and darker, the price was more expensive because the typical tour became a “firefly tour.” We rode along the canals, stopped at one temple along the way, then, once it was dark, spent the rest of the time watching the fireflies dance along the marshy riverbank. It was cool and dark and there was a light breeze, and I was so relaxed finally. Being near the water and being a little chilly and having fireflies all around me seriously made me miss Wisconsin summers on the boat with Austin so much.

 

Two Thai women at the temple who signaled to me they wanted me to take their photo

 

Before Gabby and I left to get our van back to the city, we decided to search around for some dessert. I tried some Mochi ice-cream. Mochi is a Japanese cake, so it’s kind of like this little cake ball with ice-cream in the middle — it’s like chewy ice-cream. I’m describing this badly, it was delicious.

 

Mocha chip and Thai tea flavored Mochi Ice-cream

 

Gabby decided to try a Thai dessert that both of us had seen everywhere but never actually tasted called Khanom bueang (crispy pancakes). These desserts resemble mini tacos, but the shell is actually a mini crepe and the inside (which looks like sour creme and cheese) is actually a sweet cream and a traditional Portuguese treat called fios de ovos (angel hair), which is very similar to cotton candy. Walking back to the van, we passed a vendor pulling a fresh pizza out of the oven. Pizza isn’t incredibly common around here, and lots of the time it’s nothing like the pizza you find in the states (think when you’re babysitting and you make pizzas on top of English muffins for the kids) but this pizza was gooey, with real cheese and spinach on top. Neither Gabby or I could resist devouring a piece before we hopped on the van. Best decision of the day by far.

Khanom bueang

Being even just a little smarter than when we started our journey that afternoon, Gabby and I got back to our apartments (after a van and taxi ride) around 10:00 p.m. Making it a long day with more traveling than actual doing. However, I must say how impressed with Amphawa I was! I hope I can make it back again before I leave to see more. There were plenty of interesting temples in the area and some of the riverside shops and restaurants looked really neat, plus I’d love to see the Mae Khlong market in full action as a train rolls through. Who knows? If my professor doesn’t approve of my photos, I might be back sooner rather than later! But for now, until next time Amphawa!

Chicken or Pork? Rice or Noodles?

While preparing to live in Thailand, one of the things I was quite worried about was the food. I’m known to get an upset stomach often after eating in Wisconsin, so I was expecting this to only get worse in Thailand after reading about some of the differences in food preparation and safety. I had also been advised different things from different sources from “do NOT eat the street food,” to “if you go to Thailand and don’t eat the street food — you didn’t even go to Thailand.” You can see how I was a little concerned. In the end, I just prepared myself for whatever issues may arise by bringing plenty of western medications.

However, I’ve been living here two months now (and yes, eating plenty of the incredible street food, fruit, snacks, and drinks) and I’m really happy to say I’ve felt healthier and more energized after eating than I typically do in the states! This might because of the practically nonexistent gluten and dairy in all the food products here, both things that are seemingly impossible to avoid when you live in the beer and dairy capital of America. Thankfully, I’ve dealt with very, very few instances of questionable food. Of course, I’ve also avoided some food entirely – like the live turtles you can pick from the market or the pork intestines you sometimes find in your soup or the fried-to-a-crisp-insects you can get on Khao San. But for the most part, I’ve come to absolutely love Thai cuisine.

I really worried that I would be missing Western food by this time, but I’ve truly been so satisfied with my meals here. Besides the occasional lasagna or pizza craving, it’s somewhat amusing that my mega-cravings haven’t even been for American food, but Mexican food instead. Seriously, all I want is a big plate of tacos and chips and guac and a margarita (I’m one month away from being legal in the U.S. ok?) from La Mex. The only Mexican restaurant I’ve found so far was in Georgetown in Malaysia – months ago now. I have even been searching out avocados in Thailand to be able to make my own guac to subside my craving. No luck so far, but I will not give up the hunt.

For the first few weeks after my arrival, I knew almost no Thai dishes, so when I’d go to eat my Thai friends would ask me, “Chicken or pork? Rice or noodles?” and that’s what I would get. Thankfully, I have begun to try and taste more dishes and have started to be able to differentiate what makes them each unique. But in all honesty, this is really the basis of almost any Thai meal – chicken or pork and noodles or rice.

Pork with chili sauce and white rice.

“Boat” noodles. Noodle soup with pork and fish balls.

(Scroll over the photos to see what the food is)

One thing I’ve really come to embrace about Thai culture is how the day, and many conversations, center around food. I can’t count how many times one of my Thai friends has greeted me with the phrase, “Are you hungry?” or “Have you ate yet?” It’s a beautiful thing. And I think this is largely because eating is such a social activity too, especially for students. Almost none of the apartments/dorms have kitchens, so we eat out for every single meal of the day. Before you think, “Holy cow, Mckenzie. You’re paying to eat at a restaurant every meal, every day?” Meals in Thailand cost anywhere from 20-150 baht. Mine are usually around 40 baht… this is the equivalent to $1.20. So I’m paying around $4 a day to eat full-blown plates of chicken and rice or pork and noodles — I’d say that’s doable. So typically, I meet up with a group of friends for meals around campus and we eat together and talk for awhile and have a good time. So, food is the center of my days because it usually determines when I will be seeing everyone next.

Luckily, my campus does not have a shortage of yummy and cheap places to find a meal at any point of the day. Here’s the layout:

So the big red house is where I live at Skyview. Across the street from me, you can see…

View down my road towards campus

Zone 1: I don’t have much over here but I do have a small restaurant under my building that will deliver food to me at my room. However, I do have to have a Thai friend call and order it for me because they only speak Thai. Then, I have a 7-11 which is very frequently visited by me. I often go if I’m feeling lazy or low on time. You can get food warmed up for you there, and as pre-packed meals go, they aren’t half bad. I usually go for the garlic chicken or basil chicken stir fry, always with sticky rice included. Although, after a night of drinking nothing beats a ham and cheese toastie. They are ALL the hype for drunk, Western food in Thailand. 7-11 has even teamed up with Lays to make a 7-11 special, ham and cheese toastie flavored bag of chips.

I also have a few small food vendors around here. I finally worked up the courage to order food from one of them the other night. I have been admittedly quite shy to order from some food vendors because I’m often wary of the language barrier. I mean sometimes people genuinely look terrified when I approach them knowing that I’m going to speak English to them! But I keep pushing myself to not give up because of it! Pointing and nodding works very well.

 

Fried chicken over rice and some type of sauce (siracha mayo maybe?) over the top that I got from a small vendor near my apartment. Came with a baggie of cabbage with a lemony-mayo dressing – delicious! Plus, nothing better than dinner in bed with Netflix.

Zone 2: This area is called U-Village. It has a nice set of proper restaurants and cafes but for one reason or another, it’s not very popular. I have yet to try anything here. But it’s nice to know it’s available and close!

Zone 3: U-Square. Ahh, the heart and soul to cheap eating at TU-Rangist. U-Square is basically just a large market area with a bunch of outdoor vendors who are set up permanently in their locations. But the food is delicious, there are lots of options (from fish to salad bars to crepes to noodle soup to steak) and it’s all very cheap. This is my most common stop for dinner. I can also find freshly cut fruit bags or fruit shakes here at almost any hour of the day, which I love.

U-Square at Night.

Fish & Rice from U-Square! Eaten right off the bones.

Zone 4: Zone 4 has a set of proper shops underneath the apartment buildings here. There is also a small bar (the only one located so close to campus) that gets pretty popular on weekends. I have two restaurants I like a lot here. One is called Poon Poon (supposedly, named after the sound of a train whistle) and it has some good Italian-style dishes. The other is called Clean Food. I was struggling for a while to find a well-balanced meal with enough vegetables to satisfy me — Clean Food has it. You get a large portion of lean meat, jasberry (whole-grain) rice, a side salad and cooked vegetables — all for $2.20. This is my favorite place to eat on campus by far because it’s healthy and so tasty.

Chicken breast, side salad, cooked veggies, jasberry rice and a sweet teriyaki sauce. Mmmmm

Zone 5: Another set of proper shops under apartment buildings. I haven’t tried a ton of these but you can find almost any craving (besides for Mexican food) you need to be fulfilled down here. They have sushi, dim sum, boat noodles, shabu, curry, American food, pizza, etc. A lot of these places are on my mental list of places to try when I’m craving something specific.

Coffee shop with ham and cheese crossiant

Edamame from Sushi restaurant!

Hawaiian Pizza is so popular here, and I am so here for it!

Zone 6: This area has a little market available on Tuesdays that I tend to stop by on my way home from class. There I can grab fresh fruit drinks or little sweets or my dinner for the evening, typically I can get all of the above for about $2.50. Plus they have some little boutique/thriftshop clothing vendors that can be fun to look through.

Melon shake – nothing but a 1/4 of a musk melon and ice!

Little waffle desserts with chocolate and strawberry jam

Chicken kabobs with chili sauce

Zone 7: This is the canteen (aka cafeteria) I eat most of my breakfasts and lunches at. It’s right next to my faculty (in the dark pink circle.) The food here is super inexpensive (about 90 cents per meal) and very tasty! When I’m low on time, I’ll have a mug of granola with chocolate soy milk at my apartment, but if I have the extra time I’ll typically go here for a plate of rice, fried chicken, stir-fried veggies and egg for my breakfast in the morning.

Chicken, Veggies, Thai Omlete, and Rice

Fried Fish, Sweet hard boiled eggs, and White Rice

Two weekends ago, I took a Thai cooking class that was offered through the Thammasat Office of International Affairs out in the countryside of Bangkok. It was so interesting getting to see what ingredients make up some of the dishes I’ve begun to enjoy so much, like spicy papaya salad! The menu, recipes, and ingredients are below. It was fun for me to read them and see how many I didn’t recognize, yet lots of these ingredients are very common in traditional Thai cuisine.

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Now, this entire post was really for my mom because I know she likes details and photos and maps and getting to feel as much as possible like she understands what my daily life is like here. Love you, Mom! But I also wanted to make a post about this just because of how different the culture surrounding food is! Getting my food from markets and small vendors and trying things I would probably avoid in the U.S. has been such a rewarding experience for me! I’m also proud to say that my spice tolerance has dramatically increased since when I left. So for those of you who stuck around till the end, thanks so much — I hope you learned something new!

 

Hi, I’m Mckenzie, and I’m Studying Journalism with an Emphasis on K-Pop

After a few weeks of adjusting and settling into my classes, I thought it would be time to put up a post about how my classes are going and how they work here in Thailand.

Unlike many study abroad programs, when I arrived I did not have a schedule yet. In fact, I didn’t even know the exact class options that would be offered during my semester. Luckily, to help combat confusion or bad choices, the BJM (Bachelor in Journalism – Mass Media Studies) program here at Thammasat gave me a week to sit-in on any classes I wanted before officially enrolling. I was very strategically trying to pick my schedule to get all my classes at the beginning of the week so that I could have long weekends for traveling. I also didn’t want to take classes that would be too easy for me that I would get bored, which took out even more options. In the end, I had about seven classes or so I could pick from that worked well in my schedule.

Almost all the classes at Thammasat meet just once a week but are three hours long. So working out a schedule with all my classes early was easily possible but it does mean my first few days in the week will be basically spent in the classroom all the time.

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The first class I attended was Photography for Communications. I was really excited for this class because I had never actually taken a photography class before, all my training was just self-teaching and playing around. Instantly, I was relieved to see my professor spoke English well and was super easy to communicate with. He had also worked as a photojournalist before becoming a professor, so he has tons of experience in the field. I’ve found that enrolling in the course has already encouraged me to bring my camera along when otherwise I may have found it easier to leave it at home. Some of the projects in the class included portrait photography, landscape photography, editorial photography, and a final project centered around a theme or narrative of my choice. It’s been interesting learning some new techniques so far for even basic things like balancing ISO, shutter speed, and aperture and using flash correctly, so I look forward to gaining more critical feedback for my work and hopefully becoming a better photographer from it!

I was astounded in this class by how many students showed up late periodically through the class period. A few students strolled in only about ten minutes before the class was completely dismissed! This has gotten a little better since the first week, but what hasn’t changed is how much people talk while our professor is teaching. I just couldn’t believe it — I had a class dismissed at UW-Madison once because the professor felt like students were working on other things during her lecture; I can’t even imagine what the professors would do if students had as many loud, personal conversations while they were talking as they do during some of my classes here.

The second class I attended, on Monday afternoons, was Global Media Industries. I didn’t really know what to expect from this class, but what I got the first day was far, far from what I was anticipating. It turns out my professor for this course is kind of a big deal.

He worked for the Bangkok Post and was well-known for writing radical articles about the Royal family that kept him under the watchful eye of the palace at all times, then he was Editor-In-Chief for GQ Thailand — which is a once-in-a-lifetime position. Here are some of the pieces of fashion advice he dropped during his first class session:

“A belt is not a necessity. It is an accessory.” 

“Swag is not a group thing, it’s an individual thing.”

“Swag lesson #2: No socks with loafers. But, you must make sure your feet don’t stink.”

*He also taught us his go-to selfie face, the “pucker lips.” (more like what we’d call the pouty lips)*

So, you can imagine why I was a little confused by him. It was a little hard to pinpoint his personality on the first day: kind of a weird mix of egotistical and yet being able to poke fun at himself. However, as we’ve now had five classes with him, he has shown a great sense of humor and is a very interesting lecturer. Each one has been on thought-provoking topics for me personally, such as who controls the media and what makes the U.S. the only world superpower. The only grades in this class are based off two presentations. My first one is next week on how social media is used to give a voice to the 99 percent.

One of the other humorous things about this class is that, for some reason, every week before class starts, my fellow Thai students will take over the computer attached to the presentation screen and play, sing and dance along to K-Pop or Thai pop music videos. Of course, this is highly entertaining for me because I have never heard of any of these songs or groups, but the Thai students (girls and boys alike) know every single dance and word. I look forward to my little lesson in Asian music culture every Tuesday afternoon.

One of the most popular songs in Thailand right now is by a group from Bangkok called BNK48. I’m attaching the music video below and please watch a few minutes of it because I’ve never seen something that summarizes all the parts of Thai culture and life so well. I’m not kidding you that this song is everywhere; I step in a mall, it’s playing. I sit at a bar, someone is playing an acoustic version live. I go to the traditional football game, BNK 48 makes a guest appearance to perform the song after the game — it’s everywhere. 

Next morning, I went to Interpretation of Current Affairs. I was somewhat comforted as the professor laid-down some ground rules: don’t come in late, don’t talk while he is talking and don’t eat in class — this was much more the structure I was used to in class. This class basically consists of analyzing current news to sort out the truth, fact, and nontruth and search for deeper meanings and impacts of news stories. A lot of the stories brought up are Thailand current events, so it’s intriguing having a way to keep up-to-date with what’s happening here in Thailand. For example, one week a Thai celebrity accidentally posted her boyfriend’s dick pic on social media which began a classroom-wide conversation on “if size really matters.” Other big news includes a Deputy Prime Minister who wears too fancy of watches, a CEO who poached black panthers, and, Thailand news aside, Kylie Jenner’s pregnancy has also been frequently discussed.

My final class, luckily during the trial week, on Tuesday afternoon, was called Creativity in Strategic Communication, which I was excited about, thinking it would be about creative advertising campaign messages. As soon as the professor began to talk, I realized there might be a little problem. Her English just wasn’t as strong as my other professors had been, and I was struggling to understand. All the sudden, without going through the syllabus or being introduced to what the class would cover, we were told to pick groups (Reminder: I knew no one in this class) and make a video using just the prompt…

“Impossible is Nothing. Love.” 

I was so confused. I had no clue why we were making a video or what it was supposed to be about. Apparently, the Thai students in my class were confused too because she explained everything to them for the next few minutes in Thai, telling me she would “translate later” which she never got around to. Another point, she wanted us to work on the project until 6 pm that night even though the class was only supposed to go until 4:30. I hated to be “that” foreign exchange student, but I had plans to go into the city and check out more of Bangkok after class, and I still had no idea whatsoever what I was supposed to be doing. So, knowing I was still in a trial period for classes anyway, I excused myself and decided I would enroll in a different class.

That different class ended up being Announcing in Broadcasting. It was canceled the first two weeks because the professor had to be a substitute anchor for a Korean news station (I think?) and then we had another two weeks off for the university sports week, so we met for the first time in February. This professor is incredible. She’s so smart, sweet, nice, and speaks clearer English than I do by far. Although this class is a little easier for me, so far, since I am a native English speaker and my Thai classmates are challenged to speak in their second language, I think I will be challenged when we get sent out to do field work and make real broadcast news stories. Finding people to interview will push me out of my comfort zone a bit more.

So, there you have it! A quick glimpse into what my weekly class schedule looks like. Through it all, I’m happy to say that I feel like I am learning and interested in what my professors are teaching here. It’s such a great experience to be able to study what I’m passionate about on another side of the world!

Hike, Eat, Sip, Sleep, Repeat

Our last two stops in Malaysia were both beautiful. From KL, we took the bus up the mountains to the Cameron Highlands, where we would be staying in Tanah Rata. I was most excited about this location because I had read it was a beautiful place to hike and be outside. When we stepped on the bus, I was first surprised to see that the seats were huge, with tons of legroom and very comfortable cushions. I was not expecting anything nice considering we had paid 30 RM (~$7) for this 5-hour bus trip. Secondly, I was amused at the colors the entire inside of the bus was decorated with. I’m serious, picture the inside of the Mystery Machine. Since arriving in Thailand, I’ve acquired the habit of wanting to pass out as soon as I’m in any form of a moving vehicle, and I think I might have fallen asleep on the bus before we even left the station. When I woke up, we were already beginning our journey up the windy, hilly, mountain roads. I have no idea how I didn’t get carsick, those roads were a nightmare.

Finally in Tanah Rata, checked in to our hostel and fed, we decided to make our first short hike to see a nearby waterfall. I was so pleasantly surprised by how cool the weather was in the mountains. Singapore and Kuala Lumpur had been the hottest I’d felt so far, so it was refreshing to wear leggings and my rain jacket. It was also nice to walk around outside and hear rushing water and see the jungle. For me, the waterfalls were unfortunately ruined by the trash that riddled the entire water. Bottle and bags and other non-decomposable objects were everywhere. I’ve mentioned before how much I’ve noticed an issue with litter on the streets in Bangkok and KL, but I expected Tanah Rata, a town that prides itself on its natural beauty, to take better care of the garbage that permeates its hiking trails and land. It was sad to see.

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After our hike, we went back into town and got cheesecake and tea for dinner (well-rounded meal, aren’t you proud Mom?) Then we went back to the hostel. In the morning, we planned to wake up early and hike, in order to avoid the afternoon rain. We met a sweet girl named Sarah from Germany at our hostel who would join us for the morning hike, and then we all turned in.

We had been recommended by a local to hike Trail No. 10 and Trail No. 4 in order to see the most diverse views, get a good workout, have trails that were easy to follow and be able to loop back to our city — sounded like a good plan to us so we went for it! Walking out of town towards the trail, we were greeted by a little cutie who wanted to hike with us. Our little friend joined us for about the first mile and a half of our hike. I think it actually physically hurt me not being able to just sit down and scratch her belly and give her love, but I resisted due to the number of times she had to sit down and scratch herself. She may have been flea-ridden, but she sure was sweet!

The hike ended up being fantastic. It was challenging getting up the mountain and the entire trail was slippery and muddy (we all almost faceplanted multiple times) but the difficulty added a level of enjoyment to the climb. By the time I got to take my Chacos off, my feet were so muddy and dirty the outline of my sandals was perfectly outlined. The view was great from the top. It really felt good just being outside, not feeling like I was going to have a heat stroke, and enjoying the outdoors. Plus, I really appreciated that this trail was so, so much more clean than the one the night before. It was obvious that fewer people decided to make this climb and therefore we barely saw any trash littering the trail.

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Back at the bottom almost four hours later, we got some food at a local Nasi Kandar (Malay dish of rice and curries) place, but we were pretty exhausted so we went back to the hostel for downtime. We ended up watching three movies that day, and it was actually really great to just sit around and laugh and have a normal, chill day. Sarah picked The Great Gatsby, Lucy, and I Am Number Four and in between watching, I got some writing done and walked around town to find some coffee and enjoyed chilling out.

For dinner, we walked to a little, family-run Indian restaurant a friend had recommended Sarah called Singh Chapati. While we had to wait a little longer for our food because everything was being cooked absolutely fresh, we watched Bollywood music videos and admired all the beautiful Indian girls and fun dancing. So the music was good here — but the food. Oh my god. This was my favorite meal of the trip so far. I got Butter chicken and rice with paratha. I couldn’t stop talking about how delicious it was. It was definitely one of the best meals.

In the morning, we woke up fairly early again because we had booked a tour to see some of the jungle and go to a butterfly farm, tea plantation, bee farm and strawberry farm with a guide today. The guide was mainly just for the convenience of having a ride everywhere, and I was feeling much more confident about this tour than our last accidental taxi “tour” because it was recommended to us by a few other travelers we had met earlier. The “jungle trek” ended up being very, very short, but our guide did point out some interesting plants we passed, including the carnivorous flowers, and told some other interesting stories and facts about the trail and jungle.

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The butterfly, bee, and strawberry farms were all pretty normal, fun to see but nothing especially thrilling. The BOH (Best of Highlands) tea plantation was definitely the highlight for me. I had wanted to come to one of the Cameron Highland’s many tea farms since I first planned the stop in Tanah Rata, and it was absolutely gorgeous. The rolling hills with the patterned tea fields cut into the sides were breathtaking. I also got some pretty cheap, variety tea bags to take home which I’ve now tried a few of since returning to Thailand. So far my favorites are Mango and Earl Grey with Tangerine.

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After our tour, Gabby, Clare and I had to catch the bus to head to Penang. So we grabbed some fried noodles quick from a small Hawker stand (another simply delicious and incredibly cheap little meal), said goodbye to Sarah, and boarded our bus!

Our first night in George Town, we decided to walk around the city a little bit. I had read about a place called Beach Blanket Babylon where we could get some drinks and food near the water. We wandered over to it but took like five minutes to look at the menu, closed it and walked out (way too expensive for our current budget.) Instead, we found a little Hawker market area in Chinatown with plenty of cheap food and beer options. I was super pumped to see the hard cider Somersby on the menu, as I had really liked it in Portugal and hadn’t seen it anywhere since! Gabby and I both got one, as well as some mango sticky-rice (obviously missing Thailand.) We listened to some sort of open-mic night that was happening for a while before deciding to head back.

In the morning, we made the long walk across town to see a little art center I had read about in an old bus depot. I loved this place. It had lots of interesting wall art and really cute, artsy shops that reminded me a lot of State Street back home. We also met some beautiful kitties owned by one of the stores, named Shakespeare and June.

After. we walked to Chew Jetty, a little market community that lives and operates on top of the water, stopping to get a cold iced tea at an artsy cafe, then we wandered the street art neighborhoods. I was surprised walking around George Town by how artsy the entire city was. Street art covered the walls of so many of the buildings and many of the shops themselves were art galleries or beautifully decorated coffee shops, it was so different than the other cities we’d been to in Malaysia.

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For lunch, we couldn’t resist a little burger joint called Two Buns that we had passed earlier that day. We all were craving a good burger. I couldn’t say no to a milkshake and fries too! I got the “Party in Hawaii,” a pork patty with cheese, pineapple, and BBG sauce — mmmm, delicious.

It was SO HOT in George Town, and we had walked a ton that day, so back at our hostel, we took a good, long afternoon rest and nap. When we finally resurfaced, mainly due to hunger, we headed to another nasi kandar place called Hameediyah. Proudly, this is the oldest nasi kandar restaurant in all of Malaysia! To re-explain, nasi kandar is a Malay-dish that starts with a giant scoop of rice and then you choose which meat/vegetable curries you want to put on top and pay based on your portion size and the choices. I didn’t love it the first time we had it in Tanah Rata, but it was much tastier and fresher this time. As soon as we walked in, one of the main chefs, who was obviously very comfortable speaking English, helped us pick what to eat and figure out how it all worked. We all ended up with a heaping portion of rice, beef, chicken, naan, and mango lassi (like mango smoothie) for about 18 RM (~$4) I was so stuffed only about halfway into my plate, I don’t know how anyone finishes the size of that meal, but it was great. Then, we went to 7-11, purchased some really cheap beer and played some card games on the patio at our hostel before bed.

The next morning, we got ready quickly in order to catch the local bus to the beach! We had seen cities, we had walked miles, we had hiked mountains, but we hadn’t made it to the beach yet! We found one close by George Town with pretty average reviews and just decided to go for it. The beach wasn’t huge or breathtaking, but the sand was soft, it wasn’t crowded, and the water was warm so none of us were complaining. It was so relaxing laying in the sun all day and being able to jump in the ocean to cool often whenever we liked. After about three hours straight in the sun, I knew I was reaching my sun-limit for what my half-ginger, never seen the sun in Wisconsin, body could take. So we got an overpriced, beachside restaurant meal to take a little sun-break. Unfortunately, Clare wasn’t feeling good and I could tell my skin was begging me to not expose it to more direct sunlight, so we took the bus back to the city after lunch.

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Back at the hostel, we had another looong afternoon naptime. When I woke up, I was deep fried (sunburnt mainly on my legs and stomach) and exhausted. We walked around the entire city looking for a night market that ended up being non-existent before ending up right back where we started at a neighboring restaurant called Holy Guacamole!

My favorite food ever is Mexican food, and unfortunately, it’s not something I encounter almost ever in Thailand — so my mouth watered when we first passed this place. We ended up there right in time for happy hour so we all ordered two rounds of margaritas and I helped myself to a large portion of chips and guacamole and Mexican street corn. It was perfect. My mouth is watering again just thinking about it.

We were leaving around 4 pm the next day. So we wandered the city a bit more, played cards in a coffee shop for awhile and got one more lunch in the city before heading to the airport.

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I feel so lucky that I had Clare and Gabby to travel with over the past two weeks! We all really got along well and had a perfect balance (in my opinion) of wanting to do and see as much as possible and also needing downtime in order to restore ourselves for another day. I know how rare it is to find good travel buddies, so I’m so grateful for the both of them for making the entire experience amazing. Can’t wait to see what the next big adventure will bring; you know I’ll keep you posted!

Ripped Pants, Rainstorms, Rooftop Bars and More in KL

Walking from the bus station to our hostel in Kuala Lumpur, we passed plenty of abandoned shops and litter on the street, and I instantly knew we had left Singapore’s halo of perfection. Arriving too early to check-in, we dumped our backpacks in the hostel’s office, grabbed a map, and decided to wander our way to Old City KL to visit some of the free museums.

It was a longer walk than anticipated that involved many confusing streets, dead-end sidewalks, limited crosswalks, and random, unfinished construction sites. Finally, after plenty of detours and turnarounds, we found the Police Museum, one of the free options. We arrived about 12:45ish and no surprise really, the museum was closed from 12-2:30. Deciding to stick around the area and come back, we wandered past a bird park and ended up at a little Orchid garden on top of a hill. From there, we could hear the afternoon prayer being sung from the National Mosque at the bottom of the hill below us.

This was one of the coolest moments for me as it came as a sudden realization of the completely different culture we had just landed in. Thailand is dominantly Buddhist and Singapore has a large array of religious backgrounds, but Malaysia’s official religion is Islam, and I’d never spent time in a Muslim-dominated society before. I had (ignorantly and subconsciously) thought that Malaysia would be a lot like Thailand up until this moment. It was beautiful listening to the prayer being projected through the entire city and really made me stop for a moment and think about how different this place was going to be.

Unfortunately, thanks to the half-marathon of walking we had done in Singapore the day before, and because I only had room to bring one pair of shoes (Chacos) since I was traveling with nothing but a small backpack for the next two weeks, my feet were absolutely killing me. So, I was very content just sitting in the park for awhile, listening to the prayer and waiting for 2:30 to roll around. It was about this time when I stood up and realized I could feel the breeze in an area that should’ve been well-covered by my pants. I looked and sure enough, my pants were ripped horizontally across my butt. I have no clue when or how it happened other than these pants being super lightweight and cheap. Luckily, Gabby had a lightweight scarf along that I could tie around my waist to cover my booty from the rest of the world. I looked a little like Aladdin but at least I wasn’t walking around flashing all of KL.

As we waited outside the police museum for it to open back up, I was surprised how many people stopped to talk to us to say hi or ask us where we were from. People in Thailand are shyer when it comes to randomly approaching strangers; they also don’t use English as much, either because they aren’t comfortable with it or just because they just simply don’t. Every person that talked to us said, “Rain is coming!” (Ignorantly, again) We just shrugged off the warning, because we figured an afternoon rain shower wouldn’t last long, and we were so hot we didn’t really mind getting a little wet.

Finally, the museum was reopened and I have to say, it was a bit anti-climatic. Maybe it was my tired feet, maybe it was my hungry stomach, maybe it was just the somewhat poorly translated poster boards about the Malaysian police services, but I was just about ready to go from the moment we walked in the door. But, in coherence with our bad timing for the whole day, when we left the museum not long after, it was pouring.

Lesson: If the locals tell you “Rain is coming!” Don’t ever assume they’re just being silly and you’ll be fine — Get to where you want to stay for the next few hours!

Clare, being a person who can pull fun game ideas out of nowhere whenever the time is necessary, had the idea to play Heads Up while we waited for the rain to subside. It passed the time well, but I was starting to get really hangry (Note: not a spelling error. I was so hungry that I was angry.) When we finally felt the rain had died down a bit, we decided to just go for it and find a place with a roof and food – that’s all we needed. Of course, it started pouring again as soon as we left. We ducked into the first restaurant we saw about a half mile down the hill. It took us until we were seated and drying our faces to realize the entire menu was in Malay and the entire restaurant was filled with middle-aged Malaysian men. Our waiter helped us order something familiar on the menu, chicken fried rice. And I’ll be damned, that was the BEST chicken fried rice I’ve ever had. Waiting (again) on the rain to stop, we played a few more games. They mainly consisted of — hey, can we figure out a dessert that begins with every letter of the alphabet? What about countries? – but once again, it passed the time well.

After a short rest at the hostel, we decided to join another hostel down the road to go out to get street food and bar hop a little bit. I had some pretty yummy dim sum and drank a couple pretty terrible imported beers then headed to bed fairly early. Traveling is tiring.

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Our hostel room was two bunk beds, and we were only traveling with the three of us, so I wasn’t surprised to see we had a new roommate once we got back. I was surprised, however, to see her asleep, shirtless, without a sheet covering her. Luckily, she had her back turned to the door so all I really saw was long, black hair and some tight spandex. It wasn’t until the morning, when I said to Gabby, “So how about the naked lady in our room? Bold move, huh?” that I even considered that she might have been a he. Gabby looked at me with confusion and said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about, but I’m pretty sure our roommate is a dude.”

She was right. It was just a nice dude with some really long, beautiful hair. I need to stop expecting the expected and begin assuming the opposite.

The next morning, we made a plan to go see the Batu Caves. At first, when we arrived at the little market at the base of the hills, I was super overwhelmed by the crowds of people, loud music, and overpowering smells of incense mixed with curries. But looking up at the climb ahead of us and taking in the greatness of it all calmed me down. As we walked up the hill, I was amazed to see all the cultures, people, religions, places, and practices that were represented on those 272 concrete steps.

I had no cell reception outside of Thailand, so I had no way to look up what the ceremonies people were practicing were at the time, but the most common ritual I saw was people dressed in vibrant yellow walking up the stairs carrying pots of milk on top of their heads. I later learned this was Tamil community (predominantly Hindus) beginning to celebrate the festival of Thaipusam, which officially started only three days after we visited. It felt so incredible getting to witness all the different people interacting with this location in their own ways, from the people making and selling food at the bottom to the tourists selfie-sticking with monkeys to those practicing their religious rituals in the cave — everyone found their own way to appreciate what was around them, and I guess (for once) the people ended up being what I appreciated around me most.

Deciding to head back, we bought our train ticket and luckily, found the train already at the station! We ran to catch it only to find that, no matter how full it got, it wouldn’t be leaving for another 40 minutes. Of course, we didn’t score a seat. Have I mentioned yet how much my feet were killing me in Kuala Lumpur? We also hadn’t eaten anything in a long while, and we all were feeling the hanger coming back from the day before. You can imagine our frustration when, after 40 minutes of waiting for the overcrowded, hot train to leave, we also missed our stop to get off and had to wait for another train going the opposite direction to take us one stop back. It was a long afternoon.

After an Indian meal at a restaurant near the train station, I was feeling energized again. We decided to make the long walk across the city to see the Petronas Towers.

After, we went to check out a place called the Helibar, a bar located on an old helicopter pad at the top of a tall building. We got there for happy hour and got lucky enough to score a reserved table with a great view where we met two other travelers.

Knowing we needed to walk all the way back across town anyway, we decided to check out one more fun bar along the way. This one was called PS150, and I had read that it was a really cool speakeasy in Chinatown that was disguised behind a fake toyshop. The “toyshop” ended up being just a small booth with some old-timey toys in it, but PS150 still had a really cool, hidden vibe to it, and you had to be led through a couple of doors and dimly-lit hallways to enter the bar area way in the back. These were probably two of the most interesting bars I will ever have the chance to go to.

After a quick stop at KFC on the way back to our hostel, we called it in pretty early once again. One of the nice things about being a budget backpacker is if you hit up all the bars at happy hour, you pay a lot less and still get a good night’s sleep – what could be better! In the morning we planned on leaving for the Cameron Highlands as early as possible, so we were eager to sleep as much as possible