Southeast Asia Odyssey

Quirky Things About Thailand 1. It’s a different year here - I had no idea some countries are going about life in entirely different years, but then I remembered calendars/years are based on religion, so of course not every country is recognizing the same year. Thailand follows the Buddhist calendar and the year is 2568 B.E. Per the Buddhist calendar, I was born in the year 2540 B.E. 2. The traffic patterns and laws around vehicles are much different. There are significantly more motorbikes than cars and you will often see 3-4 people on a single motorbike. The most I've ever seen was 5- it was 2 adults and 3 young teenagers. You will see 10-15 people in the back of trucks and just so many things that would NEVER fly in the US. The traffic is so busy and crossing roads as a pedestrian often feels like the most intense game of real-life frogger. The madness works most of the time, but unfortunately, Thailand has one of the highest road fatality rates in the world :( Sadly a lot of ...

Finishing our Krabi Tour in Krabi Town  Krabi Town is the capital of the Krabi province, located a bit more inland along a river. It's home to many markets and the famous Tiger Cave Temple, a Buddhist temple located on top of a mountain. We were here for 2 nights in between island hopping and returning to Bangkok.  The red marks the Krabi Province The highlight from this leg of the trip was our hostel and the people we met. This was our first hostel experience in a while and we picked a great social hostel and made so many new friends! The first night, there was a pool party where we met a couple guys from Saudi Arabia and had the best time talking to them! I learned so much more about their culture and religion. One of the most interesting takeaways was learning about their diet. Muslims are only allowed to eat what is known as "Halal food," food that follows Islamic law. This includes fish with scales, milk and eggs from permissible animals, and animals (excluding pork)...

Ao Nang is a busy beach town on the mainland of the Krabi province that serves as the gateway to isolated beaches that can only be accessed by boat. It's only a 5-minute boat ride to and from Tonsai, where we had come from. Long tail boat If you read my recent blog post about Tonsai, you know that the reason we found ourselves in Ao Nang is because we weren't able to follow through with our original plans to travel north to a national park due to illness. We needed time to rest and recover from a virus that wreaked havoc on our bodies. We knew we were traveling during peak tourist season, but that reality hit hard when we were searching for last minute accommodations. It's safe to book things 3 days out, but options become extremely limited when you're trying to find something 24 hours in advance. There was nothing available within our budget, so we had to ball out on a hotel the first night and then a private cottage the next night. Ideally we would've stayed at th...

Howdy! I’m currently in Vietnam! We’ve been here for a week now and I just boarded a sleeper bus that is taking me on a 16-hour journey from the mountain town of Da Lat in the south to the coastal town of Hoi An in central Vietnam. Here is my set up on the bus. I can sit up or fully lay down. I think it’s very comfortable considering I’m on a bus! This was our last sleeper bus to give you a better idea of the setup I’m actually making this journey alone because Atticus struggles with motion sickness and opted for a flight. I wish I could join him, but it wasn’t in the budget for me. We’re also using this as an opportunity to spend 2 nights apart to do our own thing since we’ve been together pretty much nonstop for over 5 weeks. I’m already looking forward to our reunion! I have plans to catch up on my blog posts during this time, but I will say - I had plans to do so the past 2 bus rides and it hasn’t happened due to rough conditions that made it difficult to look at words on a screen....