Category: Travel
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Dalat and Mui Ne
With my work finished for the year and our time in Chiang Mai at an end, Laurie and I met at the airport on a Sunday morning for our flight to Vietnam. During the hours and hours of travel research and obsessive flight searching that preceded this trip, I had found a direct flight from Chiang Mai to Saigon. It doesn’t operate every day, but it saves time and money compared to flying through Bangkok. Being the holders of e-visas, we were confused about how to proceed after landing in Saigon, but we figured out that we could enter any…
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Chiang Mai
My two weeks in Chiang Mai were very much a continuation of the working holiday that had started in Bangkok the week prior. I found a nice guesthouse in the north-eastern corner of old city that I’ve walked past for years but never patronized; I derived a strange, satisfying closure that after all these years, I finally stayed there. I stuck to the same early morning routine as the previous week, again mainly because my guesthouse room was bathed in sunlight at 7:00 in the morning. There was never any question that I would go back to Punspace, my favorite…
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Ekkamai
You know how’s a good way to start a 39-day, trans-Pacific trip? As you’re settling into your tiny economy seat and mentally preparing for a long and uncomfortable flight, the lead flight attendant announces to everyone that the cabin doors have been closed and you realize that the plane is only one-third full. Sofas for everyone! Armed with sleeping pills, earplugs, a sleep mask, and a row of seats all to myself, I had the easiest 14-hour flight ever. Dinner, sleep, breakfast, movie, done. Hello Asia! After a short layover in Taipei and a (relatively) short flight to Bangkok, I…
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Southeast Asia Part Oh Who’s Counting Anymore
Another December, another trip to Southeast Asia! Shocker, right? Having used only two weeks of vacation the entire year, I decided in September – while in Beirut, actually – to embark on another winter adventure. If you’re wondering why I keep doing this, see my post from last year because the reasons are just as relevant today. Given the success of working remotely last year and the appeal of being able to extend the trip, I pushed my luck a bit with my manager and told him I’d be gone for five weeks: three weeks of working remotely and two weeks…
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Lebanon
My trip to Lebanon for my friend Omar’s wedding ended up being a massive friends reunion full of eating, drinking, and socializing, which doesn’t make for the best writing, so this won’t be one of my normal blog posts. Instead, this is more a reminder of what we did and where we went, with a few observations thrown in here and there. I even brought my camera to Lebanon and still barely took any photos! The week was incredibly engaging in so many other ways. Monday A decently full day of flights starting Sunday afternoon in San Francisco ended at…
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Bangkok
After a lazy morning in Vientiane and a pretty standard travel day, I found myself back in Bangkok, the chaotic, frustrating, perplexing city that I have such a soft spot for. The last three days of my vacation fell on a weekend – New Year’s weekend at that – and I can’t think of a better place in the whole world to celebrate the end of an amazing trip and ring in the new year. Once I was on the ground, I got a taxi to my Airbnb in Sukhumvit, dropped my things on the floor, and was immediately enchanted…
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Vientiane
Christmas, the day I was transiting to Vientiane, ended up being quite two-faced. The holiday turned out alright in the end, but the travel portion of the day sucked. The day wasted no time in getting off to a bad start. It was the classic death-by-a-thousand-cuts, something that I’m no stranger to, especially given how long I traveled before. My guesthouse’s breakfast area was completely full when I went downstairs in the morning, so I had to shift around my entire morning schedule. After walking into town to get some coffee elsewhere, the strap on my sandal – which was…
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Vang Vieng
The morning I left Luang Prabang, I climbed into one of the many tuk-tuks in town that was making its morning rounds, collecting travelers from their hotels, guesthouses, and hostels. With each additional guest climbing aboard, we all had to squeeze together a little tighter, until all the couples were sitting vertically (one on the lap of the other), the back was full, the cab was full, and we were all praying that the next stop was the bus station and not another hotel. The excessive number of people correlated to an excessive amount of baggage on the roof rack,…
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Luang Prabang
After saying goodbye to Chiang Mai again, I took the one-hour flight to Luang Prabang and coasted through probably the easiest entry to a new country that I’ve ever had. The visa was trivial to get since I had brought dolla bills with me from America, the ATM outside the small airport dispensed reasonably sized notes (ahem, Thailand…), and the very short taxi ride to my guesthouse was an easy flat rate. I liked it there immediately. The beautiful, hazy, green mountains are impossible to miss, the weather was cool enough that I could wear pants and a long-sleeve tee at…
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Pattaya and Chiang Mai
The specific travel dates for my winter holiday were mostly dictated by my vacation time balance and the expense of traveling during the holiday season. To keep costs reasonable, it was necessary to find a round-trip flight to Asia – as opposed to two separate one-way flights – so I opted for Bangkok. Don’t let the above photo fool you; December 8th was not a fun travel day. To begin with, I had a very full day at home: working, packing, cleaning, preparing my apartment for my Airbnb guest, and trying to fight off a cold. After going to a friend’s…
