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Bangkok, Cambodia, and Thai Islands
Bangkok Becca, Michael, and I flew into BKK on a pleasant Friday afternoon and the two of them were immediately introduced to the urban jungle of Bangkok as we suffered through the first of many hour-long taxi rides through the massive city with its dense, standstill traffic. After finally reaching our hotel, checking in, and getting some food, we decided to go to the Chatuchak weekend market. Friday night at the market was very different from Saturday or Sunday; only a subset of the clothes shops were open and all the non-clothes shops were closed, there was very little food…
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Chiang Mai: Halloween, Lantern Festivals, and the Bruggmans
The last two months have been filled with lots of fun times with friends, some relatively quick traveling, and many a poor Internet connection, resulting in zero blog updates. Now that I have time and a normal Internet connection, I can finally catch up. Here’s my best attempt at transcribing what’s happened since the end of October. After Australia, I flew to Chiang Mai so I could attend the lantern festivals again this year and to await the arrival of Becca and her brother Michael. You may remember Becca from our fun adventures through Chile last year. Becca had allotted…
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Bali, Gili, and Brisbane
After the conclusion of the bloody (and delicious!) chaos that was the Vegetarian Festival, I stuck around Phuket Town for the weekend to go through all my photos and write up the story for the blog. My original plan was to finish all that work in Phuket Town, then travel to the western side of the island for a couple weeks of relaxation on the beach. And then the rain started. The day after the last day of the festival was not one of my favorite memories from this trip. During the 24 hours of constant precipitation, I had to…
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Phuket Vegetarian Festival (a.k.a. HOLY FUCKING SHIT)
Where to start with this one? The story of my attendance at this festival actually goes back almost a year. During my last trip through Southeast Asia, I had read about the vegetarian festival, but after it had already happened. Once I learned more about what happened there and saw some photos from it, I immediately put it on my list of things to see if I was back in Thailand at the right time. Conveniently, my last wedding obligation of the summer was only a couple weeks before the start of the festival, so I took it as a…
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HK ‘N BKK
It’s not lost on me that the two cities I visited initially are currently epicenters of political friction. Admittedly, Thailand has been quiet lately since the junta has oppressed the country into mostly silence, but not long ago there were large, loud, and violent protests all over Bangkok. And as I write this, Hong Kong is under siege by “Occupy Central” protesters looking to send a pro-democracy message to China by stalling business downtown. Luckily for me, the timing of my trip avoided all of this, so I was able to enjoy both places without any logistical headaches caused by…
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Southeast Asia Part II
Before transitioning into a brief discussion of my return to Southeast Asia, I think a summer debriefing is in order. Total travel stats for my Murrikan summer: 19 cities in 14 states/provinces in 2 countries, 10 flights, 9 train trips, one high-speed ferry, and one seaplane. Add to that many new friends, a nebulous number of craft IPAs, three weddings, and dozens of reunions with high school friends, college friends, SF friends, Thailand friends, and almost my entire extended family. In fact, all the quality time with people I care about has set a frighteningly high bar; traveling solo in…
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A Murrikan Summer: Midwest
This post is going to be a short and dull one since it seems like ancient history (now that I’ve already been back in Southeast Asia for over a week) and because it’s probably not that interesting to most people. I spent about a week at an Airbnb in suburban Minneapolis, followed by my cousin Kelsey’s wedding weekend, then flew to Chicago for a few days to visit some friends, then flew to Asheville for another wedding (a good friend from college) before flying back to the bay area. The vast majority of my time in all these places was…
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A Canadian Summer: Victoria and Vancouver
Victoria Upon arriving in Victoria, I went through the familiar checklist of entering a new country: immigration, customs, cash. Actually, customs was non-existent and the ferry landing was so small it didn’t have an ATM or currency exchange, so once I got my passport stamped, I was turned loose into downtown Victoria. (Mental note: take the ferry to Victoria the next time I need to smuggle something to Canada.) I’ve recently become addicted to having mobile data service for traveling (something I never had in Asia), so I walked to the local mall and bought a 30-day SIM card from…
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A Murrikan Summer: Seattle
After another gorgeous train ride up the coast, I checked into my Seattle Airbnb in the neighborhood of Hillman City, which is quite far south of downtown. My time in Seattle was split into two distinct halves; I would alternate between unknown, local spots in Hillman City and touristy places in the city center. For the first 36 hours, as I was developing photos and working on my Portland blog post, I stayed entirely in the neighborhood, quite content to explore the nearby cafes, ethnic restaurants, and alehouses. On Thursday night, I met up with Craig and Yoko, a lovely…
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A Murrikan Summer: Oregon
After saying goodbye to friends in SF and Oakland, I left the bay area by hopping on a late night train to Oregon. Okay, that’s a lie, because the train was over four hours late, so it didn’t leave until 2:30 in the morning. Truth be told, it wasn’t Amtrak’s fault; all the trains going through northern California and southern Oregon were delayed because of wildfires. As the train was passing through those areas, we could all see smoke, the smoldering remains of trees, and even a few distant fires. Funny side note: during the long delay, as I sat…
