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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…
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A Murrikan Summer: Bay Area
Knowing that I wanted to be in the bay area for about a month, I had hunted for a sublet on Craigslist before leaving my brother’s place in Delaware. Among my findings were a studio flat in Normandy Village, a small part of Berkeley that was built in the 1920s and intentionally designed to look like a rural French town. No, I’m not making this up. Though I’d much rather live in something more modern, I thought it would be interesting to try something quirky and quasi-vintage, especially since it would be for only a month. I contacted the landlord…
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A Murrikan Summer: East Coast
Philadelphia Just as my time in Delaware was winding down, my brother and his wife left on a trip to Europe, so I spent the last few days housesitting, catsitting, finishing up some tasks, and watching a lot of World Cup matches. I drove up to Philly for my last Saturday night in town, stayed with my cousin Samantha and her husband Dan, and hit the town with them. It was an evening of reunions, as I also met up with Ethan, a good college friend, and Parker, one of my roommates and good friends during my volunteer time in…
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Back to Murrika
Given the welcome screening I had received in Japan, I was expecting a long wait and a moderate amount of questioning when I returned to the States. Instead… nothing. No questions from immigration and I walked right through customs without so much as eye contact from a security official. I was pleasantly surprised by all of this, of course, with the emphasis on “surprised”. After a five-day beach trip to Cabo two years ago, all my bags were turned inside out and scrutinized. After nine months in Southeast Asia? Nothing. Meh, move along sir. California My flight back to the…
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Some Final Thoughts
I’ve been putting this post off for a while because I’m not quite sure what to say here. Maybe to get things rolling, I’ll talk about boring logistics and what resources I used, if only because this could be useful for other travelers. And here’s some random advice: Rather than attempting some free-form rambling about my trip, I’ll instead answer the questions I’ve heard the most since I’ve been back. What was your favorite place? Impossible to answer. I liked many things about everywhere I went. I will mention that I spent the most time in Thailand, specifically Chiang Mai,…
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Tokyo Part II
Taking the train back to Tokyo on a Friday afternoon was a great feeling; while it was certainly pleasant to spend some time in the countryside, there’s nothing quite like traveling to a major cultural city (especially Tokyo) for the weekend. Being Golden Week in Japan, cheaper lodging in the city’s more popular areas was difficult to come by, so we had to suck it up and splurge a little bit for our last weekend. As we cleaned ourselves up and enjoyed some 7-11 happy hour beers in the room before heading out for the night, we absolutely soaked up…
