Diaries Around the World: 6 Months!
OMG guys. I cannot begin to describe how crazy it is to write the fact I’ve been on the road for longer than 6 months! Before planning this trip I kept telling people, “who knows…I only might make it on the road 3-6 months total before getting homesick or running out of money.” I’m happy to say I’m still truckin’ along!
A lot has happened since I last wrote 3 months ago and I want to fill you in on as much as I can. The reason I’ve been so MIA on the blog is because 1. I’ve had a lot of friends come to meet me in SE Asia, 2. I’ve made a lot of friends, 3. I’m lazy and when I get a free moment, I sleep, 4. I went to a coding camp and learned to code, 5) I went to a silent retreat.
So now I’m going to fill you in on my month in Thailand, my 3 weeks in Laos and my 5 days in Malaysia. I stayed exactly one month in Thailand and seriously can’t wait to go back and explore more. From Thailand I took the slow boat over to Laos and had an amazing experience and stayed for about 3 weeks and then went and chilled out for a bit in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia before heading over to Indonesia! Here we gooo…
THAILAND
The next day I literally did nothing and felt rather sick again from the buckets I had so I didn’t do anything again. It’s sort of a bummer because I didn’t see much of Koh Phangan and feel like I need to go back to truly experience it minus the half or full moon party.
After Koh Phangan Mikael and I took a flight up to Chiang Mai to stay one night before heading up to Pai on motorbikes. We rented them and drove the 3 hours up the windy roads to Pai. It was really worth it and I was glad to ride a scooter vs. taking the vans. I probably would have gotten super car sick because there are 900 something turns along the road!
LAOS
We crossed the border into Laos after getting our Visa’s at the border. Then we got transferred over to a boat where we ended up winding along the river for 2 days on a slow boat. This was super fun and it was cool to do it with the same group we started with. We all went out together a few nights and explored together before finally making it to Luang Prabang which was our final destination.
Finally it was time for our trek and our homestay with Tiger Trails. We first hiked for about 6 hours the first day through remote villages and landscape of Laos and can I just say OMG! The scenery was stunning! Literally untouched and beautiful mountains and jungle. I couldn’t believe my eyes. We stopped in two villages on the way to ours and one had no running water or electricity. The people were super dirty and they had so so many animals. It was fascinating to see because they were super smiley and happy and sold us their homemade goods. It was so rural that you can only get there by hiking in because there aren’t any roads!
We finally made it to our homestay after a lot of up and down hiking. We stayed in little huts with mosquito nets and the family cooked for us. This village had a road, but was situated against a gorgeous mountain cliff. I was in awe the whole time! They made us their local food for dinner and then we got to drink their wine from a big ceramic pot. Later we learned that this is the old way of drinking and fermenting wine from Laos and is still used heavily in villages.
This was seriously an amazing cultural experience for me to see in Laos and I didn’t want it to end! After our homestay we went to two more waterfalls (Tad Se but it was dried up) and then kayaked back towards Luang Prabang for a few hours. We saw a bunch of elephants crossing the river and saw some beautiful scenery. We even hit a few rapids!
I jinxed myself and said out loud “I hope someone fall out of their kayak so I can laugh at them.” and then of course Lauren and I hit a rapid on the last couple feet before the ending point and tipped our kayak and everything (including my dry bag with my camera and phone in it went floating down the river). Thank god for our guides who saved everything for us! It was a site to see and it was pretty funny looking back. The only thing he couldn’t salvage was my SF Giants hat…RIP!
Lauren ended up getting super sick from something we had eaten at some point and so she was be ridden for a few days. We just laid low and then she bucked up and we went to a Laotian cooking class. I thought it was really good food and so fun, but poor Lauren was trying not to vomit the whole class. She finally got better and then in the next couple days we took a van to our next town of Vang Vieng!
The bus ride here was TERRIBLE. The roads were super windy and pot holes everywhere. Our driver was driving like a bat out of hell and it was miserable. I started to feel sick halfway through and at first thought it was car sickness which I rarely get. Then I realized I was actually sick with what Lauren had and it just hit me later. I threw up all over the van. Whoops and sorry to the 4 other passengers :(.
We FINALLY made it to Vang Vieng thank god and I just went immediately to sleep. Our hotel the Elephant Crossing hotel was incredible! I couldn’t have asked for a better view of Vang Vieng. We literally watched hot air balloons go past our window at sunset with the limestone cliffs and river in the background. Doesn’t get much better than that.
We met up with some of the slow boat crew and hung out and one day rented bikes to tour around the valley. We went to 2 of the blue lagoons surrounding and drove on the SUPER shitty roads through a few villages which was fun. I was just happy to finally feel better again.
A trip to Vang Vieng wouldn’t be complete without a boozy tube float down the river so Lauren and I saddled up after both of us were sick and bought booze to pre-funk in the room. I felt like I was back in college. We filled up water bottles with our mixture of watermelon vodka and sprite and coconut water (EWW!! do not recommend) and went to the float. It was actually super fun. I can’t imagine what it used to be like before they shut down all of the bars, but we still had fun at the 3 bars they left open. The views floating were incredible and that was super worth it.
We eventually made it to Vientiane where we stayed at a swanky hotel and checked out the night market but mostly just walked around and vegged out. We saw some cool temples and then took a day trip to Buddha Park which was the coolest part of the area. I couldn’t believe these ancient structures.
Eventually Lauren had to leave after a freakin’ amazing trip. it was so sad to see her go and once again I was back by my lonesome. I decided to book an extra night at the hotel so I could chill out at work on my pre-course work for my coding camp in Bali (more on that later).
The next day I had a flight to Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia before my coding camp started. I wanted to spend more time traveling in Laos, but unfortunately they have pretty bad roads and public transportation, plus no airport in the south so it didn’t make sense for me to stay here before Bali. Instead I got a cheap flight to Kuala Lumpur for 5 days and then flew on a cheap flight to Denpasar in Bali.
KUALA LUMPUR, MALAYSIA
I landed in KL really tired from all that go-go-go in Laos. I had a plan to pack in a few more things in Malaysia than just Kuala Lumpur, but was too lazy and just stayed here to chill out for 5 days. It was sooo nice.
I was really feeling anti-social before I got to the hostel. I told myself I wasn’t going to speak to anyone and not make any friends. Literally the next day there I met a group of 6 friends. Haha it’s hard to NOT people in hostels….I’m telling you.
I explored a few of the malls, saw the towers lit up at night and went to the night markets with a guy I met who is traveling to all of the countries in the world. So cool! The group of friends all went out to a few rooftop bars the next night and a few tequila shots later….we were having a blast.
I saw the KL bird park which was actually pretty cool. Not worth the $20 but cool nonetheless. I also got to see more malls (they have a big mall culture) and then hung out a ton at this hipster cafe I found called VCR with some strong wifi and caught up a bit on blogging and life.
After 5 days of attempting to chill out and a few nights out, it was time to head to The Institute of Code in Bali where I would be for 10 straight days learning how to code/create websites in HTML, CSS and Javascript. If you’re curious what it is, check out this site. www.instituteofcode.com. I was in a luxury villa for 10 days and it was AMAZING because I met some of the coolest people and had a great introduction into the Bali lifestyle which I LOVED.
More on my Indonesia experience later. I just spent a month there and had a blast. For those of you who are confused as I was…. Bali is an island in the country of Indonesia. 🙂 I spent most of my time on Bali and then swapped over to the Gili islands which are owned by the island of Lombok which is right next to Bali. Indonesia unfortunately only gives out 1 month visas or I would have easily spent 2 or 3 months there exploring!
Until next time!!
xoxo
Katie
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