Hey, friends! I'm home, and here is my awesome video from my Southeast Asia travels...

Backpacking through Asia was an adventure, one of the best things I’ve ever done, and also one of the most challenging. I spent two months with pretty much nothing but a backpack and a passport – no plan except to fly into Kuala Lumpur on the 17^th of June and eventually make my way up to Hanoi, Vietnam, by the 22^nd of August. I became a pro at haggling, navigating public transportation, saving money, making friends, going with the flow. I ate new foods – some that were delicious and some that left me bedridden-sick for days. I heard new languages and attempted to talk to locals with the few words I knew. I met people from all over the world. I experienced what it was like to be the minority. I had the time of my life, but after two months I was ready to get back to somewhere comfortable. A place where I knew the culture and the language and the food and the money.

What I didn’t realize was the reverse culture shock I’d experience when I got back to the States.

I fell in love with Australia in the year I was there, and whenever I was homesick throughout Asia, the place I ached for was Brisbane. From the day I arrived in that city, I felt like I belonged there – and even through all the ups and downs I experienced, there was never a day that it didn’t feel that way. I can’t put my finger on exactly what it was – the endless summer, the awesome people with awesome accents, the laidback attitude, the meat pies and Tim tams… it was all of that, and none of it because it was more. It was simply that feeling of home.

I think what made the culture shock the worst when I landed back in the States three weeks ago was that I didn’t expect it. I found Australia so similar to home. But it was different in all the little ways I wanted it to be. Australia was a little more laid back, the people a little more flexible and friendly, a little less self-involved. I got used to the small things – like Aussie dollars, driving on the left side of the road, reading temperature in Celsius, distance in kilometers, weight in kilograms. When I got back, these tiny differences seemed so much bigger than I expected. I had to convert back to the American ways – which maybe wouldn’t have been so hard if I wasn’t still constantly homesick for Brisbane.

I had a three-week route planned out to get me from the west coast to the east coast, and that plan changed a couple times – I added legs because I was dreading going home where my identity as a Traveler would be temporarily over, and then I skipped legs because I was so overwhelmed with being back. I hopped from San Francisco to Ashland, up to Seattle, over to Nashville and Raleigh, and last night I finally arrived back home in New Jersey.

I remember reading an article that had been circulating around my au pair friends who left Australia - The Hardest Part of Traveling No One Talks About. The hardest part about coming back is dealing with the changes within yourself. You’re the “new, shiny object” for a minute, and then everyone goes back to their lives and you’re left feeling lost. You’ve changed on a deeper level that isn’t visible on the surface, so no one sees it, but it makes you want to scream because it’s not something that will go away. It’s a difference in the way your mind works, and you experience it every second of every day. You want something more, you’ve caught what some call the “travel bug.” But what it really is, is a longing to go back to a place where you’re surrounded by likeminded people – people who know what it’s like to go places and grow and feel so incredibly lost when you return to the place you’re supposed to call home.

I dreaded all of this. I felt it from the moment I got back to the States. My friends and family were excited that I was back, and they wanted to hear about my travels, but it almost felt like most people were relieved it was over. Not many people have acknowledged the more permanent changes in me. Maybe they haven’t seen them, but they’re so apparent to me that it breaks my heart when the people I love can’t see it right away.

It sucks, but I expected to feel that way. What I didn’t expect is this bizarre feeling I’ve had since I walked in my front door last night. This feeling that the “pause” button was pressed while I was gone. The boxes I gathered of old clothes and dorm room décor are still sitting in the middle of the bedroom floor, exactly where I left them fifteen months ago. The old woman across the street is still sitting in the same lawn chair in the same spot next to her driveway as she was when I headed for the airport last June. The construction sites around my town haven’t made any progress. It felt like a lifetime since I’d been here, but driving through my town last night gave me an eerie feeling. Everything seems untouched. It makes me feel like the past year of my life was a dream that I’m waking up to and I’m in a panic to get back to it.

I’ve never felt more lost. This is the first time that I haven’t had a next step. I don’t know where I’m going or what I want, except for this wanderlust to stay with me. I hope that it will. I hope it guides me and gives me the same courage it has in the past – to go, explore, grow, and most of all, to not get stuck.

I hope to extend my travels in the near future. But until then… thank you all for following my adventures, for inspiring me and letting me inspire you in return!

I’ve never been a big city girl. When people talked about Singapore, all I heard were the words “skyscrapers,” “expensive,” and “they’re so strict, you can’t even chew gum.” I remember thinking I was going to hate Singapore and dreaded it being the last stop on our trip. But even though all those things are true, it was one of my favorite places I’ve seen in Southeast Asia. I think after two months of heat and sweat in underdeveloped, dirty cities, Singapore was exactly what we needed. The second I walked off the plane into the airport, I took a deep breath and said, “Wow, I love Singapore.” It was so clean. And shiny. And I could actually breath the air. The subway system was surprisingly easy to figure out, and we went straight to our hostel on a cute little cobblestone pedestrian street marked with cafes and Turkish restaurants. After some street food for dinner, we crashed so we could explore the city in the morning.

We only had one day in Singapore, so first thing in the morning, we headed to the Marina Bay and botanical gardens. It was so incredibly beautiful there. As I walked around Marina Bay, I felt a little like I was back in Sydney with the same sort of circular quay – but there were also the over-the-top Vegas-like hotels and casinos, and the New-York-City-skyscrapers. Kelsey and I embraced our tourist identities and took heaps of photos of the bay, the architecture, and the famous Merlion spitting out a fountain of water.

Me and the Merlion

Our last night was different, but it was awesome. Through some au pair connections, we ended up staying with an Australian family who just moved from Brisbane to Singapore. We spent our last night in Asia hanging out with some adorable little Aussie kids in a nice, big house, eating cereal and salads and Tim Tams and Ben & Jerry’s ice cream – a bit of a Western binge – and slept in a big cozy bed after watching some Jimmy Fallon. I think it was exactly what we needed to ease us back into the ways of the West.

At the moment, I’m sitting in the Manila airport, waiting to board our final flight back to the good, old USA. I have so many mixed emotions. I’m exhausted, sick of lugging around my giant backpack, ready for some clean clothes, and some food and water that won’t send me running to the next toilet. I’m relieved that I survived this trip – it was a lot harder than I expected, and after meeting so many travelers in the last few months, I’ve realized that pretty much no one leaves Southeast Asia without some scars. I’m excited to see everyone I miss back in the States, and I’m pumped that this isn’t the end of my trip – I still have another three weeks of hopping across the country until I’m back in my hometown. But I’m also scared shitless because this is the last and final leg of the grandest adventure I’ve ever had, and I don’t have a clue what’ll come next after I finally land in New Jersey. I don’t want this to be over just yet. More than anything, I don't want my life to be boring.

Our last week in Vietnam had its ups and downs. Although I loved Hoi An, I left in a somewhat miserable mood with a stomach bug due to a combination of bad water, bad food, dehydration, stress, lack of sleep, etc. That was only the beginning of our bad luck streak. When we arrived in Hue, I was bedridden-sick so I didn’t see one bit of the city, and after a night in what seemed like the nicest hotel, Kelsey woke up covered in bites – bed bugs. We left Hue stressed, attempting to quarantine our bags, but it only went downhill from there. Broken iPods on an 18-hour overnight bus, taxi scams, Kelsey’s lost iPhone. Luckily, this was our final stop in Vietnam and we powered on through.

We checked into our “hostel” which was more like a hotel, except for its $10/night price. Private room, fluffy pillows and duvets, HBO, free coffee, and hotel robes. We spent a lot of time in Hanoi in bed… but I don’t regret a thing about it. When we finally restored our energy, we explored the city a bit. The same day we arrived, our English friends from Mui Ne – Emily, Liv, and Dan – took a train up and we all met for dinner. We had such a great time spending our last few days with them – walking around the city lake, eating Pho, “bar hopping” around Bia Hoi Corner where you can get “bia hoi” (“fresh beer”) for 5000 dong/glass (that’s about 25 cents), and hanging out at some other local hostels where we played trivia and made some other travel friends. It was really hard to say goodbye to these guys when we left Hanoi.

Kels, Em, Dan, Liv, and me in Hanoi

On our last afternoon, Kelsey and I found a cute little coffee shop called the Note Café where the walls were covered in love notes to and from people from all over the world. We sat and drank iced lattes and doodled and wrote notes to add to the walls. I made sure I wrote one to all the people we met on this trip. They’ve all made this such a special two months, and I truly hope to see them all again!

When you’re traveling for extended periods of time, it’s easy to lose track of time. When Kelsey and I arrived in Vietnam last week, we glanced at a calendar and realized how little time we have left in our trip. We started planning our route up to Hanoi – where we have a flight out on August 22 – and decided we’d limit our stops to the 4 H’s: Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon), Hoi An, Hue, and Hanoi. But after only a few days in Ho Chi Minh – a big city that followed dirty, polluted, underdeveloped Cambodia – we immediately detoured to Mui Ne to get some beach time. I’m so glad we did because it was one of our best stops by far.

Last weekend, we took a bus from Saigon with one night booked at Mui Ne Backpackers Village. But from the moment we arrived, it was clear that it’s impossible to stay only one night in Mui Ne. We checked in, hot and sweaty, and the staff walked us to our hostel room – a private room, $10 per night, poolside, surrounded by palm trees and hammocks. We dropped our 15 kilo bags and jumped straight into the pool. We already felt like we were in heaven, and within a couple hours we’d met heaps of people – from England, Ireland, Wales, Denmark, Holland, New Zealand, Canada, Italy, Israel, etc. People traveling for weeks, months, years. People with awesome stories to share. Most had stopped in Mui Ne for a night or two and ended up staying “one more night”… and for most people “one more night” turned into four or five. It really was paradise.

Pool time in Mui Ne

With the exception of taking a half-day trip to the sand dunes, we spent all day, every day in the pool, soaking up the sun, until it was dark and our fingers and toes were shriveled beyond repair. And then our new friends and we would venture down the street for a giant seafood dinner by the beach where we picked out our “dinner” while it was still swimming around in fish tanks in the front of the restaurant. The best part: a feast of clams, mussels, scallops, squid, prawns, and tuna cost about $6 each.

Sand dunes

After four days, we finally booked a bus up to Hoi An. We ended up bringing along our new English friend Dan, and the three of us checked into a triple room in a hostel when we arrived. Hoi An was a cute little town where we spent the days renting bicycles to ride around the old city or down to the beach. And a couple days later, most of our friends from Mui Ne headed up to meet us – everyone traveling at different paces, but in the same direction.

Out on the town with Dan

One night a few of us biked down to the beach to have some drinks and watch the sunset, and I sat there with new friends and realized that the people really make or break a place for me when traveling. My favorite stops in the past couple months have been the ones where really good people surrounded us. It reminded me of a quote from one of my favorite books - Into the Wild - about a guy who leaves everything behind to travel through America and "find himself." He chooses solitude in the wilderness, and although he experiences moments of self-discovery, he ultimately realizes that "happiness [is] only real when shared." The past few months have been amazing. Words can't describe the changes I've seen in myself, emerging myself completely in new places and cultures every day. But the true joy I've felt in this trip has manifested when I've been able to share it with others.

One last thing we did in Saigon, before heading off to our next city, was visit the War Remnants Museum. It was really interesting, and I left feeling sad and also confused about History. Here, what we call the “Vietnam War” is called the “US War of Aggression,” and we walked through exhibits of anti-American propaganda, photographs of victims, destruction, and an entire floor/gallery dedicated to the victims of Agent Orange – an herbicide sprayed all over Vietnam by US military that left victims, and several generations after, with horrible birth defects. There was so much hatred toward Americans and it made me feel horrible and sad and embarrassed. I saw things about this war that they would never talk about or show you back home because it makes our country look horrible.

Letter to Obama from Agent Orange victim.
Too tiny, I know, but worth zooming in for a read.

At the same time, I left with so many questions – about the war, and about history in general. You can’t deny the horrible things that happened in this country, and the devastation the people here have experienced. But history is made up entirely of stories passed down through generations, and while there are facts, there is also a huge portion that is based on perspective. When we learn about this War in America, they teach you the story from their perspective. When we learn about this War in Vietnam, it is entirely different because the people here viewed events differently and were affected differently. How can you ever know the basic truth about what has happened in the past? How can you ever know who or what to blame for what has happened? I left not knowing any more or any less. Just knowing something different. And not really wanting to take a history class ever again.

We arrived in Vietnam a few days ago, and our first days in Saigon have been great. I think I hit a wall in Cambodia – overwhelmed, exhausted, a little homesick – and while I really enjoyed hanging out in Phnom Penh with our American friend Sam, I don’t think I gave Cambodia the chance it deserved. With only a couple more weeks left in Southeast Asia, I’m trying to jump over that wall and take in as much as I can before this lifestyle comes to an end (at least for now).

On our first day in Saigon, Kelsey and I booked a full-day, 12-hour tour of the Mekong River, with candy/tea/fruit tastings and lunch included… for only $7. We took a bus to a boat to an island where they made coconut candy, and then we ate lunch at Unicorn Island (but we didn’t see any unicorns L). We hopped over to some other little islands and had a tea party with honey bee tea, and then we ended the day with some fresh fruit, Vietnamese singers serenading us, and a quick little ride in a tiny boat through some of the canals, similar to where they set up the morning floating markets.

Mekong River tour

While sipping tea and eating some dragon fruit and lychees, Kelsey and I started talking to an older couple from Western Australia. Every time we meet some Australians, we can’t help but strike up a conversation – since we were there for so long, saw so much, and can’t get enough of that Aussie accent. Mark and Karry were really cool people to talk to though. Now that their kids are grown up and they’ve retired, they’ve been traveling everywhere for months and months at a time. They made it sound like they pick out a country (or even a continent) every year, book a one-way ticket and go, making it back home just in time to spend a couple months with their kids for Christmas, before heading off to the next place. I loved hearing all their stories and they loved hearing ours. Before we parted ways, Karry gave us her and her husband’s email address – something involving their “bucket list.” I guess that’s all you need in life – someone to share your email account and help you check off everything you want to see and do in this life!

“If you ever decide to come to Perth, send me an email. Just let me know what year you’re coming and I’ll give you our kids’ Facebooks so you can chat before coming and staying at our house with them!” What funny, weird, wonderful people you meet sometimes!

We met even more today. My mom has a Vietnamese friend she’s been wanting me to get in touch with, since she is back in Saigon this week, and today she acted as our tour guide. Lien is the sweetest – 25 years old, very pregnant, and very excited to show us her city. We met her for lunch and she took us to her favorite little eatery where we tried Pho for the first time – a traditional Vietnamese soup with noodles and beef. She showed us the best types of beef to order, mixed up our spices and herbs and sauces for us, and showed us the right way to eat this delicious lunch. We wandered around the city, and ended the day in the market where Lien was on a mission to find us the best Vietnamese dessert – a glass filled with fruit and beans and coconut milk, and who knows what else. At the end of the day, we got giant hugs and agreed that we’d have to meet up back in America to have Pho with my mom.

Me, Lien, and Kelsey in Saigon City

Before Lien left, she told us about how a lot of young Vietnamese people hang out in the park, and they love talking to Westerners because they all want to practice English. On our walk back to our hostel, two boys in university stopped us and asked if they could chat with us, so they could practice. It was so funny chatting with them because they asked such rehearsed, textbook questions. “Where do you come from?” “What are your hobbies?” “What do you do to stay healthy?”

The boy I was talking to ended by asking me, “Do you have a dream?” Like a sleeping dream? “No, a dream for the future.” Talk about a hard question. I have no idea what I want to be doing in two months, let alone the far off Future. I didn’t want to leave him hanging, so I told him my dream was to have enough money to travel everywhere in the world. And hopefully move back to Australia. “Do you think this dream will come true?” I don’t know. “I think it will for you. If you try, it will happen!”

Random thoughts and observations on Cambodia:

1. On the bus from Bangkok to the border, we met a Canadian girl who couldn’t stop telling us stories about all her friends who were raped by taxi drivers, or mugged, or had their arms sliced by machetes in drive-by bag-snatchings in Cambodia. A couple days earlier, I had a bad taxi experience in Bangkok when I got sick at the weekend market and went back to the hostel alone – I was harassed and in tears, and had a nice Thai woman find me a free ride home, and after that I locked myself in the hostel room for the next few days. So yeah, I was pretty afraid of Cambodia before I even got there because of Andy’s stories.

2. Despite the scary stories, all the Khmer people we’ve met have been the sweetest.

3. There are no 7 Elevens, only 6 Elevens… but those look sketchy, so I stick to the supermarket.

4. The supermarket has all kinds of things I haven’t seen in over a year. Like Goldfish and cliff bars and peanut butter M&M’s.

5. They use the US dollar.

6. They drive on the right side of the road – which, by the way, is a total mindfuck after being in Australia/Malaysia/Thailand for the past 13 months. Not only are the roads crazy with tuk tuks and motorbikes, but I also have no idea which way to look when crossing the street, so I had my life flash before my eyes several times in the past few days.

7. All the Cambodian people who are trying to sell us things call us “lady” (pronounced: lay-DEE). “You need tuk tuk, lay-DEE?” “You want pants, lay-DEE?” “You buy postcard, lay-DEE?” It makes me want to never buy anything ever.

8. I have no idea how people do multiple days at Angkor Wat. Kelsey and I used our one-day pass, beginning at sunrise – and even though the temples and ruins were beautiful and there are enough to last you for days on end, we didn’t make it past 1pm. Maybe I was burned out after waking up at 4am for the “sunrise” in the pouring rain.

9. Beer costs 60 cents in the supermarket. Happy hour drafts are 50 cents.

10. All the pizza places sell “happy pizza” that will put you in a dazed state for at least a day.

11. When booking buses throughout Cambodia, splurge for the $14 bus instead of the $6. They tell you the only difference is that the “VIP” bus has wifi, but they’re wrong. We took a $6 bus from Siem Reap to Phnom Penh and were forced to watch/listen to awful dubbed karaoke music videos for ten hours while we dodged potholes on the “major highway” that was a dirt road.

12. Cambodia is still very much in its developing state. It has a horrific history that I learned so much about in Phnom Penh, visiting the Killing Fields and the genocide museum. Walking through the old prisons, seeing portraits of every victim lining the walls, standing in the fields where people were tortured to death, bones around my feet, made my heart ache so much for the people here and everything they’ve been through.

13. It is awesome to have connections while traveling. While in Phnom Penh, we stayed with a friend we met in Thailand, originally from Texas, who’s been teaching at the local university for two years. We had our own bedroom, not to mention a whole apartment to chill in our down time, and a local to show us the city, all the good party spots, all the good eating spots, and anything else we could ever need to feel at home in a foreign city (like Dairy Queen).

We just arrived in Bangkok this morning, and I’m not going to lie, I’m feeling really overwhelmed and a little sad. Our overnight bus dropped us off at 5am this morning on a random street in the pitch dark, and we took a taxi to our hostel, only to wait for six hours until check-in. I fell into a sort of half-sleep on a wooden bench outside of reception, hugging my backpack to me so I wouldn’t get robbed, and felt very, very homeless. Not only am I sleep-deprived, with an upset stomach and a very strange rash breaking out on my arm, but I’m also slightly depressed because I absolutely fell in love with Pai – the tiny, hippie town where Kelsey and I spent the last few days – and that’s the only place I want to be right now.

Last weekend, Kelsey and I took a mini bus through the winding roads up north of Chiang Mai to Pai – a tiny town in the mountains, filled with cute little tea shops, prayer flags, tie dye, and young travelers. It was so easy to meet people there because everyone was doing the same thing – taking a break from their busy travel lives to do absolutely nothing in Pai. It’s the type of place you find and immediately begin to unwind and relax and settle in. It felt like home. There was nothing not to love.

Welcome to Pai

A few minutes after getting off the bus and checking into our hostel, Common Grounds, we were walking down the street and heard a girl on a motorbike yell, “KELSEY!!!” It was a girl she went to university with who’s been living at the Circus School in Pai for the past two months. Talk about a small world. She pointed us in the direction of the Sunset Bar that night for a fire show she’d be performing at.

So that’s how we found Sunset Bar. We rolled up on our first night to the hidden little tiki bar that you could only get to by crossing a sketchy bamboo bridge since it was on the other side of the river. When we got there, it was empty. No fire show. The only person there was an older guy sitting at the bar, and on second glance, we realized he’d been at our hostel in Chiang Mai, so we stopped to say hello. And then we just got sucked into Sunset Bar. We had a couple beers with our Chiang Mai friend, Mike from South Africa who’s now living in Reno, Nevada, and on a six-month trip at a sort of transition phase in his life. He introduced us to the bartender, Sanpet, half Thai-half Canadian, covered in tattoos with gauged earrings, the sweetest, kindest, wisest twenty-five-year-old I’ve ever met. Our new best friend. We chilled with Mike and Sanpet for hours and decided this was our new favorite spot.

We settled in to the Pai lifestyle, doing nothing. Our first couple days looked something like this: Kelsey and I lying in hammocks, sipping coffees, chatting with our new hostel friends from Denmark/Canada/Ireland/Germany/England, with dogs at our feet who were all named after Thai curries, taking breaks to walk five minutes down the street to all the food stands that strangely sold burritos, ice cream, pizza, and burgers instead of traditional Thai food. On our third day we were antsy for an adventure, so Kelsey and I rented a motorbike for the day. We paid 100 baht (about $3) for the day, and set off on the winding roads through Pai. We had a map, but no destination, which was absolutely fine because everywhere was beautiful. We got caught in the rain and searched for hours for some hot springs to swim in, only to find that the ones we stumbled upon were literally boiling (I burned my toes), and we nearly ran out of petrol on the long drive back to town, but it was still one of the best days of our trip so far. Green mountains, rice fields, waterfalls, wind in our hair.

Moped selfies

That night as we sat at a burger joint – Burger Queen – inhaling some of the best burgers we’ve ever had, we had this overwhelming feeling again of how small the world is. Pai seemed like a university campus that night, because every other group of people that passed us had familiar faces. We ran into at least fifteen people who had all been at our hostel in Chiang Mai – everyone traveling separately but ending up in the same place. We made plans for everyone to meet at Sunset Bar, and because Kelsey and I spread the word and brought so many new friends, Sanpet hooked us up with free drinks all night. We befriended a couple of the other bartenders, two Aussie guys from Byron Bay, who made me really homesick for Australia. We stayed at Sunset until 4am that night, well after closing time, just hanging out with Sanpet, the Aussies, and their Thai tattoo artist Jeanne, who promised to design a tattoo for me the next day. So that’s what I did on our last day in Pai – I got a tattoo (sorry, Dad). I’d been wanting one for ages, and what a great souvenir/story to tell! Jeanne designed a compass with my first initial in the middle – to center me, to make sure I am never lost, and to guide me all over the world.

Inked

After spending the day at the Magic Monkey tattoo parlor, Kelsey and I met up with some of our Chiang Mai friends to go watch the sunset at the Pai Canyon. I hopped onto the back of a motorbike with Martin, a cute guy from Chile I just met who just finished a semester in New Zealand, and we loaded our other friends onto the backs of a few other bikes, stayed until the sun went down, and then rode back to spend our last night at Sunset Bar with our “travel family.”

It’s going to be such a strange feeling to go home and not be surrounded by travelers. In the past thirteen months, I’ve found that I could walk up to just about anyone and have a day-long conversation with them by asking the same three questions: where are you from, where have you been, and where are you going? Even when I was living in Brisbane, working, I was meeting people from all over the world. Once I stepped outside of the bubble that is America, I found that travel is such an important part of life in so many other cultures. Now, spending nearly three months in a constant wandering state, I can’t imagine what it will be like to go back to a place where people have jobs and addresses and phone numbers. It’s going to be such a culture shock. I don’t know how I’ll possibly find anything to talk to anyone about.

Our last night in Pai was almost surreal. Here we were, surrounded by a group of nearly twenty people who we’d only just met, but we honestly did feel like a family. We took over the entire Sunset Bar, trading tales about where we were from, where we have been, where we are going, and feeling so close because we’ll all always share this particular overlap in our stories. I was nearly in tears at the end of the night, giving hugs to my travel family, to Sanpet and Jeanne and the other bartenders who I don’t think I’ll ever forget because they made this week the most awesome. I love you all, and I really don’t think it’s goodbye forever!

Travel family at Sunset Bar