I remember the first moment that I was truly happy to be a solo traveler. It was in Chiang Mai in the third month of my trip (I’ve now been traveling solo for 15 months) and a friend and I had spent all day motorbiking around the surrounding mountains. They were beautiful, but come nightfall we […]
8 Reasons Why I’m so Hopelessly in Love with Pai
Pai, just a few hours outside of Thailand’s second biggest city, Chiang Mai, is a hippie oasis I’ve been dreaming about ever since I left. I had visited for 5 days almost exactly a year before, and had loved it so much that it made my very short list of places I just had to […]
Thousands of Lanterns Become Stars in the Sky
It was a rainy day in London when I impulse bought a ticket back to Chiang Mai. I had been wanting to return to Asia and was choosing between Phnom Penh in Cambodia and returning to Pai in northern Thailand. Pai won out and I’m so glad it did. A few days later, while chatting […]
How to Quell Your Parents’ Fears About Your Solo Travels
A couple of weeks ago, a reader emailed me asking for some advice on how to deal with her worried parents. She had long wanted to take off on a solo trip around Southeast Asia, but every time she brought it up to her family, her mother would get teary-eyed and her father would express […]
Sak Yant Tattoos: The Ultimate Travel Memento
There is a magical Buddhist blessing that each of us carries on our bodies. Some of us carry just one, others two. Some of us were gifted this art from the very same monk – Luang Pi Nunn of Wat Bang Phra near Bangkok, and others traveled to the green and mountainous Chiang Mai to […]