It’s confession time: sometimes, I’m really scared to travel to certain places alone. Sometimes, even if the bus ride is 9 hours long, I dread the last 15 minutes because I’m going to have to rise to the occasion, watch the motorbike taxi drivers as they point directly at me excitedly, ready to grab my […]
Sapa: Trekking Rice Terraces and Staying With Hill Tribes
The fog was rolling in and the cold weather was biting at my nose. My endless summer had officially ended. I was at the very north of Vietnam, in Sapa, about 10 hours north of Hanoi, preparing to go trekking with some of my favorite travel buddies. They sent a message through for me to […]
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 […]
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 […]