buddhism | Digital Zen

Dec 17

Southeast Asia Update #7 [Thai Islands]

With sadness and reluctance, Madison and I began planning for the final two-week leg of our journey through Southeast Asia. From the northern Thai city of Chiang Mai, it was time to head south to decompress near the crystal clear waters and limestone cliffs of the Thai Islands. The itinerary consisted of flying to the coastal city of Ao Nang which would act as our home base for a week as we went island hopping each day to a few of the dozens of islands further out to sea. For our final week, we’d then take a speedboat 60km further out to sea to a small island near Malaysia called Koh Lipe, a.k.a. “the Maldives of Thailand”. My goal for this part of the trip was to try to be as present and carefree as possible. I wouldn’t say that the Thai Islands were uneventful, but we were definitely not as active as we were in previous cities. That being said, this post will probably be brief.

Southeast Asia Update #6 [Northern Thailand]

If you’ve been following this blog series from the beginning you may remember that our initial goal for this two-month trip was to visit four countries: Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, and Laos. At one point during our time in Vietnam, however, we decided it’d be best to exclude Laos from our itinerary altogether. This is because we felt we wanted to slow our trip down a bit and stay in Vietnam and Thailand longer than originally planned. In my last post, I covered our time in northern Vietnam, but instead of booking a flight into Laos from Hanoi, we went directly to the northern Thai city of Chiang Mai.

Nov 18

Southeast Asia Update #4 [The Vietnam Coast]

Finally, the moment Madison and I have been waiting for: the Vietnam coast! The chain of land-locked cities we traveled through up until this point were great and all, but after growing up near the Oregon Coast you can only keep us away from the ocean for so long. Vietnam has many incredible beaches on its eastern coastline along the South China Sea. Being such a long and narrow country from north to south, it’s super easy for backpackers to scale the coastline and hit all of the popular beaches. Our first beach town destination would be Nha Trang.

Oct 21

Southeast Asia Update #1 [Bangkok, Thailand]

After months of planning, and 22 hours of travel, we finally arrived at our first Southeast Asian (SEA) destination: Bangkok, Thailand! The plan was to stay in Bangkok for four days, then take a bus to Cambodia. We plan on going back to Thailand towards the end of our backpacking loop.

Jun 13