Skinny, sexy, and two-sixty

The skinny arm is spreading like wildfire and let me say, it looks good on almost everyone.



Almost.

Diamonds are a Facebook stalker's best friend

To stalk or not to stalk.

Never really a question.

After an old friend of mine got engaged when I didn't even know she was dating anyone, I realized I need to pick up my Facebook stalking. Actually, I stalk this girl a lot. She was a sneaky one.

But it got me to thinking.

Everyone Facebook stalks.

It has always been my personal custom to stalk people my age with babies or diamond rings. But then I realized, it's not just me. Doesn't everyone like to look at cheesy, lovey pictures of the newly engaged or the flip book photo album of your expanding belly?

If you have a baby, you know people are stalking you. You post the sonograms as your status and pretend your engagement fell before the conception. It's ok, times they are a changin.

Also, if you're still chasing your BA and recently engaged, people are definitely stalking you. You put up pictures of the ring and people judge. "Judge?!" you say, but you know they are. You think your ring is the best ring ever so you take pictures of it on the macro setting and tag it as yourself and the man of your premature engagement dreams. Everyone else looks at it and thinks what they'd change to make it their perfect ring.

The thing is, you're happy. Which is great. More power to you. I wish you the best new mom/wifey. I am no where close to ready for any of that serious adult stuff. But I will continue to stalk you.

Home, sweet home

I am home. Safe.

Aside from a few new gray hairs for my mother, pretty much everything on my trip went well, I learned a ton, had incredible life experiences, and I am now back in good old America.

There really is something about coming home that feels like a warm bed or peach cobbler. If those were feelings.

While I love traveling the world and soaking in new cultures, I think I'm too much of a homebody to ever spend more than a summer in a different country, much less move there indefinitely. More power to the people that can, but I like the coming-up-the-escalator feeling way too much. My two favorite boys every were there waiting with open arms and a steak dinner at home. And that's pretty special.

Hope everyone is well and enjoyed following me through Asia. Back to normal life posting!

My Thai

Where to begin.

I feel like a traveling fiend and we’ve only been on our own for 10 days.

The rest of Malaysia was great. Kuala Lumpur (KL, as the locals say it) was a lot of fun. I think mostly in part to our great location right above the Chinatown night market. We also went to this little pond where you can rent paddle boats and we got a great view of the skyline.



The story, however, lies in the 5 days of northern Thailand.

We got to Thailand on the morning of the 6th and spent the day walking for about 3 hours up and back down the street our hotel was on. It’s like walking through an Anthropologie store. Katie Sturniolo would be drooling. So naturally we spent way too much money on things that take up room we definitely don’t have. My 75 liter pack is now 20kg and we had to buy another bag as a carry on.

Another really cool thing I got- as we were walking down the night market street I spotted an INCREDIBLE dress in the window of a tailor’s shop. And it was white with black accents.

Every four years the brothel has a celebration of sorostitution called Red Rose Formal. It’s a weekend long formal, usually in Savannah, where every girl wears a white gown and the president wears a bright red one.

Let’s talk about white gowns in America. They’re called bridal gowns. And I, for one, am no bride. No time soon at least. I also don’t want to drop a ton of money on something I may only wear once.

So I went into the shop.

I asked about the dress and asked how much it was and he said it would be a bit small for me but he could make the same thing in all white for the equivalent of $80. So over the course of 4 visits to the tailor shop, I got my formal dress handmade by a Thai woman and it is gorgeous. How many people get to say they got their dress made for them in Thailand? Pretty cool.




Can you see how we bought everything in sight?

But alas, we get to the trek. In about March, Elizabeth and I decided to get onto GapAdventures.com and find some fun tour to do in Chiang Mai during our visit. We found it.

The first day we got picked up from the airport and stayed in the hotel they provided. The second day the “trekking” began.

Let me preface this by saying that the physical fitness level on this “tour” was a 2 out of 5 and included the words “light walking” in the description.

I’d like to see a level 5.

The first day we hiked for 3 hours. Not normal hiking. Machete-wielding, slide your way down hills, almost die on the way up a 400 meter vertical hill kinda hiking.

Naturally I fell on a pile of bamboo and cut up my leg. It had a bit of blood but our guide, Pon, ran into the forest to save the day. Luckily for us, he wasn’t running away, he was getting a leaf. A leaf, he said, that had antiseptic powers and would stop the bleeding. My mother’s cringing nurse face was in my mind as I let this guy rub a crumbled leaf over my cut but it actually felt like rubbing alcohol and, hey, all our remedies had to come from somewhere. Plus, I haven’t had to get my leg amputated so I’m guessing it was safe.

He had all sorts of tricks up his sleeve though. Pon carried a bottle of water, tobacco and salt mixed together to pour on the leeches that attached to our shoes. He also poured it into our shoes which was appreciated until the blisters ensued.

After our hike we got to the first village we were seeing. We thought we’d be seeing people with rings on their necks who were fully prepared to smile for tourists but we were wrong. The tour was much less of a cultural immersion and more of a three day hike.

We slept under mesquito nets on mats on the wooden floor in a hut. I laughed remembering the travel clinic nurse asking if we’d have air conditioning or screens on our windows. Windows? You mean the places where parts of the wall is missing? No, sorry, no screens.




Now APPARENTLY I’m not in the best of shape. Or I like ice cream too much. But day 3’s 5 hour hike didn’t suit me well. It could have been the fact that it was a 5 hour hike. Not sure why those even exist.

We came over the last hill into a middle-of-the-jungle elephant farm. There were just elephants wading in the stream and playing with each other everywhere. Seven in total.

Such a victory. We had made it.

We then had some awesome lunch prepared on the spot and got to ride the elephants for about an hour to the village we stayed at. Same sort of accommodation but we slept much more soundly that night (until the cocks crowed at 4am).







We played some fun, language-barrier-friendly games that night in which, if you lost, Pon would draw on your face with the soot from the bottom of a pan. I’m sure it’s a skin treatment somewhere.

The 4th day we got on a bamboo raft made by Pon and floated down a river for 5 hours. It was super relaxing and peaceful once we realized bamboo was buoyant.



Once we reached our bus we had a late lunch and headed back to town to stay at the hotel again the last night.

It was definitely nothing like I expected but it’s nice to push yourself sometimes. Looking back, I’m really glad I got through the hikes and got to meet the 4 wonderful Irish people we were on the trek with. We passed the time quickly and had a good time living the hilltribe life for a while.

The rest of the 10th we got to walk around Chiang Mai, our new favorite city, and see some temples with our trek group. It was nice living in an Anthropologie magazine.


Our new Irish family with a city view of Chiang Mai in the background.

Chiang Mai

We made it here to Chiang Mai, Thailand this morning and will stay here for the night, trek around the jungle for two days, and then come back here for one night. Then a night in Bangkok and time to head home. I'll update again in Bangkok!

KL Sentral

Today is our last day in Malaysia and I'm awake before everyone else so I thought I'd catch yall up.

We got here on Wednesday which is when I last wrote. Pretty much that day we went to the train station to figure out our now non-existant Singapore trip and then we fooled around the night market which is RIGHT outside our window.



Then Thursday was full on Malaysia day. We spent the morning in the national museum and then headed over to the famous Patronus towers and then walked to see the KL tower, which is actually just a communications tower so that wasn't so exciting. There is a giant mall in one of the Patronus towers though so we had fun drooling at everything from Jimmy Choos to Marc Jacobs.





Then yesterday, Friday, we went to the Batu Caves. The different kinds of people here are so varying it almost catches you off guard. There are people that have extremely dark skin and people that look "Asian" and most that look almost Indian. There are also a ton of Muslims but a lot of Hindus too. I even saw a Methodist church yesterday. Anyway, the caves are Hindu and have a ginormous statue in front of the million stairs you have to climb to the opening. There were monkeys and pigeons everywhere.






And then back home to our hoppin street.



Today's the last day in Malaysia before Thailand tomorrow!

When nothing goes to plan...

Why oh why do I attempt to plan things?

Number one lesson learned today: a plane ticket bought for May 2 gets you NOWHERE on June 2.

That's right. In my retardacity I bought both Elizabeth and my tickets from Siem Reap to Kuala Lumpur for May 2. Which not only means that we had to buy tickets for today's flight but that we had accidentally missed our May 2 flight that we didn't mean to book in the first place. Finals mess up everything.

Luckily Air Asia is SUPER cheap so nothing $150 couldn't fix.

So then my bag was 19 kg instead of 15 so I got charged a neat chunk of change for that along with the exit tax so I was out of money. Literally. None. No riel or dollars or anything. And then my ATM card got denied at SEVEN ATMs.

But we got here and decided to make sure we get overnight tickets to and from Singapore for the next two nights. So we get on the train to go to the central train station and waited for our ticket to be called to talk to a ticket person. Who told us that all seats for both those trains were sold out. So no Singapore for us.

But no worries! We are here in Kuala Lumpur in our awesome hotel which we now booked for four nights, overlooking the hoppin' night market. And I found an ATM and got 550 whatever Malaysian money is. So I feel like Ms. Money Bags. Elizabeth lost her debit card and is living off $175 and Frances, who is traveling with us through Malaysia, got her card eaten by an ATM so she's living on $100. This is seriously budget traveling for the next 10 days.

Anyways, Cambodia and I had a rough ending there, but I really think me and Malaysia are going to get along quite well. I feel good in Kuala Lumpur and the night market is really something. It's literally RIGHT outside our window and the street is completely inaccessible to anything wider than my father because there are so many street stalls. You can walk everywhere and there is no telling who is Malaysian or not because of the range of skin colors. Malaysia is a Muslim country and we all know I love Muslims so it's nice to see hijabs (head coverings) again after Morocco.

We have wifi at the hotel so I'll be able to post later, too, just maybe not in Thailand. But looks like we're staking out in Malaysia for a few days and making this awesome little room our home for 4 days.