How cute is Courtney!! Love this girl so much, we had such a blast in Palm Desert and I can't wait to see what our next adventure is. We both got to take some great pictures of each other for our own personal fun!
Here is a sneak peek of what is to come of Courtney... I'm so excited to share the whole session, I'm super happy with the images, so stay posted because this one is so worth the wait. In the meantime check this pic out anndd hop over to Courtney's website to see some of her amazing work. https://www.facebook.com/CourtneyJessPhotography http://www.courtneyjessphotography.com/index.html
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Where to start!! Thailand was way too short and way too much fun! I'm so excited to share this blog post with you because its a little more personal than anything else I post and a little bit crazy! But we'll get to the crazy stuff later! For now lets start in Chiang Mai!
I arrived in Chiang Mai nervous and excited to have two full days alone to just explore. No distractions! I spent my first day wandering around the old city admiring the endless amounts of beautiful temples. That and a thai massage pretty much consumed my first day... annnd my second day! It was nice to slow down for a couple days, and have some freedom to do what I pleased. After eating some ridiculously good Thai food and meeting up with some friends I was off on a tour around Chiang Mai. To start off the tour we did a walk to a beautiful waterfall. After the waterfall we did a hike to our home stay house. I thought I knew hiking but I did not. Hiking is just not the same when you have leaches attaching themselves to you and you casually run into poisonous snakes. Although very interesting it was nice when we made it to our home stay where we enjoyed a warm camp fire and some delicious thai food. The next morning was spent heading over to meet some elephants. We spent the afternoon hanging out with, feeding the elephants and then got to ride them to our next home stay! Riding an elephant was amazing, it was so much fun and a lot harder than it looks! The scenery in the country side was so beautiful, I will never forget it! After another amazing home stay meal and a good enough sleep we were up at the crack of dawn to get on these handmade bamboo rafts and go rafting. As a reader you have to understand something, the picture may look like it was so peaceful, beautiful and a breeze of a ride, well, that wasn't exactly the case. Don't get me wrong it was all of that for the first half, then came the water rapids. Full on white water rafting rapids... on a bamboo raft! It was honestly the most fun and the scariest thing I experienced throughout this entire journey. I probably wasn't that far from peeing myself in all honesty, but I 100% would recommend it to anyone! After that adventure we were off to our next one! Zip lining, then back to Chiang Mai where another awesome tour ended. Back in Chiang Mai after a well needed shower some friends and me were off to see the cabaret show! Words cannot describe how great the show was! It was a great way to end my experience in Chiang Mai. The next morning I was up super early to make my way to Koh Phangan to meet a friend for a week. First things first the full moon party! After a crazy hectic day of travel a good nap and a shower next thing I knew I was at the full moon party ready to go! It was a long and fun night, but shortly after that we were off to the next place. Koh Tao is beautiful. We toured around this beautiful little island, did some bargaining and just relaxed. (Here comes the crazy!) On our second last day after lots of thought I made a decision to get a tattoo done with bamboo needles. This means that it is not a gun pushing ink into your skin, it's a set of 5-9 tiny needles manually inserting ink into your skin, this makes for next to no ripping of the skin and a very fast healing process. (I've also heard it's supposed to be painless, but I beg to differ!). What I thought was so cool about it, is that this is very traditional to many countries in Southeast Asia. These bamboo tattoos are given to Buddhist monks by their respective master. The respective master picks a form of text and where on the body it will go, now being a Buddhist monk while receiving this tattoo you weren't allowed to move or flinch at all. I can't explain why I was so fascinated with it but after spending so much time in Buddhist countries i've grown a real interest in this religion. I did not become a monk, I picked my own tattoo and where it went and I also did flinch... a lot! Now i'm not sharing this to brag or be cool, I'm sharing this because it was one of the coolest experiences of my life, and its an amazing tattoo! I'm so glad I got it, and what a great way for me to end my amazing trip. As sad as it is my trip came to an end pretty fast, but on my last night we went to go see Muay Thai fighting. It was great, the fighters are such good athletes. It was really cool to watch fighting with so much strategy, it is so much more interesting than any other fighting sport i've watched. Then I made my 3 day journey back home. With about 4 flights, countless hours and a visit with my brother in Vancouver I finally made it home. I hope you enjoyed following me along my adventure and I can't wait for the next one to share with you. Until then keep reading my blog because once a week there will be a new post! Thank you all. Here it is! Part 2 of Vietnam. I had so many issues trying to post this when I wanted to, so I just decided to wait it out! Enjoy the second half of my experience in Vietnam.
As much as I wish I could say Hue was an amazing experience I think the road there was more eventful! Terrifying at times but with a some great views! Hue wasn't all that it was built up to be but we did get to see some cool stuff. After Hue we got on our last train and headed to Hanoi! Hanoi is a little nuts. It took a while to get adjusted but I slowly started to love it here. The first thing we did we when we arrived was a bike tour. Although we were riding through the busy over crowded streets, and along some seriously intense trails, all in 40 degree weather, I had so much fun. It was an amazing experience and we got to ride through fields of banana crops which I thought was pretty cool! After a badly needed nap that afternoon I decided to join the street food tour where we got to eat some amazing food. We had rice pancakes, a bbq feast of chicken, pork, corn, buns, and yes duck tongue... Can't say its my favourite, but I had to try. To finish our feast off we had this amazing fruit bowl with lychee, jellies, avocado, mango, apple, pineapple, some other very random fruit and it was covered in coconut milk... Yumm! I think it's safe to say I had an amazing sleep that night. After an amazing day in Hanoi we were off to Ha Long Bay! We spent the day kayaking, touring a cave, walking to the beach and just taking in the beauty that is Ha Long Bay! We finished the day off with a bang and the next morning we were back to Hanoi. It was too bad we didn't have more time in Ha Long Bay but it made me appreciate the time that we did have there so much more! Then I spent my last three days in Hanoi wandering around drinking Vietnamese coffee and enjoying my last few days in this incredible country. Its a very sad goodbye to Vietnam and my amazing tour group, but a very exciting hello to Thailand! Keep your eyes open because my next blog post is going to be of my last two weeks which took place in Thailand where I did some incredibly fun and adventurous things!
Hey everybody! We've been so busy on the tour I just haven't had time to stop and make an update and i'm really sorry because I'm so excited to share everything with you guys! I am currently sitting poolside in Sihanouk Ville with a slight (I swear) burn on my face after our full on island beach day! But before I go on about the beach let me tell you about Cambodia so far!
We started out in Siem Reap for 2 days! Its this cute lovely little city with a huge market and a big night life! Our first day was spent at Ankor Wat where we went to see 5 different temples, Bayond temple, Ta Prom, Banteay Srei, Angkor Wat and I never got the name for the last one. They were amazing, and different from what I expected. It reminded me of aztec looking structures, but unique in its own way! Very very beautiful. The next 48 hours were made of me, lets just say, under the weather! Which meant no second day in Siem Reap for me. As we passed through a quiet town on the Mekong River, Kampong Cham, I slowly was starting to feel better and by the time we made it to Phnom Penh I was pretty well back to my normal self! Phnom Penh is a very cool city with a lot going on. In Phnom Penh we got to see the Killing Fields and the Genocide museum, a very sad, and educational day. If you ever get the chance to go, you must. We also got to do a tour of the city. It was great to see some of the buildings, shops and walk through the market. The next night we were off to our homestay! I truly have no words for our homestay, except that it was amazing. We arrived in this little village with sweet houses, lots of children and farm animal roaming. Lots of the neighbors had come to the families house we were staying at to see and welcome the tourists! Lots of adorable children giggling and staring! Then we went to their community centre where we played hackie-sack (or their equivalent, which was layers of thick plastic with a feather on top), and were welcomed by traditional Cambodian dances done by the children in the village. We then had a delicious meal made by one of the towns families. Before we went to bed in their house we had the chance to sit down and talk with the owner who is a farmer and ask him questions and he asked us questions, It was so amazing! After a night on a foamy in a shack we were off to the beach! And as much as I love beaches I would have easily stayed for another homestay night! It was that cool. Before we left for the beaches we got to do a hike up to see two different waterfalls, it was a crazy hike, super challenging, but the waterfalls were beautiful and we got to see some creepy crawlies on the way! We got here yesterday and went out for a yummy bbq dinner then off to the beach for some drinks! We set off fireworks, drank from buckets and woke up this morning feeling very relaxed. This morning we jumped into a questionable looking wooden boat and went off to sea three different islands! (SEA what I did there!). We hung out, read, ate, layed in the sun, attempted to snorkle and I did a ton of body surfing! It was the perfect day after all the craziness. Tomorrow we're off to Phnom Penh for one last hurrah then to Vietnam!! The pictures are in order of the days they happened. Enjoy and share! I'll catch up with you later! Hello from Bangkok!! Throughout my travels accross Southeast Asia, I will be doing my best to keep my blog as up to date as possible! Seeing as i'm doing this from my phone I will ask that you excuse any bad grammer or spelling! Haha, photos are my thing... Not words! Hopefully as I get my groove in doing this my posts will become more organized, but until then (IF that even happens!) im going to keep my blog posts to a small amount of words and just some cool pictures! So enjoy!! We've been in Bangkok for a couple of days now and I can honestly say I dont know if I love it or hate it! Its so crazy and busy all the time, but no matter who you are this city will easily keep you entertained for a while! I feel as though i've seen so much but I know i've only seen 1/1000 of it! This city is nuts and im so excited to be here! BUT we leave for Cambodia tomorrow and that leaves me here to sum up my two days in bangkok with pictures.. This is a picture from the floating market tour we did. It was very interesting, we got to see some cool things! This is a photo I took of the food at the market down town! Some really interesting food. Lots of it I couldn't identify if my life depended on it! This is a picture taken at the Grand Palace here in Bangkok. It was absolutely stunning! So so amazing!! |