Travel Takeaways

It’s been over two months since I returned from my sabbatical to Asia. The brown stripes of my Keen sandal tan lines are finally fading, and the tropical, sticky summer feels like a lifetime ago in the SF winter rain. 

The Duck Stop in Vietnam - definitely a highlight :)

In that time, I’ve regaled many friends with stories from abroad and am often teased with questions like ‘so are you enlightened now after this eat pray love journey?’ I’d joke about how I learned to appreciate having a mattress after 4 days of sleeping on the floor in a monastery and some vague self-congratulatory statement about being independent, but the question is legitimately worth deeper reflection. It simultaneously feels like a lot and nothing has changed. Upon return, I dove straight into blurred weeks of intensive interviewing, work, and a new job, and slipped back into the familiar routine of home life. Aside from my previous article on Asian-American identity, I never took the time to really synthesize my experience.

How much have I actually changed? What were my cultural/educational/introspective moments, and how much was just participating in Asia’s rampant tourist consumerism and collecting cool pictures to flex on Instagram with? 

I’m wary of the stereotype of disillusioned urban millennials who ‘solo travel to Southeast Asia for X months and become transformed’ and as I think on my experience, I can’t say it’s really fundamentally remade me. But it did test my character in new ways and teach me about myself - how to be more adaptable, patient, open-minded, and appreciate the common humanity in people.

Some of this post might be me wrestling to quantify an intangible impact and rationalize traveling was a worthwhile experience, but it’s been a valuable exercise nonetheless. Besides, what better way to round out my ‘existentialist techie who started a travel blog’ persona than to write out my first listicle?

Takeaways

A non-exhaustive list in no particular order:

1. Appreciation for my identity.

As I discussed in my previous article, I’ve traveled internationally many times before, but this trip was the longest time I’ve spent outside of the Bay Area. Breaking out of the SF bubble and mixing with people from legitimately different backgrounds contextualized how unique my cultural and professional identity really is. 

At home, it’s common to feel like yet another Asian-American tech employee with immigrant parents who pursued the American dream through self-sacrifice and a tiger-parent, education-focused upbringing in order to climb the social ladder through wealth acquisition, etc. etc. Yet abroad, I was a confusing anomaly straddling two cultures that many had never seen before.

I won’t rehash everything I’ve already written, but I grew to value the perspectives I could bring to people, having grown up with both Eastern/Western cultures and developed an insider view of how tech companies think. As the ‘Silicon Valley representative’, there were plenty of times where I would field questions ranging from industry regulation to ‘does Instagram really record my microphone without me knowing?’ At times, it was exciting to see how widespread the impact of this industry has been, but also unnerving to see how poorly understood it is.

2. How to be in awe of nature again, and finding wholesome, simple joy. 

After roaming hundreds of miles through Asian countrysides, I also realized how locked up in city life I’ve been, particularly this past year. It’s incredibly easy for me to stay in SF for weeks on end - there are always friends to catch up with, birthdays and concerts to attend, and new hipster places to eat at.

It’s not that nature isn’t readily available - California has tons to see. I just haven’t bothered to visit Yosemite in years, stopped snowboarding in Tahoe, and haven’t been to any other national park since my post-graduation road trip. Even going over the bridge to Muir Woods requires finding someone with a car, which has been enough to dissuade me.

But nature is beautiful. Seeing straight-up jaw-dropping (though my reaction is usually muttering ‘holy shit’ and then pulling out my camera) skyscraper-sized caverns and alien rock formations in the world’s largest caves in Vietnam, and unending jungle expanses from giant treehouses in the Laotian jungle really slapped me to my senses with Earth porn. And hiking through tropical storm downpours in leech-infested jungles reopened my eyes to nature’s extremes after a lifetime in the always mild Bay Area. I really should make more effort to urban detox once in a while.

In another form of nature, I experienced some of the purest, most childlike giddiness of the entire trip at the Duck Stop in Phong Nha National Park. For context, this was the top TripAdvisor attraction for months in an area that has tours of the world’s largest cave systems. I won’t spoil exactly what happens (happy to send videos upon request) but the entire experience was a reminder of how bizarrely entertaining life can be without any hedonism.

3. How to enjoy being alone.

It’s kind of crazy to think about how easily today I can drop myself into different societies where I can barely communicate, don’t understand any social customs, and dive into another culture on my own. Sure, the cynical side of me will criticize how much immersion actually happens when sticking to well-trodden backpacker trails and socializing primarily with other English speaking, globalized travelers, but without discussing ‘authenticity’, I certainly connected more with local people, culture, and history when traveling alone versus insulated by a group of friends. 

The trip was also a rare occasion for me to be completely and unabashedly selfish. Over time, I’ve become more conscious of my tendency to prioritize others’ needs, as I’m often mediating between the group’s competing interests and constraints when traveling with others. A great skill for product management, sure, but often at the cost of compromising my own wants. On my own, I was able to meander around museums as slowly as I wanted while taking notes, and eat or skip meals whenever I wanted without worrying about imposing. This relieved a lot of my self-imposed stress that typically comes with travel, and also let me dedicate days to solitary activities like meditation or writing guilt-free.

4. How to better socialize, and appreciate the spontaneity and ephemerality of travel friendships.

I mentioned in my last article how traveling built up my social stamina. In bustling backpacker hostels, I had to push past my tendency to pre-emptively ‘other’ myself as a self-defense mechanism, taking the initiative to approach instead of automatically assuming I wouldn’t be welcome. Over time, I learned to streamline small talk, organize groups ad hoc, and steer conversations. During introductions, for example, I could give a different ‘fun fact’ about San Francisco - 1. how SF fog is named ‘Karl’ and has its own Twitter handle or 2. how SF spends $30 million a year on cleaning human feces and needles off the sidewalk, depending on whether the audience was interested in city trivia or discussing serious social issues.

I also mentioned the challenges of shedding my social circle with each new city on the backpacker trail. It wasn’t uncommon to be discussing deep stuff - geopolitics, life callings, or existential struggles within hours or even minutes after meeting someone, only to part ways a day later and never see them again. This high turnover was demoralizing at first. Each person I met had a unique perspective, another puzzle piece I could combine to build a broader picture of the world! But while I couldn’t stay in touch with every individual directly, I began regularly reflecting and journaling to make sure I cherished these memories without clinging to them.

Going solo opened me up to more risk at times, but also to the kindness of others. Sure I didn’t have someone watching my back the entire trip, but I learned how quickly I could find people who would. When I look back at some of my most memorable interactions, many of them are from acts of kindness from near-complete strangers - the people who picked me up and shared first aid after I crashed my bike, the hostel that baked me a cake for my birthday, or the woman who made me congee after puking my guts out from food poisoning. 

5. Affirmation in my own self-resilience and adaptability. 

Some of that ‘resilience’ is physical - I’m definitely grateful I did this trip while my body could still handle 13-hour bus rides, multi-day muddy jungle hikes, and copious overeating in stride, for example. But the way the trip has shaped my mindset, and by extension, my personality, is far more significant.

For one, it forced me to be less neurotic. While I’ve never extreme enough to plan every segment of a trip down to the hour, I’ve realized I was always implicitly optimizing aspects of travel. For each destination, I’d have a checklist of top tourist sites and must-dos that I would force myself to cross off, constantly striving for the most efficient way to maximize some ‘value’ or novelty out of a trip. The paradox of choice was in full force. If I chose one attraction in lieu of another that turned out to be underwhelming, I’d feel FOMO and regret making the wrong call. If I had failed to anticipate a closed business, paid too much for a ticket, or missed a faster transportation option, I’d beat myself up for lacking foresight.

Unsurprisingly, it’s not really sustainable to do this for three months. While there’s certainly value in preparedness, I learned this trip to also appreciate planning in space for spontaneity. One luxury of traveling an extended period during low season was that I had the flexibility to change plans as I saw fit. If a city was underwhelming, I left early. If I found a group of friends I liked, I could join them for their next destination. In addition to honing my decision making intuition, this lack of rigid plans also let me enjoy some of my favorite destinations, like Pai and Ha Giang which I literally planned as I went after discovering it from other travelers on the road.

Asia also taught me to be comfortable with idleness. On shorter trips I feel the time crunch to get through that list of checkboxes, but grinding through TripAdvisor for three months straight really didn’t appeal to me. There were days where I’d just hide in a cafe all day and write, or wander around town, and it was in these moments of relaxation that I found some of my most insightful times.

Lastly, I learned to be kinder to myself. When I’m solo traveling, there’s nobody else to trigger my people-pleasing nature - my own enjoyment is the only thing I have to attend to! So why not give myself a break (and also a pat on the back) for handling all the social challenges, travel mishaps, and ambiguous plans, on my own? It’s certainly not something that just anyone could do. ‘Self-compassion’ is trendy nowadays, but I’ve learned that it’s not always productive to unleash my harshly critical, contrarian side onto myself. Ultimately, it’s important to set an intention, not an expectation, to do something, and be open to life as it unfolds before me.

Solo Traveling as an Asian-American

The Allure of Independence

One comment I often hear from friends, typically after I’ve spent some time extolling the virtues of my recent solo Asia trip, goes something like:

Wow that sounds like you had an amazing time! Traveling solo sounds too stressful and lonely for me though - I could never do it. 

I won’t sugarcoat it: while I think solo traveling has been invaluable for my personal growth, it’s definitely not for everyone. We’re all in different life phases and traveling with different intentions. 

To me, it’s something that simultaneously relinquishes and empowers me with control over my experience. Traveling forces me out of my bubble to see new perspectives in the world. Traveling solo gave me full agency over my plans, but also forced me to negotiate my identity in new settings. Without the crutch of familiar faces to socially insulate myself, this proved isolating at times, but I ultimately engaged more deeply with both the destination and other travelers. 

One challenge with travel friendships is they often end as quickly as they begin. I’d build up a social circle in a city, only to shed it days later when we departed for our next destinations. And I couldn’t choose who ended up in my hostel room, city tour, or bus ride - places where I’ve both made fast friends and also steeped in quiet solitude. A benefit of constantly meeting people, however, was that I got really good at perfecting my pitch to cover backpacker small talk - name, where you’re from, where you’ve been, etc. I tried to keep it light: 

‘I’m Patrick from San Francisco, I’m doing my quarter-life crisis eat-pray-love journey for three months through Southeast Asia. Like 90% of people you’ll meet from SF, I work in tech. Basically, if you ever walk into a Starbucks and connect to the free wifi, you can thank me for that.’ 

That Question

Simple, right? But when I first started traveling, it was often hard for me to even get to this point in a conversation. 

For context, hostels are hubs of social activity, with bars, dining rooms, or other common areas for travelers to mingle. Some will host activities like pub crawls and family dinners, but in most cases, you fend for yourself. There’s added pressure from the rapid-fire nature of travel relationships, where a single conversation could determine whether you explored a city alone for the next three days, or with a set of companions you could happily follow and tag on Instagram. (Over time, I’ve learned how to enjoy solitude, but that’s a topic for another time). As a self-conscious introvert, making friends from crowds of strangers was already a struggle. Culture shock, not to the destination, but to the demographics of the European and Southeast Asian backpacker trail itself, made it harder. When I first left my bubble at home, I hadn’t been prepared to enter another - one that overwhelmingly white.

After a lifetime of living in the relatively diverse SF Bay Area and blending seamlessly into the tech industry, I’ve rarely been so conscious about my ethnicity. I had forgotten the subconscious feeling of vulnerability when walking into bustling rooms full of people where nobody else looked like me.

For reference, after three months of travels this last trip, I met a grand total of one Asian-American (and one ethnically Vietnamese German) in all my hostels, with whom I immediately bonded over these sentiments. It was a reminder that even though I went to a 40% Asian school and live in a 33% Asian city, we are still just 5.6% of the US population. 

This came with a few challenges. For one, it was extremely rare for anyone to approach me first. Understandable, since the only Chinese people many travelers have ever seen are the Mandarin-speaking tourists crowding their capital cities by the busload. When I did make introductions, I could often see eyebrow raises by the time I said ‘San Francisco’ - surprise that 1) My name was Patrick and not Wang Wei or something and 2) I spoke fluent English. At times I’d hear responses of ‘oh I thought you were a local’ or ‘you don’t look like you’re from San Francisco, where are you really from?’ - the classic question minorities here have all heard before.

While these questions were more out of ignorance than malice, I struggled with this sense of otherness a lot more during my solo Europe trip two years ago. I can still recall how I spent that New Years' Eve at a Budapest club. After immediately losing the hostel companions I’d met only two hours prior, I wandered aimlessly through the pulsing crowds, conspicuously aware of how badly I stood out. Failing to even find any English speakers, I eventually just stood alone in the corner until midnight, clutching a beer in a feeble attempt to blend in. Surrounded by nothing but hundreds of towering white bodies, I felt like a complete alien.

Now, this anxiety would fade after starting proper conversations in most other settings. But a lingering foreignness always persisted. A sense of ‘I’m not like them’ that fed personal insecurities around group acceptance.

Would that circle of British lads think I’m weird if I barged in? Why do other travelers always seem to make closer friendships - do they just bond over their shared whiteness? Why don’t I ever have saucy travel flings? I guess nobody actually likes Asian guys right?

At times, these thoughts outright stopped me from approaching certain groups, with the default assumption that I wouldn’t fit in, while in others, I’d subconsciously withdraw and just take a backseat in conversations. Viewing my race as a liability only fueled these self-fulfilling prophecies, in retrospect.

Cultural Ambassador

I gradually learned to stomach these misgivings and double down on being proactive during my recent Asia trip. I came to realize that most people, especially those you find traveling internationally at a young age, aren’t trying to intentionally discriminate. For the less traveled, often European, backpackers, I’m probably the first Californian they’ve met at all, let alone a minority one. I tried to tell myself ‘they’re more afraid of you than you are of them’, and if nobody approached me, I could either sulk alone and cry racism, or take the initiative myself. This became easier as I developed self-confidence and openness around my background.

First, even though I don’t look it, I’m a native English speaker which is a huge privilege and advantage when socializing. If other travelers can overcome communicating in their second/third/fourth language, I can get over my perceived feelings of ostracization.

Second, I simply added to my pitch: ‘...and my parents are Chinese, in case you’re wondering why it looks like I’ve lost my tour group’. This did a few things: pre-empt any confusion with humor, get a laugh over the shared traveler experience of dealing with mainland tourists everywhere, and most importantly, help transition small talk to deeper topics.

I welcomed people’s curiosity. Given the chance to ask questions, conversations often quickly went from ‘wow that’s cool, do you speak Chinese?’ to elaborating the differences between Cantonese and Mandarin, comparing the tonality to Thai/Lao/Vietnamese, and discussing the Asian diaspora experience.

I’d sometimes have to field questions I’m less qualified to answer: why are Chinese tourists so rude and come in such large packs, what’s happening with the Hong Kong protests, does Vietnam like China? Having only lived in America I’m obviously biased, but I’d still try to offer perspectives on Chinese and broader Asian culture and history.

One time in northern Vietnam, a few travelers were lamenting how absolutely barbaric it was for locals to butcher animals out in the open, and eat even eat dogs! I tried to nudge at the ethnocentrism. Would I ever eat a dog? No, but I’m also lucky enough to never need to. I told them that when he was a kid, my dad’s family in rural Guangdong cooked their dog after raising it for two years. He told me how much he cried when they butchered it, but ate at dinnertime nonetheless. ‘Better than crying from hunger.’ Sounds terrible to us, yes, but they’d also eat any frogs, forest rats, and even snakes they could catch. If you could barely afford rice, bok choy, and meat once a month for your kids, wouldn’t you try to feed them?

More lightheartedly, I also shared how my grandparents used to buy live chickens from Oakland Chinatown and slaughter them in my backyard, the pungent steam in the kitchen as my grandma boiled the feathers off turning it into a no-play zone. One time, a would-be burglar hopped our backyard fence at night, saw my grandpa hacking meat apart with a bloody cleaver, and immediately jumped back over. Our neighbors even called the cops on us once after seeing bloodstains in our yard. I recounted the time my family steamed one of our pet fish after it died and served it at dinner (would not recommend - very bitter). Or when they gathered the eggs from an abandoned bird nest on our porch to hardboil. I still think of that time whenever I see quail eggs! 

They carried the resourcefulness required to survive the Cultural Revolution into my early life, and while Vietnam is another country, the attitudes villagers have towards animals might justifiably differ from those of us wealthy Western urbanites.

The Tour Guide

Being an Asian-American in Asia also led to interesting interactions with locals. When asked where I was from, my answer elicited both curiosity and skepticism - I didn’t look like a typical American, but I also didn’t look like part of a Chinese tour group.

For example, in Ha Giang, I did a four-day motorbike tour around the mountains of rural Vietnam with a group of around 30 other visitors, none of whom were Asian of course. At one point, we stopped at a tour site to visit a cave. The ticketing guy, an old, squat man lounging on a plastic chair, saw me with a pack of white people and immediately shook my hand, breaking into jovial Vietnamese banter. Taking a moment to process what was happening, I gestured with a wave of my hand and said ‘oh no sorry, I’m not Vietnamese’. He must not have understood as he paused for barely a second, clapped me on the arm, and resumed his stream of thought. We all laughed as the entire group and I tried to interrupt him without avail, until I pointed to my face and loudly repeated ‘CHINA. CHINA.’ Maybe I should’ve asked for a ticket commission.

This happened a lot, especially in Vietnam where understandably there are similarities in appearance and also ethnic Chinese locals. Every other restaurant I’d go into, the waiter would take my order, hear my English, and then immediately ask where I was from. Although part of me got tired of disappointing locals, I eventually learned to pre-empt the stares, reciting ‘tôi là người trung quốc và mỹ’, which they appreciated.

Foreigner(s)

Another time, I was ordering crepes in the tiny border town of Houayxay, Laos with another (white) American. Like many ‘stores’ in Laos, the stand was just a counter in front of the guy’s house, with the open double doors revealing his small single bedroom, wife, and baby inside. When his baby started crying, his wife took over the stand as he picked up the child, cheerily bounced her in his arms, and pointed to my companion. ‘Look, falang, falang!’ - ‘foreigner’ in Lao. Curious why I hadn’t been the subject of the baby’s entertainment, I protested ‘what about me? I’m a falang too!’ He retorted as if I was crazy - ‘No, no, no. You not falang. Look like us.’ I was skeptical, but without any further explanation, we grabbed our crepes and walked back to the hostel. It wasn’t until much later that I learned that falang originally meant French, referring to Laos’ colonizers. It only expanded to describe all white foreigners later. What am I called then?

Crossing Borders

There were other encounters where I was grateful for my culture, from finally meeting another Cantonese speaker in Halong Bay (he owned the hotel that ran our cruise and shared his life story) to discussing my upbringing and Eastern vs Western family values with a Québécois tea shop owner, who had married a Vietnamese woman and recently became a father in Ho Chi Minh City.

Another happened at the Thai-Laos border stop. The afore-mentioned American and I crossed to Laos on the last bus over and were being forced to either wait for more passengers to fill a tuk-tuk or pay an exorbitant fee for a ride into town. To make matters worse, as the only captive foreigners (i.e. customers), two locals kept trying to rip us off on overpriced boat tickets with some high-pressure sales tactics, promising that if we bought their tickets, one of the drivers would take us immediately. Honestly, it was probably a difference of less than $10, but after adjusting to Southeast Asia prices, scams became more a matter of principle than actual financial burden. We decided to wait.

After deflecting on our boating plans for long enough, the female salesperson finally dropped her ruse and switched to small talk, asking about my background. She leapt with excitement at my response. ‘Chinese! So many Chinese travelers here but they never know English. You can teach me!’ With nothing better to do, I was happy to oblige and dove into an impromptu 30-minute lesson, tapping into my extremely rusty Mandarin to transcribe some phrases, teach her Pinyin (Chinese romanization), and rehearse pronunciation. She picked it up quickly, which was unsurprising when I found she already spoke Lao, Thai, and Vietnamese, all of which are difficult tonal languages. 

Afterward, I joked if we could get a free ride now that I had helped her. She said no, but that one of the drivers was going home early, so we could catch a ride at one-fifth of the asking price. That was a win in my book! She also found out that I work in tech and immediately added me on Whatsapp ‘so I can ask you when my internet is bad’, and offered her consultation if I had any questions about tour sights in Laos and Vietnam. So if you ever cross to Laos overland, say hi to Noina for me - maybe she’ll be able to pitch you Luang Prabang boat tickets in Mandarin now.

The Fluffy Stuff

These interactions, whether serendipitous or challenging, ultimately brought me a newfound appreciation for the richness of my identity.

At home, it’s common to feel like yet another Asian-American tech employee with immigrant parents who pursued the American dream through self-sacrifice and a tiger-parent, education-focused upbringing in order to climb the social ladder through wealth acquisition, etc. etc.  Yet abroad, I was a confusing anomaly straddling two cultures that many had never seen before. 

There were times where I grew tired of playing the ‘token’ role, of course, obligated to explain my background at every turn and somehow represent all of China and Asia in conversations. Anyone who’s been in a minority can relate. But these experiences also made me more aware of the bubbles I place myself in back home, and taught me to embrace my heritage. Feeling like a special snowflake can be nice, but more important is finding the self-confidence to own that difference, even when it isn’t easy.

Is there a bias against the unfamiliar? Maybe. I still can’t control how others might perceive me at face value. But for those that I do engage with, hopefully I can share a new perspective on what an 'American' looks like.

Background: Wtf are you doing?

I've talked to many of you who would be reading this about my plans already, but in case you need a refresher - I'm taking 3 months off work and solo traveling Asia! I have the general order of where I want to go, but am uncharacteristically winging most of the specifics.

The questions people always ask are 1. why u do dis/why now and 2. wtf you're so lucky how?? - so I’ll try to answer both somewhat briefly here.

The Motivation

I've felt a restlessness to either move out of SF or do extended travel since October 2018, before I changed jobs at Meraki. I only realized after the fact that I had been burnt out. But more fundamentally, I felt I had slipped into living life on autopilot. Turning 25 also sparked a bit of a quarter life crisis, with a severe case of introspection. I was no longer a 'recent grad' just 'trying out this one job before I figure out the rest of my life'. After carrying out my programmed directive of climbing the education ladder and seeking gainful employment, what else was there? Sure, I was now climbing the corporate ladder, but what did I actually want to accomplish in life aside from get paid and live comfortably? 

The figuring time had come, which, combined with an unsated dose of the travel bug (or #wanderlust) from my new job led to a scattered few months of trying out therapy, attending Zen Center Dharma talks and meditation, reading a bunch of existentialist and self-help books, and countless (ongoing) discussions with friends.

I changed jobs in October, which provided distraction but not resolution to the existential anxiety underneath. 

Making it Happen

By mid-May, my restlessness came back in full force. I considered quitting and interviewing elsewhere, only to realize that even if I were to get a new offer, start dates usually happen within 3-4 weeks. Cisco fortunately offers (unpaid) extended personal leave, and by summer I finished a major project and was able to clear a proposal for time off with my manager. I had the willingness, and the permission, but even then still struggled to follow actually doing it. It’s extremely easy, dare I say even natural, for me to torpedo any idea, especially my own, with criticisms:

- you're not only missing out on a couple months salary, but also tanking your career progression when there's a juicy project you should be leading right now - just take 2 weeks to chill and get back into it

- you're just buying into a new capitalist narrative of experiential consumerism and transformational travel, without any actual cultural immersion. Eat pray love is for basic white bitches

- you just got mugged and broke your wrist in Barcelona, you're gonna die/get malaria/suffer massive shits if you spend 3 months abroad

...I could keep going but you get the point.

All of these hold some validity - I know because I'm a rational person and came up with them. But they’re also full of cognitive distortions. I’ve begun to realize that my tendency for over-rationalization and over-optimization often locks me into decision paralysis, leaving me to settle on the default option in life that presents itself, and give up self-agency. Besides, I’m fortunate enough to have the financial means, simplicity of solo-traveling as a guy, and freedom of not having to take care of parents or any dependents - why not now? 

So I’m gonna take some time from my normal life in SF, dictated by the colored blocks of my Gcal, punctuated by libations and weekend gatherings. Having visited much of Europe, I was weighing between South America and Southeast Asia, but ended up with the latter due to cultural interest, backpacking familiarity, and cost, and booked a one-way ticket, stopping first in Hong Kong before going to mainland SEA. 

So...what are you doing?

Getting space from the mental overhead of managing work, friend, and familial obligations to reflect is already huge. There are concrete things as well - be in nature, meet people from other cultures, train muay thai, meditate, practice photography, force myself to write (ha). And there are some very abstract questions to mull over - What do I personally value, vs what family or society has instilled in me? What do I want to create in the world? Does spirituality mean anything to me? 

Am I gonna ~~find myself~~? Maybe, if being ‘found’ was even a discrete state of being. But I’m gonna experience and learn random shit about the places I visit, which I want to  share here, and eat some dope $1 street food in the meantime. I’m writing more concrete travel posts as well - don’t worry it’s not all gonna be angst.

So here I am, typing this up in a hostel bed in Ayatthuya at 1am instead of figuring out how the hell I’m getting to Chiang Mai. Thanks for reading :) 

my dope ass hotel blanket

Note: I tend to make decisions informed by many viewpoints - there are tons of people that helped me work through this decision process who are unmentioned, but s/o to y’all.