Love this link up…It brings out my favorite kinds of posts…you know the kind with drunken pictures of everyone acting their very best!
Oooh boy what a long, exciting, exhausting, adventurous trip! I have to admit it was so hard to come back to this apartment. Going on such a long trip with a friend from home, granted she lives in NY so I don’t see her all the time anyway, but nevertheless I found myself really wishing I was heading home after the trip and not back to my place in Jiaxin.
Traveling with other people is hard. Much harder than say a loved one or boyfriend or alone. Sometimes you have to do things you probably wouldn’t do on your own, you have to compromise on things you might want but they don’t and above all you have to get used to how someone else does things for the entire trip. I admit I spent a lot of time being pretty crabby this trip because I felt like the first 24 hours after my friend arrived basically set the tone for the trip. Two broken cameras, hours spent looking for her, tears and anger and no sleep. It definitely set my mindset to a whole different place than it was beforehand.
Some things I learned on this trip:
1. There are always going to be more things than you have time to see
2. Maybe its better to visit fewer countries and spend more time in the ones you do than to jam pack your trip and spend very little time in each place
3. patience is a skill that takes an amazing AMAZING amount of work
4. It is ok to say no when you know you need to
It was a once in a lifetime trip and I am so happy that I took it and got to see all the places I did. Its hard to say my favorite place because I fell in love with Thailand when I was there last year but I did really enjoy Cambodia. There was just something about the atmosphere that I really appreciated, not to mention Angkor Wat was seriously just plain beautiful.
So now its time to get back to work with the kiddies and start planning my big trip for July. This time I am going to be sure to not over plan this trip and force too much into a tight timeframe!
I wish I could just show you all the pictures like I do on FB but that is too much work and I just don’t like doing it so I’ll post some fun pictures of the trip. My friend has so many awesome ones on her backup camera so once she posts those I will be sure to steal them and share!
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| The Great Wall |
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| In Beijing 🙂 |
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| Meeting my cousin for the first time in Hong Kong |
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| This picture makes me smile everytime! Kids in a Cambodian fishing village |
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| Ha Long Bay in Vietnam |
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| all smiles |
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| At Angor Wat-Tom Phrom where parts of Tomb Raider were filmed |
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| just goofiing off in a park in Vietnam |
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| Ahhhhh our Full mOon party night |
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| at the Grand Palace in Bangkok |
Going going gone! Guess who finally got sick on her trip?!?
Yep! So sick right now laying in my bunk bed whining and wishing I wasn’t while K sits under me icing her ankle because she apparently can’t walk down the steps she told me to be careful of.
We’re a mess and we have a boat tour to Ha Long Bay tomorrow!!
Eeerps!!
On the bright side before I got sick and she got clumsy we went to see the Hoa Lo Prison. It was something high on my list to see and I’m glad I did. It’s been very interesting to see the Vietnamese point of view on the war having only really read & learned the American side to it all. It was a sad to see the conditions they lived in and read about so many people dying.
We then explored the city and got some Vietnamese beers( which may or may not have been the cause of my suffering).
Still considered a pretty good day exploring on our own.
