And the blog title has changed...ciao to "Off the Beaten Business Path"! I guess I can safely say my nomadic life has and will change along with it. The past month has been a wonderful whirlwind of friends and family, and I have loved every minute of traveling to Medellin, Colombia with Pedro, spending Christmas in Lynchburg, VA, partying NYE at the family beach house, and road-tripping to DC, Boston, and NYC. Every single stop could fill up a blog page alone, but the main purpose of this tiny post is to verify that the blog will go on!!
This Sunday I fly out of the US with a layover in Abu Dhabi (that totally counts as visiting, right?) and will arrive in Bangkok, Thailand around 25 hours later. I have never had such long flights so that will be an experience in itself. I will meet up with Abbie there, we are going to spend 2 nights in Bangkok, and then head via bus to Cambodia! Word on the street is that you can’t really plan in advance before backpacking SE Asia, so we’re going with a vague route in mind: Bangkok-Cambodia-Thai islands-Northern Thailand-Laos-Vietnam. Maybe it will be funny to look back on this after the trip and see where our travels actually took us.
Of course South East Asia is undeniably different from any of the places my work took me during the past 18 months, but my method of travel is what will vary the most. Staying in nice hotels and working abroad is a complete 180 from bringing 2 dresses and some t-shirts in a backpack and living out of hostels for 6 weeks. I am such a novice at the whole thing, and I just pray I won’t have to use the inside of my running shorts as a face towel, like I had to do in a hostel in Amsterdam.
After 6 weeks of grunging it, I will head to Madrid to visit Pedro for a couple weeks, then I am back in the US for good! That’s the plan, Stan, and I hope to keep you duly updated on it.
Laew phob gan mai (“See you later”in Thai!)
