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I’m back!

Well, I’m back from my 6 month trip around the world!  I saved money for 7 years, quit my job, sold or gave away most everything I own, and for the last 2 months trekked nonstop with a backpack and suitcase. The first 4 months I did short trips to Barcelona, Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks, visited friends and family I haven’t seen in years in some cases, and took my niece to Cedar Point for a weekend, then went to San Diego and Mexico.  After I dropped my cats off with my mom so I could travel nonstop, I went to London (day trip to Stonehenge, Bath, Cotswolds), Edinburgh, Scottish Highlands (including Loch Ness, Isle of Skye, Glencoe), Dublin (day trip to Cliffs of Moher and Galway), Paris, Venice, Rome (day trips to Vatican City, Pompei, Positano), Chiang Mai (including Elephant Nature Park), Krabi (day trip to Phi Phi Islands), Phuket, Bangkok, Tokyo, Kamakura/Enoshi Island, Hakone, Kyoto, Osaka (day trips to Nara, Himeji, Hikone), and Iceland (my mom came with me on that one!) There have been a lot of ups and downs, the more important ones as follows:

Pros:

–  Reconnected with family, old friends that I haven’t seen in years, and met a lot of fun new people.

– Visited places I’ve always dreamed about, and saw things I’ve always wanted to see while they’re still there.

– Tried new food, new desserts, new drinks…and yet, still lost about 5 inches on my waist probably from walking an average of 7-9 miles per day almost every day.  Usually uphill, which I still haven’t figured out the logistics in that.  If you go up you’d think you’d have to go down but it always seemed to be uphill!

– Saw new cultures and learned a TON of history including doing some ancestry research in England/Scotland/Ireland.

– Worked things out on my own whenever there was a problem and learned not to have a meltdown about the little things even if I wasn’t happy about it.

– Learned how to walk slower. Everyone in my family power walks everywhere and are masters at weaving through crowds, we also usually inhale our food rather than eat and enjoy it, it’s just the way it has always been.  I was walking around Chicago today and for the first time everyone was pushing past ME and I was seeing things I haven’t acknowledge in the 8 years that I’ve lived here.  Like, was that restaurant always there?  It looks neat, I never noticed it before…

Cons:

– I missed my pets so bad, I can’t wait to see them when I go to my mom’s for the holidays this weekend!

– The sheer volume of tourists is crazy!  I’m not complaining, since I am also one of those tourists and I think it’s amazing that the world has gotten to a point where so many people can enjoy it, it was just really surprising.  I used to live in Japan 15 years ago so a lot of my stops there were for nostalgia purposes and the number of people in places that had previously been practically unknown was shocking. The main concern I had was about safety, a lot of these places weren’t designed to hold that many people and those mega-tour buses are way too big in a lot of cases (I almost got squished by one!) I used to work at construction sites and we have OSHA in the United States and I think I got a few new gray hairs just from some of the safety related things I’ve seen.  I’m also an environmental scientist, so seeing some of the unhygienic things people were doing in some locations made me cringe. Bring a hand towel and hand sanitizer everywhere with you, for real! I would need an entire separate post to explain all of the people, behaviors, and safety issues though.  I’m putting this under “cons” but honestly this was one of the most interesting parts of the trip given my profession.

– I get why it’s hard for some people to understand how bad climate change is especially if they don’t travel.  It was really sad to see some of the locations because of all the trash and pollution, irregular weather patterns, damaged ecosystems, and changing behaviors of the animals. I already knew a lot about the impacts of the climate crisis, but some places really opened my eyes to how bad it’s truly becoming.

– Blisters.  So. Many. Blisters.  Even with broken in boots and moleskin and bandages.  I’m fairly convinced it’s inevitable.

– The scammers.  I managed to avoid them mostly, but one got me in Venice and it was so obvious I had to laugh after I realized it.  Rookie mistake!
Anywho, now that I’m back I’m going to spend the holidays with family then decide if I want to be a responsible adult and get back to work, or buy an RV and do an epic 6 month National Park road trip with my cats…

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Thailand – Day 12 (Bangkok)

I need to start getting into the habit of waking up early. In Japan, you need to get to everything as the sun rises to avoid the crowds. Today I failed at this, again. My alarm went off at 6am but I laid in bed snoozing every 10 minutes until after 7am. Then I got up and made coffee and sat on my balcony overlooking Wat Arun for an hour just reading and getting caffeinated. Then I went down for breakfast, and this place actually has real BACON! Not just cheap ham cut to look like bacon but for real bacon. It was an unexpected surprise and a good start to the day!

My first stop was Wat Pho, which houses this massive reclining Buddha statue. It was super-hot and the place was busy, but it’s a huge place and really neat to walk around and look at everything. After that I headed to Wat Ratchapradit Sathitmahasimaram (no I can’t pronounce it either), and although it was a much smaller temple the elaborate glass work on it was top notch. There were also a lot of birds here, so I sat for a while and listened to them sing. The next stop was the Grand Palace and the Temple of the Emerald Buddha. The temple is supposedly the most famous and most sacred temple in Thailand, and because of that the place was PACKED. This is the first and only place I’ve been to in Thailand where you were really shoulder to shoulder and I had to move my purse to my front and cover it with my hand to avoid pickpockets. It was gorgeous, but for the crowd and the price I don’t think I’d recommend it. Plus the Emerald Buddha statue is tiny and way up on a pillar thing so you can’t even really see it and I have good eyesight. I moved through the temple fairly quickly just to get out of the crowd and went to the Palace, but you can’t even go inside, you can only look at the exterior so that was disappointing too. But, I got to see the Thai version of the “changing of the guards” which was neat, and the ticket included a free shuttle to the Royal Theater where you got to watch a Khon show with English subtitles so you knew what the heck was going on. That was really fun, I enjoyed it. After the show was over I walked back to the hotel and got some cashew chicken and rice for a linner/dunch, and cooled off in my room for a bit while the sun set outside my window.

I didn’t plan it this way, but today is Loy Krathong. In fact, if I had planned it better I wish I was in Chiang Mai tonight since it’s a waaaay bigger festival there with lanterns in the water and in the air. But, I’m in Bangkok, and I read that Wat Arun was a big place to be for the festivities so I hopped on a rickety ferry across the river to check it out. Unfortunately the temple itself was closed, but the party was going on outside. There was food, games, music, theater and hundreds of people walking around with various lanterns to put into the water.

For those not familiar, Loy Krathong is actually a bit of a hypocritical festival. People make these wreath things with candles, often out of plastic, light them up and put them in the river to thank the gods for the water and…apologize for…polluting the water? Yeah, so put plastic trash in the water to apologize to the gods for putting plastic trash into the water, haha! It seems like people are starting to catch on to this and even though there were still plastic krathongs there were more made out of organic plants, fruits and flowers. I wanted to participate, but didn’t want to throw anything into the already polluted river, so instead I donated some money to the temple monks who then gave you a little tea candle type thing in a reusable flower cup and you lit that and floated it in a nearby pool. True, it’s not a zero waste method, but better than the alternative. After hanging out for a bit, I hopped back on the ferry to Wat Pho. In hindsight, I should have done Wat Arun during the day when it was open, because Wat Pho was still open and now for free including the reclining Buddha. So I wandered around there again since there were far less people than in the morning, and watched some of the shows on the stage. It was getting late and I still needed to pack up for my trip to Japan tomorrow, so I called it a night and now I’m packing things up. Can’t believe it’s time for Japan already!

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Thailand – Day 11 (off to Bangkok!)

I woke up before sunrise to a very wet, rainy morning. The trip to the airport was uneventful, and although the flight was delayed a bit I made it to Bangkok. I had a moment of panic when the light at baggage claim flashed that all the suitcases had been unloaded, only to feel a wave of relief when I saw my suitcase was the literal last bag off. After getting my bag I took a taxi to the hotel and checked in, then changed and navigated the subway to meet my friend, Andrea. She and I met about 3 years ago at the Women’s March in Chicago and kept in touch through Facebook, but hadn’t seen each other since. We went to Charley Browns for tacos and nachos and a pitcher of margaritas, then headed to an Irish pub of sorts for more food and booze. A few of her friends joined us there, and they were all very nice and very funny people! It was a lot of fun catching up with Andrea and meeting her friends, 5 hours seemed like 30 minutes. Time really does fly when you’re having fun! Alas, it is Sunday night and they have work in the morning, so we split up just before 8pm and I made my way back to my swanky hotel with a gorgeous balcony view. Bangkok walking adventures tomorrow!