Around Southeast Asia in 60 Days

Post Try number two.... sorry if it repeats this email... the blogger can be pretty stubborn

 

Well the day has come... I have parted from Casey and Ben and will be heading home soon. While I can't beleive it is over, I really can't beleive it's only been two months since I got off the plane in Bangkok. I am sure I will be telling a lot of stories when i get back, but I really can't express how much I have learned about everything I always never knew about and things I though I allready thought I knew. (if that makes sense :) ) I couldn't have asked to travel around with better travel partners or even gotten anything more out of the two month trip had I done years of planning. After hearing about so many travel blunders from everyone, even our friends that we met up with in Vietnam, ours seemed almost scripted in its ease, yet it was only a rare occasion that we were forced to follow the bland, layed out, tourist route that most went on. By often straying off the beaten path I feel we maximized our interaction with the amazing cultures we have been surrounded by. 

Take for example take just three days ago while we were in the 4,000 islands in southern Loas. We decided to leave a little later in the afternoon instead of buying a 7 am tourist bus home, and enjoyed the relaxing morning looking over the Mekong and playing with a puppy and kitten while we ate a long breakfast. When we finally made it on a boat ride across the river and to the bus station we found out that while busses leave every hours from Pakse to the 4,000 Islands, they only leave in the morning at 7 or 8am back. (the same tourist bus we decided not to take) We found ourselves with the option of paying literally 2,000 % more to get back in a the same bus meant to catch late comers and swindle them out of money or trying to go to the highway and catch a bus on its way back buy ourselves. We chose the path less followed, waited for about 2 hours on the road, and then met two guys who even after we offered money, gave us the 5 hour ride for free back to Pakse. We were still stunned by our luck when upon returning to our guest house in Pakse, Ben noticed that Brenden (Casey and Ben's roomate from school who we had purposefully met up with back in Vietnam) was also their on the guestlist of the hostel. We found him staying fifty feet from the front desk and had one more night sharing stories over an asian barbeque. I doubt we could have even planned another meeting like that as our itineraries were exactly opposite in Vietnam. Him going south towards Ho Chi Minh and us north to Hanoi, with no set plans.

This is just one of the reasons we had put so little emphasis on planning and more on experiencing and playing it by ear and guts instincts at times. Don't worry Mom, we were smart and never found ourselves stuck between a rock and a hard place, but we could definately write our own enriched version of Lonely Planet. We have had many discussion about the book and the level be able to experience it gets into. In my words and I think all our opinions it provides a great skeleton for someone to build a trip off of. If some of the amazing places that we made it to in our trip were in the book, they would no longer be as amazing on so many levels, not just our "discovery" level. Everyone who is tavelling seems to have a version and thus our trips secrets would be revealed and become higher priced, no longer secluded, or even worst... saddled up by tourism in a way that makes it feel rehearsed and fake.

Well sorry for the slipshod entry, if you made it this far I am as proud of you and I am myself for earning your attention. lol

Can't beleive it is over and will definately do something similar again, perhaps even longer next time... I can't recommend it enough to anyone interested...

Sean

PS See everyone soon!

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