If you want to buy any of these things, here's my favorite gifting website, Hintd, with all of the items I list in my video

http://www.hintd.com/user/krissykelley

In the vast expanse of acres of yard devoid of landscape except for well-maintained Kentucky bluegrass, the foundations of some of the most important lessons of my life were laid.  These lessons were hard.  And they hurt.  The kind of bloody violence that was a near-daily occurrence in the Kelley household during the lazy, humid Midwestern summers isn’t the sort of dark, domestic type which probably comes to mind.  

Bloody noses were the result of pop-fly baseballs escaping the clutches of a well-oiled leather baseball mitt, worn down by two generations of hands calloused by hard labor on the farm.  Bloody knees manifested themselves as badges of valor after miscalculating the balance required to stay upright when turning the handlebars of a shiny new Schwinn.  

I’ll never forget the day I learned to ride a bicycle in the cul-de-sac of Norwich Drive. I couldn’t believe that I had convinced my parents to buy me something this cool that was all my own, an entire size too big for me at the time, but a bike that I could grow into.  I was five years old.  My parents didn’t believe in training wheels.  It’s a damn miracle that I didn’t wet myself as I gingerly pushed off and placed both feet on the pedals.  It was terrifying yet exhilarating to throw caution to the wind and attempt to balance on two wheels while simultaneously remembering to pedal and steer at the same time (a feat which, at 35 and with tens of thousands of miles on the bike under my belt, I still sometimes struggle to do.)

My tangled hair trailed behind as the glory of self-propelled flying sent my spirits soaring and heart racing.  The glory was short-lived.  In a split-second, my fortune had changed and the aluminum frame lay on top of my crumpled lanky kid body, newly adorned with two freshly painted crimson knees and a well of tears threatening to betray my confidence.  I assumed that this would be the end of my short-lived cycling career, a failed experiment never to be undertaken again.  I mean, how could one be expected to retry such an utterly fruitless and disastrous experience?  Not only did it hurt like hell, but it was humiliating.  Maybe the neighbors were looking out the window and seeing the one kid who couldn’t keep two wheels on the ground.  What if one of the other kids saw my failure?  Most importantly, what if I let my dad down?  There was a certain amount of pressure to at least look like I was enjoying this new toy that I felt was such an enormous privilege to have.  

I was shocked – SHOCKED – when my dad swiftly stood the bike up and motioned for me to get back in the saddle. Trying again seemed like a monumental task for another day, maybe after my dad carried me up the driveway, bike slung over his other shoulder, and after I could recuperate with some milk and cookies.  It never occurred to me that the next trial would happen NOW and HERE, so publicly and without any fanfare.  

It was bloody, and it was hard, and even the thought of doing something again which had begun so poorly seemed improbable.  But it was the first of many lessons my dad would teach me using sports as a metaphor for life; it’s only hard before you succeed, and if you don’t get back in the saddle, you’ll never ride.  Part of the glory is in doing something that is hard.

My parents were big believers in doing hard things sometimes just for the sake of doing hard things.  We grew up in a farming community and it wasn’t uncommon for families to loan their kids out to other families, especially in the dog days of summer, to do chores around the farm.  Of course, a lot of times we didn’t mind the backbreaking work because we somehow made tasks like shoveling out the hog barn fun.  When there is dirt involved, kids always find a silver lining.  But some tasks weren’t fun.  I’ll never forget the time my parents forced my sister and me to dig a hole under the house with trowels in order to install a sump pump.  It took hours.  There were any number of professionals whose actual livelihoods are forged doing this work for a living, but in the eyes of my parents, there was no one better for the job than my sister and me.  We complained.  It wasn’t fair.  It was really hard.  It was dark and sweaty and there were bugs under there that we’d never seen before, even in the farthest reaches of the woods that was our playground. We weren’t allowed back inside the house until the task was complete.  It was boring and miserable work, but it did feel kinda good to have completed something hard.

For my parents, it was partially about finding a time-intensive task to get us out of their hair for a while and also out of the house, but in hindsight it was, more importantly, a lesson.  A lesson in the value of hard work and grinding through something when you really don’t want to.  I wish this was the only example I could think of where our parents made us do manual labor seemingly for the sole purpose of making us suffer and destroying our childhood aspirations of beating every level of Mario Brothers 3, but, alas, it was with shocking regularity that there was more and more hard work to be done.  I once asked my parents why we had to do all this stuff that they easily could hire someone else to do.  “Because it’s hard,” my mom said.  What a ludicrous answer.  And child abuse.  But the older I get, the more grateful I am for the opportunity to have experienced hard things so early and so often because now I know how to do hard things.

A week ago I was the victim of a violent attack at knifepoint in Ecuador, just two weeks before the end of a 9-month trip around the world.  I was alone and shaken and scared.  It might have been the worst day of my life.  I spent a solid 24 hours in tears not wanting to leave my apartment.  My initial reaction was to catch the next flight home, but my friends and husband encouraged me to finish my travels.  It was great advice and I was so grateful to have been able to fall back on the lessons from my youth in getting back in the saddle.  If I hadn’t continued, the fear would have stayed with me and it would have really held hostage my love of travel, maybe forever.  Don’t get me wrong, the attack certainly changed me.  I’m still uncomfortable walking alone.  I have a super annoying habit of constantly looking over my shoulder and I cross to the other side of the street if there are men on my side. I really get tremendous joy out of taking pictures and using the internet to learn more about places as I visit them, but I’m not comfortable pulling out my phone or camera or wallet in public anymore.  When I recently needed to peek a map, I walked into a grocery store and hid between the aisles before I would let anyone see that I didn’t know where I was going.  

I shared a cab from the airport with a local gal when I landed in Colombia the day after the attack.  I offered to pay for her taxi if she would come with me in the car and drop me at my hotel.  I recounted the story of my attack and asked for the name of her salon in Santa Marta.  I was planning to dye my hair black to do something about looking like such a gringa.  At least it was one thing I could control. To my complete and utter dismay she said, “It’s not your hair, sweetie.  It’s your face.  You have the most American face I’ve ever seen and no amount of hair dye is going to hide it.”  FML.  I had to do something else.

A few days post-attack, I was just miserable.  Stuck somewhere in between knowing I needed to move on and get over it and continue to travel and do the things I love but also feeling very hesitant and having a lot of trepidation about what to do next, I executed the nuclear option; I knew I just needed to do something that felt hard.  Without any sense of ego, I walked into the nearest tour operator in Colombia and asked for the hardest activity they had planned.
Turns out, the next day this company was beginning a 4 day trek to Ciudad Perdida, an ancient archaeological site meaning “Lost City” in Spanish.  Built about 650 years before Machu Picchu, the lost city was rediscovered in the 70s by treasure hunters and after ancient artifacts began showing up on the Colombian black market, archaeologists began restoring the site.  

(scroll for more)

The trek was grueling.  The average daily temperature was 90 degrees F and 100% humidity.  Just taking 10 steps was enough to streak your clothes with sweat, and the trail, with its red-tinged clay, never dried, turning the pathway into a muddy mess that wouldn’t have been out of place in a Tough Mudder race.  We hiked for 28 hours over 4 days in the rain, the heat, and the mud, stopping to cool off in the Rio Buritaca when it became too unbearable.  While the trekking was tough and steep, the swims were amazing!  The chilly mountain water raging from above winding into streams and twisting into waterfalls was a natural icepack for sore knees and tired feet.  There was no point in toweling off after getting out of the water because the high humidity kept every article of clothing permanently drenched.  Even after hanging wet, stinky clothes on a clothesline overnight, they were just as soaked when it came time to put them back on the next morning.  

(scroll for more)

The trek to the lost city began just a few miles off the Caribbean Sea on Colombia’s north coast, which was hit by Hurricane Matthew several weeks ago and did quite a bit of damage to the trail.  A number of bridges we crossed had either fallen or were about to.  In the United States, our overly litigious society would never have allowed passage on this trail in its current shape but the Colombians were eager to reopen and allow the trail to provide income for the supposedly 1500 people who rely on it. The thrill you get from doing things that seem dangerous are kicked up a notch when they probably actually are dangerous.  I’m fairly certain there is no country on earth in which these bridges were up to code.  

In addition to the difficult terrain and stifling humidity, there were also river crossings to deal with.  Our guides really proved their mettle shepherding us across the swift thigh-deep water that apparently can get chest-deep after a heavy rain.

After two days of hiking, we finally arrived at Ciudad Perdida with its towering terraces and ancient maps carved into blocks of stone.  Our two guides to the lost city did not speak English, but our intrepid translator ensured that we didn’t’ miss a detail.  We also traveled with a cook, who made some of the most amazing food with virtually no modern amenities to work with.

(scroll for more)

 The lost city has only been open for tourism for about 15 years, so it’s not as completely excavated or restored as Machu Picchu, a similar set of ruins to which it is often compared.  The lost city is comprised of multiple sets of terraces set into the side of a mountain, each of them having served different purposes from farming to worship to living before the city was abandoned more than three hundred years ago.  No one knows precisely why the city was abandoned, but the Tayrona people who lived there likely contracted empire-ending syphilis and smallpox after the Spanish conquistadors arrived.

(scroll for more)

There are a soul-crushing 1200 steps that lead up to the lost city, and it is thrilling to think of what the first people to rediscover the lost city must have thought when they stumbled upon the beginning to this massive city in the jungle that at one time was home to somewhere between 5000 and 10000 people.  The lost city was also a great time to do some reflection -- on my own recent history and what lay in my past and the physical struggle in the past days that had helped me take my mind off of an extremely harrowing experience.  It felt good to wrench my feet out of the sucking mud with each step up the red clay trails and it felt it felt good to purge emotions out with the sweat.  It felt good to need nothing more than the 15L daypack on my back and to feel foolishly purified by the torrents of river water. At one point, alone in the humid jungle among the palms and toucans, tears came to my eyes as I realized that it was one of the first moments since the attack that it occurred to me that I had momentarily stopped being scared.  Although I swore as a child I would never feel this way, there is something exceptionally gratifying and restorative to doing hard things.  

It was an overcast day in Guayaquil, Ecuador, a port city that used to be known for its grit and crime and as a stopover for tourists on their way to the Galapagos Islands until a riverfront revitalization project several years ago put Guayaquil on the map as a legit destination in its own right.  In fact, I too, was coming off one of the best weeks of my Gap Year after disembarking a boat in the Galapagos where I had the experience to wrestle in the open ocean with sea lions and swim side by side with docile sharks, penguins, and tortoises.  There is virtually no crime in the Galapagos and on the boat we were encouraged not to lock the doors to our rooms.  

Maybe it was the envelope of safety that lulled me into a lazy false sense of security or maybe it was the lax attitude after seeing the literally hundreds of police officers lining the touristy area where I was staying, known as the Malecon 2000, where locals, police, and every guidebook advertises the safety of the area.  Last night as I strolled the riverfront with hundreds of tourists (and hundreds of police) I saw families with little kids, runners, and tourists alike even after 10 pm.  

So I didn't occur to me that leaving my little cocoon of touristy safety would pose a problem when I decided to visit one of Guyaquil's most well-known sights - a lighthouse and church on the top of a hill (Cerro Santa Ana) just a 20 minute strenuous walk not far from where I was staying.  Even when I'm in an area that seems safe, the New Yorker in me always has a guard up.  I don't wear fancy jewelry, I am always vigilant to see what's going on around me, and I try to blend in as much as my blonde hair and baseball cap will let me.

I knew that I wanted to go see the lighthouse that was at the top of the hill that I could see easily from my apartment, but the streets in this area wind around and around to reach the top, so I used google maps on my phone to plot my walking route.  As any user of Google Maps knows, it chooses for you the most direct route and it hasn't yet rolled out a feature to "avoid shady ass areas."  So I'm headed up this hill and a couple of guys start whistling at me.  I wish I could say that it was because I was looking particularly good that day, but not so.  It's the blonde.  This outwardly Western symbol, while extremely useful for the better part of my youth back in the States, is an annoyingly irremovable emblem of what most foreigners assume equals wealth.  At the very least, the blonde invokes curiosity.  Today I went for a run through the main downtown area that supposedly is fine by day and seedy by night, and I couldn't go a single block without getting a whistle or a comment.  Hearing it once makes you feel glad you did those extra squats; hearing it dozens of times makes you wonder if you forgot to put pants on.

So as I began ascending the hill full of beautifully colored houses around 4 pm, I got a few catcalls from teenage guys up above.  Depending on the tastefulness of the come-ons, my response is typically somewhere between feigning complete deafness to a "good afternoon."  I couldn't even see these guys they were so high up, so I didn't even bother to acknowledge it.  I rambled through the neighborhood for about 5 minutes or so until I came across a school playground with dozens of kids screaming, a friendly soccer match in progress, and a picture postcard perfect backdrop of all the Crayola colored houses below.  I was on an elevated sidewalk about four feet off the ground and it gave a really great vantage point.  I thought to myself it would be a great photo op.  I took my phone out of my pocket and as I'm apt to do, looked around to ensure no one was planning to relieve me of my valuables.  Just at that moment, a young guy approached me very quickly from the front.  I didn't like the looks of him and the elevated sidewalk we were on was fairly narrow, so I turned the other way to hop back down onto the street.  As I did, I saw a sight that I just can't get out of my mind.

It was the kind of thing you see only in horror movies, usually as the bad guy is jumping out of a dark alleyway or from behind a shower curtain: a raised long knife with a red handle pointing straight at me wielded by another young guy.  It only took a second and the first guy was pinned against my back reaching for my phone while guy #2 held the knife at me.  I screamed.  I screamed like I have never screamed before.  If you heard this scream, you would have thought that I had already lost a limb.  It was 100% adrenaline and reaction.  Knife guy was shushing me.  I kept screaming.  The guys pushed me off of the sidewalk which was a 4 foot drop onto the cobblestone street.  I'm not sure exactly how I landed, but judging by the gash on my elbow, it was probably there.  

I instinctively curled up into fetal position and by luck or lack of it, my backpack ended up tucked into my stomach.  Which presented a problem for the theives.  I was clenched so hard out of fear that it would have taken the jaws of life to pry my bag from me.  Now, mind you, I don't give a shit about the bag.  It is an Osprey daypack that I have been complaining about to anyone who will lend an ear.  The only thing inside it was a wallet with about $100 cash and a jacket.  It wasn't like I was protecting something valuable or sentimental.  I was completely frozen with fear.  Guy #1 was really unhappy that his friend had relieved me of my phone and he had nothing to show for the heist.  So he dragged me by my hair for several meters while I was still screaming for my life and clutching my bag in fetal position.  Eventually the guy must have been too afraid that my screaming would draw a crowd (which it did) and he ran away with his friend.

I lay there in a daze in the middle of the street.  It seemed like it had been minutes, but the whole thing only took about 15-20 seconds.  Soon enough, people came to see what all the commotion was about and what a sight they must have come upon.  A crazy screaming blonde in the middle of the street bleeding from elbows and knees and blonde hair strewn about the dark cobbles that had been pulled out by my assailant.  No one came to help.  I walked toward the nearest sympathetic face, an old Ecuadorian man, to whom I asked in broken Spanish if he could take me to the police station.  "I don't see nothing," he replied as he turned away from me.  My heart dropped.  No one else came forward.

Just then a couple on a motorcycle came over the hill and upon seeing my state and hearing my cries for "policia!" they put me on the back of the bike and drove me down the hill to the nearest precinct.  Upon seeing the burly Ecuadorian police officer, I lost it.  Tears flowed down my face and I tried in my best Spanish (which is way less than mediocre even on my best day) to relay what had happened.  The policeman asked why I was alone in such a bad neighborhood.  I had no idea it was so bad.  It was the middle of the day and didn't seem so creepy to me.  I called my husband, which made me lose it once again.  I think by this point the police were afraid to leave me alone because they always kept one officer in the room with me.  Or it could have been the fact that the blood dripping from my elbow was being slowly covered by soft tufts of my blonde hair falling from my scalp every with every sobbing heave.

Even in an emotional state, it still occured to me that I might be able to find those fuckers using Google's "find my phone" capability, so I began logging into my Google account from the police desktop.  Because I hadn't logged in before from that computer, Google wanted to authenticate my ID via a second method.  The first option was to send a code via text to my phone.  Clearly that method was out.  The second option was to send an email to my other email account at Yahoo, which I use only for spam.  Authentication sent.  Unfortunately, I ran into what we call in the Computer Science world an infinite loop.  Yahoo also wanted to verify my identity using either my cell phone or my Gmail account.  Who knew Yahoo was so secure?  D'oh!

So I did the next best thing and had my husband hack into my Gmail account from my home computer back in New York.  My phone was showing no connection to a network, so GPS location wasn't possible.  With no other alternatives, I had to wipe my phone.  The police asked me to identify the thieves from a bunch of photos of perps they knew about, but apparently dark-skinned and carrying a knife didn't really narrow down the list of suspects too much.   The real boondoggle came when I asked for a police report so that I could turn my losses in to my insurance back at home.  I was advised that the person who does this job (there were about ten other police officers in the office) was not available because it was the beginning of some sort of festival.  After two extremely frustrating hours of arguing with the police (over Google Translate animated with very exaggerated hand motions) I was able to convince someone to type out a few words on some police letterhead that detailed my losses.  Eventually a policeman gave me a motorcycle ride back to my apartment where I proceeded to sob my eyes out for the next few hours and could not even enjoy the also extremely emotional Chicago Cubs win in the World Series, nearly 100 years in the making.

I am not really sure why I am sharing all this.  I gave my family a heads up but this is probably going to really freak them out and want to kick themselves for not trying to talk me out of coming here.  Probably because when something traumatic happens, it just seems natural to want to do SOMETHING.  And seeing as how I'm holed up in an apartment too scared to even walk out the front door for water (I've been crying for hours and really dehydrated and not sure if the tap water is drinkable) writing seemed like the most natural thing to do. Maybe someone else has been through something like this and has some advice for how to move forward.  At this point I have about 3 weeks left in South America and I'm wondering if I can enjoy the rest of the trip or if I'm going to be constantly looking over my shoulder.  Part of me wants to just hole up in a luxury hotel for the remainder and just get room service and watch Netflix, but that's not what I came to South America to do (and besides, I haven't yet found a place in South America with good enough wifi to be able to stream anything.)  

I've been reflecting on what went down and here are some things I think went pretty well (as far as muggings go) and also some lessons learned.

What Went Well

1. Be Cheap - I don't wear any jewelry other than the very simple travel wedding band I bought specifically for this trip.  I had a cheap plastic watch, but it broke.  

2. Don't put all your eggs in one basket (or daypack.) I keep a few bucks tucked inside my phone case and a separate wallet in my daypack.  The majority of my cash and some credit cards, not to mention my passport were back at the apartment, so even if my bag was stolen, I still had some money and my passport.

3. Keep an eye out.  Despite getting mugged, I thought I was pretty aware of what was going on around me.  When I was starting to get my phone out of my pocket I was doing a visual sweep for bad guys.  Clearly it didn't make a difference this time, but it wasn't for lack of trying.

Lessons Learned

1. Double check the supposed safety of where you're going.  Sure, few places outside the US match the safety back home, but if I had asked the front desk of my building, they definitely would have told me not to go where I did.

2. Go with a friend.  I have been lucky in most of my travels to have made friends along the way and I'm usually with someone else when walking around.  I only had one day in Guayaquil and I wasn't staying at a hostel, so I was flying solo.

3. Your stuff is not valuable.  You are.  I am really lucky that I walked away with only some scrapes and a bald spot.  If someone wants your stuff and appears to be willing to take your life for it, give em your stuff.  If I hadn't been so completely taken by fear, I would have given up that godforsaken backpack before I lost half a head of hair.

Anything like this ever happen to you?  Were you able to move on and enjoy travel?  Did you change anything about your behavior?  Leave your comments here or on Facebook and I will read them as soon as I get myself together!  I won't have What's App until I get back to the States since I don't have a phone so Facebook Messenger is the next best thing.

Of all the places I’ve been lucky enough to write a blog post, hauling my Samsung Galaxy tablet to the peak of a  atop the snow-capped Andes is certainly a first.  I had an hour to kill while waiting at passport control between Chile and Argentina after saying, “Adios!” to Santiago and heading toward Mendoza, Argentina, so I decided to hop off the bus and type a few words in the sun from one of the highest peaks I've ever been to.  I chose to take the 8-hour bus ride over the Andes rather than fly at the urging of several friends who have done the ride before.  I am so happy to have gotten this advice!  There aren’t really foothills in this part of the Andes, at least not the part I crossed.  It’s just flat flat flat and then you start climbing the mountain, winding your way up switchback after switchback, each hairpin turn revealing a new snowy peak set against a bluebird sky.  Crossing the Andes while sitting on the top deck of a double decker bus with panoramic mountain vistas in front of me is one of the coolest experiences I've had in all my travels.  Do this if you get a chance.

I’ve spent time in many mountain ranges across the globe, but I don’t think I’ve seen any quite as dramatic as these.  It’s hard to describe the Andes as vast, though they are, because you can’t really see much of the range at one time because the pitch of the peaks is so severe that you can only see the few nearest you at any given time.

It’s with a bit of nostalgia that I leave Santiago, primarily because of the great friendships I made and the hospitality of the people there.  This trip is made different than any past travels because instead of sleeping in a hotel or an AirBnB, I earned a backpacker’s rite of passage and slept in a hostel.  I was able to avoid hostels in Asia because hotels were so cheap and I also avoided them in America and Canada because – wait, are there even hostels in America?  My opinion on hostels had previously been – based on nothing but maybe some movies – that they’re for college kids on a gap year and noisy, dirty, and potentially ripe for getting your things stolen.  I couldn’t have been more wrong.  

So what is a hostel REALLY like?  There are sometimes a variety of beds from a single room with ensuite bathroom, but the typical hostel room is a 4- or 6-man dorm with bunk beds, one bathroom to share, and large lockers to secure your things. It’s kind of like being back in college!  Some hostels offer female-only dorms, but I chose a mixed-sex dorm (sorry mom!) because I couldn’t stomach the thought of competing with 5 other women for the bathroom in the morning.  The hostel I stayed in had an amazing outdoor roofdeck with views of the Andes.  It was a brilliant place to have a cup of coffee and make friends.  From the very first hour of my arrival, several Brazilians introduced themselves and invited me to join them for meals and activities.  Despite our difficulties navigating the melange of languages (English, Spanish, and Portugese) we somehow were able to communicate.  Hand signals go a long way!  So does Google Translate!

By far the best thing about staying in a hostel is ready access to other people who are traveling just like you and are interested in seeing a lot of the same types of things as you are.  As a woman, you get the added security of not having to walk around alone, and as a solo traveler, it's a great way to get feedback on your ideas for where to travel next (and maybe even someone to go with you!) 

Santiago is a decent-sized South American city, but what makes it really special is some of the funky artsy neighborhoods where you can make an entire day out of just looking at the graffiti.  I stayed in the Bellavista neighborhood and this is just some of the really cool graffiti artwork adorning the walls of the local buildings.

The Chileans are a very artsy bunch as I learned on a day-trip excursion to the seaside towns of Valparaiso and Vina del Mar, just about two hours away from Santiago.  Valparaiso is the governmental capital of Chile, and it was historically a very important strategic port city between traders from Europe and the East coming around the Cape of Good Hope en route to California.  The port is pretty disgusting, just like you'd expect any port to be, but the real reason to come to Valparaiso is to see the views from the top of the steep cliffs and the brightly painted houses.  You get up these hills by taking a funicular, and there are dozens of them around the city, only costing a few cents for a one-way passage.

There is an entire section in my guide book dedicated to the "Top 10 Views in Valparaiso" so it's no secret that the best way to see the city is to take one of the many dozens of funiculars to the top of a hill to catch the amazing vistas.  Some views allow you to see the ocean below, some provide the most mesmerizing scenes of colorful artwork and brightly painted houses that are revealed while navigating the tightly-wound hillsides.  But it begs the question - what if a whole block of families decided to conform and all paint their houses the same color?  Is that legal?  Do you have to get some sort of city approval before painting your house?  And what about the amazing street graffiti art we see all over the country?  Are these works commissioned or do storefronts just wake up to some clandestine Banksy-style miracles ardorning their front stoops?  So many questions about the funky, vibrant street art scene that seems to pop up all over Chile.

The best way to ascend the steep cliffs in Valparaiso is by taking a funicular.  To the uninitiated, this is a small little cable car that takes you anywhere from a few stories to several hundred feet up the face of a hill.  I almost always prefer to get some exercise and take the stairs, but these little cars are just part of the culture here, and they only cost about $.25 USD so it was fun to experiment and go up and down a few of them.  I have no idea how often these things are serviced or how exacting the maintenence standards are in Chile, but based on the creaks and jolting stops and starts, it does add an extra dimension of risk and thrill with every bump and screech as you ascend!

If Valparaiso is the cool, tormented, artsy hipster, then Vina del Mar is its buttoned-up square older brother.  Just 10 minutes up the coast north of Valparaiso, the wide, tree-lined boulevards of Vina del Mar provide a quiet respite for well-heeled Chileans looking for a bit of seaside luxury.  The hustle of Valpariso melts away into a quiet beach town with ample international cuisine and one of the best empanadas I've had in recent memory (chicken with coriander and cilantro.)

I am very sad to put Santiago and Central Chile in the rearview mirror, but when you've got views of the Andes like this, it makes looking forward all the more easy.  :)

So I wasn't too excited about the idea of rehashing that experience with another overnight train, especially by myself. I pulled an extremely New Yorker move and tried to find any other possible mode of transportation to get there including a helicopter, but it appears that Sapa, for better or worse, has stuck to its reputation as a remote hill town far removed from amenities and creature comforts and overnight train or bus is pretty much the only way in. I couldn't believe my luck when I arrived to my train berth to find a totally normal (and pretty cool) American gal from LA who would be sharing my room for the night. There were two other beds in our berth that were unoccupied, so we chatted for a bit about our travels and tucked in to a rickety and noisy 8 hour train ride from Hanoi to Sapa.

I certainly can't say that it was a peaceful night's sleep, but I awoke to a driver waiting to take me to the mountains and in just 30 minutes I had met Pham, my mountain guide and homestay mama.  There were two other girls from New Zealand, Nina and Tessa, staying with Pham and her family as well.  We started out on a 3 hour hike up through the rice paddies that would turn out to be one of the coolest hikes I've ever done.

As we walked through fields and climbed up the terraced landscape, Pham described how the terraces are made and that every terrace has to be maintained every year.  First, you need a source of water, and in this part of the country it comes from mountain springs.  The terraces are shallow pools just deep enough to collect about six inches of water with a small retaining wall made of mud that keeps just enough water in each terrace. At some part of the wall, there is a break that allows water to flow freely to the next terrace like a giant infinity pool cascading water down the mountain terrace by terrace and giving life to the vast fields of rice. Each spring, the fields need to be plowed, typically by water buffalo, but depending on the terrain and the amount of land, some are plowed by hand. The terraces are then planted with rice seed and after the growing season has come and gone and harvest time is near, the rice terraces transform the fertile mountains into the most amazing, verdant green terraced panorama you've ever seen.  I was there just as planting had begun, but the pictures we saw near harvest time were just breathtaking.

In Sapa, most of the rice farms are subsistence farms, with the rice from one harvest is used to feed the family for the entirety of the next year.  Families typically don't plant more than they'll consume, so this makes rice an incredibly important crop and families with different harvest schedules will often help each other when harvest time comes. 

After hiking for most of the day, we arrived at Pham's house, a small two-story wood house a few kilometers from a very tiny village that would make the small town near where I grew up, Gaston, Indiana, look like New York City.  Gaston had one stoplight and a pizza place and you'd certainly miss it if you blinked.  Pham's dwelling was a palace compared to most homes in the area because she and her husband had been able to save up enough to build on the second story to accommodate space for their homestay. The floor of the main level was packed dirt and stone and surprisingly did feature a few amenities like running water, a shower, and an actual toilet.  Trust me, you don't know how luxurious a proper Western toilet feels until you've teetered above a squat toilet in the jungle with a 50 lb pack on your back just praying for enough stability to keep your shoes dry.  Needless to say, there was no wifi.

Then it was time to start preparing dinner.  Pham and her sweet husband Phuong cooked the ingredients for fried spring rolls, showed us how to assemble them, and then we were responsible for making them. I should mention that the kitchen was unique, to say the least. While the family did have electricity, the main heat source was an open flame over which a number of pots contained the various things cooking for dinner.  It made the house a bit smoky, and me a bit dizzy, so I spent some time with the kids outside dancing and singing the lyrics to songs from Frozen.  No kidding. In the middle of a rice paddy on the side of a mountain hundreds of miles from a major city in Vietnam, where the kids don't really speak English, the long-armed tentacles of Disney have infiltrated.

So these two teenage nieces walk in, see me and the two Kiwis.  And stop dead in their tracks.  They looked like they'd seen a ghost. And I guess, to them, they had.  Pham told us that this may have been one of the first time they'd ever seen blonde-haired, blue-eyed white people. A sense of fascination spread across their faces the same way I might look if I saw Bigfoot riding a unicorn: sheer wonder, curiosity, and the sense that this is all probably a dream and my eyes must be playing tricks on me. After some initial hesitation, they ran over, grabbed my arm, and kept touching and stroking my skin. If it was anyone but teenage girls, it would have been a bit creepy, but it was kind of funny to see someone so enamored with the pale skin I've been trying to darken up over the last few months in Asia. Eventually they got up enough courage to ask if they could touch my blonde hair, and when I said yes, they were giddy with joy.  For the next hour, they brushed it, braided it, ran their hands through it, and were so excited the whole time they kept giggling and elbowing each other like kids in a candy store. The whole thing was a little surreal.  I felt like a minor celebrity for having a trait that most of us back home spend hours of time and the risk of melanoma to change our pasty white skin into something that won't blind other people from the glare.

Pham teaching us how to make spring rolls

Dinner was absolutely delicious and made even more special having been prepared by strangers who had invited us into their home and made everything from scratch. I was truly grateful to have come here and to have been so graciously welcomed by this family. The evening got a little more interesting when Phuong brought out a homemade beverage very popular in the area.  Or should I say poppy-lar. Every culture has its own version of homemade hooch; back home in the Midwest it was moonshine made from corn and rye or whatever grains we could make a mash from, in other parts of the world, spirits are made from potatoes.  In Vietnam, rice wine is the booze of choice, and in this part of the country where poppies grow in abundance, "opium wine" is a common after-dinner digestif.  It's not clear whether or not there is any actual opium in the wine, but Pham and Phuong poured so many shots of it that I'm pretty sure I'd be in real trouble if by some miracle I won a triathlon and had to take a drug test.  Thank goodness there's no real chance of that happening!

If there was one positive thing that came after multiple shots of opium wine, it was that it made the spartan sleeping situation a little easier. My bed was a thin mattress on the floor surrounded by a mosquito net with holes large enough to let in a small bird.  I could see the stars through the spaces in the wood plank roof and hear all the nocturnal jungle animals peeping and hooting.  Eventually, I drifted off to sleep.

The next morning, I awoke to another delicious breakfast of banana crepes prepared by Phuong, which would sustain us for the adventure Phuong was about to take us on.  Just like the rest of Vietnam, the main mode of transportation in Sapa was the motorbike.  I hopped on the back of Phuong's bike and he had rented another bike for the two Kiwi girls. Phuong turned out to be an expert driver, navigating the steep, windy roads with no problem.  He was pretty confident even when sliding around sharp curves with loose gravel and steep cliffs! I wasn't really sure what the proper protocol is for holding on to the motorbike so I started out with my hands behind me, holding onto the metal bars under my own seat.  Seemed like the most polite way to ride with a stranger and Phuong didn't object, so I rode that way for an hour or so. This worked for a while until my arms got tired, so I changed my position to cling casually onto Phuong's hips. This felt a little more secure and he didn't look at me like I was totally molesting him, so I stayed this way until things got REALLY hairy. It should go without saying, but there are no such thing as guardrails up in these mountains. It only took about one hairpin turn before I was full on grabbing Phuong in a complete bear hug.  I think he knew how scared I was because he busted up laughing.  Think it was a coincidence that there were many, many more hairpin turns in our future?!?! 

On the back of a motorcycle in Sapa.

We stopped a number of times at various viewpoints to take in the majesty and vastness of the rice terraces climbing through the valleys and up the mountains and the pictures I have here really don't do justice to the just seemingly never-ending terraced landscape. And just like that, our time in Sapa was over and the overnight train awaited us to return us back to Hanoi, and civilization.

My time in Sapa was wonderful thanks to the generous and hospitable spirit of Pham and Phuong and their families.  It was an experience I will never forget.  Moral of the story: if you get the chance to experience life through the life (and home) of a local, don't pass it up!

Hoi An feels like the best kept secret in Asia. All my friends told me it was a must-see, but it didn't get a lot of ink in guidebooks and it's not a major transportation hub. It feels like just the kind of place that will be overrun with tourists in five years, but right now is a thriving little thimble of art and nightlife and home to some of the best bahn mi sandwich you'll ever have

I had only budgeted two days' worth of time in Hoi An, but fell so in love with this charming city that I ended up extending my stay to 5 days.  It's where I took the first of many cooking classes, learned to ride (and crash) a motorbike, and realized the best way to learn the lay of the land is on a bicycle.

My hotel rented single speed bicycles so the first thing I did upon arrival was hop on a saddle and tool around the city.  There's a river running through town with many cute little wooden footbridges and no surprise they all led to massage parlors!  I was already batting 1.000 for days in Asia having a massage and I was determined not to break the streak.  For about $6, you can get a one hour foot massage sitting by the river with a nice breeze almost lulling you to sleep.

Hoi An is where I first learned to ride a motorbike. I called it a motorcycle, but a few Harley Davidson-riding friends were quick to point out that it's more like a glorified scooter. I'm fairly comfortable riding a bicycle in New York City and in fact it's my main mode of transportation for both commuting to work and getting around the city thanks to NYC's awesome bike share program. So I was pretty confident that riding a motorbike was going to be a breeze. Everything was going swimmingly as I strapped on my helmet (that looked like it was manufactured in 1975) and sped off down the road. There wasn't a lot of traffic and no one really stops in Vietnam anyway, so things were as smooth as silk until I had to stop to get gas. And that's when things got a little hairy. When you dismount a bicycle, you don't realize how much you tip it to the side in order to clear the saddle height in order to put your foot on the ground. Well, let me tell you what happens when you tip a several hundred pound motorbike to the side. Yeah. Inertia. And pavement. Fortunately, I came out of the incident mostly unscathed except for my pride, but the Vietnamese gas attendant lady was about to split her side laughing so much.  I made it to the beach on the motorbike and it was actually easy and fun once you got moving.  The hard part was stopping, but in Vietnam, traffic signals are merely suggestions, so I figured it was safer to keep moving through an intersection than to dump the bike!  Things got a little hairy when I came back from the beach during rush hour!  Boy, was it nerve racking! I did actually have to stop several times and other motorbikes stopped within inches of me!  I was so nervous to take off with all of the traffic swirling around me but there was only one way out of it, so I revved the engine and faked some confidence as best I could!

Hoi An, quickly becoming the city of firsts for me, was also where I took my first cooking class.  Iearned how to grind rice into "rice milk", which is the basis for so many Vietnamese dishes including my favorite dish of all time, Bánh xèo, a crispy crepe-like pancake made of rice milk, coconut milk, and turmeric.  Once you've crisped up the edges, you fold in all kinds of green leaves such as wasabi leaf, fish leaf (it smells absolutely disgusting, but really does add a delicious, salty element), thai basil, mint, bean sprouts, and then either pork belly or shrimp.  You can think of it almost like a Vietnamese burrito.  And then you dunk it in a sweet and sour vinegar-based sauce.  The flavors run the gamut from sweet and salty to rich and vibrant.  This is one recipe that I will definitely be making back home!

Another Vietnamese staple that was served nearly everywhere as an appetizer is the fresh spring roll.  Sometimes in the States, we call them "summer rolls" and they're differentiated from fried spring rolls by that fact that they're not fried.  The wrapper is made from rice paper, which is made from rice milk, which is made from regular rice, water, and a lot of elbow grease.  My cooking instructor literally made me put my nose to the grindstone.  The inside of a fresh spring roll can be filled with anything you've got on hand, but traditionally carrot, cucumber, mint, basil, rice noodles, and either pork belly or shrimp.  Super refreshing with an ice cold Tiger beer on a hot day!

One of the main reasons for coming to Southeast Asia was to be able to complete SCUBAOpen Water certification.  My friend Cori and I had completed the classroom portion and confined water dives (in a swimming pool) back in New York, and we plan to complete the open water portion in Thailand in June.  But, I ran out of things to do in Hoi An but wanted to stay longer, so I signed up for an "introductory" dive.  On an intro dive, you basically do all the things you do while regular SCUBA diving, except that you don't go as deep and you have an instructor holding on to you the entire time.  I was a bit bummed by the lack of autonomy at first, but then realized it was awesome!  It was like having a dive butler show you around to all the places I wouldn't have been comfortable getting close to on my own.

Unfortunately, I forgot to use the one piece of equipment that I bought specifically for this trip, which is a red filter for the GoPro.  Underwater at depth, a lot of the colors wash out, so adding a filter on the camera really helps.  This is why the photo above looks crazy green.  

I can't wait to get back to Hoi An.  The vibe of the whole place from its custom tailor shops to the soft glow of paper lanterns above the wooden bridges  was so enchanting, that I am truly in the debt of everyone who told me to go there.  But let's keep that little secret just between us.  ;)

But he did a very patriotic thing when he was called upon to serve his country and for his bravery and leadership earned a Silver Star and a Bronze Star, among many other military awards. While I couldn't be prouder of my dad for his willingness to sacrifice his life for his country, he's always maintained that there are no winners in war. I've seen in my dad and other veterans the long-lasting after effects of going to war and they're awful - from physical disabilities like losing a limb to an IED to the many types of mental disabilities like PTSD and depression. And those are the just the ones who lived to tell about it. 

If there's any chance that my dad, sitting in foxhole in a triple canopy jungle 47 years ago could have looked into a crystal ball to see his daughter with an M-16, in the same Vietnamese jungle, I think he would have given up right then and figured there was absolutely no hope for the future. But the circumstances are a little bit different now and the reason I was able to do that was precisely because of peace.

As a day trip from Saigon, I took a visit to a small town called Cu Chi, just about an hour west of the city. Cu Chi was the site of an enormous network of underground network of tunnels occupied by the Vietcong during the Vietnam War, where North Vietnamese soldiers would live by day and would come out at night to fight. Now, if the image that comes to mind when you think of the word "tunnel" is a luxurious and spacious wine cave in Napa Valley, you'd be pretty disappointed to see these tunnels.  I'm 5'6" and on my hands and knees, my back would often hit the top of the tunnel. There was no light; it was pitch black.  And there was very little ventilation. It was hot and incredibly humid. And people LIVED in there, cooked in there, and slept in there, sometimes for weeks at a time when the fighting was at its worst. A cross section of the Cu Chi tunnels looks a lot like an ant farm.

I got the chance to crawl through one of the tunnels and I was drenched with sweat by the time I came out the other side. I only made it ten meters before I started to get a big anxious. It was so hot and humid and if you have the slightest bit of claustrophobia, forget about it. One of the most interesting features about visiting Cu Chi now as a tourist is that they have about a dozen different types of firearms used by the Americans, the Vietcong, and other nations that you can have the opportunity to shoot. My dad carried both the M-16 rifle and also the M-60 machine gun, so of course I had to try both. You pay per bullet in Cu Chi, so while I was able to get a few snaps shooting the M-16, the ammo went way too fast in the machine gun! My dad has always complained about the accuracy of the M-16, so I'm going to use that as my excuse for not hitting a single target. That and also the barrel of the guns were tied down. 

It was a little crazy being in the same country shooting the same weapon as my dad, 47 years after he was there. It also felt a little uncomfortable being there as an American surrounded by Vietnamese in a place where there was so much tragedy just a few generations ago. I had a conversation with a young Vietnamese person and asked about the sentiment toward Americans, British, and Australians who fought against them on their own land and I was somewhat surprised to hear that most Vietnamese, especially the younger generations, don't harbor a lot of resentment toward the West, and don't mind them coming to see some of the historical sights where the fighting took place. I think it's telling that in just a few generations, wounds can be healed and sentiment can change and there can be peace and camaraderie in a place with such a malevolent past. 

Two of the first things I like to do when coming to an unfamiliar place are 1) Meet a local and 2) Learn about the food.  In other words, "Are they friendly and can they feed me?"  There is nothing more telling about the culture of a people (and it doesn't have to be foreign people) than hearing them talk about their food.  Food is so integral to the lives of people - socially, culturally, biologically, that it's impossible not to learn something about a culture by breaking bread.

I was very lucky to get spend a lot of time eating with locals in Saigon, my first stop in Vietnam.

As an American, I'm used to spending time on the road in hotels by myself, but the idea of being alone seemed to defeat the purpose of traveling. I explicitly sought out an AirBnb where I could stay with a local and get the lay of the land from someone who knows it best.  I stayed with a very sweet Slovenian couple and their two adorable kids and as soon as I arrived they said, "Hop on on the back of our motorbike and we'll go for lunch."  Sweet!  Friends.  Food.  What more could I need!?!?! So the 5 of us piled onto the back of 2 motorbikes, weaved through traffic like crazy people, and and arrived at Sara's "local" street food place where we served ourselves rice, beef, veggies, and a spicy chicken wing and the owner charged a price based on some form of voodoo math I'll never understand.  It turned out to be $1.45 USD. To drink, I had fresh coconut water, served in the coconut after I watched the top being cut off with a machete and a straw poked through the top.  Talk about fresh!  And let me tell you what, there's no concept of a sports drink here to replenish the electrolytes lost in the 10 pounds of sweat that rolls off of you every day, so these fresh coconuts (along with a healthy dose of soy sauce) are a great way to replace what you lose.

One of the VERY best things I did in Saigon was take a Vespa tour at the recommendation of friends Tim and Nick.  It was absolutely rad.  Someone comes to your house and picks you up on a vintage Vespa and you spend the whole night whooshing in and out of the absolutely insane traffic and stopping to eat along the way.  A quick note about Vietnam traffic (especially in Saigon and Hanoi, but also in the smaller towns) -- there are virtually no stoplights and the ones that do exist are taken more as suggestions than actual rules. I never would have felt comfortable driving a motorbike myself in Saigon. Heck, I was basically closing my eyes and praying to live just riding on the back of one driven by a local professional driver. I suppose this must be like what tourists to New York City think when they get in a yellow cab for the first time.  :)

The best part about this tour was that every 30 minutes or so, we'd stop at some local street food place that I NEVER would have found on my own and even if I did, would have had no idea what to order.  The guide was amazing and showed us how to order and described what each of the dishes was.  I am so glad that I did this at the beginning of my trip so that I knew what I was eating for the rest of it!  Of course, the street food tradition continued, as it is alive and well throughout Vietnam. You'll see in a photo below a guy cooking my food on a hot plate while literally sitting on the sidewalk.  I would NEVER eat this in New York.  But, when in Rome.  And it was AWESOME!

Loads of tourists flock to nearby Halong Bay for its gorgeous, picturesque limestone karsts rising out of the sea, so I chose to come to Cat Ba Island to get the same scenery, but with fewer tourists.  The views are just stunning.  Halong Bay was the inspiration for the scenery in the movie Avatar and it's just one of those places that you can't believe looks the same in person as it does on film.

There's only one company in the area licensed to rock climb, so I did a full day tour with Asia Outdoors.  The first half of the day we kayked through the inlets and bays created by the jagged rocks jutting out of the Gulf, and into lagoons where we ditched our sea vessels and went for an impromptu dip.  I really wish I'd had the presence of mind to wear my Garmin watch so I could see how far we paddled.  Since I didn't, I'll have to rely on muscle soreness the day after and estimate it was upwards of 100 miles.  I could be wrong.

After a seafood lunch on the boat, it was off to a private island to climb. I've had very little climbing experience, but what I've missed out on in quantity, I've made up for in spades with quality.  I first found a rock face -- I guess really it was an ice face -- in the Adirondacks a few years ago when our friends Tim and Nick invited us for a weekend of ice climbing.  Yeah, the kind with pick axes and crampons that make you feel like a Viking explorer conquering the new world. Then this past Christmas I had the opportunity to climb in Bariloche, Argentina with friends Cheri and Dylan who actually created the routes and drilled the bolts.

By far the least experienced climber on the trip in Cat Ba, the guides were super helpful at helping me navigate the route and making me keep climbing when I thought I was too tired to keep going.  Climbing is hard, especially when you're as inefficient as I am!  As a new climber, it's natural to want to use your biceps and not trust that your feet will stick on the rock face, so you end up using a lot of small muscles that tire out pretty fast. But as the day wore on (and my forearms wore out) I learned out of necessity just to trust that my legs and shoes would hold me, even on what seemed to be the tiniest nub sticking out of the rock.

I had enough energy to ring the bell on 2 climbs and WOW the views were amazing from the top. We started from a very small beach on a tiny private island, so the money shot at the top was a view of beach, water, and mountain all in one.  On the third climb, I tried a route that was way out of my ability level.  I fell a couple of times, but it was exhilarating to keep trying the same section of rock and eventually mastering it.

I never made it to the top of that last climb, but it got me thinking about climbing and how it is a really great (and cheesy) metaphor for life. When you start the climb, it just seems so daunting and you're thinking how the heck am I ever going to make it up there.  But then you make a plan, and it usually just involves thinking about the next place you're going to put your foot - the next step. (Great climbers and people are who are great at life probably plan more than just the next step, but I'm not a master of either yet.) And then you think, hmm where can I put my hand so that my grip is just a little better than it is now.  And then you get stuck. And you can't see a way forward. And you ask for help.  Or in my case you yell, "I'm coming down this blasted rock" while your belayer pretends not to hear you and gives you some more alone time to figure out a path. And even if you have no idea how to reach the top, you just keep finding one more foothold, and then another, and then another.  And sometimes you fall. And you learn. And you punch that goddamned rock in the mouth next time you get to the tough section. And eventually you find the top, or you don't.  And that's ok too.  

The best thing anyone has ever said to me was an old boss back on Wall St.  He said, "I've never seen someone happier than when they're trying to reach a goal they believe is achievable." And it's so true. It feels great at the top.  But the pursuit of the peak is sometimes just as sweet.

Silly analogy or one you can relate to? What have you done that seemed so tough in the moment but so rewarding in hindsight?

Vietnamese coffee is so special that it deserves its own separate blog post.  An amazing blend of thick, rich french press coffee on top of a bed of sweetened condensed milk, it is the perfect combination of rich, bitter, and sweet.  

Sweetened condensed milk holds a special place in my heart; as a kid, it was the key ingredient to my mom's secret "Hello Dollies" recipe (aka magic bars.)  It was a special treat we made around the holidays and although the recipe only called for one can, Mom always had to buy two because my sister and I would usually have half a can finished off the end of a spoon "just a taste" before the baking even began.  

Cafe Sua, as it's called in Vietnamese, has quickly become my favorite mid-morning (and let's be honest, mid-afternoon too!) tradition.  Yes, the coffee is good, but the cafe culture is strong in Vietnam.  As I'm typing these lines, I'm on my second hour of nursing a Vietnamese coffee while taking advantage of the free wifi and cushy couch overlooking the ocean.  I'm surrounded by a handful of locals as well as tourists doing the same thing.  

While I'm on the topic of iced beverages, I can't help but mention the inherent danger in drinking unfiltered water (even in ice form) in a third world country with known parasitic aquatic invaders.  While I would never think of drinking tap water in Southeast Asia, there's just something so alluring about a cold drink on a hot, humid day.  Maybe it's the familiarity of the drink or just the strong desire to feel refreshed in the oppressive heat, but there's something incredibly disarming about ice served in such an awesome drink.  I LOVE me some Vietnamese iced coffee!  I must be averaging 2-3 per day at least.

And this alluring, frozen concoction is precicely where I began my long, dark journey to food poisoning where I was 100% sure that I would die alone in a cheap hotel in a third world country.  It all began when I arrived in Cat Ba Island, Vietnam and was waiting to check into my hotel.  The room wasn't quite ready yet, so I found a coffee shop next door and had a coffee and a wifi and delved into some free internet bliss after three days hiking in the rice fields with no internet. 

I came to Cat Ba Island seeking adventure sports and was revved up for a week solid of rock climbing, kayaking, and hiking when I realized I was running for the bathroom more often than running for exercise. After having met someone the week before who had come down with Dengue Fever from a mosquito bite, I was 100% sure I had it thanks to a WebMD self-diagnosis. I'll spare you the gory details of my 2.5 days of complete incapacitation and my exercise confined to sprints between the bedroom and the bathroom, but let's just say that it's been a long time since I was crying for my mommy.  

Being sick on the road alone SUCKS. You just miss all the creature comforts of home, and even though they don't ACTUALLY speed your recovery, there's just something extremely comforting about experiencing near death from your own couch/tv/toilet. It put me in such a bad mental funk that I checked on seeing how quickly I could return to New York and was positive I would cancel the rest of my year of travels. Add to that the annoyance of looking for normal drugs (Tylenol and Gatorade) in a foreign country where English is limited and the frustration just mounts. But it's amazing how quickly your outlook can change with your health. My Dengue Fever self-diagnosis turned out to be simple food poisoning, probably from contaminated ice in my Vietnamese coffee. Two days of American antibiotics, generic Tylenol, some salt tablets, and a boatload of sleep has me feeling like a whole new person who can't wait to get on a rock face and plan my next adventure!

What is your single best traveling food experience?  Have you ever been sick on the road?  Tell me so that I know I'm not the only one!!!

If there is one part of this trip that hasn't failed to disappoint, it is the amazing variety and ubiquity of flavors and food.  By far the best way to get amazing food in Southeast Asia is right off the street.  And I'm not talking New York or LA-style fancy food trucks that sell tiny tacos for $10 apiece.  I'm talking about one long-haired dude with two whiskers and a propane burner sitting on the sidewalk with a bunch of ingredients, a lot of which I can't identify.  

It took me a few days to get used to the idea of eating from a cart off the street that never in a million years would I have considered eating from back home.  But, armed with a bounty of antibiotics and some recommendations from people I've met, I gave my first food cart a try in Bangkok.  I wasn't totally sure I was ready to eat street food, but I walked by something that smelled amazing and sweet and roasty and it stopped me in my tracks.  I could tell it was coming from a big bowl of (what looked like) beef.  The guy selling it didn't speak a lick of English, but he gestured toward the meat with a big smile on his face.  I gave the universal sign of "feed me" (thumbs up followed by drool) and the guy started pointing at a bunch of other stuff (an egg, some noodles, some bean sprouts, some other stuff I had no idea what it was.  When in Rome...

And it was absolutely the best meal I've had this year.  Sweet, slightly salty broth, a tad flavor of coconut, and perfectly cooked noodles.  I paid the equivalent of about $2.50 and began my love affair with Southeast Asian street food. 

This majestic compound of ancient temples nestled in central Cambodia, the beauty of Angkor Wat can't be accurately captured in pictures, no matter how cool they may look.  Built in the 12th century as a Buddhist temple, Angkor Wat oscillated between Buddhist and Hindu worshippers at the whim of the king and the present political landscape.

I visited Angkor Wat for 3 days, each day traveling from the city of Siem Reap via tuk tuk (a two wheeled "chariot" pulled behind  motorcycle) with a driver who dropped me off at the entrance to each temple and then waited for me while I toured.  The first day I took a recommendation to visit Angkor Wat for 5 am sunrise, which wasn't too hard as I was still adjusting to Asia time.  This is a pretty popular idea, apparently, because I was there with hundreds of other tourists with the same idea.  The sun coming up over the temple was just really cool.  There is a huge moat 620 feet wide that rings the entire temple complex, so the sun reflecting off of the water coming up behind the temple was truly majestic.

After touring Angkor Wat, my driver took me to dozens of other temples over the next two days including Ta Prohm, the site of filming for the Tomb Raider movies.  It was SO cool to see these giant root formations, lichens, and moss covering the temple straight out of an Indiana Jones fantasy.  It was a pretty good workout climbing over the ruins; my step counter logged over 25k steps in each of those three days.  I figured that merited an extra mango sticky rice dessert.  :)

Sunday, April 17 was a bittersweet day.  You could call it an inflection point, a commencement, or something more profound; it brought into abrupt focus the closure of one part of life (a career on Wall St that my teenage self would by all accounts have considered successful) and the beginning of adventure.  Although I've been planning my trip around the world for months and looking forward to it like a fat kid looks forward to a smorgasborg, there were still a few kick-myself moments of, "What am I getting myself into?"  It's kinda like that moment when you reach the tip of the first climb on an old wooden roller coaster and you think, "Man, I don't know if I should have done this" but it's too late to turn back and you're going down the other side whether your shorts stay dry or not.

I read this quote by Buddha and it struck me -- partly because I'm traveling to Southeast Asia, aka land of a thousand Buddhas -- and partly because life, for me, has always been more rewarding during the journey than at the destination.  

To some, traveling well may mean flying first class (which I didn't do) or staying in an amazing hotel (this all depends on your standards) but to me, traveling well means being mindful of your intentions and constantly moving forward with purpose. I don't know exactly where the next 9 months of planes, trains, and automobiles will take me, but my greatest wish for my own travels is to stay open minded, listen more than I talk, and be mindful of this extraordinary opportunity.

What does traveling well mean to you?

I don't get the point of certain countries making people from ONLY certain other countries get visas.  I'm sure someone with a better background in national security can explain it to me, and I'd appreciate the education.  But in a nutshell, if you're a country that relies heavily on tourism for a good portion of your GDP and a lot of people want to come spend money there, common sense says you'd make it a little easier for people to do it.  Of the 5 countries I'll visit in the next 7 weeks, two (Vietnam and Myanmar) required me to obtain a visa (or application for a visa) in advance.

It was a time-consuming pain in the ass.  And that's coming from a New Yorker, who can be at any foreign embassy in about ten minutes.  The cost (about $50 each for Vietnam and Myanmar) isn't a ton when you compare it to New York prices and rationalize that's only about 2 cocktails on a Friday night.  But it is considerable when you compare it to how cheap it is to travel to those countries.  $50 in Vietnam is more than plenty for an entire day's budget including hotel, good, transportation, and entertainment!

More significant than the cost (at least to me) is the giant hassle.  You have to physically go to the embassy (which is only open while most people are at work) surrender your passport (which means no traveling for you) and then wait 3-5 days for your passport to be returned.  And this is the process for someone like me who lives in a major metropolitan area with easy access to every embassy in the world.  The pain and expense just increases for someone outside of New York who has to pay to FedEx the application and passport back and forth.

I'm not sure exactly what the Vietnamese national security is onto that others are not (the Thais, for example) but I can tell you that I'm a lot more likely to visit places that make it easy for me.  Maybe some countries are doing a really serious background check to make sure they're not letting in any ne'er-do-wells.  Maybe they're just being a major pain in the ass or trying to extract more money from citizens of rich nations (Argentina does this to the US as a quid-pro-quo, although it just recently dropped the rquirement.) I have a lot of travel coming up this year and a lot of it won't be pre-planned.  I can say for sure that I'll be choosing which countries to visit on what looks cool and what's easy.

It all started when my company decided in June 2015 to announce the sale of itself to another company.  The severance packages were looking pretty good.  It got me thinking...

I don't have a lot of regrets in life, but one big one was not studying abroad in college.  I ran into a colleague from work who had just written a book about the trend of adults taking a career break, aka an Adult Gap Year.  Who knew this was a thing?

My fiancee is supportive, my parents are terrified, and I'm stoked.  I'm deciding to take one of the biggest risks of my life, leaving my cushy Wall St job, strap on a backpack, and start a 9 month trip around the world.  

This couldn't have come at a better time.  I was an IT nerd at a large global bank and while I love my team, I stayed way too long in an industry that had lost its luster for me.  I needed a break from the rat race to refocus and who knows when I may have the opportunity again.

I will miss my friends, my fiancee, and New York City, but I am so excited for the adventure that lies ahead.  Below is a rough schedule of what lies ahead this year.  If you're available to join any part of it, or already have a trip planned where I could join you, let me know!

April/May - Southeast Asia

June /July - Europe

August - I get to marry my best friend and the love of my life. 12 years in the making!

September/October/November - Central/South America