Sunday was a long day.

It had been a fun two weeks in Melbourne, despite the weirdness of being home, but now it was time to go.  I hugged my sister outside the departure terminal, wrenched my backpack from the car and headed for the check-in counter.  It was 11.30am, and I was feeling refreshed from a good night’s sleep.

34 hours later I stumbled out of an Amsterdam train station, my lungs enjoying fresh air for the first time in a day and a half.  I was exhausted, smelled terrible and felt like death after fighting severe stomach cramps the whole way from Bangkok.

I’ve had more enjoyable days, but I didn’t care.  I was travelling again … and despite not really wanting to leave Thailand, I was excited about it.

The next six months are looking amazing.  I’ve alluded to what the rest of the year looks like on my Facebook page a few times recently, but not in great detail.  So, here’s the plan:

May

14 – 18:  Amsterdam.  Lauren and I are here for a couple more days, hanging out with my brother and reconnecting with one of my favourite cities in Europe.  I expect to do minimal sightseeing and maximum eating and drinking in that time.

18 – 27:  Northern Spain.  I’ll be spending around ten days in northern Spain, first hanging out with my good friends Craig and Linda in A Coruña and then checking out some of the other coastal towns and cities.  Everyone raves about San Sebastian, so I’m sure that will feature highly.

27 – 1:  Como, Italy.  Back in 2010 I spent a week with a couple of awesome new friends in Laos, and they casually offered me a place to stay if I was ever in their neighbourhood.  When the neighbourhood is Lake Como – y’know, where folks like George Clooney have a holiday home – I was always going to turn up on their doorstep at some stage.

June

1 – 8:  Slovenia.  Everybody I’ve met who has been to Slovenia raves about it, but it still seems to be one of those places that doesn’t get much press compared to its neighbours.  Hot-air ballooning, canyoning and medieval castles?  Don’t mind if I do.

8 – 10:  Vienna.  Just a flying visit, really, but given I’ve wanted to get to the Austrian capital for about 15 years and never managed it, I’m really looking forward to it.  If you’ve got some recommendations about places that I really can’t miss, let me know.

10 – 18:  Las Vegas to Colorado.  I head to the US for a month to attend a couple of conferences, meet up with some cool people and do a bit of exploring.  First up: a road trip from Vegas to Denver, and the TBEX travel blogger’s conference in Keystone.  Let the partying – I mean, networking – commence.

18 – 30:  Somewhere in the USA.  With a couple of spare weeks the most likely option right now is hiring a car and taking a slow drive through the national parks and other amazing scenery between Denver and Seattle.  There was a good discussion of possible routes on my Facebook page the other week, but I’m very much open to suggestion.

July

1 – 5:  Seattle.  Some good friends of mine live in Seattle, and given that it is also one of my favourite cities in the US it’s never hard to convince me to come and say hi if I’m anywhere nearby.  So I will.

5 – 12:  Portland.  I’ll be hanging out in this wonderful little city for a week, eating from street carts and drinking great local beers.  Oh, and the small matter of attending the World Domination Summit.  Yeah, that too.

12 – sometime in August:  Good question!  I’ll be heading back to Europe to meet up with Lauren and start slowly jumping trains eastwards.  I haven’t got as far as … you know … a route or anything, but I expect that countries like Romania and Bulgaria will feature heavily. 

August-September

Here’s where plans start getting really vague.  We’ll be in Turkey for probably about six weeks in total, including 14 days sailing with friends off the southern coast.  If it’s anything like the last couple of yacht trips in the Greek Islands that I’ve done, it will be seriously amazing.  Sun, sea, sails … and very little internet.  Perfect!

October

The current thinking is a trip through a few countries in the Middle East – perhaps Jordan, Lebanon and Israel, unless the political situation in Syria has improved dramatically.  I haven’t made any real plans yet though, so this theory – like most others – could change significantly!

So there you have it.  The next six months of my life, at least as far as I know them.  Now that I’ve actually put them down in writing they seem somehow more real, more vivid.  Sure there’ll undoubtedly be changes along the way, but that’s the beauty of making travel plans I guess. You can change them any time you like…

If you’re going to be in the right place at the right time in the next six months and would like to meet up over your beverage of choice, let me know!

What’s Dave Doing … for the next six months? is a post from What's Dave Doing?.

You know what they say about how people always explore the world before they explore their home town?

Yeah.  I’m that guy.

I lived in New Zealand for over twenty years and still didn’t see large chunks of it.  I spent three years in both London and Sydney and barely scratched the surface of either.

Melbourne has been much the same.  Two and half years I lived here, and I have probably still seen less of the city than some people that are only here for a week.  Although I can, at least, point out a few good bars…

So it was that when I found myself back ‘home’ for a couple of weeks, I figured it was time to change that situation.

Urban Adventures offer a few different tours there, but the one that appealed the most was a sunset kayak on the Yarra river that flows through the centre of the city.  The Yarra is much-maligned by Melburnians, however, and all of the ones I spoke to about it had a remarkably unanimous response…

Kayaking?  In May?  On the Yarra?  WHY THE HELL WOULD YOU WANT TO DO THAT?

After two hours on the water last week, I had an answer for them.

BECAUSE IT’S AWESOME.

After some frankly appalling weather earlier in the week, the evening dawned fine and warm – surprising for late autumn.  I was paired with Swiss-Greek doctor Spiro for our excursion.  When it was explained that the person in the back both had to steer and was most likely to get wet, the race was on to see who could get to the front seat first.

I lost.

Still, as we paddled away from the dock and found our rhythm it was hard to care about anything except the flat water and glorious sunset behind the Bolte bridge.  We glided past the luxury yachts and motorboats moored nearby, looking for all the world as if we almost knew what we were doing.  Apparently the kayaks are almost impossible to capsize … but I figured if anyone could do it, I could.

Tour director Kent was never too far away, making sure his charges didn’t crash into other boats – or each other – but in reality we pretty much had the harbour to ourselves.  Maybe that was due to the time of year, maybe it was just luck of the draw, but either way it made for a wonderfully serene experience in the heart of a major Australian city.

After tying up for 20 minutes to enjoy the vaunted "on water dining experience" – fish and chips served al fresco in the kayaks – it was time to give our arms a proper workout.  Out of Victoria Harbour we went, under the bridge and onto the Yarra.

The sun had fully set by then, and the noise of the paddles caught a few fishermen and waterside diners by surprise as we splashed past them atop the ink-black river.  Past the new bars and restaurants at South Wharf, under the bridges until we arrived outside the casino with perfect timing, mere seconds before the fire show that takes place along the water in Southbank every night.

I had seen it before, of course, but never from the river.  There was something magical about being out on the water then, the light and noise of the fireballs in stark contrast to the dark, still water underneath us.  Apparently there can be strong currents below the surface of the Yarra, but they certainly weren’t evident from where I was perched.

Onwards we went, our final destination in sight as we lazily moved past a bar in the middle of the river.  We were so close I could have just about reached out to snatch a beer from the customers.  A drink certainly wouldn’t have gone amiss by then…

Flinders Street Station, a Melbourne icon, marked the end of our two hour journey.  Avoiding the rowers while slipping under the Princes Bridge, we ran the kayak up onto the bank with a whoop of satisfaction.  The whoop almost become a scream when I stood up as my cramped legs threatened to give way underneath me, but I somehow avoided topping backwards into the water.  That would really have destroyed any remaining street cred…

With impeccable timing the weather turned as we said our farewells, the first spits of rain joining the river water on my jacket.  Walking back toward the station to head home, I realised that I had really enjoyed my kayaking trip on the Yarra.  It was the kind of thing that would never had occurred to me to do if I was still living here permanently, but seemed somehow perfect while I was back playing tourist.

And the best bit of all?

I didn’t capsize the kayak.  Not even once.

Who would have thought?

[Images via Kayak Melbourne]

Urban Adventures were generous enough to offer me a complimentary Moonlight Kayak Tour, but as usual all opinions, mishaps and damp items of clothing are my own.

A tourist in my home town: kayaking on the Yarra is a post from What's Dave Doing?.

Stepping inside the grounds of the Grand Palace in Phnom Penh is a strange, almost surreal experience.

The manicured gardens and golden buildings seem bizarrely out of place compared with the dirt, noise and poverty of city life on the other side of the gates.

The Cambodian Royal family have lived there since it was built in the 1860s, interrupted only by the horror of the Khmer Rouge.genocide.  Try as I might, though, I didn’t spot the king wandering around anywhere…

The Friday Photo #108 – Royal Palace, Phnom Penh is a post from What's Dave Doing?.

Comfort zones.

They’re funny old things.

Usually when travellers write about breaking out of a comfort zone, we’re talking about leaving behind the 9-5.  Throwing our old life in the trash and hitting the world, armed with only a backpack and some hope.

Suddenly everything is new.  Strange.  Difficult.

Finding somewhere to stay.  Asking directions.  Living with your life on your back.

Cultures wildly different from your own.  Physical hardship.  Loneliness.

Hell, in some places even crossing the street can be a seemingly insurmountable challenge.

Like anything, though, when you do it for long enough it starts getting easier.  Practice makes perfect, and all of a sudden you’re sleepwalking your way to yet another hostel, eating fried cockroaches for breakfast and vaguely trying to remember the last time that you had a shower.

It takes a lot to phase me when it comes to travel these days.  I’ve been lost, sick, bored, broke, hungry, confused and lonely on the road, and dealt with it all, one way or another.  The stuff that freaks most people out doesn’t really bother me at all any more. 

You could say that this life has become my comfort zone.

Of course, the reverse is also true.  The stuff that everybody else seems to take in their stride completely freaks the shit out of me.

This was bought home to me a couple of days ago like a smack between the eyeballs when I had to do something that scared me senseless.

I took my nephew to a five year old’s birthday party. At a bowling arcade.

The questions started in my head before I even left the house.  Do I need to take any food?  How about a drink?  What clothes should he wear?

It didn’t get any better once we walked inside.

The other kids were bringing in presents for the birthday girl.  I hadn’t been given one.  Why not?  Shouldn’t I have one?  Are the rest of the parents judging me?

Crap, I’d screwed this up before I even started.

I bumbled my way through a round of bowling, making sure my nephew mostly sent the ball towards the pins and not flying into the nearby crowd.  We seemed to get through that ok, high-fiving when he knocked all the pins down and neither of us laughing (much) when one of the other kids nearly dropped a bowling ball on his foot.

Then it was time for lunch.

While the kids quietly ate, I made small talk with the rest of the people more than 4 feet tall.  They talked about their jobs, their houses, their kids.  Mostly the kids.  I started to talk about my last six months in Thailand and plans for the rest of the year, but the conversation didn’t usually last long.

They were lovely people – they genuinely were – but we just didn’t really have much in common.  I went back to hanging out with the five year olds.  We seemed to have a bit more to talk about.

I did enjoy myself in the end, spending a few hours with both my nephew and a whole bunch of new people.  They were all friendly and welcoming to the awkward uncle trying to work out what the hell was going on in an environment that he just didn’t understand.  But wow, did I struggle.

On the way home, I couldn’t help but laugh to myself.  I’ve travelled overland through Africa.  I’ve backpacked for months around South East Asia.  I’ve sailed in the Med, road-tripped around the USA and scuba-dived in three countries.  I’ve slept in hostels barely fit for human habitation, bumped my way through dozens of overnight bus journeys and failed to communicate in more languages than I can possibly remember.

I’ll do those any day of the week.

Take a kid to a birthday party again, however?

You’ve got to be joking.

The strange thing about comfort zones is a post from What's Dave Doing?.

I’ve been back in Melbourne for a few days after finally, reluctantly leaving Thailand.  I’m only here for two weeks – just long enough to catch up with friends and family, deal with a bit of paperwork and head back to the airport, really.  It’s only a short break.

Because my return is only temporary I don’t feel the same depression that I did last time I came back.  This is a time of celebration, of drinking with mates, gossiping with my sister and cuddling my little nephew until he’s blue in the face.  I’ve done all those things, repeatedly, and it has been wonderful … but I just can’t shake this weird feeling I’ve got.

I don’t even really know how to describe it.  I guess I feel … lethargic.  Like I’m in slow motion all the time.  Every time I leave the house and go to do anything, my legs feel like lead and my brain seems foggy.  It’s as if I’m permanently jetlagged – yet that wore off days ago.

The weather hasn’t helped – the temperature is half that of Thailand, less when it rains.  It has done that a lot.  Still, with cooler temperatures comes the chance to go for a run more often, and I was looking forward to hitting the pavement every day while I was here.

So far it’s happened once.  For 20 minutes. The rest of the time I just can’t drag myself out of the house.

I’ve got a backlog of work piling up, and no motivation to do it.  With so much travel planned for the six months, this is the last chance in ages that I’ll get to knuckle down and get things done… and I’m wasting it, day by drowsy day.

Even the thought of heading to Europe on Sunday isn’t doing much for me.  I know it’ll be great when I get there, but right now I’m not feeling it.  I just spent four hours trying to figure out the best transport options from place to place over the next month, and ended up with nothing except a headache.

It’s probably just a bit of what long-term travellers call reverse culture shock, and everyone else just calls the blues.  After six months in Southeast Asia, being back home is taking some readjustment.

I miss the beaches. I miss my scooter.  I miss the smiles, prices and street food.  I was out for dinner a few days ago with a good friend, and I couldn’t help but notice that pad krapow gai was listed at $19.  It was a buck ten at the night market last week, and the damn thing even came with an egg on top.

There’s no point griping about any of that – everywhere is different, and that’s the reason why I travel in the first place.  Knowing that hasn’t made it any easier to come to terms with, sadly.  I’ll probably finally get used to it about 10 minutes before Sunday’s boarding call.  Or I won’t.

It’s not really a big deal, I suppose.  I’d just hoped for something more.  Not from Melbourne – this has little to do with a city that I still think is the best place to live in Australia.  The issue is entirely mine.  When I was planning what this year would look like, six months in Thailand seemed like plenty.  More than enough.  Surely I’d be ready to leave after that long in one country.

Apparently not.

I fell in love with the place instead.

But hey, in a week I’ll arrive in Amsterdam, one of my favourite European cities.  The next part of the adventure begins.

Maybe by then I’ll even be ready for it.

It’s weird being home is a post from What's Dave Doing?.

I spent three days exploring the temples of Angkor in Cambodia, and while there was a huge diversity of architecture, sculptures and state of repair, there was one thing that stayed consistent the whole time.

The heat.

Damn it was hot.  All day, every day.  Even when the afternoon storms rolled in the temperature didn’t drop much.

I remember standing there outside the entrance to Ankgor Thom with two thoughts in my head.

1.  Those statues are really interesting.  I should take a photo of them.

2.  I’m incredibly sweaty.  I really want to jump in that river right now.

In the end I only did one of those things.

I’ll let you decide which it was.

The Friday Photo #107 – Outside Angkor Thom is a post from What's Dave Doing?.

The transition to a new year is celebrated in many different ways around the world.

In much of the western world it’s an excuse to drink too much, watch some fireworks and kiss a random stranger.

In Sri Lanka gifts are exchanged, food prepared and oil lamps lit to mark the occasion.

In several Asian countries money is given out in red envelopes and plenty of noise made to scare away evil spirits.

And in Thailand they have one hell of a water fight.

After our traumatic tsumani experience in Phuket we were very pleased to arrive in Chiang Mai and jump in a cab without the earth moving beneath us.  The Songkran celebrations didn’t officially start until the next day, but the local kids didn’t seem to be too hung up on the details.

Cheeky faces peeked out from behind power poles and bushes, swiftly followed by the contents of a water pistol or bucket as we drove by.  As we climbed out of the taxi a pint-sized assassin lay in wait, just itching to unleash a firestorm of ice-cold water on us.  Walking towards the 7-11 to buy weapons of our own, the street was suspiciously damp.

And that was just the beginning.

The next day dawned hot and sunny, and a group of us left at 10am to head into the old town armed with as much water as we could carry.  Being relatively early, I wasn’t sure whether the party would have kicked off in earnest yet.  Two minutes later the answer was quite clear.

It had.

It was mayhem out there.  Thousands of people thronged the streets of the Old City, especially around the moat that surrounds it.  Pickup trucks inched along the congested roads while the people on the back engaged in a never-ending battle with pedestrians.  Barrels of water filled with enormous chunks of ice were commonplace – being hit with a bucket full of frigid water was a hell of a wakeup call.

Quickly realising that volume was more important than accuracy, I bought a plastic bucket with a string attached and filled it up with moat water.  Given that I had been completely soaked within seconds, I thought it only fair to repay the favour.  As often as possible.  I reckon I must have refilled that bucket five hundred times over the course of those few days.

Amidst the madness a few Thais stuck with the original Songkran tradition of gently sprinkling (presumably) holy water, on locals and foreigners alike.  Most of the time, though, the ‘sprinkling’ was done with a high pressure hose and a huge grin.

And that was the thing.  Like just about everything else in Thailand, the drenching was done with a smile.  Some people even apologised as they proceeded to dump several litres of water on my head.  It was wonderful.  So much happiness, so much fun, so much excitement on the faces of young and old alike.  We were out there for hours, soaked to the bone and unable to walk a couple of steps without another dousing, and it just kept getting better.

I have so many wonderful memories, and most of them revolve around the kids.

The little boy who was so desperate to unload a bucket of water on my head, but couldn’t reach high enough – until I squatted down for him.  The smile on his face as he ran back to tell his dad could have lit up a room.

The girls who simply wouldn’t let me pass until they’d daubed my face with white paint, barely able to contain their giggles as they did so.

The two young brothers who fought a running battle with me along the moat for ages, ducking in and out of trees and passers-by with abandon as they sought to land another squirt of water on the silly farang.

God I loved it.

Other than monks and the very elderly, nobody was off-limits during daylight hours.  Scooter riders and tuk-tuk passengers were nothing more than target practice.  There was no point trying to stay dry, it just wasn’t going to happen.  By the end of the last day the novelty had started to wear off, but it didn’t matter.  It had been an incredible party.  I had never been a part of anything like it, and unless I happen to be in Chiang Mai for Songkran again, I don’t know that I ever will.

The best thing of all is that this experience is available to everyone in Thailand, young and old, foreigner and local alike.  There’s not much you need to do if you’re in the country in mid-April – the fun will find you.  Just choose an affordable guesthouse somewhere near the thick of the action, buy a plastic bucket and join in the festivities.  You’ll never forget it.

I’m damn sure I won’t.

Thanks to Wimdu for helping to support this site.  If you’re looking for fantastic holiday apartments at a low cost, be sure to check them out.

Songkran 2012: now that’s what I call a water fight is a post from What's Dave Doing?.

A fair chunk of both the inspiration and the detailed how-to information that got me over the line came from two sources: Chris Guillibeau’s fantastic blog, books and World Domination Summit, and a few crazy three-day course and ebook sales over the last 18 months.  Without these resources I suspect I would never have built up the courage to do what I’m doing, or had the faintest clue how to do it.

Well, there’s another Only72 sale.  It’s a similar idea to last time – $1000+ worth of digital guides, ebooks and courses, for $100.  There’s an extra bonus this time around though.  Chris Guillibeau’s new book "The $100 Startup" comes out in a week or so, based on case studies of 50 people who have turned a very modest investment into successful businesses pulling in over $50,000 per year.

"In nearly all cases, people with no special skills discovered aspects of their personal passions that could be monetized, and were able to restructure their lives in ways that gave them greater freedom and fulfillment."

Does that sound like you?  I hope so.  It should.

If you’d like it to, the good news is that this sale includes a hardcover copy of the book when it’s released, shipped anywhere in the world.  Nice.

Of course the bulk of the value of this sale lies in the electronic books and guides.  Covering a wide variety of business-building topics, there’s something here for everyone interested in leaving the status quo behind and building something profitable based on their passion.

The full list is here, from the inspirational stuff (figuring out what you’re passionate about  and then living off that passion, building a blog that matters, getting up the courage to make the change) to the detailed how-to of turning your hobby into a business, sorting out the infrastructure, even building iPhone apps if that’s your thing, and a whole bunch more.

The icing on the cake

Ok, so this is awesome enough by itself, but I’ve decided to put my own money where my mouth is on this one.  You see, the thing is I really want people to buy into opportunities like this.  Why?

It’s quite simple.

I f*cking love my life.  I love waking up every morning and working on exactly what I want to.  Some days that might be nothing, some days it might be 15 hours of hard slog, but I love the freedom to decide.  I love that I can change direction – in business or in life – and I don’t need to ask for permission.  I can build something new, go to a new city, fly to the other side of the world on a whim, and it’s entirely up to me.

Freedom rocks.

So I’m putting this offer out there.  Buy this package (soon – it’s only available for 72 hours), share this post with your friends if you’re so inclined, and send a copy of the sales receipt to dave at whatsdavedoing.com.

When the sale is finished on Thursday, I’ll randomly pick one of the people that mailed me and give them their money back in the form of an Amazon voucher.  Simple as that.  No strings attached.  Call it a thankyou for all your support over the last 2.5 years.

Right, so what are you waiting for?  Go check the sale out, and if it sounds like you, maybe just make a start on finding that freedom yourself.

PS:  While I do truly believe in the awesomeness of these deals – I’ve bought every single one myself since 2010 – in the interest of transparency it’s worth mentioning that I do get a percentage of each sale that is made through this site.

The $100 Startup Sale: save a fortune, change your world, maybe even get your money back. is a post from What's Dave Doing?.

I can’t believe it’s over.

175 days after I flew to Thailand last year, I’m finally leaving.

All going well, as this post goes live my plane will be on final descent into Melbourne.  While commuters inch towards the office on congested highways I’ll be collecting my backpack from the carousel.  By the time the suburban mums are finishing their school runs I’ll be sitting at my sister’s house fielding a million questions from my little nephew.

After six months in the hot, sticky wonderfulness of Southeast Asia, the weather will be a shock.

So will everything else.

I’m going to miss the hell out of Thailand.  Even just thinking about it now, sitting in a cafe in Chiang Mai, my stomach clenches and my mouth gets suddenly dry.  I’ll probably need the driver to physically kick me out of his tuk-tuk when I get to the airport on Sunday.

I feel like a giant sponge at the moment.  I’m trying to soak up every little thing that I look at, every sound, every smell, every experience for when it isn’t there any more.  It’s not the big things I’ll miss the most.  It’s the small stuff.  The little things that are insignificant by themselves, but combine to make me love this country so, so much.

Things like:

The geckos

I don’t have a pet – they don’t really fit with this lifestyle – but if I did it would be a gecko.  No questions asked.  Their loud chirps have formed a soundtrack to my time in Thailand.  No guesthouse or restaurant seems complete without a resident family of them hanging out halfway up the wall.

Quietly eating the mosquitos and other bugs that lie in wait to bite me overnight, those little green dudes hold a very special place in my heart.  Cute, helpful and self-sufficient.  What more could you ask for?

The prices

My bank account is going to take a hammering in Australia.  The price difference between the two countries is quite staggering.  It is easily possible to have an amazing life in Thailand for under $1000/month.  Eating out for every meal, a scooter to ride around on, movies, drinks, travel, the lot.  If I didn’t have family in Melbourne my two weeks back there could easily cost as much as two months in Thailand.  There’s just no comparison.

The food

I am completely, hopelessly in love with Thai food.  The soups, the curries, the desserts.  The uniquely delicate blends of tastes and heat that you just don’t find outside the country.  I could happily survive on a diet of khao soy and mango sticky rice.  I never would, of course, because that would mean missing out on all the other incredible options that are served up on the streets and in the restaurants every day.

I can’t identify many of the things I put in my mouth here, but it really doesn’t matter.  I know they’re going to be wonderful.  They always are.  My stomach is crying already.

The beaches

Thailand’s beaches are rightly famous all over the world.  Golden sand, clear waters, you know the drill.  While some of them are being slowly ruined by tourism, others (like Koh Hong, for instance) are absolutely stunning – the kind that sell a million postcards.  Hanging out at St Kilda in Melbourne or rock-hopping on some of the Mediterranean beaches later in the year just won’t be the same.

The people

Away from the tourist hotbeds in the south, Thai people are among the friendliest I have ever met.  The smiles and laughter are infectious, the willingness to help a stranger remarkable after having spent a lifetime in the West.   Thailand markets itself as the ‘Land of Smiles’, and I’d always assumed that was just a cliché until I lived here for a few months.

It’s nothing big, nothing amazing – just a series of small kindnesses every day that makes a world of difference.  I love these people.

The weather

I enjoy hot weather.  I don’t enjoy cold weather.

Ergo, I enjoy Thailand.

It’s pretty simple really.

The landscapes

Before spending several months in Chiang Mai I had no idea that there was much more to Thailand’s landscape than the ubiquitous beaches.  The winding roads to Pai suggested otherwise, and a week on a scooter a couple of months later confirmed it.  Towering mountains, misty rice paddies, rushing waterfalls – and not a grain of sand for several hundred miles.

I loved my time on the beach as well – I mean, who wouldn’t? – but when it comes to sheer variety you just can’t beat the north of the country.

.

The fruit shakes

Before I first came to SE Asia, fruit shakes were reserved for a special treat.  At well over five bucks each in Australia or New Zealand, they had to be.  Since being in Thailand, I’ve changed my view.  Fruit shakes are a necessity, a vital part of a balanced diet.

As often as possible.

When you can pay as little as 20 baht (~70c) for one that is simply incredible, why on earth not?

I am going to smuggle Mrs Pa – and her blender – into my backpack when I go.

The sounds and smells

The smoky tang of stir-fried pork from a market stall.  The croak of real frogs in the morning – or fake ones at the night markets.  Crowing roosters.  Overloaded sewers.  Singing that spills out of the Buddhist wats, or the call to prayer from the mosques in Muslim areas.  The twice-daily playing of the national anthem, when everyone stands still for a minute or two.

Exhaust fumes from thousands of scooters.  Noisy longtails.  Fish ripening in the sun.  Frangipani wafting on the breeze.  Babies crying.  Crickets launching into their nightly crescendo as regular as clockwork.  People singing, in a language I don’t understand but with happiness that I do.

Oh Thailand.

The monks

Monks are everywhere here.  On the back of scooter, talking on an iPhone, walking in small groups, the bright orange robes marking them out from half a block away.  They are just a part of everyday life, treated with respect but not put up on a pedestal.  Seeing them is a gentle reminder of the importance of the Buddhist faith in this country, and I love it.

The ease of life

Life here is easy, in a way it just isn’t elsewhere in the world. Want to go somewhere? There’ll be a bus, car, scooter … something … heading your way for a buck or two. Almost nothing needs to be booked much in advance. If it needs changing, no drama (and no fee!).

There’s free wi-fi everywhere for those who need it. Scooter got a flat tyre in the middle of nowhere? Wait five minutes and the guy walking past will be able to sort it out – or know somebody who can. Need some food at midnight? Same applies. Pretty much anything is possible, and it’s not hard to find someone to help you do it.

The stupid little regulations that suck the joy out of life back home just don’t exist here. Ride with five people on a scooter. Set up a food stall on the sidewalk. Run a red light. If you’re not hurting someone else, nobody gives a shit.

I’ll probably miss that most of all.

—

I genuinely love this country. As I start to pack my bags I feel like I am leaving a piece of me behind.

Of course I’m looking forward to what the next six months holds – time with friends and family on four continents, exploring several new countries, sailing a yacht off the Turkish coast and so much more.  It will be an incredible, albeit expensive, period of travel.

I have a feeling, though, that I’ll be back here again before the end of the year.

Home is where the heart is, after all.

My heart remains in Thailand.

[Gecko image via audrey_sel]

The 11 things I will miss most about Thailand is a post from What's Dave Doing?.

Wandering along the main road in Ubud there were several things that posed a danger for the unwary tourist.

Cracks and potholes threatened at every step.

Unlicensed taxi drivers leaned up against a wall, hawking their dubious offerings to those passing by.

Large tour buses blocked the street, forcing scooters and pedestrians alike to take evasive action.

Looking up, though, I became aware of a bigger, much more serious concern than any of the above.

Apparently yetis crossed the road here.

Not daring to look back, I quickly walked away.

The Friday Photo #106 – Beware of crossing yetis is a post from What's Dave Doing?.