Southeast Asia

Exploring new distant lands…

Asia seemed like a dream that I hoped to one day get to. It was a place I didn’t feel like travelling to alone but no one I knew was willing to commit to this grand trip. Then, one day my friend from Miami says that she’s decided she’s not waiting for anyone to see when they’re ready to go Asia and she’s going alone. I shouted that she hadn’t asked me and that I’ve been wanting to go! And so began plans to go to Asia the following year. We took some time to decide which country to visit; we considered Japan (too expensive), China (too big to do on a two-week trip), Thailand, Indonesia, so many options as it was all new to us and we were more excited about visiting a new continent than a specific country.

Concurrently, there was a friend of mine from Rome, well she’s English but she lives in Rome, who had been talking about going to Thailand for as long as I’d known her, yet for one reason or another, she hadn’t yet made it there. This summer she told me she’s decided that she’s not waiting for anyone anymore and she’s going to Thailand by herself this year. At this point, my Miamian friend and I were talking about potentially doing China. But, once we decided to do Thailand instead, and I realized it was around the same time that my friend from Rome was planning to go alone, I did what I thought was the right thing and invited her to come with us.

That’s how a Venezuelan from Miami, an American living in Rome, and a Brit also living in Rome came together in Bangkok. I think it’s great how all three of us at some point said we wanted to go so badly that we’d go alone, yet instead we joined together to partake in what turned out to be a much funner trip than if we’d done it on our own.

Eventually, we ended up adding Cambodia to the trip to visit the ancient temples of Angkor Wat. This is one place that before planning the trip, I had never considered visiting, mostly due to lack of knowledge about the place. However, inspired first by photos I saw from a friend who had been (thank you friend) then by my British friend who had Cambodia as part of her Thailand tentative itinerary (thank you Laura), I started looking into it and heard many great stories and watched some incredible videos making it a must-stop on our trip. I’m so glad we added this since it turned out to be one of my favorite places from the trip.

About a week before our departure, I reminded my Miamian friend how when we first started talking about this trip a year ago it only seemed like a long distant dream, and now here we were about to embark on this amazing trip. When I told some people about it, they called it a trip of a lifetime. I found that expression inaccurate for this trip, as I felt it would only be the beginning of a new destination to continue exploring. Trip of a lifetime makes it sound like you won’t return, but even before I had left, I already knew I would want to go back.

Then, the day finally arrived. I met Laura at Fiumicino airport in Rome, where we had our traditional “last must-have cappuccino for the next two weeks before leaving Italy because who knows how the coffee will be at our next destination but it can’t be as good as here”. Oriellys had already departed on her two-day journey the night before, poor thing. (By the way, the coffee in Thailand turned out to be surprisingly good.)

We flew Air France, had a stopover in Paris, complained about the French the entire hour we were at the airport, and had a quiche for lunch before rushing to catch our final flight to Bangkok. Aside from the good wine and decent food, flying a French airline has mostly downsides. For one, they expect everyone to speak French as if it were an international language like English. Then, the choice of films is limited to mostly French films. I’ve flown Air France before to the US, but this may be my last flight with them.

We arrived at Suvarnabhumi International Airport in the morning. Oriellys had already arrived the night before and met us at the airport upon our arrival.

And then there were three…let the adventure begin!