Monthly Archives: March 2019

SEA: Day 70 – Turbo Travel GOgogo

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My life is all about being all-in or nothing. I’m either not even in the car, or 100% pedal to the metal. A workaholic, or on unemployment. It’s fitting that I’d schedule 4 cities in 7 days, 6 nights through Myanmar- Yangon, Bagan, Inle Lake, and Mandalay. During the next 6 nights, I’d spend 3 nights on a bus, and 3 nights in a hotel. I sum up this day really well on Insta. Below’s the post so you don’t have to go to the link, unless you want to see pictures. I’m cheating so much lately by copying and pasting previous posts… but it’s okay. At least I’m writing something! That’s all that matters.

“Day 1 was spent in Yagan. Woke up at 6, landed before noon, and started a day tour of the city with Jo Tom as my guide. I’m sure I got his name wrong but this is what he called himself. Went to Swae Taw Pagoda, Kabar Aye Pagoda, Nga Htat Gyi Pagoda, and Chaukhtatgyi Buddha Temple before lunch. Ate at a random spot Jo Tom picked. Asked for authentic Burmese food. The waiter took the menu away and led me to a food station with many prepped dishes. I picked the ones that looked like meat. Jo Tom’s eyes popped out when he saw how much food the server brought.

Following lunch was a quick trip around Kandawgyi Lake and a picture in front of Karaweik Palace restaurant. It’s a fancy restaurant on the lake and does not open till 6pm. Then visited Botahtaung Pagoda, Sule Pagoda, Yangon City Hall, and finished with the famous Shwedagon Pagoda. I am pagoda’d out.

Shwedagon Pagoda was impressive. I felt like I was on an Indiana Jones set. I’d say this is a good start to the trip! Now waiting for my first overnight bus. I am ready to pass out in air conditioning.”

In the end, I was in the city of Yangon for around 8 hours before I was at the bus stop waiting to head to Bagan. Bus had air conditioning so day ended as a success.

Fav photo of the day.

SEA: Day 69 – Something Borrowed

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Time for me to return to Vietnam! Just for one night though. Charlie was disappointed by this. Oh well, he took me in for a night. Thanks bud! I’ll see ya soon. Some day.

Soon as I landed, headed straight to Charlie’s office, dropped off my bag, and went to Sadec Quan for lunch. I mentioned this earlier in Day 7, so you should read about it there. You could say, that is something I borrowed.

SEA: Day 68 – Something Blue

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Not sure how the recent titles got to have a theme. I’ll give you one guess for tomorrow’s.

More Hoi An today. If you ever eat at anyplace there, I suggest Morning Glory. I heard they offer cooking classes as well. It’s delicious. I ate dinner here twice on back to back days.

I skipped over lunch. My bad. I ate the banh mi sandwich at Bánh mì Phượng that was made famous by Anthony Bourdain. Really good. I’d eat there again. I wouldn’t wait in line for it though. But I don’t think I’m a huge foodie, so take my food critiques with a grain of salt.

If anyone ever goes to Bánh mì Phượng, if you sit at the right table, you just might find me there with you. I’m wearing something blue.

SEA: Day 67 – Something Old

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My initial thoughts on this day are really relaxed. It’s only the third day I’ve been in Hoi An, but I felt no rush or need to do anything. That feeling seemed new to me on this trip, and somehow as the day went on, it felt old, and then content.

I spent most of this day either on the beach, in the hotel room chilling, or reading somewhere (hotel lobby, cafe). It’s surprising how you can fall into an old routine so easily. My fall back routine seems to be “lazy”. And it feels negative to me, like it’s wrong to be sitting around just reading or lounging around.

This got me thinking… when I am tired, stressed, mentally or physically drained, my immediate reaction is to shut down and shut out the world. I’m sure this has got to be common. The danger for me, personally, is when I drop into this “bubble of alone-ness”, I don’t feel relaxed or replenished. I feel like I’m wasting time and that leads me to feel useless. Which then gives me more anxiety and stresses me out.

Thinking back about this day, it amazes me that even in a completely new and different part of the world, I can fall into old behavior and thinking so quickly. And how that feeling overwhelms my initial thought of “ah, I had a relaxing day!”

The past has a lot of power. People tell me to let it go and that the past cannot be changed. While I agree with that, I believe the past drives perspective, which alters your present, and ultimately, your future. In a way, you can alter your past by changing your present perspective to a positive outlook leading you to remember the good more than the bad. To be grateful for what you did have, and not what you didn’t. I’m not looking to change my past. I just want to understand it, alter my perspective, learn from it and ultimately, just become a grateful, positive human being.

SEA: Day 66 – Something New

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Simply regurgitating what I did 2 years ago is kind of getting old and repeating. And let’s be honest, kind of dull.

Learn the rules.

I have been questioning the point of this daily blogging. Am I doing to get followers? Am I writing to entertain people? Writing to entertain myself? Trying to find an answer to… something? The answer to Vietnam and Southeast Asia’s general traffic is the picture adjacent to this paragraph.

I think back about Hoi An and remember mostly how beautiful the place felt. I want to try to relate what I feel today, to something I felt back then. I want to be grateful for the opportunity for then, and grateful for the opportunity for now. But lately, it’s been hard. Maybe it’s always hard, but life’s fight is always to be grateful. I use the preposition ‘but’ a lot.

Hoi An was really peaceful, if you ignore all the other tourists. Today’s post is short and strange and random. It’s like my mind, wandering around wondering.

SEA: Day 65 – Hoi An Arrival

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Writing everyday is tough, even if you already have some idea of what to write. And even if it’s just to write a sentence or two. But, I’ve been doing this for 63 days in a row now. Even if I’m writing garbage, and really not wanting to write at all, I’m going to write everyday anyways.

Luckily for me, this day was traveling for a good 10 hours to get from Phong Nha to Hoi An. Which means I actually don’t have much to write.

Well… i guess i could write about what I did, which was to check in, rest, eat, walk around Hoi An, spend an hour at the post office shipping stuff home, getting a massage, ate some more, then watched Princess Mononoke before falling asleep.

Hm… I want to say something to make this day interesting and fun, but again, it’s just hard to write today. So another day!

SEA: Day 64 – Tu Lan Last Day

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On the final morning of this trip, we visited Hang Tien 1 and Hang Tien 2. If memory serves right, we walked through Hang Tien 1 and then got to Hang Tien 2. These caves are massive. The entrance was so large. I can’t fathom how much water was rushing through here to make this ginormous hole in the side of a mountain.

I forgot to mention, near our third camp site, was a pool of water carved into the side of the mountain. It was practically underneath a cliff. We walked by this pool, or if you wanted, swam over, several times. I swam over a couple times. The first time we came across it, we were setting up camp, so i just dove in to swim around.

Later I learned that the pool has no bottom. It’s literally the beginning of the river we’ve been following. Many of the river crossings was water that came from this hole in the ground. So cool. And creepy.

In mid afternoon, we trekked up to a designated point to meet a van that would take us back to Chay Lap. I was so happy to see the van. Not only cause we didn’t have to walk anymore, but because it had dry clothes. Changing into dry clothes after being wet for 4 days felt amazing.

Back at Chay Lap, I enjoyed a steam sauna, some awesome dinner, and slept in a bed. Until 3:30am at least, cause that’s when I left to head down to Hoi An.

SEA: Day 63 – Tu Lan Day 3

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I found my gopro videos! Yes! I don’t have them with me, so here’s my favorite pictures taken by fellow caver and photographer, Joshua Brookes. I’ll definitely need to do a follow-up post on this entire trip.

Huy Cave

Above picture was taken in Huy Cave, all lights turned off except for my headlight. My writing cannot do justice on the feeling of sitting in a huge tavern being surrounded by darkness knowing that a few steps to my right was just a ledge to the dark. You hear “pictures are worth 1000 words” thrown around, and sometimes, I can’t help but think that even pictures aren’t enough.

On the way to Huy Cave, we took a short dip through a river that ran through Bat Cave. Before we headed in, our guide surveyed the entrance, then let us know to follow. We used our packs as floaties and swam through the cave- took maybe 10 minutes at most? Will have to check the videos. When we got out on the other side, our guides mentioned that we had just swum underneath that, pointing behind us. I turned around and realized that he was pointing at the mountain. We swam underneath a mountain. He said he had to check if we had enough room to swim through safely. Sometimes the cave is completely submerged under water, or the waters are too fast for safe passage. Swimming instead of trekking saved us a couple hours.

One thing keeps popping to mind as I write this. Nature is awesome. We really need to start acting before our impact is irreversible.

SEA: Day 62 – Tu Lan Day 2

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I actually have NO photos from this day. It’s not strange cause I knew i wouldn’t be taking pictures, but without my gopro videos, it’s hard to remember what exactly I did.

I did write down everything in my calendar though! According to my calendar I did the following activities: trek, visit cave, swim through cave, eat, trek, visit cave, eat, sleep. So my entire day can be summed up by saying “I trekked through caves.”

I do remember repelling down a cave wall onto a boat, you couldn’t see, floating on an underground river, surrounded by darkness. Pretty cool.

Also, I asked where the river went to, and the guide said it lead to a whirlpool that drained into only God knows where. Pretty cool.

It’s really intense when you turn off all the lights and you’re in total darkness. All you hear is the sound of rushing water. And the occasional bug flying by your ear.

I gotta find those gopro videos to throw up some pictures. Might have to write a follow-up separate post for Tu Lan…

SEA: Day 61 – Tu Lan Day 1

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Tu Lan expedition day 1! Woo! I’ve been looking forward to this day so that I could actually take a look at all the gopro videos I shot during this trip. I glanced through them after the hike, but the good byproduct of this blog was making me actually watch videos.

::Half hour goes by::

And now after a half hour of looking for these videos, I can’t find them. I really hope they are on a hard drive at home. If they are not, I will be sad. But not that sad, cause I obviously didn’t care enough to watch them for the past 2 years.

Forging ahead, I broke my rule of writing my blog before I left the house this morning. I woke up late this morning again at 8:30am. Day light savings really effed with me this time around. I stopped setting an alarm clock a few months ago, just naturally waking up between 6 to 7:30am. But now, I wake up at 7ish, and it’s dark and my body is confused so I just sleep more. I will break this cycle.

FORGING ahead again, I’m sorry. I’m so distracted right now. My mind is being split into a million different places. This is what happens when I’m trying to write with all these other distractions. Hm, maybe this is why people do stuff first thing in the morning, before their head gets filled with other non-important tasks, like doing tasks at work, or doing taxes. Stupid stuff like that.

Gosh, I side tracked again. If you’re still reading this, I apologize. Okay, just very quickly, first day was awesome. Started the actual hike around 10am walking 2.5 km’s through the peanut and buffalo fields to the Rao Nan River.

After crossing the river, we got to experience our first cave, called the Secret Cave. We go through this and continue forward with a trek to Hung Ton Cave entrance. Got to eat lunch at the entrance of Hung Ton. The picture on the bottom right is actually the location of one of the scenes from King Kong.

From Hung Ton, we hike through the jungle to the Tu Lan Campsite. This campsite is right at the entrance of the Ken Cave, first made famous by a National Geographic article in January 2011. The entrance of this cave is actually a waterfall. In order to see the cave, you have to walk past the waterfall (there is a path), then swim into the cave before you climb out onto land and continue the exploration.

I really wish I had my videos. It’s really something to experience swimming into the dark. And it’s also scary swimming out of the cave, cause it’s only darkness behind you.

And this day is when my American arachnophobia was somewhat cured. Spiders in the states are small. Spiders in the jungle are large and you see their eye balls glistening in the dark before you see their bodies. I was climbing up some rocks and I just happened to glance at my hand as I was getting up, and next to it was something larger than my hand. Yes, it was a spider. Yes, I was scared. Yes, I might have peed, but luckily I was already wet from swimming.

We got to explore pretty deep into the cave. I think maybe an hour or so in, we turned around and headed back to camp. Again, we had to swim to exit the cave. When I think about how dark that water was, that I couldn’t touch the bottom, and that behind me was just darkness, I wonder how I did that. Adrenaline is quite something, eh?