Blog 1: Why I think it’s absolutely okay to go away for a while.

Inspired by Eat, Pray, love, I decided to go away for six weeks, starting in Bangkok with further destinations unknown.

 For the ones who  haven’t seen the movie, it’s about a woman with a ‘perfect life’, or so it seems and she decides to make a 180 degree turn by getting a divorce, going to Rome to learn Italian, then to India to learn how to meditate and then to Bali where she finds true love.

Lately, or honestly for a very long time now, I’ve been indecisive about what I want in life, from life.

Feeling like I’m one big glorious mess in her quarter life crisis I just booked my ticket, packed my bags, got on the plane to Bangkok and left.

Statistically seen, there is many people in their 20’s doubting their life choices and surely this is not a permanent solution, but I do believe it could be helpful in my so-called self-exploration.

 I just want to go to places, with no one to have an influence on my thoughts, my decisions, my principles and my self-reflections.
So in order to discover the ‘’real me’’ I decided to disconnect from my daily life.

Furthermore, there is a really positive side-effect to me going to Bangkok, and that would be me seeing family that I hadn’t seen in 10 years that live there. And a cheap upgrade to business class for my outgoing flight wasn’t too bad either!

I’ve been away a little bit over a week now and so far, my travels taught me that:

•  -You can actually get fatter from only eating fried rice and chicken.
• -I can get even more confused about where I want to live in life.
• -That Thai people are really short next to me.
• -My body is not made for the tropical heat.

Having said that I can’t wait to share my adventure with you and hear about all your opinions, tips and even suggestions.

All right, it has been emotional, bye!

My first Phuket. experience — not what I’d envisioned!

‘’This is not something I signed up for’’, was the only thing I could think about while walking through Bangla road.It is the main going out street in Phuket, and as you can imagine things get quite crazy over there. 

I remember being more than excited when Stef and I had landed on Phuket airport, but now I had to overlook so many cultural differences that even got me feeling overwhelmed a little bit.. Personally I believe I’m a very open-minded person, but I don’t support when (young) children and animals are used in a bad way to make a living.

Literally every step that I took, someone offered me a bird show, snake show, all other kind of shows that included animals. And if that’s not enough, on every corner there would be an underaged child either performing or selling something, and I feel so bad cause I have the feeling like they can’t be how children are supposed to be. 

Phuket is known for its seks-tourism, and after having watched several documentaries about pedophiles that visit the island for this exact purpose, I had the worst feeling in my stomach when I saw a big Caucasian man with a very little Thai looking girl on his shoulder asking her, with a strong American accent if she ‘’would rather buy a toy first’’. So what would be second? Maybe was my judgmental mind after all (even after claiming not to be), possibly I watched too many documentaries, maybe it’s his daughter, everything is possible. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not sure but despite this it just made me realize what it could be and that made me sick to my stomach, like this is reality and I might have witnessed a little piece of it, which I’d rather not have.

I know that’s a lot to take in but stick with me here. The island is known for its ladyboys too, and I absolutely love them. I respect and accept everyone (when they’re adults, have freedom of speech and are not forced into doing things). The so called ladyboys were so glammed up, open and I thought some were so pretty. Felt less like a woman by looking at. 

Can you guess who are the ladyboys?

Provided that I can’t save the world, I had to let certain things go and I still tried to have a good time my first night over there.

I believe it was either 4 or 5 mojitos further, beating the waitress’s as playing for in a row ( they make you play this game and if you lose you have to buy them drinks and visa versa) I finally starting to enjoy myself.

We went to the tiger bar and illusion which are both pretty cool clubs if you’re looking for a good place to enjoy a little dance.

We all know every cloud has a silver lining, and I started to look at this visit in a positive way again. That is until I woke up vomiting all over the place, which lasted until 3 PM. 

My advice? Even if you could beat the waitresses at playing 4 in a row, don’t!! Cause I have no clue what she put in the free drinks, but it certainly didn’t make me feel like hoped it would!

When I finally started feeling better my sister and I had some lunch, dinner and went out for drinks.

I really didn’t feel like drinking too much, so it was a bit of a quiet night.

We went to this so-called backpacker bar and we met so many cool people we would hang out with the subsequent days.

One guy we met named Jordan had just moved there two months ago from Paris, and the next day he was going to show us around a bit.

This being said, I’m getting tired of writing now, so what happens next will be in the next blog.

Ok, bye.

How I survived biking in Bangkok during monsoon and why my solo trip isn’t so solo after all.

I remember being so excited when I booked my ticket to Asia, despite not having done my research, as it turned out to be monsoon. Monsoon is basically a rainy season in South and Southeast Asia between the months of May and September. And if that isn’t enough, I was ‘’forced’’ to ride a bike for 40 minutes in very heavy rains and thunder in the middle of Bangkok. Nonetheless I would have gone the same had I known, but hey that’s not really the point! Then guess what happened? Not even 3 days into my ‘’solo’’ trip and not having been solo yet, my little sister Steffy decided to come visit me for a while, and as you can imagine I was very excited she decided to do so!

As mentioned in my previous blog, I spent the first couple of days in Bangkok, and stayed with family I hadn’t seen in a very long time. My cousin Marc lives there with his wife Tisna, and they had a Babyboy called Mason a half a year ago, how awesome is that?

So, as you can imagine I was very excited to see both of them and of course my ‘’newborn’’ nephew mason. Even though he looks like a little chubby Shin Chan and that I had to buy clothing for the average two-year old, he is the cutest baby ever, always smiling and his cheeks are nothing but an invitation to pinch them!

After 3 days of doing nothing but eating, ( and literally mean eat, sleep, repeat) I decided to do a bike tour at Co van Kessel tours that numerous friends of mine recommended. Even in rain season the Thai temperatures were hard for me to get used to (I’m sure every fellow Dutchie that visited Thailand is with me on this one) and therefore I chose to do the evening/afternoon tour starting at 15.00 I recall.

Taking you through the ‘’real Bangkok’’, this bike ride was pretty frigging awesome. It really turns your attention to quaint local communities and charming excursions into the fascinating lifestyle and culture of real Thai people”, as they mention on their website http://www.covankessel.com.

The tour guide was really nice and surprisingly spoke quite some Dutch words (probably because of the Dutch founder of the company and the many Dutch customers), which I mostly didn’t understand because of his accent, but hey the guy really made an effort! He took us to a local market to eat some so-called ‘’street food’’ and it was more than delicious. But that’s not all, I even tried some fried insects and bugs. They didn’t really float my boat I must say though!

Out of nowhere it started raining so hard, that if the weather girls were right, no single woman was ever to be found in Thailand again. That said, it started storming, and the thunder was so loud and the lightning so light I would really recommend Bose to come up with badass waterproof headphones.

We waited and waited, but it wouldn’t stop. Our only option was to put on a poncho and bike all the way back. Whereas one of the girls was pretty scared, I thought this was pretty adventurous and exciting. Talking about unique experiences! Made me feel like home too.

Once back at my cousin’s house, I went to bed only to wake up having to go pick up Steffy from the airport!

My cousin had to do ‘’one little thing’’ in town, and so we went. We visited a mall and ate something and, on our way, back to their home (all on the other side of Bangkok) we were so stuck in traffic we couldn’t believe it.

Having said that, it turned out to be raining quite heavily in the center. The result? A great part of town got flooded so much that cars were just floating around. Only a few roads were open to traffic, and unfortunately there was no simple solution but to sit the traffic jam out. In a city with more or less 8 million habitants, you can only imagine how crazy that was…

But how do you survive so long with half an empty stomach? We got out of the car and moved our fat-asses to a nearby mall to have dinner. When we finally got home I packed my bag only to leave for Phuket the day after (my Stef and I).

I was really looking forward to be spending some time with my little sister, regarding the fact that back home we both are often too busy to really see each other without being in a hurry. I mean, at times it seems easier to meet up with the Pope than with my little sister.

So far, so good. All things considered I had some pretty cool first days. I can almost hear you thinking about how boring these days sound but believe me if I had any Idea my time in Phuket would be so ‘’fascinating’’ I would have prepared slightly better. Like buying myself 1000 milligram paracetamols and a coffin.

Next time I’ll be posting about how my experience over there 2turned out to be one of the most shocking ones in my life!! (and believe me, I’ve had many!) 

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Adios chicos & chicas!