Farewell Asia, you mixed bag you.
Right now, we’re en route to New Zealand, riding high on our decision to extend the trip past its original year expiration date. We arrived in Asia on September 6; almost seven months ago. We’ve been in Southeast Asia alone for four months. To say we’re ready to move on is an understatement; rice, especially the ubiquitous fried variety, won’t be on our plates anytime soon. We’ll miss neither the wood-like mattresses nor the constant on and off again of shoes, and we really won’t miss the pay squat toilets that someone should have paid us to use or the soaking wet bathrooms with showers on top of the toilet and strange sewer gases seeping through the exposed pipes. It’s someone else’s turn to get eaten alive by the mosquitoes, to try (unsuccessfully) to drown out the screechingly loud music on buses stuffed to the gills, to shake their head at drunk, obnoxious backpackers who think they own the world. Please don’t kill my excitement by mentioning that New Zealand has sandflies, shared camp bathrooms, thin campervan mattresses, or anything else that’s less than perfect, because nahnahnahnah, I can’t hear you.
Despite my current good riddance attitude, Asia’s been good to us and I know it. It provided us with sweet, sweet Cambodian bananas, Malaysian mangoes, Thai pineapples, and Vietnamese dragonfruit and watermelons; tasty, tasty street food; cultures totally foreign; scores of friendly, kind people; almost constant sunshine in what otherwise would be a cold, snowy winter; turquoise waters and white sand beaches; exploration of the underwater world; a peek into an anything-goes lifestyle; and months of cheap, cheap affordable travel. And the habit of pronouncing words twice. Most of all, it has provided us daily fascination and entertainment. Just when you think you’ve seen it all, Asia tops itself, and that alone is reason to travel here.
So ends another chapter of the trip. I’ll catch you guys up on our Vietnamese travels (the Southeast Asian country the least likely to be voted same same, but different) and our five weeks in Thailand and Malaysia (which really could be summed up right now – we mostly sat our arses on the beach. The End.) I’m thinking about interspersing posts about the last two months with near real-time posts in New Zealand, but I hear internet access leaves a lot to be desired in New Zealand, so no promises other than it will all get done eventually. (See how this Type A has learned to relax?)
Good-bye, Asia, it’s been fun, but we’re dreaming of unpacking our bags for one whole glorious month, hitting the open road with our campervan, making homemade meals with goods from the farmer’s markets, eating wild boar pie (well, at least Sean is), filling a chilly box with sauvigon blanc and microbrews, and soaking in fabulous view after fabulous view. New Zealand, here we come.
I can only imagine how different New Zealand will feel after SE Asia! I have heard nothing but good from there and can’t wait to hear about it from you! Cheers!
What is going on in that picture? How is that possible?! Asia sounds like a really interesting, fun place. You must have really enjoyed it to have stayed long. Hope you enjoy your next stop in your journey in New Zealand!
Anything is possible in Southeast Asia!!!