Welcome to my new site!
I’ve been working on a new personal site for quite some time now and I’m happy to announce that it’s finally live! As you can see, it’s part resume, part portfolio, and part blog. The resume and portfolio are a pretty good representation of me, but I’m still trying to figure out what I’ll be writing about. I’m sure I’ll blog about my travels, but since I’m working full-time and no longer on a sabbatical, I’ll have much less travel content than before. Maybe I’ll write about tech or San Francisco or photography. We’ll see.
Appropriately, my first few entries will be about my recent holiday in Southeast Asia, written in the style of my old blog. I feel somewhat obligated to explain why I decided to go back to Southeast Asia, considering I’ve already spent so much time there. In no particular order:
- It’s my vacation and I can do what I want, damnit!
- I wanted to do something big for my 35th birthday.
- The weather in Southeast Asia in December is perfect.
- Getting across the Pacific is expensive, but after that, everything is cheap.
- America’s excessive consumerism during the Christmas season – not to mention the two-month duration – is exhausting, so I like escaping the country for at least a little bit. I love November (Thanksgiving and my birthday), so it makes sense to leave in December.
- Donald Trump.
- I have friends in Thailand that I wanted to see.
- Southeast Asian food and massage are two of my favorite things ever.
- Let’s just say I know how to enjoy myself there.
Given that 2016 ended up being a shitty, shitty year, I was even more excited about this trip and about leaving the country.
The actual itinerary underwent a lot of iterations before it finally settled. Initially, I wanted to go to Myanmar, but after factoring in travel time and the requisite stop in Chiang Mai – clearly a requirement for any trip to Southeast Asia – it didn’t leave a lot of time to move around Myanmar, especially considering that travel there is slow. Begrudgingly, I moved Myanmar back onto my bucket list and searched for a different new place to go. Non-Bali Indonesia became a real possibility for a while, especially since I’ve wanted to check out Djakarta Warehouse Project, but the considerable extra travel time and slightly unappealing line-up diluted my enthusiasm for that plan too.
Flight prices and timing, friends’ availability, and the fact that I would be working remotely for a week eventually led to me narrowing my focus to only Thailand and northern Laos. I could get my Chiang Mai fix, have very reasonable flight times and costs, see my friends, work remotely, and spend most of the trip exploring a new country.
Well, I think that’s a good place to wrap up my first post. I’ll be breaking up the rest of the trip into smaller posts for easy digestion, especially since I’ll be adding lots of photos. Thanks for reading and welcome!