(Unlike my trips to the island in 2014 and 2015, I made a point of taking a lot of photos and videos this time around, so get ready for a lot of media content in this post.)

On Christmas day, after one last banh mi and iced coffee at the Saigon airport, I flew to Bangkok, where I met Nock for our flight. The next 24 hours were pretty standard for a trip to Koh Phi-Phi: a short flight to Krabi, a guesthouse for the night (since all the boats to the island leave early in the day), dinner at the night market, massages before bed, a lazy breakfast the next morning, a van ride to the semi-chaotic and tourist-packed pier, a relatively sedate two-hour ferry ride to the island, and a 10-minute walk from the pier to our hotel. There are no motorized vehicles on the island – which is always heaven on earth whenever you can find that in Southeast Asia – so the porters and other workers transport everything via hand-pushed carts.

We stayed at a hotel that I’ve stayed in before, so the walk from the pier was very familiar. There had – unsurprisingly – been a fair amount of development in the two years since I was last on the island. A nice paved walkway connects the two main beaches now, but the main corner by the pier has a fucking McDonald’s, which is infuriating. You can’t stop “progress”, I guess.

Before dinner, while Nock had to work a bit on her laptop, I took my camera down to the beach to get some photos of Koh Phi-Phi’s famous long-tail boats. Some of the tour guides will hang around Ao Lo Dalam in the late afternoon in the hopes of enticing tourists to book a sunset trip. A few guys were hawking on the beach, a few were lounging in their boats, and a few Thai children splashed around in the water nearby.

Our first full day on the island was a deep dive into the beach vacation we both were craving: lazy time on the beach to lounge and read and people-watch, swimming, some light reading, and Thai food for lunch and Italian food for dinner. I hit “peak vacation” in the mid-afternoon when I passed out in my chair – clearly exhausted from all the lounging and eating – and broke my cheap sunglasses.

The next day, we woke up early to catch the sunrise, then took a long-tail boat to Haad Yao, a beautiful beach on the southeast part of the island. It was honestly the best beach day I’ve had in a long time: powdery sand, perfectly hot weather, cool spots in the shade, fresh coconuts, an incredible lunch of massaman curry and stir-fried fish, and clear, warm water that was so salty you could effortlessly float away if you wanted to.

On our final full day, we had a fantastic brunch at an all-mangoes-all-the-time restaurant in town, followed by another lazy afternoon on the beach closest to our guesthouse.

In the evening, we asked around about boat trips and decided to hire one for a few hours to go sightseeing on Koh Phi-Phi Leh, the beautiful sister island to the south that is open for tours but has no inhabitants. Even though this was my third time on Koh Phi-Phi Don, I had never actually gone to the other island on my previous trips and I decided it was time to correct that.

We puttered around the island, mostly visiting the two large bays: Pileh Lagoon and the world-famous Maya Bay. We stopped frequently to take photos or go swimming next to the cliffs or kick around small, deserted beaches. We cruised by Maya Beach – best known as the shooting location of The Beach – but didn’t stop since it was already packed with tourists (and actually costs money for foreigners). Instead we found another deserted beach with palm trees and towering limestone cliffs and beautiful turquoise water.

As I floated in the water and looked at the tops of the karsts against the deep blue sky, I strained to fully absorb the stunning scenery. The nearby party boat blasting 90’s hip-hop brought me back down to earth occasionally, but mostly I felt like I was gently floating away in a dream.

Just as the sun was setting and the moon was starting to come out, we left the southern island and made our way back. The scenery for the entire evening was incredible and that boat trip was the perfect way to finish our trip to the islands.

That evening, we stopped by the massive nightly beach party for a bit to watch all the dancing backpackers and ridiculous fire poi antics. Our flight back to Bangkok wasn’t until 5:00 the next day, so we happily slept in and had a lazy lunch before our boat ride and transfer to the airport.

Even though the island has seen more and more development in recent years and one has to wonder if there’s a breaking point, Koh Phi-Phi is still the most beautiful island I’ve ever been on. I will always happily go back, especially if I can take along friends to see it for the first time.

Thailand

Ayu and I flew from Hanoi to Bangkok, picked up the blue duffel bag of souvenirs and gifts we had left in the airport, killed time for the rest of the day, and flew to Chiang Mai in the evening. We had really wanted to take the bus or train for the experience, but everything was sold out since Songkran was just around the corner. We spent two fun weeks in Chiang Mai, enjoying the four days of water fights of Songkran and lots of cheap Thai food and massages. As with last year, I didn’t dare take my camera out for fear of it getting water-damaged, but if you search YouTube, you’ll get a pretty good idea of what we were up to.

During our stay in Chiang Mai, we also went to Pai, a “chill, counter-culture, hippie mountain town”, to paraphrase the common sentiment echoed among Southeast Asia backpackers. My advice: don’t go to Pai. It’s overrun with the same types of people you’d find on Khao San Road in Bangkok, the tourist sites aren’t that great, and it’s a long, quasi-nauseous minivan ride to get there from Chiang Mai. Our 48-hour trip was, at best, completely forgettable; at worst, we wasted two days of our lives.

After Chiang Mai, we flew to Phuket, met up with another friend from America, and took a boat to Koh Phi-Phi, where we had four days of cloudy, but still awesome, beach and island time. I came down with tummy issues for the first time in about fifteen months, so I gave myself a small pat on the back for that. For about a day, I stayed within sprinting distance of the toilet and popped Pepto pills, activated charcoal, and antibiotics like candy.

We took a boat back to Phuket and spent three days on Surin Beach, a quiet beach far from the rowdiness of Patong, to savor our last few days in Thailand. There was lots of Thai food, sunsets, and bittersweet nostalgia (especially for me) before moving on to Indonesia.

Bali

We flew from Phuket to Bali by way of Singapore and once we landed, I left for Ubud for a few days while the girls went to Canggu. I thought Ubud would be a great place for me to be productive with a number of laptop tasks I had, but it turned out to be the straw that broke the camel’s back. I’ll explain.

It wasn’t anything in particular, but rather the classic “death by a thousand cuts”. I had to walk around town in the heat for an hour to find a new power adapter because mine didn’t fit in those stupid circular outlets. Every WiFi connection I tried was unreliable. My guesthouse room had one of those stupid one-handed showers and daily power outages. The local coworking space was full at 10:00 in the morning and charging $20 a day, as if this was San Francisco. The streets were a constant stream of motorbikes and noise, as usual, and the road construction in front of my guesthouse caused more congestion and air pollution than normal. The sidewalks were full of slow-moving, day-tripping tourists. About once a minute, a tout somewhere asked me if I needed a ride. And those little fucking ants that you find everywhere in Bali got into my Toblerone bar.

Seriously, I lost my shit after that. Those little fuckers.

I suddenly felt homesick and tired. Very tired. Really, really tired of everything and everyone around me. Tired of dealing with third-world bullshit. Tired of constantly dealing with logistics. Tired of packing and unpacking my stuff. Dare I say it, but I became very tired of traveling.

Before arriving in Ubud, I was hoping that it would be a familiar home away from home, like Chiang Mai. And while it did feel familiar, it also felt weird and distant, like I was in a place that I should have left in my past and not returned to. On my first full day there, I called Ayu after I ordered lunch and all I could tell her on the phone was: “I’m tired and I want to go home. I’m thinking of leaving tomorrow.” We talked for a bit and after we hung up, I sat by myself in the restaurant, ate my food, and cried.

I remember talking to a friend last summer about his Southeast Asia backpacking adventure and he told me about how and when and where he hit his breaking point. For him, it was Cambodia; he had a bad day, flipped a (metaphorical) table, and bought a plane ticket home. For me, it was Ubud that broke my spirit. I realize that it isn’t fair to Ubud or Indonesia to say that since it could have happened anywhere, but that’s where it happened to me. I’m convinced every long-term traveler will reach his or her breaking point eventually and that happened to me after 638 days on the road.

After a lazy, unproductive day (to minimize the chances of something else annoying me) and another night of sleep, I was able to shake off most of my freak-out. No, I didn’t go home the next day as I threatened, but I did feel very checked out. I started to let others make most of the travel arrangements and my camera rarely left its home in my daypack. The only photo I took during my time in Ubud was of my (admittedly phenomenal) view of the neighboring rice paddy. Sadly, that view was the only thing keeping me sane; I especially enjoyed it when a thunderstorm rolled through and I could watch the rain and lightning from the comfort of my patio.

I left Ubud a few days later and met up with the girls on Nusa Lembongan, a small island to the east of Bali, appropriately described by some as how Bali was decades ago. We had six really lovely, relaxed days on the island: two snorkeling trips, lots of swimming in our hotel’s excellent pool, multiple movie nights at the open-air cinema/restaurant down the road, multiple meals of the biggest and best nasi campur I’ve ever had in my life, and lots of sunsets and sundowners.

Nusa Lembongan single-handedly restored my faith in Bali, especially considering my disillusionment with the popular parts of Bali that are overcrowded and overdeveloped. I owe Ayu a million thanks for taking us there.

And speaking of said overdeveloped parts, I spent my last few days on the island in Seminyak, enjoying Indonesian food, some shopping, and a three-hour treatment at a local spa. For better or worse, that’s how I wrapped up my time in Southeast Asia. (For now.)

Hopefully I’ll feel refreshed and energized enough in the coming weeks to write a separate blog post that summarizes the last year of my travels. This post feels too informative (and a bit too depressing) to serve as the final chapter, so I’ll make an effort to write that chapter separately in the near future.

Becca, Michael, and I flew into BKK on a pleasant Friday afternoon and the two of them were immediately introduced to the urban jungle of Bangkok as we suffered through the first of many hour-long taxi rides through the massive city with its dense, standstill traffic.

After finally reaching our hotel, checking in, and getting some food, we decided to go to the Chatuchak weekend market. Friday night at the market was very different from Saturday or Sunday; only a subset of the clothes shops were open and all the non-clothes shops were closed, there was very little food or drink, there were much less people than usual, and the clientele was almost exclusively Thais shopping for clothes. Nevertheless, we enjoyed the more relaxed atmosphere as we casually browsed the racks and got foot massages.

Saturday was the big tourist day. I took Becca and Michael to the usual spots – Chao Phraya, the Grand Palace, Wat Pho, and Wat Arun – and set them loose. The cliche continued into the evening as we went to Khao San Road to observe and partake in the spectacle. However, that plan came to a nauseating halt when both Michael and I started to feel ill about an hour and a half after dinner. Given that Becca was completely fine and that the content of her meal overlapped with ours, any potential theory (Was it the rice? Was it the chicken? Was it the Chang?) has a gaping hole in it. To our credit, we managed to make it to 1:00 or 1:30, which is when the junta started shutting down all the parties anyway, so we felt less bad about turning in “early”. We grabbed a taxi home and two-thirds of our group suffered through a restless night’s sleep filled with trips to the bathroom and the violent expulsion of partially digested food.

On Sunday morning we dragged ourselves to the airport for our flight to Siem Reap. On top of being tired and still partially sick, we had to deal with the worst immigration line I’ve ever seen. The “line”, a barely-organized throng of irritated travelers, took almost an hour to navigate. There were multiple rude Chinese tourists cutting the line, which resulted in another rude Chinese tourist scolding them loudly, which led to one of the Thai immigration officers losing face, standing up, pointing his finger, and yelling “SHUT UP! SHUT UP!” at the top of his lungs. It was not a fun morning.

Once through immigration, the rest of the traveling was uneventful and a couple hours later we were in Cambodia.

Siem Reap

I’m going to be intentionally cursory for this part of the trip since I’ve written extensively about Cambodia before. We spent three nights and two days in Siem Reap, which is probably the minimum amount of time I’d suggest to anyone thinking of going there. Before arriving in Cambodia, I had messaged Dola, my tuk-tuk driver during my previous visit, and he agreed to be our driver for two days. The discounted rate for being a returning customer was nice too.

The first day we visited only Beng Mealea since it takes about two hours to get there from Siem Reap via tuk-tuk.

The next day, we woke up very early to catch sunrise at Angkor Wat, then went to Angkor Thom and Bayon, then called it a day in the mid-afternoon.

In the evenings, we enjoyed Khmer food and Pub Street, stopped by Asana for a drink and to see my friend Lala, and watched the always entertaining Phare circus.

The next day was a long and exhausting travel day: woke up early to get picked up by a minibus (with a temporarily flat tire), transferred to a coach, drove for several hours to the Thai border, disembarked and went through a slow-moving immigration line, waited in the sun for a while, got picked up by another minibus, drove several hours to the ferry landing at Laem Ngop, boarded a massive vehicle ferry, and took that for an hour to Koh Chang. The ferry ride was legitimately pleasant once we found a spot overlooking the bow, felt the ocean breeze against us, sipped beers, and watched the sun sink behind the horizon.

Koh Chang

Once on Koh Chang, we had to hire our minibus driver to take us directly to our resort, which meant another outlay on transportation and another 45 minutes of driving. Koh Chang is the second-largest island in Thailand (behind Phuket) and very, very developed, especially on the western coast. As we drove in the dark, I was amazed at the amount of businesses and lights that whizzed by before we finally reached our bungalows. After checking in, getting situated, and thinking the day was just about over, the staircase to Michael’s bungalow buckled and collapsed as he and Becca were standing on it. Luckily no one was hurt (too badly).

Just as with Siem Reap, we had two full days on Koh Chang. Though it’s highly developed on the coasts, the island is lush and gorgeous and very beautiful, especially when viewed from the water. We spent most of the time relaxing and going to the nice beach up the coast from us.

Our only real excursion was going to an elephant park (appropriate for Koh Chang, which translates as “Elephant Island”) on the second day, where we rode and swam with the elephants. I’ll fully admit that I’m not sold on the morality of such places – especially since the mahouts tried to secretly sell us pieces of ivory jewelry during our tour – but swimming with elephants and riding on the back of one in the water is pretty freaking awesome.

The next day we suffered through another exhausting travel day: a 45-minute minibus ride to the pier, a one-hour ferry ride to the mainland, an all-day minibus ride to Bangkok (with a borderline maniacal driver who made several mysterious package pickups and deliveries along the way), and then the obligatory one-hour taxi ride in Bangkok, mostly spent staring silently out the window in anger and frustration.

Bangkok

The reasons for going back to Bangkok were three-fold: Michael was flying back home for Thanksgiving, Erik was arriving from San Francisco, and Bangkok is where I wanted to be for my birthday since I had rooftop bar demands that had to be met.

We booked bunk beds at Oneday Hostel, a fantastic, upscale place in Sukhumvit that is a slice of San Francisco in Bangkok, complete with a fancy cafe and coworking space (of course). Normally, I don’t stay in hostels since I’m a light sleeper, don’t want to deal with strangers’ sleeping habits, and prefer my own private space, if only to have more security for my things. However, since there would be four of us, we could book an entire room just for ourselves and live it up slumber-party style.

The overlapping time of the four of us was less than 24 hours, but we managed to fit in a fun night out at a girlie bar on Sukhumvit Soi 4, a solid afternoon at the weekend market the next day, and a surprisingly delicious farewell dinner for Michael that night at an unassuming restaurant in our neighborhood. As per Erik’s request and custom, we got one last cheek to cheek (to cheek to cheek) photo.

After lots of window shopping at a couple malls the next day, we hit the town for my birthday. After a delicious Thai-Lao dinner, the first stop of the evening was Moon Bar for amazing views and an equally amazing rooftop experience. And just as astounding as the views are the prices, so after a drink we bounced to Maggie Choo’s, an underground spot that I’d describe as “opium den meets San Francisco cocktail lounge”. We had a couple delicious rounds while listening to a French jazz quartet, as you do in Thailand.

After Maggie Choo’s, I believe we went back to Sukhumvit Soi 4 for more shitshow-watching, but my memory is fuzzy so I’m not going to say much about that. I do believe we turned in shortly after the bars closed since we were traveling the next day.

Phuket

After a slow morning, tolerable taxi ride to the airport, and uneventful flight to Phuket, we checked into our guesthouse in Patong and began gearing up for Birthday Night Out Part II. As you do on a night out in Patong, we went straight for Soi Bangla, a bright, loud, chaotic, alcohol-fueled maelstrom of bars, clubs, touts, ping pong shows, thumping Vegas-style music, working girls, ladyboys, and drunk tourists of all types.

My demand for the evening was shisha, so we found a very fun shisha bar and spent many happy hours there indulging in the obvious, with a healthy side of beers, buckets, cocktails, and free tequila shots from some random guy at the bar. Our entertainment consisted of scantily-clad women dancing and showering on the bar and a room full of single white men and their Thai companions who had been purchased for the evening.

The culinary delights of the evening deserve a mention as well. The bar continually supplied us with snacks to keep us around, which was appreciated, but the foods themselves got weirder over the course of the evening. The initial goodies of popcorn and peanuts turned into cotton candy, which melted all over me within seconds due to the heat, then became hard-boiled eggs later in the evening. I’ve never considered eating hard-boiled eggs while drinking… but I will from now on!

The final, beautiful culmination of the evening – and also the perfect union of drinking, food, and entertainment value – was Erik devouring a bag of roasted bugs while totally hamming it up for the camera. Out of respect for him, I won’t post that video here, but you should bug him (hey-ooohhh!) to show it to you.

The next day (our last in Phuket) was much more mellow and our big accomplishment was wandering the night market by our guesthouse. The day after that, we hopped on a ferry to Koh Lanta, my recommendation for some very relaxed island time.

Koh Lanta

Upon arriving on the island and checking in to our bungalows, our thoughts turned to food, it being Thanksgiving. We walked the beach a bit from our resort and stumbled upon Moonwalk, a spacious, uncrowded seaside restaurant hanging over dark, rough rocks with beautiful views of the beach, the ocean, and the distant lightning that was flashing occasionally on the horizon. As we went around the table and said what we were thankful for, we enjoyed a terrific dinner of bruschetta, barbecued snapper, massaman curry, Thai beer, and mango sticky rice. The massaman curry was particularly full of spices (no, I don’t mean spicy), giving it a very autumn-like taste, which was appropriate and appreciated.

We spent the rest of the evening, as we did all our evenings on Koh Lanta, lounging in chairs next to a bonfire by the ocean, sipping on drinks, talking, and looking at the stars. We also had to dodge the daily thunderstorms when they rolled through, but they always passed fairly quickly.

After a few days of standard island activities, it was time to part ways with Erik since his time was at an end. As he took his transfer to Krabi for a flight to Bangkok, Becca and I took a ferry to nearby Koh Phi-Phi.

Koh Phi-Phi

First and foremost, Koh Phi-Phi is the most beautiful island I’ve ever been on. Before going, I was worried that it had become too developed and crowded and overpopulated with backpackers. These fears are validated if you stay in Tonsai Village, the loud, dirty party center of the island, but if you stay on a beach away from the village, the island is beautiful and peaceful. Our resort (Phi Phi Hill Resort) was two beaches away from the village and at the top of a hill, meaning it was peaceful, relaxing, and had stupid beautiful views of the island below. We could watch both sunrises and sunsets from the top of our hill.

That said, we did dip into the village occasionally – via either a delightful long-tail boat ride or a hot, sweaty trek through the jungle – for shopping, food, or sunset drinks. One evening, we went to the village and Lo Dalam beach, the nightlife center of the island, for drinks and people watching. Oh man, did we get what we were looking for and more. It felt like a smaller version of Full Moon, except this party happens every night. Becca and I grabbed some beers, buckets, and shisha and sat down to watch the show, which included, but was not limited to: the usual drunk backpackers, Thai boys playing with fire poi, full frontal male nudity (in conjunction with fire poi!), a drunken soccer mom in soccer mom clothes dancing by herself in the ocean, strip Jenga with what appeared to be a rugby team, and a backpacker soap opera that unfolded right in front of us for at least half an hour.

But wait, there’s more.

After we knew we were done for the evening, we found a road leading from the beach that was lined with stalls of delicious drunk food, so of course we stopped by. Interspersed among the restaurants and food vendors were a handful of tattoo shops, which were just as busy, as backpackers of various states of sobriety decided that yes, now was the time to get that tattoo they’ve always wanted. Unlike normal tattoo shops, which promote cleanliness and privacy, these shops were wide open and in plain view of anyone walking down the street. We took full advantage of this and gawked in amazement like children at a zoo watching the caged animals.

At one particular shop, we talked to a few of the guys who were getting inked. The man to our right took swigs from his bottle of Chang as he proudly displayed the large rain cloud and lightning bolt being hammered into his bicep. Yup, a rain cloud. The real gems though were the two kids to our left. The first one had just finished getting a hah taew tattoo (one of these), which are very popular in Thailand. In fact, they’re so popular, especially for backpackers, that this shop had a printout, making the process of getting a basic tattoo in Thailand as simple as pointing.

However, this kid didn’t want all five lines; he wanted only three. Because I guess he believes in only 60% of Thai proverbs? And he didn’t want straight lines; he wanted them arranged in a circle. Because… why not? When we asked him what the lines meant, his verbatim answer was: “Um, something, something, and… something.” Bravo, my friend. Bravo.

His friend wasn’t much better. We asked him about the tattoo he was getting, and he responded with: “It’s the tattoo from The Beach.” I was really confused about this initially – and for the rest of the night – since I had read that book fairly recently and didn’t recall anything about a tattoo. It wasn’t until a day or two later I figured out what he meant: in the movie adaptation, Richard (Leonardo DiCaprio’s character) has a small tattoo on his arm. I know this only because a Google search reveals a single frame where the tattoo is visible. In summary, this kid was copying a forgettable, meaningless tattoo – that was completely irrelevant to the story – from a shitty Hollywood adaptation of the most cliche Thailand backpacker book of all time. You get a slow clap too, buddy.

I’ll also mention that all the shops used the bamboo method instead of the machine method for tattoos, which is common in Thailand. I’ve read that the bamboo method is much less painful and supposedly results in better color and faster healing. I can’t vouch for the color and healing claims, but every customer we talked to that night said that the tattoos didn’t hurt at all. Granted, they were all liquored up, so I take their testimonials with a grain of salt.

At this point, we had seen enough and were ready for a long-tail boat ride back to our beach. As we were leaving, a round of tequila shots suddenly appeared and everyone in the shop – customers and tattoo artists – had one. That’s just perfect. Have a fantastic night, gentlemen.

Having gotten our fill of the party scene, Becca and I resumed our usual beach activities for the rest of our time on the island. On our last day, we split up: Becca went on an around-the-island boat trip and I went on a death march hike through the jungle to Hat Phak Nam, a beach on the eastern coast. I stumbled upon one of the island’s viewpoints on the way and stopped for a while for some photos and to change my sweat-drenched shirt.

After extending our stay for one more precious day in paradise, we boarded an early morning ferry destined for the Trang islands, a loosely-related clump of islands to the south-east that are a bit far from the normal tourist track. Based on Lonely Planet descriptions, we settled on Koh Kradan, a very small, quiet island that is still conveniently serviced by the Tigerline ferry. After a couple stops at other islands, the ferry stopped again at a seemingly arbitrary spot in the middle of the ocean, where we transferred to a waiting long-tail boat for an hour-long ride to the island itself.

Koh Kradan

Koh Kradan is a very small island with only a handful of resorts, the vast majority of which are on the eastern shore. The island has no permanent inhabitants besides those who work in hospitality. Upon landing, we walked nearly the entire length of the main beach to get to our bungalows, which were simple bamboo huts with no aircon, no hot water, and thin mattresses on the floor. Why would we pay $35 a night in Thailand for such a place? Because we were literally on the beach, heard nothing all day but the gentle sounds of small waves, and the water’s edge was only ten feet from our front porches at high tide.

Our four days there were awesomely lazy and once I stopped shaving, I felt myself really slipping into island bum mode. We spent all of our time eating, drinking, sleeping, reading, sunbathing, swimming, and sitting on our porches during the brief storms, not only because we wanted to, but because there was nothing else to do.

One evening, we walked through the jungle across the island (no more than a 15-minute walk) to catch the sunset over the rocks. Afterwards, we backtracked to Paradise Lost, the only resort not on the coast and home to the best restaurant on the island. As we devoured massive bowls of mouth-watering massaman curry, Wally, the American owner, played the role of “Dad” as he flipped through dozens of satellite TV channels, deciding what he – and therefore the entire restaurant – would watch. The iron fist with which he dominated the remote control was evidently a twitchy one, as he changed channels every minute or two, greatly disrupting the flow of whatever mediocre movie we were getting sucked into. That said, we were quite happy to hang out for a while and be couch potatoes, downing large Singhas until it was time to walk back through the dark jungle to our moonlit beach.

After four beautiful, lazy days, it was time to get Becca on the journey back to her first-world life. Since we were on a more isolated island, the trip back would have to be split into two days. The day before her flight out of Bangkok, we took a long-tail boat through a heavy storm to the mainland, then transferred to a minibus to Trang, one of the provincial towns in the south, where we spent the night. The next day, we flew from Trang to Don Mueang (AirAsia) Airport, took the free shuttle to BKK, and had a bittersweet goodbye in the departures hall.

Traveling with my friends from home – especially through places that I was familiar with and could be a tour guide for – was wonderful and perfect and something I had been looking forward to for a long time. I’ve had a great time making new friends and travel buddies everywhere I’ve gone during my sabbatical, but there’s something really special about traveling with good friends I’ve known for many years.

It was, of course, effortless and joyful to travel with Becca for so long and I’m excited about this new annual tradition of going on an international, multi-week backpacking trip. Where to next, boo?

With that, I’ll leave here a short montage of some footage I took on the islands with my phone.