All posts by Jon

That one time in istanbul

Going to Turkey for a weekend was not the best idea. Honestly, I should of stayed longer! I would’ve never expected my experience, especially when it started out in the weirdest way. 

  Once off the airplane, I wasn’t sure if I had a ride to the hostel or not. There was a mixup with emailing the Hostel about a free shuttle, but as I was walking out the door of the airport, I saw a little lady holding a sign with my name on it. I thought that was a big relief until she had me wait by the road and walked off. she gave me the sign to hold up so the van would come get me. I was super confused because it was taking entirely too long, so I put the sign away and started to feel uneasy. 

   That’s usually the time that I listen to my gut and I figure out another ride, but that wasn’t the case because I couldn’t even fine the area for the taxis. I just sat there and waited until a sketchy leather coat wearing guy came up to me and asked me if I was Jon in very broke English, I said yes and he said to have me follow him to the van. Now I’m losing my mind, but stayed very calm. Once we got to the van, I noticed there was another Turkish family waiting by the van as well.  I just assumed they were getting a ride to their hostel too. It took a bit to drive to the Hostel and the sketchy driver, now with multiple phones up to his face, kept on talking to random people while driving. 

   At one point there was a moment of silence and I mentioned to him that I noticed that there was a lot of police activity on the roads near the Hostel. Apparently that’s all I needed to say and the guy smiled at me and proceeded to tell me everything about the city, all in Arabic. I just nodded and smiled back. Once at the Hostel I turned around and noticed that the family that was going to another hostile was now very angry, but the driver was very happy to help me get my bag and even gave me a hug before I walked in to the front door.

 The rest my time there went very well. The workers in the Hostel were beyond helpful and became good friends. There was a pack of Auzzie‘s that were staying in the hostel as well that let me join them in taking tours around the city and even went out to the clubs at night as well.

  It was only 3 days in Turkey, but I believe that I’ll be there for round two in the near future.

into the unknown

While in Vietnam, I got the chance to spend time with a couple Israeli girls traveling like i was. When we were parting ways, they invited me to their country and that’s all it took! The next trip was scribbled on an airline napkin on the flight home. Less than a year later, I was on a plane heading to the Middle East knowing this was not like the other trips.  I actually took the time to plan most of this journey from the start. Some of the areas I was going weren’t the safest in the world, but I wasn’t new with travel this time around. Prepping for the  “worse case senecio” and always staying alert was the key for a safe trip.  

   Once I landed in Israel, I was welcomed by one of the girls I met in Vietnam. She picked me up late at night, let me sleep for a few hours and that where the adventure began….

Two Wheel Life in Vietnam

Once I hit the road pointed in the right direction to Huè, I promised myself I wouldn’t fly through the pass like I would any other time and I would actually stop and take pictures. So the first part, I stopping and took a few pictures here and there, but once I started riding into the single lane roads of the pass, my adrenaline spiked and before I knew it I’m flying through the corners. I did manage to stop once or twice to take a picture, but not nearly as much as I wanted to. That’s when I reminded myself that this is for me and my experiences and sometimes you have to keep those to yourself. After about 2 1/2 hours, I found myself in the town of Huè where I had a bus waiting for me to take me to a small village called Phong Nha. I meant two girls from Israel on the bus and we talked most of the time and one of them even told me that she had no place booked once we got there.  We decided to get a hostel together being that there’s only two to choose from. The next morning they automatically included me in all their plans which I really enjoyed because without their company I would not of seen nearly as much as I did.

We woke me up really early to go see the famous caves.  We didn’t want to take a tour, so we decide to rent a couple scooters and go on our own.  We get the first cave where we can swim, ride on the zip line, go on an obstacle course and also explore the caves (which had a lot of mud so I decided to skip the cave part). Instead I stayed on obstacle course and had a really good time for the first 20 minutes, but then I realize that me waiting for them got a longer than I thought. Once they came back they somehow knew that I was having too much fun as they did, so they took me out to lunch and we talked for a long period of time then we started making plans for the rest of the day.

On the ride back, we came across two Canadian girls broke down just outside the town we were staying. “The rental scooter decided not to run anymore”, they told me as I offered to help try to fix the problem.  After a minute or two, I got it running and followed them back to town. Once we got back to the hostel, we got really lazy and decided to stay around the hostel for evening.

The following day, the girls and I grabbed the scooters and rode out to the caves nearest to where we were staying. Riding down a long dirt road that the poor scooter wasn’t designed for, we found ourselves at a dead end right before the cave. Come to find out that only boats can enter the cave. We trekked back, found a tour boat and started our way through the dark cave. The boat took us about a mile in where they dropped us off and we walked the way back. The path goes around these mighty nature made structures that took millions of years to make. The locals brought in colored lights to eliminate the structures and wall making it a surreal feeling as we walked back.

We got back to the scooters when the girls brought up the idea of just riding around the outskirts of the town. This place wasn’t much of a tourist town and a lot of these streets were mainly untouched by travelers. This became apparent once we got a half hour in the ride. The girls wanted to stop at where a few local kids were running around a hut type building. One of girls took a bag of balloons out of her bag and started handing them out to the kids which became overjoyed with their new gifts. It was at that moment that I realized that that was their home which had no glass windows and hardly a front door and was also their place of work. These people barely had anything,  yet they were happy and smiling as if they didn’t have a worry in the world.

At that moment, it all hit me as if i landed there for the first time again. all the memories that got pushed deeper and deeper in my mind as I was having fun partying with the other travelers and walking through the oldest structures in the world in the past mouth, I started thinking of the stuff in between. The people living in the outskirts of the big cities that i saw while sitting in a bus to my next destination or that I interacted with at a truck stop. They all were just living life the best they could. Even with very little to live with, they were happy and joyful in the fullest. It was funny to me that a kid bopping a balloon in the air would make this rush of emotions come over me. Maybe it was the fact that this journey was coming to a close or the fact that I was blinded by the way I live and I was trying to compare it to life here. Whatever it was that came over me was just what I needed to really appreciate this trip for what it was and also appreciate what I had back at home.

 

Shortly after we back from our ride and we returned the bikes we planned our trip to Hanoi. Hanoi was my last stop, but not at this point because I had a plane ticket to Hong Kong for the weekend (Which is a another story on it own). After Hong Kong, I came back to Hanoi for one more night of my trip. In the end of the long flight home as I watched the U.S. coastline come into view, I shed a tear or two knowing that reality of everyday life was sitting there. It’s funny how just a month and a half before I was sitting at that same airport, finding any excuse to not get on that plane in fear of not knowing what Southeast Asia was going to be like. Now I didn’t want to come back!

 

 

That One Time In Hong Kong

Hong Kong was simply beautiful! There’s nothing more to say about it other these pictures… 

The big city in China.

Of course I had to take a picture of the Mercedes AMG going through downtown!

First meal in Hong Kong had to be traditional.

Even blurry, the beauty still shows.

First taste of home on the trip.

Gondola ride to the Big Buda.

Aerial view of the man made island that houses the famous Hong Kong international airport.

Larger than life!

They’re everywhere!!

Beautiful, but fake.

Beautiful and real!

This was a trail named, “The Wisdom Path”. It was lined with these giant split trees that had random phrases in Chinese engraved in them. There was no translation so I had no idea what they said.

I really wish I knew what they said.

We ran into some locals on the path.

The architecture was breathtaking.

These statues were offering gifts to…..

THIS!! The Big Buddha.

Hong Kong is one of the most colorful cities I’ve ever seen at night.

This building was constantly changing colors.

The Bank of Hong Kong building.

This picture was a bit of story. Me and a couple friends I made there went on a journey to find a tram to the top of the hill overlooking the city. We got lost a lot on that journey, but finally had success being the last people up for the night. Once up the mountain, we walk to the famous viewpoint where I took the camera out, turned it on, removed the lenses cover and it was at that was about the time the bright city turned off their lights for the night. So this was the last picture I took on this trip, which was bittersweet being that I loved this place, but I just ran out of time!!

Good Morning Vietnam!

Best part of this trip is the random act of meeting people. Next time you go to the grocery store, look over to a person in the freezer isle and imagine you will go and make dinner with them that night and become best friends just because you both were looking for the same thing. That’s about the same as what I go through on a regular basis while traveling. I’ll be waiting for a bus, look over at a couple waiting for the same bus and before I know it, we’re hanging out and planning a ride through the coast of Vietnam. It’s literally just that easy! Unfortunately those plans didn’t go through, but I managed to make good friends in the process. 

Getting into Saigon went smoothly, but once I got to the hostel is when it went south for me. The place I booked was over full, so they sent me to their sister hostel. Unfortunately the sister hostel was just their home and I decided it was best for me to find a actual hostel that was closer to my new friends from the bus hours before. Not only did I find them, I was even in the same room together. Somehow I never really did anything in Saigon. I meanly sat around, watched movies and tried to plan the next portion of my trip along the coast of Vietnam.

After 2 days of searching for a bike to ride up the coast, I finally decided instead to fly to Da Nang which is in the middle of Vietnam. I was running out of time and riding would to take a lot longer than what I had. I managed to buy a plane ticket for cheap and got a hostel near the airport for a night so I can figure out what I was going to do around that area.

The next day, I packed my things and got a taxi to the airport. That’s when journey took a bit of a turn. Knowing that my plane was supposed to leave at 3 PM, I got there early and got something to eat to pass the time until my plane was getting ready to board, But at 3 o’clock I noticed they never had any announcements and the board showing all the flights didn’t have mine on it. Not knowing exactly what to do, I just decided to go and talk with some people that work for Jetstar Pacific, which was the flight I was taking. That’s when she told me that my flight was going to be delayed until about 5 o’clock. Not really upset about all of it being that I had no where else to go, I just use the time to update the website off-line(being that there’s no Wi-Fi at the airport)

It was 4 o’clock when I decided to go to see if everything was going according to plan, but it wasn’t and the flight wasn’t going to be in until about 8 PM. They gave me an apology for the delay and even gave me my money back for my checked bag and a food voucher for the same stuff that I ate a couple hours before. There’s no way of leaving the airport because it was so far away from everything else so I just sat there. At about 8 o’clock we all lined up just to watch flight get delayed once more, but by the time I found a friend in line.

I went this whole time waiting for this flight with nobody to talk to because most of them were locals spoke very little English, but there was one girl that was there with very short hair and beautiful green eyes. She told me she was from the UK and that she just started her trip and her flight was on the runway when the plane broke down, so she was changed to this flight. I talked to her for a little bit before we jumped on a plane. She was in the front of the plane when I was in the back so I thought I would never talk to her again. The flight was very short and I knew that my hostel was about a 10 minute walk from the airport on purpose so I didn’t have to get a taxi this time. With my surprise I was waiting for my checks bags to get in when that girl with beautiful green eyes came up to me and asked if I can watch your bags so she could use the toilet. I was very surprised because we just talked for maybe five minutes before that, now she trusted me with all of her belongings. I got my bag and waited for her to come back. That’s when we started a good friendship. We sat for a little bit looking around the airport for her ride that had no idea that her flight was delayed. We found some people going to Hoi An, which was about a 30 minute drive down from Da Nang. She talked me into going with her and skipping the hostel being that there was really not much there and this time it was 11 o’clock and she was sure that they were closed. Now I found myself with three complete strangers in a taxi going a town I’ve never heard of. We got dropped off at a hotel where the two other strangers were staying, so me and the girls decide to walk around trying to find a place to stay being her place was canceled as well. After a while and a really good meal, we decide to stay at a hotel for the night.

The next day we packed up our stuff and knew that we need to find the hostel stay at, but she had different plans and with one glance she said that she needs to be going. That was the last time I saw her. That’s how things go here, you meet somebody that you really enjoy just to find yourself all alone the next afternoon. There’s nothing you can do about it except get used to the fact that that’s all part of backpacking.

  Hoi An is a beautiful beach town with a ton of custom tailors that makes suits and dresses all year-round. I found a homestay, which is kind of like hostel except it’s a house that the family actually lives in and they rent a couple rooms. It was really nice and the girl that work there helped me out tremendously on figuring out when last we can half of my trip. I managed to meet up with a couple people that I met on my trip previously and we all got to get it to go and explore the nightlife here. It was a good time and I even managed to get a suit made while I was there. Although I don’t know why? I never wear suits, but it’s nice to have in the closet and it was really cheap. The next day I rented a bike to ride through the world famous Hai Van pass. So early morning of my last day in Hoi An I threw on a helmet and started riding…
(Sorry for the lack of picture. The camera took mostly blurry photos for some reason!)

Old Temples and Sleepless Nights

Cambodia. To be completely honest, a lot of my journey through Cambodia will never be told on here(it got pretty… weird). But with that said, there is still a story to tell. 

  I flew into Siem Reap, Cambodia at about 9pm, where I had to go through my first “visa on arrival”, which went easier then I could imagine. Once at the hostel, I was instantly talked into going to the bar at the top of the hostel by a couple Irish guys in my room. For about two days that was the most I was doing in Siem Reap. I finally booked a Tuk Tuk tour to Ankor Wut and other temples around the area which started at 4:45am so you could watch the sunrise over the temple. 

  Waking up late, the morning wasn’t starting good. I was so tired that I could barely keep my eyes open and I fell asleep in the Tuk Tuk. Bunny, the driver of the Tuk Tuk woke me up when we got to the first temple and he told me that he’ll wait here till I’m ready to go to the next temple. So after a hour or so later I walked back and he was asleep in a hammock inside the Tuk Tuk. This was how most of the day went until I got dropped off on the west side of the temple and was told to find him on the east side. After going through the temple, I got to the east entrance where he was nowhere to be found. I searched for a hour and a half, but no luck. I found myself walking to the next temples and starting my way back. I walked for 2 hours until I found a Tuk Tuk to take me the rest of the way. I spent the rest of the day in the pool. 

  I was supposed to spend 3 days in Siem Reap, but 6 days later I finally went to Phnom Penh. There is not much to do there other than seeing the killing fields. Not really the best thing on my trip although I wouldn’t skip it for the world. I don’t feel right writing about it (although I just spent 20 minutes trying to explain what it is, only to erase it in the end. It just wasn’t coming out the way i want it to) If you want to what the killing fields are, Google it. You most likely never heard of it. 

  Cambodia was incredible and definitely worth the trip. I did party more than I ever had and made good friends in the process, but before I knew it, I was on a bus going to Vietnam. 

  

Side note: the pictures I posted were of the temples in Siam Reap and they were some of the only pictures I took that entire time in Cambodia! Like I said, crazy times and I don’t even drink!!

Walking With the Gentle Giants

There’s not much to say about Chiang Mai. I mostly sat in the hostel working on the website and figuring out what I was doing next on this trip. I did manage to go and see some Thai boxing with the owner of the hostel that I was staying at. I also got to cross a part off my bucket list and went to take care of elephants for a day. 

  It didn’t go as planned at first, being that they forgot to pick me up in the morning, but after getting picked up by the owner of the elephant sanctuary, I was on my way. 

  It was deep in the middle of the jungles of northern Thailand. Miles of dirt roads finally lead us to the place where the elephants roamed freely. We were instantly introduce to the family of five gentle giants and got to feed and play with them. One elephant took a liking to me and followed me around like a puppy. I honestly can’t remember her name (language barrier) but she was about 46 years old and was very smart. She figured out where I had the bananas and sugar cane in my shirt. Every once in a while I would feel her trunk picking the snacks out of my pocket.   We found ourselves in a creek bathing the elephants and mudding them. Mudding the animals cools them and keeps the bugs off. We spent a few more hours giving the elephants medicine and learning how to take care of them day by day.  


This whole experience was beyond my expectations and I really enjoyed myself more than I ever have on this trip. Before I knew it, we’re back on the truck heading back to the city. Later that night I finally managed to walk around the night market with a Dutch family that was stay in the same hostile I was. It was a good night and I really enjoyed resting for most of it before figuring out where I was going. My original thought was to go to Laos, but with their slow mentality and travel, I knew I didn’t have the time and so I bypassed it. Instead I took a night bus to Bangkok and jumped on the flight from there to go into Cambodia. 

 

Drinking the Salt Water

After my trip through the Krabi, I decided to go with the two Americans to Koh Phi Phi which is a small island in the Andaman Sea. This island was best known from the movie “The Beach” with Leonardo DiCaprio, which (once again) I’ve never seen before. It’s was a two hour boat ride to are destination. Once we got off the boat we got bombarded by people trying to sale us stuff. This is when we realized this island was a tourist trap and really made me want to jump back on the boat back to Krabi. I also ran into a friend that informed us that there was bed bugs at the hostel we booked, so didn’t take a chance and canceled our booking. Now homeless, we described to book a hotel instead and I was happy we did because it was the best view on the island!  The next day, they talked me into doing a boat tour to all the islands around the area. The thing I was worried about was the fact that they had snorkeling, but I don’t know how to swim well. Luckily they had life vests which helped me a ton from not drowning. The only bad thing was that the current took me farther away from the boat then I thought and that’s when I heard the horn blow to come back. Now it was a mad Dash/doggy pattle back which felt like forever. Sucking in about a gallon of sea water and dying of exhaustion, I finally made to the boat where I went over today’s decisions while coughing up salt water. 


  After resting for a bit we floated over a beach that still had signs of the 2004 tsunami. We continued the journey when the weather start to change for the worst and we had skip a couple island because of the choppy waters. We ended up at the island where they filmed that movie I never saw. At the end of the trip, we got to go to “monkey island” where the beach is infested with monkey although we only saw two while we were there. All in all, it was a good tour and we got back just in time to see the nightlife.   


On the last day on Koh Phi Phi the sun was out in all its glory, which was great if it wasn’t the fact that were leaving and I had to go up and down the stairs of the hotel a couple times. Unfortunately all the walking and the lack of water in my system didn’t do so well once I got to the boat and became sick and passed out for most of the trip back to Krabi. I got better at last bit of the boat ride and even managed to grab most of our bags to get off the boat. I made it over to the airport after saying goodbye to my awesome traveling partners. I had to leave the south to go explore the north of Thailand! 

No Reservations

The best thing about not having a plan is that you never know where you’ll end up. My thought was that I would be trekking it up north to Chiang Mai, but then a message from my buddy Ian changed all that. I wanted to sit on a beach since I got here and Bangkok and Chiang Mai was nowhere near that. Plans where changed within moments. 

Krabi is small town in the south end of Thailand and was just the place to Search for those beaches I was looking for. So early that morning I jump on my phone and booked a flight for that evening. That was the easy part, unfortunately the hostel I was booking was not available for the first night (which they informed me after the fact) now I was frantically trying to find somewhere else to go. I managed to find a “hotel” that was cheap in Krabi near the hostel I booked for the next couple of nights.   One crazy uber ride to the airport and the shortest flight I’ve ever been on, I found myself standing in a little airport about 15 minutes away from the center of Krabi. I hailed a taxi to the hotel, gave him the address and off I went. Unfortunately the nice taxi driver didn’t speak a word of English and come to find out, he had no idea where this “hotel” was. We drove around for 30 minutes when he pulled into a travel agency, where he got the agent to talk to me. After a little bit, we found the place on the map. Finding the place that I was staying was a bit surprising. The “hotel” was actually a sort of motel and most of the rooms had permanent residents in it. The room was fairly clean other than the lizards on the wall and the giant spider in the bathroom. I managed to sleep for a bit before they decided to either start working on the room next to me or was cutting up a dead body at 3 a clock in the morning. 



Once out of that wonderful hellhole, I decided to walk to my hostel. That afternoon I went and explore downtown Krabi and got food at the their market. That night I met a few pretty awesome people, two from the US, one from France and one from Australia. The two Americans, the Australian and I describe to rent scooters the next and go explore the beaches down the road from Krabi. This was a first for me because I’ve never been in the waves before. Later that day, we rode to a hot springs that seen better day, but we made the best of it. 


  We rode the scooter the next day where we saw more beaches, climbed a big rock and got caught in a thunderstorm while riding back. We seeked refuge at a restaurant with one of the best food on the trip so far. 


  Known of this was reserved or planned weeks before, it just happened. I think everyone needs a trip like this! Nothing to this extreme, but just something random and reservation free. 

Stomach Pains: Starting Off in Bangkok

  21 hours! 

 That could explain a lot of my journey to Asia. When the girl at the front counter of the hostel asked me, “how was my flight?” I simply replied, 21 hour and 3 different airports. She just nodded and laughed. 21 hours earlier, I was dropped off at the SeaTac airport by my buddy Mike. Unfortunately it was 4 hours early and the wait felt like forever. That didn’t make me feel any better than what I was, being that my nerves where already uneasy about what I was jumping into. 
Inside of a Boeing 777
The first leg of the flight was 12 hours to Taipei, Taiwan where I spent 5 hours eating breakfast at a café in the airport. The next and final leg was a 3ish hour flight to Bangkok, Thailand. Once off the plane, I went through customs (twice because I forgot the immigration forms) After, I quickly found a shuttle to the street near the the hostel I booked, leaving that airport in record time!!   Once I stepped out of the shuttle  and grab my backpack is when the heat and humidity hit me. It was a bit overwhelming, but luckily I met a lovely couple on the shuttle from New York that was visiting Asia for a couple weeks, so at least it wasn’t alone for my journey to the hostel. Their hotel was just on down the street for me. After being guided through the hostel I decided to put my stuff away and go down to the lobby to see if I could meet some people I could go and explore with. I know if I laid down for a nap the jetlag would sit in and I would end up like the time in Amsterdam where l was jetlagged for several days. The great thing about these trips is that you learn from your mistakes. 

The streets of Bangkok 
   I decide to go walk the markets and experience the street life which is very difficult than home. The smells can be good and bad within a couple feet. the drains to their temporary kitchens just go out into the street. Some of the food looks delicious, but every once in a while you find something that was either questionable or just down right disgusting. This is when I start developing some problems, every time I sat down to eat with the group of people I was with, I would instantly lose my appetite even though I was hungry. This went on for about four days and as I’m writing this, I’m still going through it. (Although I have been eating a little bit more than I have been.)   


My days in Bangkok were very much the tourist route. I never did anything to extreme. I managed to go see the Royal Palace one day and got to see some temples the next day. I was prepared for this though, I knew that the first part of my trip would be a hit or miss, but once I get used the way how things go in this country I become more laid-back and start doing the fun and out of the ordinary thing that backpackers do!