For what does the city of love and light have to offer a solo traveler?

Love, and light.

You stroll contemplatively. You have days where your only agenda is to go by a certain ice cream shop or pop in to a particular bookstore. You look up at the rows of structured buildings and admire the stretch of intricate, iron balconies placed delicately upon beige facades.

You pick one arrondissement and decide: this is your home for the next two weeks. Maybe later it becomes a month.

You explore the neighborhood, find the cheapest place for wine in the evenings and cafe au lait in the mornings. The pâtissier begins to recognize you as the days pass slowly into evenings. You sit in parks and public squares and watch life and the city go by.

You dine alone for three hours, sit in a cafe with a glass or two or champagne, cherish three courses, and end with a cafe gourmand. No one rushes you. No one hassles you. You write in your journal or lose yourself in thought. And you enjoy every single minute.

Oh! But Paris isn’t for changing planes, it’s for changing your outlook.”

You fill your petit fridge with pungent French cheeses and cheap bottles of good wine. You walk to the open-air market and buy sweet, fresh fruit, or stop in the supermarché to have some tangy celery root remoulade on hand. You make yourself a picnic night after night.

You bike leisurely along the river, or over beneath the Eiffel Tower, just for the tiny thrill of going a bit faster after an aimless stroll.

You greet everyone with ‘bonjour’ and leave everyone with ‘merci, au revoir.’  You overhear conversations in French, and have no idea what they’re saying but you like the way their words echo as they speak.

Perhaps you wear bright red lipstick and little black dresses with colorful scarves or tiny ballet flats. Perhaps you feel elegant just by walking outside. Paris has a way of making you stand up straighter, and also relaxing into your true self. You both care deeply and not at all.

You discover impressive sights, yet cherish more the small street corners or pieces of art or unremarkable but beautiful cafes you never knew you wanted to see. You stumble upon a new favorite arrondissement, and make a note for your next visit.

Paris isn’t just a place for some. It’s a ritual. It’s a song, a dance, and poem that is lived and breathed. It is simple, subtle. It is both refreshingly old and startlingly new.

You connect with Paris because it connects you to yourself. You’re not just there observing through a looking-glass or a camera lens — you are just living. It is both the simplest and most decadent thing you can imagine.

You remember who we you before your heart was ever broken. You love Paris not for who or what or where it is, but for how it brings out the best in you. You adapt — even just for a few days or weeks. You are independent, strong, slow, present.

As a little girl, you always thought Paris was the place you’d go to with the love of your life — there would be hand holding, champagne toasting, and kissing under the Eiffel Tower. It’s a good thing you didn’t wait for that to happen…that’s the danger of letting the world or society or expectations define a person or a place for you. When we simply arrive, let go, and let time or a place or a journey flow, life often surprises us with something even better than we had initially imagined.

When in Paris, go it alone. It is not strange to take yourself on dates. It’s even encouraged that you buy yourself chocolates and pastries, fresh flowers, and fine meals. It’s romance, for one. You can think of nothing you need more in this moment.

Are we romanticizing Paris, even when dreaming of being there alone? Of course. But isn’t it exciting to know that you can live slowly, breathe deeply, and accept things as they are — not as we presume they will be?

Something about the way Paris moves teaches us to reflect it, if we are open to it. We find beauty and peace in simplicity and slow presence, deep thought. We find the beauty in a single moment. And as we see the world, we begin to see ourselves. We find ourselves seeking — and seeing — the beauty in our surroundings, in ourselves.

Respirer Paris, cela conserve l’ame. | Breathe Paris in, it nourishes the soul. – Victor Hugo

The post The City of (Unexpected) Love appeared first on Part-Time Traveler.

Dozens of little coincidences (which go much farther back) led me to open up an email newsletter this morning and read it through. Isn’t that how life always is, a series of sychronisms until they add up to something meaningful? I put it out of my head and went about my day.

Oddly, one of my favorite little quirks of living in San Francisco is riding the MUNI (the bus system and public transportation in SF.) It never fails to be an interesting spectacle. It is always humbling. Yet after getting ready to board a bus from Tahoe triggered a panic attack (due to parallels with what happened in Colombia,) I’ve steered clear of buses whenever possible. It was only because it was raining (and because the cafe I intended to work out of did not have wifi!) that I left for home at that precise moment. Feeling raindrops speckle on my skin like splattered paint, I decided it was time to try the bus again.

Like any good series of coincidences, this story really begins earlier in the day when I opened that email newsletter.  Perhaps it goes even farther back, to my seeking reiki healing therapy in the past few months.
Ever since I had heard about reiki, an energy healing technique formed in Japan (that I learned about in India,) I had remained skeptical of it. It doesn’t compute for me, logically. Yet over and over in my life, whenever I needed it most, reiki would show up in my life without explanation. It’s something I don’t really understand, but feel compelled to trust.
I had undergone reiki healing four times, and I knew instinctively that this time around, in desperate search for emotional healing…I was finally ready to seek it for myself.

Instinct. Gut reaction. Intuition. These are all concepts I’ve been examining closely under a microscope as I reflect on the past three months. For all my confidence in my own, and owing much of my access to my intuition to travel, I still cannot process the fact that I did not see what happened to me in Colombia coming. I sat on the bus for nearly twenty minutes with six armed robbers all around me and not one internal alarm was sounded. I go over the events in my head often and realize that after having been on a bus for the better part of a day, I boarded the second bus only to ‘zone out,’ as I usually do when I am in transit. Still, my intuition has been deeply tuned and refined through my travels. The fact that I didn’t see it coming — it’s one of the things that comes up most as I work through the aftermath.

This is all something that I’ve discussed with many friends, and yes, my reiki healer. (Feels strange even to type that!) So while I receive her emails in a daily roundup that I sometimes read, sometimes don’t…I’ve been paying a little bit more attention to her words lately.

Still I didn’t think much of the message this morning. I woke up more tired than usual, and so even pre-coffee I scrolled through my inbox (guilty.) I clicked through to her post, which talked about Mercury in retrograde — not something I care about or even believe in. As my eyes scanned her words, I stopped to read her story about a homeless man who slept in the entryway near her studio. I more or less skimmed the sentences, noting a few interesting details: his blue eyes, strawberry blonde beard, the blue tarp he carried, and his pet German Shepherd dog.

Homelessness is nothing new to everyday life and consciousness in San Francisco, but when she wrote, “There are some people who you can look at their face and know that they’ve come from a better place, that street life isn’t their destiny, they have better plans for themselves, but somehow they ended up there,” it resonated with me. It goes back to my belief that everyone has a story. Understanding that there’s more to someone than meets the eye is essentially empathy, and it can be hard to extend to someone who has hurt you. It’s another belief I’ve had to reinforce in the past few months.

Despite all this deep thinking, I do my best to go about daily life as I once did. At times I ride the MUNI bus across the city and simply watch the city pass by. I watch as people board and step down off the bus, all the while considering what their story might be. Sometimes, I even catch myself smiling about it. But not on this day.

I repeated a few of the patterns I did on that day in Colombia, actually. I boarded an empty bus, put in my headphones, and got lost in my phone instead of the world around me. When I looked up I realized the bus was full of other passengers, with no shortage of the usual characters. I saw a man who appeared to have everything he owned on his back. He had a rather large dog, and she was laid down in the middle of the aisle. I didn’t consider his story. I simply felt annoyed for all the crowding around me and escaped back into my phone and turned up the music.

It took nearly twenty minutes, and the head of the dog appearing near my feet, for me to stop and consider about what was happening around me. When I did, the connections between what I had haphazardly read in the email that morning and what I was seeing in the moment…started firing off like sparks in my head.
It couldn’t be the same man. It’s not him, is it?

Was the dog a German Shepherd? Yes. Did this man have a strawberry blonde beard? I saw the blue eyes, the blue tarp. The backpack she had given him that he requested to carry his things.

I rushed to open the newsletter again. There it was, “his blue eyes,” “his strawberry blonde beard,” “the black and tan German Shepherd whose ears flopped from side to side.” I wondered how it was possible, what were the odds? My eyes widened. How could the very person I read about with eyes half-closed that morning be sitting in front of me now? What seemed like a character in a story became a very real piece of my reality.

The random occurrence isn’t what moved me. At first I couldn’t believe my eyes, then I dismissed it as insignificant. After some thought, I realized it was too bizarre to be coincidence alone. Something told me it had to mean something. So I asked myself:

“What’s the lesson?”

Maybe it’s not just what happens to us in our lives. Maybe it’s not about significance. It could be as life-changing as being a victim of violent crime, or as mundane as sitting next to someone on your commute. What if it isn’t the details — the who, the why, the how, the where? Hundreds of tiny little coincidences occur every day, but they only have meaning if we are aware enough to make the connection and assign them meaning. When we shield ourselves from engaging fully with the world around us, when we have a mobile phone or headphones taking precedence over presence…what are we missing?

Fate. Happenstance. Coincidence. Connection. These are all concepts I’ll continue to be pensive about, especially as I process some of the heaviness of everything I’ve been through lately. I look back to Colombia and that night, and I think, maybe my intuition wasn’t gone. Maybe it isn’t damaged. Perhaps it was simply…disconnected.

But what did it mean, this random encounter with the young homeless man and his dog?

Still unsure, I read the email newsletter again. This time I took my time, I gave it my full attention. I felt the weight of each word.

In the postscript, she wrote, and I read for the first time: “This is not a political post about homelessness, more a statement on how we get too busy to connect with life around us.”

There you have it.

Distraction. Escape. Disconnect. How much time do we spend distracting ourselves from reality? What really is reality if not fully engaging with the world around us as it is, and are we escaping? Whether it’s something as humdrum as a bus ride in our own city, or as new as a bus ride in a foreign countryside, is travel one of those distractions? I had always believed that travel made us more aware of details, more able to see the connections.  We sitting pretty in our comfort zones or zone out into a world of our own distractions. What are we missing when we fail to fully engage in what and who we pass by each day?

Have you ever gotten to the end of a page only to realize you have no idea what is on the page you just “read?” Much like the way we read, we can live by skimming the lines and being satisfied with the summary. There is required reading, reading for pleasure, and reading out of boredom…yet we always have the choice of how we read (and how we live.) What we get out of the page depends on the attention we pay to each sentence, each word, each sound. In literature classes we called this “close reading.” Some pages of life is meant to be sped through and skimmed, other chapters demand your full attention to extract meaning. When we close-read an ordinary day, it could be a waste of time and energy…or it could lead to connections we wouldn’t otherwise notice.

For me this sequence of little coincidences was seemingly random at first glance, yet felt weighted with significance once I ruminated on it. It was a call to examine whether I’m actively aware and engaged with the world around me, and perhaps to more mindfully choose when and to whom I give my attention and focus. While part of me wants to believe life is random and coincidences are empty, the other part of me wakes up to the possibility that everyday occurrences are more beautiful and intentional than I’ve ever recognized.

There is power in a single moment and meaning in the mundane, if we have the courage to see everything with eyes wide open.

The post Life’s Little Coincidences appeared first on Part-Time Traveler.

2015 has been a year of travel highs and lows, much like life. As I reflect on some of the best moments and destinations of the year, Croatia stands out to me. The country is very much on the rise, and the people are some of the kindest, proudest, and most generous I’ve encountered. The story below offers a glimpse of that. Road tripping Croatia is ideal. Not to mention how beautiful it is…
For these reasons, a road-trip in Croatia is my top recommendation for spring travel in 2016.

This story is brought to you in partnership with Expedia.com. All words, images, and opinions are expressly my own.
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“Welcome to Croatia!” he exclaimed at me, handing me of glass of unidentified liquid, moments after arriving at the Dubrovnik airport.

Rakija, or rakia, was my official introduction to Croatia, to the Balkans. Clear and served in what appeared to be a shot glass, I had no idea what it was — but it was presented with such warm enthusiasm that I thought to myself, I’ve got to have some of that.

The plan was to see Croatia by train with our Eurail passes. When I found out that we couldn’t get more than one train to the places we wanted to visit, the plan changed (as it usually does.)

So we picked up our car and drove just south. Headed for the small town of Ljuta, it was more than easy to fall in love with what I saw next.
“More rakija?” The woman in traditional dress approaches me with a tray. Sure, I’ve had the clear one, but what about the golden on, or ooooh that deep purple one looks lovely!

Since we’re driving, I have to learn to politely decline — but that doesn’t stop the rakija from being offered. And the deliciousness did not stop there.

Lamb made ‘under the iron bell,’ a delicacy if I’ve ever had one. Restaurant Konavoski Dvori is ten minutes from the Dubrovnik airport.

In Dubrovnik we sit under umbrellas, beside stone walls. We sip coffee, then wine, then more coffee. We walk the city walls. We learn about a small village called Mali Ston, with the best oysters, nay, the best food Croatia has to offer. This may be the only reason I ever left Dubrovnik at all.

Dubrovnik from the old city walls.

We arrive in Mali Ston to meet Petar, brother to the man we met in Dubrovnik, who insists we go oyster farming with family.

“My family is very conflicted,” he tells me, with a seriousness that grabs me. “You see, my father comes from the land and he makes Dalmatian ham, whereas my mother comes from the sea and harvests Croatian oysters. Very big conflict.”

This is the best kind of family drama I’ve ever heard of.

So Petar takes us on the family boat, out onto the bay. He pulls a line of three-year old oysters straight from the sea, and within minutes I have the freshest food I think I’ve ever eaten in my hands. To wash it down? Some wine, of course, but not before…yes, more rakija.

Bota Sare is the name of the family restaurant where these oysters are served.

Mali Ston oyster harvest

Fresh as it gets!

Rakija comes in many forms, depending on the region but also the family that makes it. Most are infused with herbs and called travarika, and may have as many as 150 different herbs flavoring it. Each concoction is special to the family recipe, and often made at home.

View from Hotel Adriana, Hvar, Croatia

I traveled next to the coast, where I spent time in Split before heading to the island of Hvar.

It turns out April is the perfect time to be in Hvar — not too chilly, but not yet filled with hordes on summer holiday. We pulled into the main port of the old town, and I settled into this room with a view, one of the most memorable of all my travels. As I basked in the sunshine with my head out of the window, I nodded and gave a quick ‘”cheers.” What with? What else! Rakija strikes again. (It was also served at the luscious breakfast buffet each morning.)

As I made my way next to Plitvice National Park I found myself in one of the most beautiful parts of the country, barely hanging on after the onset of a terrible flu. I sought some sort of medicine so that I could continue on, not miss out on any of the things I had come to see. Or I dragged on, and when I asked about my lackluster energy I told the truth. I was quite sick. Croatian hospitality struck again.

“You know, the answer is simple,” the man said to me.

“Great! What is it?”

“Rakija!”

I thought it was some kind ofa= cruel joke. I later learned that in Croatia rakija is viewed as a bit of a cure-all, thought to ease muscle pain and cure sour stomachs. From then on, it was a bit of rakija every time I felt ill. (And I thought the welcome drinks were generous!)

Walking in Plitvice National Park

I felt better just in time to make it up to our final stop, the capital city of Zagreb. I sat in cafes, strolled the wide streets, took secret walks. Still, perhaps my favorite moment in this trip to Croatia was as I was getting ready to catch my train. I was at the bar of the historic Hotel Esplanade, a glamorous yet comfortable place that was originally built for passengers of the Orient Express.

“Where else are you going in Croatia?” the bartender asked me, after I told him just how much I’d love discovering his country.

“I’m afraid this is it. I’m on my way to Slovenia. My train leaves in an hour.”

“Oh. Well, if you must go, there is only one way to say goodbye,” he smiled. He reached under the bar. I smiled even bigger as I saw him pull up a bottle of…rakija.”My grandmother’s recipe.” He poured with pride, and I drank with appreciation. It may have been my first visit to Croatia, but what started with rakija had ended with rakija. I knew it was just the beginning.

Hotel Esplanade bar, and rakija in all its glory.

Hotel Esplanade, Zagreb

The post Road Tripping Croatia appeared first on Part-Time Traveler.

—

“It seems that the more places I see and experience, the bigger I realize the world to be. The more I become aware of, the more I realize how relatively little I know of it, how many places I have still to go, how much more there is to learn.” – Anthony Bourdain

Similarly, the more I travel within the same country, the more I realize how very little I have seen of it.

That was most definitely the case with Thailand on the eve of my last impending visit. As I approached my third visit to the country, I sat thinking: I’ve seen the beaches. I’ve walked the markets. I’ve visited the temples. In fact, I’ve checked off most of the tourist boxes, much as I disdain the concept.

It is also true that the more I travel, the more I want to take things slowly. I’m not immune to the syndrome of “I want to see all the things!” I still take my picture in front of the Eiffel Tower (or in this case, the Grand Palace in Bangkok.) I still want to feel the exhilaration of standing atop a hotel rooftop, sipping on cocktail on the edge of a famous bar with the city lights out ahead of me.

Yet there is merit in slowly letting a journey unfold, perhaps in a corner of a country that isn’t vying for visitor attention. The beauty of continuing to return to a place is reaching a level of comfort to push yourself deeper, into pockets of the country and experiences you might once have overlooked.

Bangkok yells. Chiang Mai hums. The islands awe you and then sway you asleep into a hammock. What noise did Nan, a small, ancient city in a remote valley bordering Laos, sound like?

I had no idea what I would hear, but I was ready, ear pressed against a closed door, to listen and find out.

Riverside in Lampang

Nan was once an autonomous kingdom, separate from the rest of Thailand.

It is also rich in Lan Na (or Lanna) history and culture, which dates back to the age of kingdoms such as Siam and Angkor (now Cambodia.)  The Kingdom of Lan Na was rooted firmly in northern Thailand, also reaching into present day Laos and Burma. As a result there is a distinct heritage and style found here that is different from the rest of Thailand.

You can get to Nan via thrice daily flight from Bangkok

This flight is via Nok Air, or you can opt for the slow route and move overland from Chiang Mai. Not surprisingly, this option opened up various experiences and exchanges — from small villages, to local crafts, to hidden restaurants, and even more quiet corners. I enjoyed hearing Lampang and Phrae along the way.

Lampang River Lodge, on the road to Nan from Chiang Mai

Breakfast in Nan

The Nan province has a quiet, calming confidence to it.

Perhaps it is its imperial roots, or wild, natural landscape. It seems to say: I’m here, I’m open to your visit. I’m not trying to sell you anything. I am sitting here in peace. I won’t be vying for your attention, but if you come with open ears I have secrets to tell.

There is only one ‘tour’ of Nan that runs to a few main sights in town: the Nan Noble House, Wat Phumin. What a refreshing change to see the sole tour being offered only…in Thai. (Read: the rest of the world hasn’t discovered this place yet.)

Traditional Thai fabric weaving in Long District, Phrae

This quiet beauty isn’t for everyone. But it changed my perception of Thailand as a country. Just as the United States, in its diversity and vastness, has distinctly different personalities depending on where you go and what you’re seeking…so does a smaller country inundated with tourism, where it pays to look beyond the obvious.

Sweet little streets of Nan.

Much of the world is screaming to be seen, and wanting to be heard. Yet it is often in the tiny whispers of a place — when we move slowly, look carefully, and listen wholeheartedly, that we experience the soul of somewhere.

Nan Riverside Art Gallery

So, what does Nan sound like after all? It is subtle. You’ll have to sit a bit still and listen carefully.

Nan whispers.

__
I was a guest of the Tourism Authority of Thailand for this visit to Nan, Thailand. All words, opinions, photographs, and thoughts are strictly original and my own.

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Answer: approximately nine donkey rides, three camel rides…
After spending half the year exploring Asia, the Middle East, and Europe, I flew home from Paris exactly five months to the day I left for Hong Kong.
 

All 79 stops of my five-month world tour, minus the flight home.

By the Numbers

Days on the Road: 154.
Countries visited: 15. Hong Kong, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, Burma, India, Jordan, Israel, Egypt, Turkey, Greece, Italy, Switzerland, France.
New countries: 11.  Return visits: 4.
Miles traveled: 30,673
Photos taken: 8,341
Money spent: $10,382
Pounds lost: 15.
Jobs lost: 1.
Books read: 21.
Visas: 7.
Border crossings on foot: 4.

Transportation

Forms of transportation: plane, train, bus, automobile, tram, bike, walk, boat, motorbike, metro, rickshaw, donkey, camel, horse cart, camel cart, hot air balloon!
Buses taken: 52.
Trains taken: 25.
Boats taken: 36.
Donkey rides: 9.
Camel rides: 3.
Flights taken: 19.
Car rides/rentals/taxis: I didn’t keep THAT good of track, guys.
Different metros/subways used: 9.

Culture

Religions seen: Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism, Islam, Hinduism, Judaism, Christianity, Jainism, Sikhism, Ba’hai
Languages heard: Chinese, Vietnamese, Khmer, Lao, Thai, Burmese, Hindi, Arabic, Hebrew, Turkish, Greek, Italian, French
Different currencies used: Hong Kong Dollars, Vietnamese Dong, Cambodia Riel, Laotian New Kip, Thai Baht, Burmese Kyat, Indian Rupee, Jordanian Dinar, Israeli New Shekel, Egyptian Pound, Turkish Lira, Euro, U.S. Dollar.
UNESCO World Heritage Sites: 39.
Major landmarks: Pyramids, Acropolis, Angkor Wat, Coliseum (round three), Taj Mahal (round two), Blue Mosque and Hagia Sophia, Eiffel Tower (round three,) Sphinx, Petra.
Major cities visited: Hong Kong, Hanoi, Saigon, Phnom Penh, Vientiane, Bangkok, Yangon, Delhi, Mumbai, Amman, Jerusalem, Cairo, Istanbul, Athens, Rome, Paris.
Cooking classes taken: 5.
Temples/mosques/churches visited: unknown. A lot.

Nature

Bodies of water scuba’ed in: Red Sea, Aegean Sea, Gulf of Thailand.
Bodies of water swam in: Dead Sea, Adriatic Sea, Mediterranean Sea, Ligurian Sea,  Aegean Sea, Red Sea, Gulf of Thailand, Nam Song River, Nile River.
Bodies of water skinny-dipped in: None of your business!
Major rivers: Mekong, Nile, Ganges, Irrawaddy, Tiber, Seine.
Animals encountered: Monkey, camel, donkey, sheep, goat, cow, pigeon, pelican, snake, rat, pig, elephant, fish, jellyfish (argh…) sea turtle, and many more…
Miles hiked: unknown. A lot.

Times sick: zero.

Times robbed: zero.

Regrets: zero.

Compiling this list, I can’t seem to grasp how much life I was able to pack into those five months AND…how alive I felt every day!  I also can’t seem to integrate that feeling with the starkly opposite routine my days have adopted since my return.  It’s great to be jobless, carless, even a little careless when you’re running around Hanoi/Yangon/Mumbai/Cairo/Paris.  It looks a little bit differently you insert yourself back into “real” life and find that you have nowhere to go but your couch.
Translation: How do I reconcile the person I was while traveling with the person I am at home?  
So I find myself a part-time traveler once more.  My equilibrium brilliantly thrown off by the greatest trip of my life to date — I’m again back at my desk pondering the balance between globetrotting and rooting oneself in a home.  And I’ll be bringing you my findings here on Part-Time Traveler, so stay tuned.

What are your questions for me now that I’m back?  I’ll be answering your FAQs — including those I received while I was away — next week!

The post Five Months of Travel: A Summary appeared first on Part-Time Traveler.

Adventure that includes: getting lost, getting found, discovering new cuisines, new cultures, new friends.

An adventure that no one hopes to have is…nearly being denied entry at their destination’s border. Especially not when tickets across the country are pre-booked for certain dates, and therefore there’s neither time nor flexibility to reapply for any visa.

It all began when I went to check in to my flight to Hanoi from Central Station in Hong Kong.  From the center of the city, you can check in for your flight and check your bags without having to take the trek out to the airport. (Brilliant! Why doesn’t anyone else do that!?)

We presented our passports at the counter.  The woman behind the check-in desk was silent, typing away, pausing only to let me know that the passport number on my visa letter was one digit off from the number listed on my passport.  What was supposed to end in 3, ended in 8.  The staff began to reclaim my baggage from the conveyor belt, and I began to panic.

How could I have made such a small yet significant mistake? I made the mistake of searching the Internet for answers, desperate for my next step.  “Once you’ve made the slightest mistake on your visa, you can forget about getting into the country,” I read.  I also tried the denial approach.  “It’ll all work itself out, I’m sure they’ll let me in,” I told my friend.

We proceeded to spend the day in Stanley, strolling leisurely through the market and waterfront.  Pretending like my rejection at the airport had never happened.

The airline simply wouldn’t let me board the plane bound for Vietnam when the numbers on my passport and my visa pre-approval letter didn’t match exactly.  The airline claims to have made a call to Hanoi on my behalf for an exception, but even this promise seemed dubious.

What to do at this point?  Questions and scenarios raced through my head. Would I lose my ticket and have to rebook my flight?  Had a really made this amateur mistake at just the start of my trip?  Should I attempt to get an expensive rush visa today, or will I have to wait it out in Hong Kong and reapply online?

There comes a point (or two) in every traveler’s time where luck plays a part in your make or break, at least for the smoothness of your journey.  This time, luck happened to be on my side.

After the denial wore off, we swiftly realized we could try to call the agency that issued our pre-approval.  Would they? Could they?  Was it too much to ask that they simply reissue the state document but change one digit?  It’s not like we had spent weeks waiting for it in the first place…

The odds were not in our favor for this to somehow come together.  It was Sunday.   (Who’s open for business midday on a Sunday?) The visa on arrival papers had a government seal and signature on it. (Can they even produce that in a few hours time?)

Even though I was mildly confident, deep down, that we could somehow find a solution…the thought of my friend moving on to Vietnam while I waited out a new visa in Hong Kong, of having to rebook all our overnight trains, of setting back our best laid plans for the country…tied my stomach in knots.

I checked the email I had sent in with my passport number…and here’s the worst part…it was my mistake!  I typed the wrong last digit.

We called the agency again.  The number went through to a cell phone.  Amidst the chaos of much background noise, he asked us to send the correct passport number and in broken English, assured me he would resend the document.

We waited in silence, connected to the city’s free wifi and anxiously refreshing my email inbox.

As you may have gathered, I made it to Vietnam.  The airline was confused, but they let me board.  It didn’t end there though…

We had pre-arranged for visa on arrival and we had also pre-printed passport-sized photos required for the process.  My friend and I arrived into Hanoi to an enormously long line at the visa desk.  We submitted our forms, including the newly fixed pre-approval letter (thanks vietnamvisacorp.com!) and crossed our fingers no one would notice the mistake on their end.  We also realized…our photos were in our checked baggage, sitting on the other side of immigration.

Feeling quite silly at this point, my name was eventually called by the immigration window.  They pointed out a lack of photo submission.  I paid him a few extra dollars as a fee for them to process my picture, at which point he told me I’d have to wait until the entire line was processed to take a photo.  There were dozens of others waiting for visas.  I’d be there all night.

Facing my second hurdle of entering Vietnam, I decided to make a bold move.  I’d paid for the Vietnam visa, it was signed, and slightly changed on my behalf (phew!)

Note the shady change of the last digit by hand…

So I made for the immigration line with my newly printed visa, correctly numbered, took a chance it would work, and hoped for the best.
I nervously glanced at the officer and waited what seemed like an excruciatingly line time for him to grant me entry.  I made it!

Here are the takeaways from what I’m sure is just the first of many of my travel mishaps that you can learn from:

1. I was told, you’ll be told, but I’m telling you again: double, triple check all digits pertaining to your passport and/or visa.
2. Have the contact information for any visa related communication readily available (email inbox and Evernote are great options.)
3. Be clear about the entry requirements, especially for visa upon arrival.
4. Have US cash available for visa payments (this I actually did right!)
5. Put passport sized photos in carry-on luggage.
6. Stay positive and as clear-headed as possible when faced with last minute barriers to travel plans!

More “adventure” to come. Thank you for reading and stay tuned…

The post The Vietnam Visa Scare appeared first on Part-Time Traveler.

Watch the full video  (including how they get you down!) here.

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If you would have asked me five, ten years, or even one year ago if I would ever jump off of a bridge in New Zealand, or really any bridge, I would have given you a “look” and politely asked you to get your head checked.


A little more about me (to put this in context):  I’m the sort of girl who overthinks everything, considers every consequence, can’t make a decision to save her life, and is (generally) perhaps a little too responsible.  I should mention, if there’s one thing in this world that gives me a physical reaction of fear…it’s heights.
The moment I decided to visit New Zealand, I thought of one thing outside of sheep: adventure sports and adrenaline junkies.  My initial thought when I watched a bungy video?  I’d rather hang with the sheep.
But what about that girl who, despite her better judgment, jumped off the side of a mountain—with only a parachute and a small Nepalase man on her back?  Where is THAT girl?
Oh, that girl.  That was different.  That was a one time thing.  I was traveling solo in Nepal, after thriving in India (by thriving I mean overcoming fears of traveling to India and simultaneously not getting ‘Delhi Belly’…success!).  That was when you met that cool British couple that convinced you.
“I’ve paraglided all over the world, in fact, I own a paragliding business back home.  This is the best place in the world to paraglide, and this is one of the most beautiful days I’ve ever seen to do it.  If you don’t push yourself to do this, you will always regret it.”
Oh, okay…fine.  I’ll go.  It’s the Himalayas, for God’s sake! I remember thinking…that was probably the bravest I’ll ever be in my whole life.
…Ahem!  Pardon me…isn’t this true of bungee jumping in New Zealand?  Isn’t this where it was invented? Isn’t this the adventure capital of the world?  Isn’t it something you HAVE to do?
More about me: I don’t believe in “have-tos” in travel, or in life.  I believe if something is considered a “must-do” or a “have-to,” there’s likely a reason for that, and you might want to strongly consider it.  But it’s your trip, your life—if you don’t want to do something, you shouldn’t ever “have to.”
Yet I also believe in and know about regret.  It’s more powerful than fear, more compelling than obstinacy.
I decide to wait until I arrive in New Zealand to make the decision.  When people say to me, “Oh! You’re going to New Zealand? …Are you going to bungy?”  I reply confidently, “No…[insert some excuse as to why it’s not really that cool.]”  But a small part of me knows, I will probably go through with it.  Maybe.
Fast-forward to December in Queenstown, New Zealand.  Today is the day “the jump” fits into our schedule, if we are going to do it.  Oh, so there’s no need to commit this very moment?  We can take our rental car to the original bungy site of Kawarau Bridge and watch others partake before signing up?
So that’s what we do.  We drive a few minutes outside of town.  I’m a dreadful combination of nervous and excited, but mostly excited, like I’m about to see some new sight from my travel list.  I’m just watching for now, remember?

Oh, god.  There’s a bridge.  There’s a river.  There are these tall mountains.  There’s a ledge.  I watch a few seasoned bungy pros jump confidently off the ledge, head first.  I think to myself, I can’t identify with these people.  These are those “adrenaline junkies”…they’ve probably sky-dived, hell, they’ve probably bungeed all around this country already.  That’s not me.
Then I watch a few “first-timers” get up there.  The staff begins to count down “3…2…1…”  Their face goes a bit pale, and the fear is painted in their eyes.  That’s more like me.  I start to think, “if they can get up there, so can I.”  Of course.
When the voice says, “BUNGY!” the person just stands there.  They begin to shake their head, as if the rest of their body isn’t already shaking.  They may take a few steps back from the edge.  You can hear the staff telling them, “just don’t look down, just don’t look down.”
This whole scenario plays out a few more times, until even I am like, “just go already!”  When these people finally do jump, they half-heartedly jump feet first and flail the whole four seconds down to the river.  They then are flipped upside down, almost whiplashed, as the bungy catches their fall.
I don’t want to be one of those people!
After watching four or five people jump, a rush of confidence comes over me.  I am going to conquer this fear and this bridge; this fear will not conquer me!
I go to sign up.  Once you pay and sign your waiver, there’s no refund—jump or not.  So I know, as they swipe my credit card, that I am IN.  There’s no turning back now…is there?!
As I stride confidently up to the bridge and the queue, the panic starts to wash over me.  The staff can tell, and they are fantastic: they joke with me, distract me, reassure me.

It’s a fifteen minute roller coaster of “I can do this,” “No I can’t” waiting for my turn to jump.

What kind of jumper will I be?  Right then, in that moment, as I stand up with my legs bound and my bungy attached, I am a mess.
Then suddenly, I am calm.  I am clear.  I am still shaking but my head is focused, determined.  I smile and wave nervously at the camera, let go of the handle and waddle to the edge.  They tell me not to look down, so I don’t.  “3..2..1…”
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So, what kind of jumper was I?  There are two sides to every story.
According to my boyfriend, who was watching me jump (and took the pictures, thanks!) the man on the loudspeaker exclaimed “we’ve got a screamer!” followed by laughter from the crowd. So, that’s one side.

The other side comes from my good friend, with whom I met up in Sydney as she was about to journey to Queenstown and was thinking about bungy-ing.  I told her my story and showed her my photo, and she said, “you look like Pocahontas!” So, that’s another.

For me, I resolve that my eyes must have been closed for part of the free fall—because the next thing I knew my face was right up close to the river.  Then the rebound, after the initial jump…that was the most fun.  Yes, I used the word ‘fun.’  But it really was mostly a blur, fueled by incalculable amounts of adrenaline and ultimately, pride.

This is just one example of why and how travel shapes us.  To some, a bungy jump is just a brag-worthy two minutes of your life, or a thrill for the sake of a thrill.  For me, I still reference it as a source of confidence and fearlessness.  It represents proof: proof that I sometimes need to rely on, in the moments that follow in the rest of life (and they are there, more this year than ever) when I have to overcome feelings of fear or uncertainty…and just jump.

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Oh, and here’s what happens if you don’t “Pocahontas” the jump.  It’s called “meeko-ing the bungy.”…

Have you bungeed somewhere in the world? What kind of a ‘jumper’ do you think you would be? 

The post Bungy: The Jump of My Life I Almost Didn't Take appeared first on Part-Time Traveler.

I got out with bites marks on my fins…my diving instructor wasn’t so lucky.

So, I was one of those kids who wanted to be a marine biologist.  *I know, I know…didn’t we allllll want to be marine biologists?*  No but, really, it was the first (and only) time I was truly convinced of my life’s purpose.  In the fifth grade, we all had a “job shadow” report to complete, and me, being the over-achiever that I was am, drove five hours to Monterey (Bay Aquarium) with a friend to be pretend to be a marine biologist for a day.  I can tell you my aspirations to really actually be a marine biologist lasted oh…say….a day…a quarter at UCLA (my first quarter) until I quickly resigned to general education confusion, followed by  the realization that I wasn’t cut out for a degree in science (sorry.)
This long anecdote comes with an epic travel story, I promise.

So I waited many a year to finally get my scuba certification.  MANY a year.  If it were truly up to me, I would have been 60 feet under the sea at age twelve. However, as life played out, I finally realized this dream in the summer of being being 23.

After freezing my tush off in the friendly Southern California waters, I decided it was time to put my skillz (with a ‘z’) to the test on my first international scuba trip, in THAILAND.

But not before asking my boyfriend to also get certified.  It was one thing to be a bad ass terrified at 60 feet under, another to have  good company watching out for your air down there.

He didn’t make it.  No, literally, he tried.  Gotta give the boy credit.  He was massively into the ocean, being in the water, or so I thought.  Poor man was victim to a shark attack  surfing accident that made him feel claustrophobic under 10+ feet of water.

So, I would have to go it alone.  Really, alone.  My first dive trip outside the freezing amazing California waters was to take place off the waters of Koh Phi Phi and Koh Tao, Thailand.  BY MYSELF.

Not a big deal, right?  At the time, I wasn’t much of a solo traveler.  Also, I was kinda secretly majorly scared of jumping in the open ocean by myself with minimal diving experience.  Yet I found myself jumping off the sides of boats with strangers checking my equipment (NBD, right?!) to make sure I could breathe.

Actually, the hardest part is descending and *gasp* ascending.  When you’re in the water, in front of a reef, (as long as you can get your buoyancy somewhat right) you’re in heaven.  No really, it feels like you are floating slash possibly just peacefully existing  amongst the beautiful ocean depths.  It’s the time before (and after, if you don’t have the luxury of a dive computer on your wrist) that’s mostly scary.  That’s when the creepy stuff you breezed over in dive school can actually happen.  But not to freak you out or anything.  (Diving is amazing!)

Needless to say, I was pushing myself out of a clearly defined comfort zone when I jumped off the side of a Thai dive boat in Chumphon (in search of whale sharks, what else?)  I actually switched dive companies mid-trip because the huge dive resort I was staying at didn’t have a morning expedition to this epic dive site, where you dive to the maximum depth (as a beginner diver) before you see signs of life, in hopes of seeing the illusive whale shark in open water.  It ended being an overall better experience, (contact me for more info if you’re headed to dive in Koh Tao!).

Until…. …..

My first American dive buddy/instructor (I think he was American?  He was illusive.)  ensured me (before Chumphon) that we were taking part of a fairly easy, normal dive before heading to the big leagues (the open ocean where I would be totally scared.)  The reef was only 20 feet below, and he would use hand signals to let us know of any sealife (friend or foe) ahead of time.  He taught us the fairly obvious (octopus, shark) and the obscure (turtle, eel) and finally he positioned his hands as if shooting a gun.

…What?  What are you doing, Mr. Dive Instructor Person??

That looks like you’re pulling a trigger.  It means triggerfish, you say?  What’s that?

Oh, the harmless triggerfish.  Like the humuhumunukunukuapua’as I’ve seen a billion times in Hawaii, right?  Okay?  No flesh-tearing sharks or human-hungry predators waiting for me down there?  Let’s go.

I WAS WRONG.

THOSE TRIGGERFISH ARE FIERCE.  And they are deadly.

Alright, maybe not deadly.  But definitely dangerous.

First dive off Koh Tao, the “easy dive.”  My dive instructor/buddy guy was floating effortlessly through the reef.  This is really beautiful, I thought.

Suddenly, he’s making that gun motion.  The trigger one.  But it’s cool guys, it’s only a triggerfish.  They’re pretty.  Pretty harmless, right?

WRONG.

We were told that at this time of year (April) the triggerfish may be nesting.  Great.  But if they get territorial, alls we need to do is swim away horizontally—because they protect their nesting area vertically only.  PHEW.

So I see my experienced, fearless, Thai-resident dive instructor swimming kind of frantically in front of me.  But hey, it’s only this little large, goofy-looking triggerfish, right?  Then I did an underwater double-take.  Those teeth are massive, and loud.  But only for chewing coral…that’s what they said!

All of a sudden I start to panic.  This isn’t normal.  None of my dive buddies, including my instructor guy, are anywhere to be seen.  What the hell happened?  UMMM I can’t deal, guys.  I’m a beginner, remember?!

The fish seems to be following me, waiting to strike.  So I did as I was told when I was attentively barely listening, and began to swim backwards, flailing my fins in as non-panicky  a manner as possible.

Next thing I see is my dive “instructor” with a thumbs up.  No, he’s not “okay,” as you scuba-certified readers realize in this moment.  He needs to ascend.  But we’re only 10 minutes into a 45 minute dive…whatttttt.  I only get a small number of dives in the Andaman Sea, thanks very much.  Not into it.

Nonetheless, I am starting to panic into breathing heavily, and my regulator doesn’t appreciate it.  Not to mention you consume air at a much faster rate when freaking out.  So I ascend at a rate that makes my body happy and reach the top of the waves to see what the heck is up.

HE WAS BIT.  For the first time in his many years in Koh Tao, my dive instructor took a brutal bite to the shin.  And I mean, brutal.  Not just black and blue, but a chunk of his leg is missing.  Some of the other divers were dramatically exclaiming that their bites have a natural poison which can cause paralysis. And the saltwater is having fun getting up in that.  OUCH.

So that’s was the end of that dive trip.  I still did five more dives in Koh Tao.  Each dive however, I was looking over my shoulder, in fear….not of a shark, not of a premature ascent, but of the dreaded triggerfish.

It may be a pretty fish, but it is also feisty.  My advice: watch out for its devious smile and its vicious set of teeth, especially during nesting season.

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