Nicole's Adventures

Althugh I only spent about two weeks or more in Laos, I found it absolutely charming. I entered Laos via a river crossing from the North part of Thailand. I did one of the “bucket list” backpacker epic journeys spending about 16 hours floating on a huge house boat down the Mekong River to reach Luang Prabang. The border crossing was very relaxed and there were no surprises unlike Vietnam. Paid the fees, attached the necessary documents, and was admitted. After being admitted I made my way to the house boat dock. Despite taking the first bus out of Chiang Rai, I still barely made it in time for the house boat. I didn’t have a ton of time to stock up on food. I did grab a sandwich… which the rest of my trip had these delicious sub sandwiches on every corner! Thank you France for the bread influence! Unfortunately my seat on the houseboat wasn’t super comfy and my neighbor had her head phones in the whole day. There was a group of rowdy kiddos at the back but the engine was soo loud back...

Sooo I'm still missing a few pieces of the puzzle on my blog to get you all up to date! I need to blog about Cambodia and Laos. I'm still waiting on a few friends to put up their pictures so I can put together an awesome video like i've done in the past for each country. Time just always seems to slip away so fast and my calendar fills up like crazy! I returned home Dec 17th and again managed to kick jet lag in the but by sleeping lots and lots on the long plane trips, and by staying up the entire night before taking off early at 5am Vietnam time! The first food I ate was a huge Chipotle Burrito followed by a nice little dinner that my mom set up for me with some family friends at Oreganos.. I felt like i've never stuffed my face like that before, and topped everything off with a pizookie (or pizza cookie, a somewhat unbaked cookie fresh out of the oven with ice cream on top). That week I enjoyed spending time with my brothers after they returned from Tucson, a family...

THAILAND! What a land indeed. :P I met a sweet girl named Ploy this weekend at my Ultimate Frisbee tournament in Phoenix who is from Thailand which inspired me to get my blog about Thailand up soon!! We talked about a lot of things and it was really interesting to hear some of the things she had to say and different ways we saw her country. Thailand was insanely beautiful! There is such a wide variety of landscapes, sights and scenery. I flew into Phuket from Manila and decided to book (I believe one of the two times I booked a place to stay in advanced) a hotel close to the airport instead of making the mini trek closer to the main parts of Phuket.. I was soo happy I did that because the beach was incredible! The water was perfectly teal and I had a beautiful long run along the beach in the morning and enjoyed the sunshine for the first time since Ppines didn't show me a whole lot of sunshine. After that I headed towards the infamous Patong to meet up with Daphne! I had no ide...

Hmm, writing about Vietnam is something that I find harder so far than other things. As I mentioned in my frienship village post, I'm currently reading a book titled, The Girl in the Picture which I've been learning more and more about which has made me kind of change the way I think about my experience in Vietnam. I arrived in Vietnam via an 31 hour overnight/ day bus leaving from Vang Vieng, Laos at 1pm. Arriving in Hanoi around 6pm the next day. It was an interesting bus journey for sure. Thank goodness there were two dutch girls on the journey with me. But i'll save the rest of that story for the Laos blog.. I decided to tag along with the girls from the bus journey to the hostel they had booked. Turned out to be an excellent one where you could meet tons of people but it was huge! I think, 7 or 8 stories, a huge lounge, computer lab, outside hang out, a bar downstairs, luggage storage, etc. The next morning the girls and I went on a walking tour of the Old...

I have had several problems with my other blog site, so have decided to go with tried and true google.  I will continue to try and post blogs about the rest of my trip throughout the month.  ENJOY and sorry to make you change your saved links!  Sooo I pretty much would consider documenting my trip as far as photographs and blogging goes a complete fail.. but such is life when you are on the adventure of a life time and don't really want to make time to hit up the internet cafe or borrow computers.  As far as the photos go.. obviously now I wish I had more photos, you always wish you had more afterwards.. but I enjoyed living in the moment and just soaking things in as they came to me. As mentioned in that little mini post, November 7th I started volunteering with Vietnam Friendship Village. I didn't know a whole lot about the organization besides a few things I could read about online. Because Hanoi was my first stop in Vietnam I also wasn't sure what ...

  Winter Vaca to The Land of Mangoes March 13, 2013 Nicole FINALLY! It was vacation time for this girl, after a long long long winter! I dont’ even know where to begin on this post! I guess from the beginning.. Manila! Is a very very busy, dirty, and not nice city where we were anyways. The hotel we booked was near the airport and was supposed to pick us up and they weren’t there.. soo we took a taxi and Chinese New Year was just ringing in so there were fireworks and all kinds of stuff. The taxi driver spoke decent English but wasn’t really that friendly. The hotel, was prettty sketchy.. haha. The room looked clean but just dingy.. but it was late so we went to sleep right away. Next morning, we picked a new hotel, and then went to explore “Intramuros” the original settlement of Manila, and a few parks surrounding the area. It was very eye opening, but nothing really was very interesting.   We decided instead of taking a taxi to the MRT to take a Jeepney h...

  20 Apr The last few months I have spent a lot of time thinking about whether or not I will stay in Korea another year as contract renewal is upon us very soon. Or at least a verbal commitment followed by signing of the contract about a month later.   At this point I think I want to move schools. Some of my friends are leaving so I would request to take their position. They are closer to downtown, and are in a really nice neighborhood with lots of foreigners and near the University.  Anyways here is the list. If you have any guidance or ideas about what I write here, please feel free to advise! Why Korea is Great and I should stay.  Friends in Korea .  I know it’s not the same as my friends that I grew up with back at home. but my friends here who are in the same situation, similar type of adventurous people, and people who are always up for anything, are a blast to be around. They have really made my time here fly by. Bond...