TravelGoon

Well, time to go home. In the end, my trip lasted 603 days. I've been to 23 countries and boarded 31 plane flights (my bag was only lost by an airline once). About 10 months were spent in New Zealand where I had 3 different jobs. I've read about 30 books, taken 10 hours of video footage and I'm guessing about 6,000 pictures. And I did it all with no broken bones and only one trip to jail. So I guess I should wrap up the last two weeks of my trip and put this blog to rest. My final week in Sweden was great. It's a beautiful country, and it's pretty cool that it never seems to get totally dark at this time of year. At 10:30 it's still rather bright and even in the ... read more

After 18 months on the road, I finally made it to Europe. My delirious flight from Kuala Lumpur to Vienna went smoothly, after fortunately realizing at the last minute that it left at 2 am on June 3, not 2 pm. Missing that flight would have been such a pain in the ass, not to mention costly. It was a little sad and, oddly enough, a bit intimidating to be leaving Asia. But of course at the same time I was also really excited to get to Europe and it hasn't let me down. It's pretty cool to have a couple of months to do whatever the hell you want on an entire continent. The mentality of travellers in Europe is a bit different than Asia though. Most people in Asia/Australia/New Zealand are long term travellers ... read more

Well, after finally ridding myself of my frickin job (again), I'm back on the road. For the last 30 days I've been bouncing around Indonesia, specifically Bali and the tropical Gili Islands. My first stop was Kuta Beach where I met back up with Alan for the first time in 6 months. Kuta is the most popular travellers spot in Indonesia. It has really good food, nightlife, and plenty of really pushy people trying to sell you dumb shit. It's also a surfing mecca. Not that I surf, but a billion travellers rocked out in Billabong gear and using the word gnarly can't be wrong. So Alan and I spent some time there catching up, wandering around, and hitting the bars. After a few days we went to the town of Ubud which is about an ... read more

But of course, I knew there would be consequences. Complete disregard for any sort of balance between work and play must have its price. Ignoring the need for an income and living purely on impulsive and often completely irrational desire for over a year straight surely cannot go unnoticed. It hasn't. Coming back to Auckland over 2 months ago by myself, feeling very world-weary and with my trip fund depleted, was almost as big a shock to the system as was leaving New York in the first place. I needed a job. For real this time. And not minimum wage either - waiting tables for $6.70 USD per hour before taxes would get me nowhere. It took awhile for the implications (resume) of that (interviews) revelation (desk job) to sink in. It was as if overnight ... read more

We're in Hanoi, just got here this morning after a 14 hour overnight train ride. Since my last entry we have been moving relatively quickly through southeast asia. Alan and I have until October 16 to be in Beijing for a flight back to Bangkok, and we are definitely not used to operating under a deadline. But funds are running low, and I'm not done travelling just yet. I needed to figure out what to do after Asia, so I decided to get a work visa and go back to New Zealand to get a job until I save enough money to do South America. So we've had to budget our time to make sure we see what we want and get there in time. We spent roughly another week in Laos after my last entry. ... read more