Begrudingly updating from Bali, Dad!

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Alright, so my dad has been consistently nagging me with these little one-liner emails to update this freaking blog. Ughhhhhhh. I guess it has been a while, hasn't it?

Needless to say, a lot has happened since the frightening experience with meditation. (You have to... double-up... your spirit... gag me, please.) I booked it up to Chiang Mai with a quick (read: longest drawn out two days of my life) stop in Bangkok and thought I was going to go absolutely crazy the first few days. I couldn't find a hostel with anyone under 40 or.. anyone.. at all (one place I stayed at was like a ghost hostel). FINALLY... I got a tip from Chip (that rhymes! huhyak huhyak) to stay at a place called A Little Bird. Once I found it, my luck started to change immediately. The first ten minutes of sitting down in the common area, I met some Americans (OTHER AMERICANS TRAVELING?! Say whaaaaat?!) and we hit it off. Before I knew it, we were all at a muay thai boxing match and had plans to actually LEARN how to box the next day. I think it goes without saying that we had a grand old time. We basically showed up the next day (after a long night out at this amazing little reggae bar that everyone just knows as.. "The Reggae Bar") to a little old man's house with a boxing ring just set up in his front yard. His introduction included throwing us a jump rope and saying "Get to it." ...Uhhh. Alrighty, then.

Jumping forward... Christina returned to Thailand a few days later, and I was very, very happy to see her shining face!! Following her closely behind was our friend Elliot from England. Our mini-reunion was a blast.. particularly on my birthday!! We didn't do anything too crazy as we were all really tired (especially Christina with all of her jet lag) but Elliot found this amazing, swanky hotel. We crashed the party and found our way up to the rooftop, where there was a little place to sit and hang out with an absolutely amazing view of the city. We sat up there with our backpacker clothes and our own drinks that we bought at 7-Eleven... for about 4 hours! It was a great time though. Afterward, we found sushi from a street stall (way more legit than it sounds, I promise) and we bought a MASSIVE plate of sushi... for one dollar. So. Freaking. Good.

After Chiang Mai, the three of us headed up to Pai. (I apologize, by the way... this is the very condensed, "I don't feel like updating right now" version.) Pai is an awesome little town in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by mountains. It's full of hippies and health food restaurants. There is an AMAZING restaurant called.. Good Life? Maybe? I'll have to ask Christina - if anyone ever goes there, let me know and I'll let you know how to get there. It is awesome. Within 5 minutes of sitting down and ordering, we were in a full on conversation with about 3 people about the different levels of dimensions. ...Where am I again?! If you know my mom, you know she would love it. I'm currently attempting to convince her to move there! =) The town is pretty quiet (but apparently gets crazy during the high season - personally, I preferred the peacefulness of the off-season!) but the trekking is supposed to be amazing and the rafting was AWESOME. Nothing can beat the Rio Pacuare of Costa Rica, but the Pai River is a pretty good place to raft as well. We did a 2-day one night trip and it was fantastic. I fell out of the boat the most out of anyone on the trip, but Elliot topped me.. he lost a tooth!!

Ok, I know this is the worst update ever BUT I just bought a ticket to Australia and I'm STARVINGGG so I need to go get something to eat and process the money I just spent. We actually have some set plans, for once. We're leaving Bali early tomorrow morning for Lombok, the next island over and from there, we're booking it to Flores. We fly out of Bali on September 26th, so we have a little less than 3 weeks to travel eastern Indonesia. We're looking forward to trekking and a whole lot more surfing!! We then fly to Kuala Lumpur and leave that night for Perth, Australia. We met a few friends in Bali who invited us to come down, so we're going to head that way for 2 weeks and get our visas for India while we're there. We'll then fly back to KL for a few days and then go to India!! We're planning on flying into Delhi and then going overland to Kolkata to volunteer with Mother Teresa's House for a few months. From there, I'll most likely head for Nepal!!!

That's the update from here - more soon!! Hope everyone is doing well back home =)

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[K- Anderson]

Australia
Let's put another Shrimp on the Barbie!