Naturally, right after I get back into the groove of blogging regularly, I leave for a two week holiday and don't post ANYTHING for a really long time. This is my first holiday here that I haven't brought my laptop on, and while I feel a bit naked, it's been really liberating (and good for my shoulder to boot). I was planning on blogging a bit from my Kindle Fire, but the interface with Blogger doesn't let me add content into a new post for some reason. So boo to that.
In other news, my holiday so far has been phenomenal and completely reinforcing the fact that I cannot go back to live in the States (sorry mom). I met a friend from Songyuan on June 25th, and my plan was to travel with her for about six days, and then meet up with a friend of mine from the States that's on holiday here as well and bounce around with him for another week or so. I started in Siem Reap, Cambodia where my friend from Songyuan and I actually met up with my friend from the States there too.
We spent three days in Siem Reap, two days in Battambang, three days in Phnom Pehn where my Songyuan friend departed and yesterday we crossed into Laos to head to 4,000 Islands. In Battambang we picked up a lone, stray traveler who was actually teaching English in South Korea, and she just left us this morning as well. And then there were two.
I came on this trip with absolutely zero plans or even vague ideas of things I wanted to see. My friend from Songyuan was meeting me coming off a month of traveling southeast Asia with her boyfriend and his mother, so I had no idea what she was going to be up for. My friend from the States is actually an ex and is traveling here for about two months with a pretty specific itinerary and set list of things he wants to do, so I figured I was set. I didn't even have a ticket back to China until a few days ago.
It feels like I've been traveling for so much longer than I actually have, and I've had so many amazing experiences in the past 10 days. When I get home and back to my laptop I'll have tons to post and some ridiculous pictures to share as well.
Even just living in China, at some point almost every day I look around me and think, "This is my life," and am constantly struck by how happy I am and how coming over here was the best decision I have ever made. On this trip, that feeling is almost constant.
