Hello friends! I wasn’t quite sure if I was going to include some travel blog posts on my website or not, but when I reached out & asked you wanted to see some images from my travels! And that is totally cool with me because I have hundreds of travel photos that are just sitting in my computer doing nothing. I really should get those printed!

Traveling is something that is so important to me because it truly opens our minds to so much that is outside of our everyday realms. Seeing other cultures and societies, and the way that they live their lives, is such a fascinating privilege. It’s fun getting to pretend that you live somewhere else, if only for a little while. I am always so excited to go on trips, but then thankful to return back home to my bed after the time is done.

Fore warning – these images are a combination of iphone shots & shots from my camera & some of my images are not the best as when I am traveling I tend to focus a lot more on the experience than on actually taking a lot of really great images. I also do not have images from every single place that I went to as my camera is my baby & I wanted to ensure that I kept it safely away from salt water hahah. I do want to focus on taking some better travel images though so stay tuned for my upcoming Hawaii trip blog post!

Last July my sister Stephanie & I traveled to Thailand, Malaysia, and Singapore together. I can definitely without a doubt say that it was one of the most interesting and exciting trips that I have ever been on. Before going to Asia, I have traveled a lot around Canada, a bit in the United States, and to England & Scotland when I was in high school. Traveling within your own country or to other commonwealth countries is still an experience, but it was nothing like Asia. It literally felt like an entirely different world.

We began our trip in Phuket Thailand where we stayed at a hostel right across from the beach. I got burnt within the first 48 hours of course because who needs sunscreen, right? I was a complete lobster. In Phuket we went on a boat tour which took us to some of the different islands where we went kayaking and snorkeling in the MOST BLUE water I have ever seen. My favourite stop on that boat trip was at the ‘floating village’ or Ko Panyi. Three hundred and sixty families live in buildings that are built on stilts in the ocean! They even have a floating soccer field that the kids play on & there is a super interesting short film on the team & their successes.

After Phuket we went to Bangkok to meet up with two of Stephanie’s friends who she had taught with in Abu Dhabi, Sarah & Alyson! From the airport, Stephanie & I took the public train. Now imagine this, a very burnt, very blonde, Caucasian traveler with two huge backpacks on an extremely crowded public train. I was standing because there was no sitting room, just trying to stay alive in the sweltering heat, when one of the train workers walked through the car & saw me standing. He then proceeded to tell two locals to get up & move over so that I could sit. I WAS MORTIFIED. I tried to say no over and over again but he insisted. Let’s just say that was an awkward time for the rest of the train ride.

The amount of poverty that I saw while traveling on that train was almost unbelievable. But it was odd to me because it was a different kind of homelessness than what I have seen here in Canada. All along the railroad tracks were shanty’s built right up to where the train could almost demolish them, but in most of these shanty’s were TV’s with cable! It was the strangest thing.

We stayed in a really cute hostel in Bangkok called the T-Boutique Hostel, but all in all, Bangkok was not my favourite & I don’t think I would ever go back.

From there, we traveled over night by train to Chiang Mai. Chiang Mai was a super cool, super old, city that i wish we could have spent more time in. For this whole trip, we were only gone about three weeks. It seems like a long time, but not when you are traveling to different places & the travel takes up a lot of time!

Next up we traveled to Pai! Pai is this cute little hippy traveler town even further north than Chiang Mai. To get there, you must take a road that has 762 winding, hairpin, narrow turns through the mountains. I am not a person who typically gets car sick, but I felt pretty nauseous throughout that whole drive.

While in Pai, Sarah & Aly & I decided to get tattoos. YES MOM we did our research & made sure that the place we were going to was sterile & safe. I don’t have any pictures from the rest of that evening because somehow we decided that it would be a good idea to go to a bar far in the jungle with a bunch of strangers. SORRY MOM.

Back in Chiang Mai we went on a trip to Elephant Nature Park which is a sanctuary and rescue park for elephants. Now THIS was my most absolute favourite part of the entire trip. Getting to spend the day with these incredible creatures was such a privilege. We got to feed them, take them in a mud bath, and then rinse off with them in a stream. I even go to feel a pregnant mamma’s belly! This experience is actually so hard to put into words & you should probably go check out the video I created from the day to see just how amazing it was! Seriously, click the video link to have some elephants brighten your day.

And lastly we travelled to Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia for a few days, and then to Singapore to end our trip. We said goodbye to Sarah and Aly who headed off on another adventure. Stephanie & I only had about 13 hours in Singapore to sleep & see as much as we could, and we really made the best of it by visiting Gardens by the Bay for a beautiful rooftop dinner & Merlion Park. 

All in all, this is a trip that I will never ever forget & I am so glad to have shared it with my sister, Sarah, and Allison! Now I keep bugging Tanner that we need to go back because I want him to experience everything that I did!

This was kind of a long worded posting but I hope that you enjoyed reading it & checking out some of the photos that I took! Let me know down below if you liked this, because if you did, I have many more photos from our previous two trips to Hawaii. Hawaii has a piece of my heart & I would love to share it with you you! Thanks for reading!