Thailand - Spring Break Trip 1/3

I am back from my extended travel! And there is so much to share, so I will try to give some highlights - fun, struggles, and all! My spring break trip included countless adventures over ten days, seven flights, six cities, five hostels, four countries, three boats, and with one good friend. 😊

Itinerary included: solo in Thailand (Phuket, Bangkok) --> meet friend in Vietnam (Hanoi, Ha Long) --> Hong Kong --> Macau, China

      Like any true adventure... it starts out completely wrong. My first set of three flights were to take me to Phuket, Thailand where my solo adventure would start. This included flying through Vietnam. A U.S. citizen needs to have a visa for any amount of stay in Vietnam, and through my online research I found a (what I thought was a credible) source that said I didn't need a visa to just fly through the airport. So I applied for a visa for just the days I was going to be in Vietnam, which was four days after just flying through. Upon arriving at the airport in Taiwan to take off, they asked for my visa and upon examination said it would not work. I needed my visa dates to include a fly through. 😬 Good thing I showed up to the airport two hours early (I will forever be early to my flights now!), because I sat in the airport and ordered an expensive new one-hour-rushed multiple-entry online visa through my phone. After a tense waiting period, with just minutes to spare before the check-in time closed I received the okayed email, asked reception to print out the paperwork, and made it on my flight. I thought I wasn't going to make it! 
      The flight was great! Landed in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, and followed the queue to get the visa on arrival. Which was pretty simple, stand in line, hand in paperwork, sit and wait, get called to the front, pay $50 for stamp, then proceed to next flight. The only issue is I only had a couple hour layover... and had already spent a significant amount of time walking off the airplane on the tarmac and then piling on a bus to take us to the airport (which is common in Asia I came to find, instead of parking the plane at the gate). After I got the visa, they wanted me to leave through customs and then come back in and go through security again - but the time!! I already didn't think I was going to make it for a second time. So, I asked questions (which asking questions is the key to traveling!) and I was moved to a desk that got my tickets and allowed me in through a back security. I hustled to my gate... only to find it was delayed! What. 😐 I even had a shorter layover period at the next airport in Bangkok. How would I make it? Delayed 15 minutes, 30 minutes, 45 minutes, gate switch, 1 hour... 
       Thankfully I didn't need the visa process for Thailand, but I was now getting worried a third time that I may miss my connecting flight. Finally we lined to board... and thankfully I like to print my flights and hotel confirmations because they needed my confirmed flight out of Thailand before I flew into it. 😅I was on my way. I landed in Bangkok, Thailand and ran through the airport asking workers which way were the connecting flights, and then going through a pass through security again... and them asking where my departure stamp was for Vietnam... 😳After explaining the situation, I again sprinted gate past gate, backpack zippers jingling, and was the second to last significantly late person on the flight. But I had made it. Flew into Phuket late in the evening, was too drained to try and figure out the bus system, and asked a tour service to call a car for me. Bless the car guy for calling my hostel to tell them I was on my way, and upon making it to the hostel, I just laid down and slept. 

     After all this... Thailand really was amazing. In Phuket I went to an elephant sanctuary where I mud bathed, swam, and showered with elephants. It was a truly a beautiful experience! Elephants are giant puppy dogs with sweet playful personalities! 😍

     I made friends some people in my hostel, and we headed out for the evening to Patong Beach and enjoyed the nightlife there. (Though I now know why Asian countries call it "table tennis" and not "ping pong"... for that explanation I will let you figure that our for yourself... be warned!) After this the next day I went on a boat tour of some of the famous Phi Phi islands in Thailand. Including the place where James Bond: The Man with the Golden Gun was filmed - which was stunning! We were able to kayak around at one point, and it was really one of the most beautiful places I have ever been too! Of all the places, I would have liked to have spent more time there in Phuket. 

     After roughly two days there, I flew to Bangkok for just one afternoon. Yes, the song "One Night in Bangkok" by Murray Head was playing over and over again in my mind the whole time, sadly I didn't play any chess though, haha. Here I went to a few different large temples, which were like large complexes full of magnificently decorated buildings and large buddhas. There are many gigantic buddhas in Bangkok. 

After this I went to have dinner and met another person solo traveling, and we went to one of the night markets where I ate a scorpion! 😱Weirdest thing I have ever eaten, and I've eaten some weird things. Very crunchy, and tasted like bland jerky... but I really was so worried about my teeth breaking I didn't really pay attention to the flavor, haha. 

Thailand definitely had the best food I had on my whole trip, and the street massages were so cheap and so worth it! 

Yes, yes, I do understand stranger danger. And I stay away from people who I don't feel comfortable around, I feel like there is a gut feeling that you get. And even when I am with someone I have just met, I try to make it a group of people, I still have my guard up. But I do feel like part of traveling is meeting other travelers as well. And more than not I have found people are more good than bad, and are as equally as wary of other strangers as I am, haha. Nonetheless, it's good to lock your things up in hostels (looking back I would have liked to have traveled with a small lock, but most places have locks you can rent for cubbies), good to always have an emergency plan, and good to always err on the side of caution. 

This concludes the first leg of the journey. The next, 2/3, is coming after I finish my Chinese language exam tomorrow! 

Wish me luck,
Ayla