The Itinerary:

• 2 Weeks in Vietnam – Hanoi to Da Nang. I stuck to North and Central Vietnam since I had spent 48 Hours in Ho Chi Minh City and 24 Hours in Da Lat in the South on a previous visit.
• 3 Days in Siem Reap, Cambodia – I’d heard this was the perfect amount of time to allocate for exploring the temples of Angkor Wat and found this to be spot on.
• 3 Days in Luang Prabang, Laos – absolutely the perfect endcap to my SEAsian travels. Was really glad I squeezed this extra stop in.

 

The long, potentially boring explanation as to why/how I decided to spend 3 weeks in French Indochina:

After accepting a job in Nice, France, I now had a start date of September 1st and my new European life which also meant an end date to my year of travel. And just like that, I went from feeling like I had all the time in the world to see the world, to having very little time at all. I already knew I wanted to spend the last week of June with all of my mother’s immediate family in a cabin in Maine and celebrate the 4th of July with a BBQ with my family in the USA because being an expat has made me patriotic and sentimental AF. I also knew I wanted to come back to the US to watch the total eclipse on August 20th before moving to France on the 25th. This gave me a scant 6 weeks to play with. I faced sad realization that I would not make quite the dent in my Asia Travel Wish List as I’d like.

I had originally promised one of my dearest friends who lives in Scotland that I would hop on through Europe on my way back to SEAsia, but since time was now tight, I decided to scrap this plan and spend as much time in Asia as I could. After all, I would soon be a chic European like her, and so I promised to visit her when we were practically neighbors. However, the very same day I decided this I received a message from her Mother-in-Law saying they were planning a surprise baby shower for her and how special it would be to have a friend from back home be there.  How special indeed. I took this as a major Sign and switched my plans back because the timing of the shower worked perfectly for me to spend the second week of July in Scotland with her and be there for the shower.

Not to mention that Norwegian was having some killer deals from Stewart Airport. Where is Stewart Airport? Heck, I don’t know, but for 84 Euro to fly to Europe, I knew it would be worth my while to find out*. To get the 84 Euro fare I could fly to Edinburgh (and take the train to Glasgow) or to Belfast (and take a ferry to Scotland). Since I’ve been to Ireland, Scotland, Wales, & England, the completist in me really liked the idea of seeing Northern Ireland to “collect them all”. Not to mention my curiosity to see why the British were so keen on keeping this little piece of the Irish isle. My friend also always wanted to pop over from Scotland to see the Giant’s Causeway, so we decided to meet in Belfast and then we’d take the ferry back to Scotland together where I’d spend a week with her.

So this left me with 4 weeks in SEAsia. And since Bangkok is the hub I knew I would fly in/out of I also knew I’d need to spend at least a few days there on either end to see my friends there. I’d departed in December to come back to the US for Christmas with promises that I’d be back in a couple months time when I’d de – it had now been 8 months since then. Also, now that I knew I’d be settling down in France, it might mean I wouldn’t see them again for some time.

So, really, 3 Weeks. Which is a good amount of time to devote to only one country in SE Asia, but of course it’s really tempting to try to see ALL THE THINGS.  I set down to the hard task of prioritization. This is literally my job and exactly what my specialized set of skills are honed for. But it was pretty agonizing. ‘Regret’ is really not a word that entires my vocabulary, but this feeling kept washing over me as I wished I had time to see all the amazing places on my list. I had to constantly remind myself of the wonderful experiences I had in the past year and that it’s not like Asia is going any where. I’d wanted to spend some time in Ubud, I’d visited Bali twice, so off the list it went. The Phillippines? My Filipino friends told me it’s not a great time anyway.  Sri Lanka, Borneo, Taiwan all wound up on the cutting room floor.

Angkor Wat was a “MUST” since it was already pretty amazing that I had spent 2 years in Thailand without making it there already, I decided I could allocate the recommended 3 days of my time there. Vietnam was also on the top of the charts. Now of course plenty of people would tell you you could/should spend the whole rest of the 3 weeks there and they wouldn’t be wrong. But since I’d spent a 3 day weekend split between 48 Hours in Ho Chi Minh City and 24 Hours in Dalat, I decided I could skip the South and allocate 2 weeks then I could squeeze in one more stop. Laos was not only the most geographically convenient, but also completed the set of the French Indochina territories. And I simply can’t think of a better segue between the Asian chapter of my life to my new French life than that. Can you?

So after all that pre-amble, here’s how how I spent my 3 Weeks in French Indochina:

• 2 Weeks in Vietnam – Hanoi to Da Nang. I stuck to North and Central Vietnam since I had spent 48 Hours in Ho Chi Minh City and 24 Hours in Da Lat in the South on a previous visit.
• 3 Days in Siem Reap, Cambodia – I’d heard this was the perfect amount of time to allocate for exploring the temples of Angkor Wat and found this to be spot on.
• 3 Days in Luang Prabang, Laos – absolutely the perfect endcap to my SEAsian travels. Was really glad I squeezed this extra stop in.

Then I found myself exactly 1 year to the day (completely unplanned) once again flying from Bangkok to Seoul. And while the last flight marked the true beginning of my year of travel and I stayed for 3 Weeks in S. Korea and then continued on to 3 Weeks in Japan, etc, etc. This time it was on my way to Atlanta to see yet another wonderous event (the Total Solar Eclipse) before embarking on my next set of adventures in Europe.

But hey, Asia. Don’t like, go anywhere, mmk? Phillippines, Malaysia, Taiwan, Sri Lanka, India…I’m coming back for all of you.

<3

*Turns out that Stewart airport is about an hour north of NYC and Norwegian runs a bus for 20$ that goes directly there from Port Authority. Also, considering everyone else on your flight is on this bus, you really don’t have to stress out if you hit traffic because they’ll wait.