One Year Later: Cruising Around Asia

One year ago on July 1, 2012, George and I stepped on a plane to Bali to continue a journey from before we were married. In 2008-2009, we took a sabbatical in Asia. While we were away, I lost nearly sixty pounds; we got engaged underwater in Koh Lipe, Thailand and visited twelve countries in eleven months. It was truly life changing.

After our wedding at Casa Del Mar, where we had our first date after meeting online, we began to plan our next long adventure. In June 2010, we started our first blog and thought about a return to Asia. On July 1, 2012, we left! What a year it has been.

Thank you to everyone who has followed our travels through Indonesia, Thailand, Myanmar, India, Nepal and back to Thailand. Our YouTube channel is now nearly 100,000 views with over one hundred videos and more to come. You have followed us on Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, Pinterest, SlideShare, Twitter, and  YouTube.

We are planning for a wonderful next phase of travels and look forward to sharing them all with you. My parents took a cruise to Iceland in June to celebrate their fiftieth wedding anniversary; my sister and her husband are on a cruise in July to the Baltic for their twentieth wedding anniversary. Maybe we will go sailing to Antarctica or the Galapagos for our next anniversary.

Wherever we go, we look forward to sharing our stories with you. Our summer 2013 Independence Travel Writing Contest is still open! Participate by writing about where you find freedom! Vagabonds from all over our planet have entered with wild tales from nearly every continent.

News from us one year ago:

Our Year Adventure Begins: Three Flights to Bali, Indonesia from Los Angeles, California

What a trip! Three flights from Los Angeles to Bali; with the help of modern chemistry we slept through most of the first 12-hour flight from LAX to PEK. I think I slept nearly 10 hours. I even fell asleep before we took off. Our flight was at 1:40am July 2nd. My cousins, Eric and Krystie, who just moved to Los Angeles on the day before we left, took us to dinner and from there to the airport. We passed Air China in Terminal 2 at Los Angeles Airport because we were so sure we would leave from Terminal 4 the Tom Bradley International Terminal — but we were wrong. Luckily together our two big packs aren’t so heavy– so schlepping back to the other terminal was not too painful. One of the TSA men commented on how most people pay extra so that each of their bags can be over the fifty-pound weight limit yet together we have less than one person might have.  All in all, the Los Angeles airport is an embarrassment compared to other countries’ international hubs.

We marveled at how modern, big and spacious the Beijing airport felt. Not like LAX.  We went through immigration and on the tram to pick up our next two boarding passes. Honestly it was a bit confusing but we survived and we got help from a few officials. The tram and all the other signs were in English and Chinese; we really did not think we had to go through immigration as we were in transit and had no visa. We found a Starbucks had a snack and wandered about until our next flight. We could not log in to the “free Wifi” but we did not have much to say yet to anyone back home anyway.