I could hardly contain my excitement and immediately got in touch with Arash for some pointers. He had traveled to Malaysia, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, and China while in Asia. After gaining some helpful tips from Arash and doing some of my own research, I decided to travel around for approximately 6 weeks, incorporating Thailand, Laos, and Vietnam. The only drawback would be the fact that I would be doing Laos and Vietnam on my own, as Rach and Vinny would be flying out of Thailand the end of October, going back to Ireland. I wasn’t too concerned about going by myself though since a lot of backpackers travel around Asia and, according to Arash, many of them take that same route around Asia—Thailand to Laos, and Laos to Vietnam. I figured I’d find someone to travel with along the way…no worries.
Well, a certain lovely woman I know back home wasn’t too thrilled with this idea. I received a call from my mom a few days later, and in a concerned voice, she told me that I was not to go outside of Thailand if I didn’t want her to have a heart attack. =) She had been my absolute biggest supporter for my trip to New Zealand, had been okay with the idea of Australia, and was somewhat okay with the idea of Thailand. When it came to possibly traveling to Laos and Vietnam by myself, however, she was far from okay with it haha. It was quite cute though. I could obviously see her point, and in order to prevent her from experiencing any further unnecessary distress, I promised to just do Thailand after all. I’m still young—I have my whole life to go back to Asia and do some more exploring if I want to, so it’s all good. The new plan is to stay in Thailand for the month of October, then depending on my finances at the time, I may still go to Australia for a few weeks before returning to The States. Accordingly, my apologies to friends and family back home, but as plans stand at the moment, I won’t be returning to the other side of the world until sometime in December.
Besides once again extending my travel plans, I spent the rest of the week basically settling into my new job at AMP. Jessica was an awesome person to train under, so it made the job just that much better. We started a daily routine of having lunch together every day in the cafeteria, joined by Phil and Simon (who was from another department of AMP). It was nice to have a regular lunch buddy since my previous lunch buddy Sandra wasn’t there anymore =( On Thursday of that week though, I did get to see my sassy Sandra for a few minutes. She was in the area, so she came by AMP during my morning break and we caught up for a bit in the downstairs coffee shop, chatting while delighting on a yummy slice of carrot cake. That same day, I actually went out to lunch with Melissa from Kiwisaver, so that was quite nice as well. However, it did involve me making a bit of fool of myself…as usual. =)
We walked to the Westfield Mall across the street from work and ordered wraps from Ensalada. I watched as the woman behind the counter wrapped my food in some foil, then handed it to me in a small brown paper bag. Well, I wrongly presumed that the food was tightly wrapped up in the foil, so as to prevent any spillages. Yeahhh…it wasn’t. I had been holding my bag of food upside down not really paying any attention to it when Melissa pointed out that it was dripping. As it turned out, dripping was quite an understatement haha; I had splotches of orange tandoori sauce ALL over my shirt, my kakhi blazer, my coat, and my skirt. Smooth…real smooth. After our lunch break, I had to go back to work and explain why I smelled funny =) On the way home from work, I stopped by a couple of Asian food marts that I hadn’t been to before. One of them had actually just opened up less than a block from our flat, so that was pretty sweet. Then, Emma and I spent the evening watching the classic 10 Things I Hate About You. Great end to a week, and the weekend was even better!
Cheers,
Ash
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