It's been awhile since I have caught you guys up! I'm excited to have carved out a little time to write!
I am finally back in Italy for the next month and excited to have some consistency!
I've written a few notes since leaving Thailand and the Philippines which I will leave here, in sequential order and add my own notes too!
So many incredible people have come and gone into my life in the last few months, and for that I am incredibly grateful.
So, Feb 23rd I had my flight from BKK to Milan:
I’m on the last leg of my flight from BKK to Milan. Honestly this day snuck up on me. I’m not sure how the time passed so quickly, but it also felt like an eternity again.
I feel like I spent so long on Koh Phangan at the time and now it’s like a distant memory. It’s wild to me.
I don’t want to forget Srithanu in my head and whipping around on a moto to get to the beach. I don’t want to forget staying up late to work listening to the waves or opening the bar. I don’t want to forget paddle boarding with 4 people or watching people play in the bioluminescent algae at night.
I am so glad I lived through all of that. That I’ve learned and am learning these valuable lessons about life and people. I’m proud of myself for the mental growth I’ve done here, I was a completely different human coming back to Bangkok this last time. I wasn't scared of the city or getting lost. I knew where to go and what I wanted to do. The metro felt like any other metro and I felt like a whole bag of confidence.
Half of me thinks that having stability now would be nice but I’m also so enjoying the thrill of traveling around.
I’m so sad that I’m wearing a sweatshirt right now and I’m not boiling hot. What a tragedy. I did manage to skip most all of winter though so I’m proud of myself for that. In hindsight maybe I would have stayed one more month to avoid even an ounce of cold, but I was already so nervous about 3 months I think it would have been too overwhelming as an initial commitment.
This will be good though, I can tell you I’m not looking forward to the prices again in Italy. That’s a drag for sure, it was so stupid cheap in Asia. I’ll miss the noodles, and I’ll for sure come back soon.
Back in Italy for a week:
Being back in Italy has been super weird. There’s a strange dynamic that happens when you return to a place that feels familiar, landing in Italy after the culture shock of Asia felt safe. I hopped right back into the language like I had never left and riding the train made me feel like I had only been gone for a few weeks.
It seems to me that our brains work very interestingly when it comes to time. Vivid memories fade, and maybe the sheer volume of experiences is a lot for my brain to handle but it seems like I have lived through at least a year these last few months. Time keeps skewing. Im enjoying pasta and espresso again finally, and I couldn’t be happier.
Dubai and India:
So, I have returned, yet again to Italy, the homeland. The last 2 and a half weeks were amazing. I was minutes away from changing my flight and staying in India forever. The team I get to work with, online, was so super cool and I am grateful I got to meet them.
Dubai was so beautiful, it filled me with a sense of hope and abundance like nothing has before. The vast amount of wealth and success there really raises the entire energy. Its clean and one of the safest places in the world. It was so amazing eating all of the hummus and BBQ, salad, and so many other delicious foods. The spices and flavors there are unreal.
Our company organized quite a few activities for us, to make up for the time we spent in meetings in a hotel room. We went “Dune Bashing” which properly sums up the experience. We took big white land cruisers into the desert and drove on the GIGANTIC sand dunes. The drivers have to go through special training to know how to navigate the sand without rolling or sliding. It was an understatement to say that we were jostled around a bit.
We also got the chance to go to Atlantis water park, and go on a fun dinner cruise too! When I can afford it, I will be going back for sure!
India is completely the opposite of Dubai in so many ways. Landing there was awesome, we had our whole team with us, and I didnt have to worry about any of the normal logistics that I would when landing in a third world country. We had Ubers arranged, SIMs picked up, ATM’s provided and an apartment arranged. Although it wasn't LUXURY, it was still so nice to have a safe home base.
We slept most of the first day and then made our way to the Taj Mahal, and by “made our way” I mean we stayed up until 2:15 am, got into the car that we had arranged from our Uber earlier that day, and took off on a 4 hour journey. Now, I wish that car rides in India were just car rides, but they are entire feats in themselves. The cars look like they are normal sized, but somehow when you get inside of them, they shrink. There's no such thing as a flat road there, or a quiet one at that. Each road has an obnoxious amount of these 5 tiered speed bumps, holes, or piles of dirt. Not only that, but you can add cows and stray dogs to the list of obstacles that you get to avoid. People use their horns like a second language, and I have never heard such a wild array of horn noises in my life; I’m going to look into installing one in my car when I get back to the USA. Some of them sang entire songs, I swear. The volume of people on the road, even during the wee hours of the morning was astonishing, we hit traffic at 6am, right after we stopped for morning Chai.
The Taj was well worth it, along with an incredible Red Palace and Mosque we visited.
Other than that, we worked a lot to catch up from Dubai, and we drank a LOT of tea. Indians really do have the best food, even if it can mess with your digestive tract.
So here we are, back again in Italy. I’m happy and excited to see what this next month brings. At the end of the month I'll be surfing in Spain with some of my italian friends and I’m so excited.
I need to start doing more push ups to prepare.
Thanks for reading guys, let’s catch up soon if we haven’t recently. I am always just a video call away. Miss you all dearly.
