It’s both hard to imagine that it’s been two entire weeks since we departed on our journey, and that it’s only been two weeks since we’ve departed. I figured (Sophie was not involved in this choice) that a biweekly-ish update is probably a good idea. We’ll see how long I (or we) keep up with this frequency.

Anyway, here’s what we’ve been up to for the last two weeks.

Arrival in Singapore

The first stop of our trip was Singapore, where we spent about five days. Singapore is pretty much on par with any major city in the United States when it comes to price, so our diet almost exclusively consisted of food from Hawker Centers. For the uninitiated, Singapore makes all of its street food vendors work out of centralized centers, called Hawker Centers. The meals here are pretty cheap, usually about $15 (US) for the two of us, and incredibly delicious. Our hotel was located in Little India and our nearest Hawker Center had mostly Indian food. We pretty much went every day.

The highlights of our time in Singapore were seeing some friends that I met while in college and going to Bird Paradise, which we decided to go to since Sophie has recently selected birding as her 30s hobby. Bird Paradise is near the zoo in Singapore, which is located close enough to the border with Malaysia that Sophie’s phone thought we were in Malaysia. It consists of a few areas that are covered in large nets where the birds can freely roam around. Honestly, it was one of the coolest zoos I’ve ever been to, and I think that Sophie quite liked it as well.

Arrival in Thailand

Because we didn’t want to spend a year’s worth of budget in about three weeks, we decided we needed to leave Singapore. Our first stop in Thailand was Ao Nang Beach in the Krabi province. It was a quick one hour flight from Singapore on Singapore’s budget airline, called Scoot, which refers to their employees as Scooties.

A trigger warning for anyone in the United States who is currently under two feet of snow or braving subzero temperatures… we spent three days on the beach.

The first two days were spent relaxing on nearby beaches and not doing much. The beaches in question were Ao Nang Beach and Railay Beach. Railay Beach is only accessible via a ten minute boat ride from Ao Nang.

When you’re in Ao Nang, pretty much everyone and their mother is trying to sell you tickets to the “four island tour” in which the boats bring your around the bay to four different islands. At this point in our stay we were growing pretty tired of the crowds in Ao Nang and only imagined that the four island tour would involve being herded around like cattle, so we instead decided to pick one island and go only there instead. The island of choice was called Ko Poda.

Let me tell you. This was the best choice that we made. After a thirty minute boat ride, we arrived at Ko Poda to discover that we were two of probably about 30 people on the island. The morning was incredibly relaxing and the beach was gorgeous.

The four island tour group did eventually make it to Ko Poda, and we suddenly found ourselves with about 50,000 new friends. Needless to say, I think we made the right choice.

Khao Sok National Park

From Ao Nang, we took a van about three hours north to the village of Khao Sok. Somewhere online, there is a review of the town of Khao Sok that complains that there is nothing to do in Khao Sok. This is incorrect, because there is exactly one thing to do in Khao Sok: go to Khao Sok National Park. And this is what we did.

We booked an overnight tour into Khao Sok National Park. We were picked up from our hostel at about 9am and driven into the park where we got onto a boat (quite the common form of transportation in Thailand) that went into the massive lake at the heart of Khao Sok. After about an hour on the most uncomfortable and wettest boat ride of our lives, we arrived at the floating bungalows where we would be spending the night.

This was the highlight of our trip thus far. We got to kayak around the lake, trek through the jungle, watch the stars over the bungalows, and not get eaten by giant spiders. 10/10 would recommend.

Our next stop is the island of Ko Samui, which is an island in the Gulf of Thailand. Our understanding of the island is that it is a pretty calm island most of the time, and is quite popular with wellness influencers, but it transforms for a couple nights every month when they host their famous full moon parties on a nearby island. Thankfully for us, it is not time for the full moon party.