Adios 2016! It was a good but challenging
year. Here's a flashback at the travels
that I've done so far,
best and worst moments. And I did
conceive of it or start filming it when
i was in the tail end of 2015 starting
my journey my three-month trip to
Thailand, Taiwan, Borneo, and india. At the
beginning of 2016
even though i was already on the road I
really wasn't sure how I was going to
make travel happen for me or how I was
going to afford it. Fortunately and by
the good graces of God travel happened. This
is about those little things that can
make or break your travels when you're
on the road and highlights of my best and
worst moments of this span of travel!
First i'm going
to show you the worst of my travels. I
just got through immigration and there
was a problem. i had overstayed two days
in Thailand. You're only allowed thirty
days and completely forgot because I
was a little too comfortable. They
stopped me at immigration and i had to
pay 1,000 baht. It's
around
thirty-three dollars. Sometimes, I can start
feeling too comfortable in a country
and i think when that happens, I had
to take for granted that I i know the
rules and stuff and I actually forget the rules.
My trusty day pack which carries all my
equipment for my laptop to my DSLR
cameras ...broke.
it's just the zipper part. But if you're
traveling, the last thing you want to do
is have a piece of equipment that's very
primary to your needs a break down on
you. I'm in Taiwan right now... I need a
decent simple hikers backpack has
been kind of hard. I've got this nice semi designer one,
which is not quite functional, but its
going to carry all the
things I need to carry and it was like roughly
around 390
dollars Taiwanese
So that's $12 U.S.. This is like really cheaply
made. So note to travelers~ if you ever need
a backpack or nice quality bags that's durable and rugged
This is not your place. Then i bought a
second daypack in Bangkok and that
broke within two weeks. Thus, the last
place I expected to buy a daypack happened
to be Kuching, Borneo and it's still
lasting me today . Worst~ went to the
dentist and discovered or was told that
I needed a dental implant and that was a
huge bummer to me because I was
already feeling the wallet pinch at the
very start of my vacation. Best for
wisest option is to get an implant. It
would cost me roughly around eighty
thousand baht which in american dollars
is
2265 dollars! I was price checking how much
it would cost for dental implant in Phuket
and it was significantly cheaper ...like
four hundred dollars cheaper. A lot of
you thought I got sick in india and off
of street food, right?
No it was a Chinese buffet restaurant
that was taken to on a daytrip in Chiang
Mai. My knuckles feel sensitive. My chest feels sensitive. I'm nervous
that I might pass out at any moment because that's how
my dizziness has been feeling..
I feel like I'm pregnant
Bloated, definitely bloated.
Worst~ i contracted this weird foot
fungus. Iwent to get a pedicure like
three weeks ago in Bangkok and my foot started
peeling and just didn't stop peeling.
It's like the third week already.
And now I'm starting to get on the other side
too!
After trying many different types of
creams it eventually went away but like
I still don't even know what that was!
The worst tour that I've ever
experienced in my life was a speed boat
tour to the Phi Phi islands. The sites were
gorgeous and you'll see that by my videos
but it was the worst and most dangerous
ride of my life! And with all the local
transportation I use when I travel
that's saying a lot!
Like Sea Mites or Sea Lice.
And theyre kind of like they're tiny
microscopic microorganisms they
kind of like bite at you.
Apparently every sea has them but I've
never experienced that in Hawaii. This is the first
time experiencing it. I was in a
snowstorm!!! Holy mackeral. I'm just squatting at this point.
And yet people still have time to take selfies.
I like the cold, but I'm never prepared for it. I was ill-prepared
for traveling during the winter to Jilin
in China. I hated myself for it. I have
experienced winter before, just not
that daily and regular and snowy degree.
Expect to have a winter packing video
within the next month or so. Now i'm
going to show you the best of my travels!
With trekking there was an element of danger and yet
it was like one hundred percent natural
beauty. I saw stalactite and stalagmites,
bat, some silkworms ...it was a
rugged adult Disneyland. What is a liveaboard experience?
i finally got to find
out. That was another insane experience
that i'm so glad that i got myself to do--
it was two days and three nights of
living on a boat and just diving three
times a day. I got to see different types
of marine life , different types of
oceanic terrain and the company i went
with was just so good like in terms of
you know being a lot more eco-conscious
about the environment that they're going
into and taking tourists into . I
experience four of my biggest bucket list
festivals, within the span of a month.
I had Yi Ping festival ,... the
Phuket vegetarian festival in Phuket ....
Diwali in Varanasi India and Pushkar
camel fair in Pushkar.
I spent three days and two nights in
Bako National Park and that was my best
best best best best jungle safari
experience in my life! That's something i
would recommend to anyone and everyone
it was just like in a heartbeat!
I took six transfer vehicles at one
point I even got picked up by school bus.
I saw amazing sights, we drove down
really tight and narrow roads and
I definitely surpassed my record of
using the most amount of transportation
vehicles in one journey. It was definitely
one of my travel highlights of india.
Look out for that video to come in 2017
It's already being worked on and it's
almost close to finished . ... That was well
organized, it had good English speaking
guides and variety of foods they took us
to. It was perfectly done. Perfect. My
second best food tour was in calcutta
where it was a local experiences as a
volunteer voluntary food tour and my
guide was awesome and amazing. She
introduced me to so many street foods
that i wanted to try but I was chicken
about it. It opened the world of food for me.
The best ~ I got invited to a press trip
with other influencers to Qinghai.
China and it was my first time going to
China. It afforded me a Chinese visa ...
the 10-year Chinese visa. It was just really
nice to to meet other people like myself
as well. I travel alone and that's not the
lonely part... the lonely part is actually
when I take all my content and I have to
like go into my little GRRRL cave and
start assembling them and and trying to
figure out where i can get
opportunities for more travel . My friends
and family, they don't know how much work
goes into like vlogging on youtube or
blogging or being on Instagram. Only
other travel influencers know the madness
that goes on. Being around other
influencers just kind of opened my mind
to how other people are running the
business how they are forming the
travels that they do how they make it
all work so that they're making, you know
a decent amount of income from their
work without compromising their work or
their audience and that's the most
important thing. Like you guys are very
important to me
and my content and what I stand for in a
GRRRL TRAVELER is very important me. It's
just like a god send. It's like going to
school on a bus where we got to see
China. It was nice to finally just be a part
of a group where I didn't have to plan
everything and like worry about my
budget. There are times I just like to
take a break and I'd like to be on tour
and not have to worry about figuring out
out how to get around so I can film it.
From that press trip, i also met another
Youtuber who I will be having my first
collaboration with! A collaborative
video ...but overall Qinghai was just
like a really beautiful area it was like
Tibetan with Muslim influence and I feel like
it was a really new experience for me!
Because of the culture and the yaks... they
have a lot of yaks. Hope you enjoyed this
video let me know what some of your best
or worst moments were in travel this
year!
Leave them down in the comments section
below the thumbs up or a like subscribe
to my channel if you haven't subscribe.
Also remember that I post the written
version of whatever video guide i'm
doing on my my travel blog, so get out there!