And We're Off!

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines, sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover. – Mark Twain

  Greetings friends and family,

Well here we are, sitting in the airport in Taipei Taiwan. It’s been 26 hours since we first checked into our first flight leaving LAX and we finally have some time to begin our blog.

   

Most of you know us closely but if you don’t, here are a few quick words about who we are. I’m Roy, a 25 years old merchant marine by trade and have a passion for the ocean and traveling. I was raised split between Laguna Beach California with my father and Salem Massachusetts with my mother. I’ve been fortunate enough to travel on my off time to many countries around the world, much of it to fuel my obsession with freedive spearfishing.

I’m Siobhan, 23, and born and raised in Salem as well. I graduated from UMass Amherst a year ago last spring with an accounting degree and work as an auditor for a public accounting firm. I grew up dancing since the age of 3, currently teach at my local dance studio, and just retired as a New England Patriots Cheerleader. Go Pats! I’ve had a few opportunities to travel in the past but nothing this extensive. It has always been a dream of mine and I’m so glad to have someone to experience all of this with.

We’ve been together for almost a year now, and discussed traveling and seeing the world since our beginning. We are so drawn to different cultures, people, and just want to see it all! Oh yeah, and definitely tasting new FOOD! After extensive research and discussion with many friends at home we decided South East Asia would be the perfect combination of what we were looking for. The exotic beauty of the terrain, the incredible ocean attractions (above and below water), the unique clash of cultures, and opportunities to volunteer and assist the local communities. We have planned to spend a total of 3 and a half months traveling through Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, and hopefully parts of Laos and Cambodia. We want to take in as much as possible, but we also don’t want to pass through so quick that we fail to gain a true understanding of each place. So what we have done is researched the many places and attractions we would like to visit, and have left our schedule open as a rough draft. Enabling us to come and go to each destination as we please. So with all that said, back to our adventure.

In typical airline fashion, our scheduled Singapore Airlines flight was delayed…..and delayed….and then finally canceled 4 hours later with little hope of getting another flight through until the following day. It was utter chaos with the hundreds of passengers from the double decker airbus plane standing in line, attempting to rebook but a quick maneuver on our part into the first class line, and some harsh verbiage out of Siobhan’s mouth got us swiftly transferred to a China Airlines flight departing at 0200 in the morning. Luck was on our side, we had an entire middle row to ourselves and were able to lie down and sleep most of the way.

We stopped in Taipei, where we just finished a delicious veggie/mushroom bowl of noodles, sweet potato rice porridge, peanut milk and a pineapple beer. A two hour wait, and we’re off for Bali!