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!
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