My goal is to keep traveling for as long as I can, so that means keeping to a budget. However, as I’m now in my 30s, I don’t necessarily want to stick to the lowest possible budget options and all the discomforts they come with!

I consider myself a cozy budget traveler: I don’t mind hostels and taking buses everywhere, but if it’s only a $10 difference I’ll take a private room or a plane. 😛 I prefer trains over anything, especially if they have a cozy sleeper cabin!

Some highlights of my travels so far:

• Taking the Laos Slow Boat to Luang Prabang
• Traveling 4 days on the Ha Giang Loop
• Seeing Phantom of the Opera in Tokyo
• Seeing Phantom of the Opera in Busan, South Korea
• Seeing Cats the Musical in Nagoya (I love musical theatre)
• Learning about street art in London
• Making backpacker friends and exploring Jeju Island
• Doing a 3 day Kinabatangan River cruise in Borneo
• Taking the overnight train from Malaysia up to Bangkok

Thanks for stopping by, and don’t forget to subscribe to my newsletter to stay up-to-date with everything I post!

Or keep reading…

My Travel Story

After working and saving for 10 years, I took my first international trip in 2022, at the age of 34. I wanted to make it count, so I planned on being gone for 9 months. I quit my job, sold almost everything I owned, put the rest into storage and took off.

I went to Europe, dipping my toes into international travel by first taking a transatlantic cruise to England! We stopped at Portugal and France before ending in England. I visited the United Kingdom (England and Scotland) for several months, then took the Eurostar train over to France where I roamed around for 2.5 months. This included another cruise where we went to England, Germany, and France!

I ended my Schengen timetable in Spain, where I had an amazing week in Barcelona before taking a transatlantic cruise back over to the Americas. We ended in Barbados, a beautiful country with great beaches that I couldn’t appreciate because I was recovering from getting COVID on the cruise! What a shame…

(Check out my 2022 travel itinerary here.)

Well, I enjoyed my trip to Europe so much that I decided to keep my travel life going, and in 2023 I turned my sights to Asia!

From California I went over to Japan for 3 months, then took a ferry to South Korea and stayed there for just over a month. Next I went to Indonesia via Singapore, where I explored Bali and Java for about 6 weeks. Malaysia was calling my name, so I went and explored both the mainland and Borneo, where I saw some amazing wild animals and ancient rainforests!

While on Borneo, I had a quick stop in Brunei, maybe the tiniest country I’ve ever been to. Back on the mainland, I took an overnight train up to Bangkok and started my exploration of Thailand for just under a month, ending in a cross-country trip to Laos to take the slow boat down the Mekong to historic Luang Prabang.

After a month in Laos, I then went over to Vietnam for (yes) another month, starting in Hanoi and ending in Ho Chi Minh City. I made sure to do the Ha Giang Loop and took plenty of night buses to get around the country to see old cities and charming heritage towns!

Then I took a bus across the border to Cambodia where I stayed for a mere 5 days, squeezing in a visit to Angkor Wat before making my way back to Singapore to fly home to California to visit my parents for Christmas– and to do jury duty.

(Check out my 2023 travel itinerary here.)

My travel spend for 2023 ended up being so low that I decided to keep going…if I started supplementing it with work. So in 2024 I decided to try out digital nomad life!

I’m working hard at this website and turning into a source of income. It DOES mean that I have to adjust my travel style: slower pace (WAY slow), less sightseeing, and lots of time spent at the computer. But even so, I get to live abroad while doing it, so it’s still exciting!

I got another cheap ticket to Japan and stayed for 3 months, split between Tokyo and Osaka. Then I headed over to Malaysia to stay in Kuala Lumpur for 2.5 months, stopping at Tanah Rata (Cameron Highlands) and Georgetown (Penang) for a bit.

Where next? Vietnam again! Then onward to the UK and eventually back to the US for (hopefully) my first summer seasonal job.

• 2022: England & Scotland, France, Spain, Portugal, Germany, Barbados, United States
• 2023: Japan, South Korea, Singapore (3x), Indonesia, Malaysia (2x) including Borneo, Brunei, Thailand (2x), Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia, United States
• 2024: Japan, Singapore, Malaysia, Vietnam

Popular Posts

Here’s some of what you can find here on the blog:

Recent Posts