Jasmine Wanders

Creating this blog has made me think about all the awesome, memorable times I’ve had on my travels.  My favorite experiences are always mingling with locals and my experience with animals (riding elephants, laying with tigers, feeding wild monkeys, holding snakes, etc.).

One of my favorite memories is when I was in Hoi An, Vietnam.  Every day I would take a motorbike to Cua Dai Beach and chill.  It was low

The most memorable part of Saigon for me is the traffic… imagine trying to cross a road with 15 motorbikes in a row traveling one direction, and another 15 forming a row going the other direction.  If I wasn’t hiding behind locals, I waited for 20, 30 minutes and held my breath while crossing, too afraid to look

In Phnom Penh, we went to visit the S-21 death camp where Pol Pot and his regime killed thousands of people, then went to the killing fields were mass graves were made.

Sihanoukville is a small, chill place to hang out for awhile.  Lots of westerners working in the bars and restaurants though, which was weird.  We got extorted by the police who demanded $10 from us for driving a motorbike

I wish I could label all of these properly, but I don’t remember the names of all the temples.  It was a really long day.  The tuk tuk driver met as at the guest house at 4:30 a.m. and we stayed out for about 12 hours exploring all the temples.  A friend of mine gave me a great tip to avoid the hordes of tourists – ask the tuk tuk

After taking a night bus from Vientiane in Laos to Savannakhet, then waiting at the bus stop for 6 hours in a state of delirium, I pushed on for another 8-hr bus ride to Hue.  Hue is a pretty city, with the Perfume River flowing through it.  The locals are friendly and talkative, and if you walk outside the main tourist area, the locals stare at you wondering if you’re

The highlight of Siem Reap was definitely the Temples of Angkor.  Aside from that, it’s a nice town with some other temples around other than Angkor, and another site of the Khmer Rouge horrors

Luang Prabang is a gorgeous UNESCO city with temples everywhere.  While I was eating breakfast one day, a Laos girl walked up to me and tried to sell me a bracelet.  I’m a pretty hard sell, but she sat down and I started asking questions about her life.  In the end, she got me to buy her a mango shake, and I ended up getting a bracelet… but I did

From Chiang Khong in Thailand, I took a 2-minute boat ride over the Mekong to the Laos border.  Then I took a minivan to Luang Nam Tha, which is a one-road town that has the best Laos coffee ever (coffee to condensed milk ratio was perfect).  Then I took a chicken bus (there was a live chicken in a bag on the top of the ’82 Toyota van) for the