Lately I’ve been having people ask me how I made the decision to leave home.  It wasn’t easy, and a lot of thought and planning went into it, but the turning point came when I stumbled upon this quote.  Cliche?  Maybe.  But I scribbled it down in my planner and kept returning to the phrase […]

I hate saying it, but I felt kind of apathetic about the New Year.  I didn’t even hear the countdown to midnight though I was in the center of it all in Chiang Mai – one moment I knew it was getting close to 12:00 and the next moment fireworks were going off – but […]

I first visited Thailand more than three years ago for a quick trip.  Before those two weeks were even up, I already knew that I wanted to return and spend more time soaking up this country.  It felt so alive – dirty and beautiful – somewhere that felt completely new to me but where I […]

Oof. A lot has happened between when I first published this post and now, and I am definitely not with the same person. While I should update the post, let’s be honest, I’m not getting around to it anytime soon, and there are still a lot of relevant points. so, enjoy. There’s a stereotype in […]

When I first came to Thailand I thought I might be gone for about a year – teach a little bit and travel around SE Asia, then head to Australia and New Zealand, and ideally make my way home via Europe.  That was in May 2011. Instead, I haven’t even managed to get out of […]

I did it. I started my own blog. I have mixed feelings about this, and blogs in general to be quite honest, but here I am. If you’ve been following me at Wanderlust and Lipstick, you already know that I’m originally from Seattle but have been living and traveling around Southeast Asia for the past […]