Markestorp

This is our little yellow country house. I absolutely love it here. We’re so lucky with the weather which, in Sweden, makes all the difference – sun, blue skies and it’s not too hot nor too cold. It’s perfect.

I sit out in the sunshine every morning for my breakfast. I listen to the birds and I watch the cats trying to catch them (which they never do).
I read books and I eat. One thing I miss a lot while living far too many years with shady kitchens is baking, so I’ve been doing a lot of that too. Then eating way too much of it afterwards…
I take the bike through the forest down to the lake, where everything is still and quiet. I’m too chicken to swim in the cold water but I love just sitting there and being amazed at the perfection of it all.

I’m one lucky person right now.

Me and my brother share the little house next to the big house and I got the best view from my bedroom window.

My brother’s 20th birthday and we ate cake which I had baked.

The night skies are just stunning… The sun don’t go far at night and not for long – this is 10pm.

If there is one thing that’s going to speed up my recovery, it’ll be the fresh air from this beautiful place.

The other day I took a scissor and cut off my hair! Something I’ve always wanted to do.

My Swedish paradise

I’ve arrived at the Swedish country side and it’s beautiful. It’s actually quite perfect and there is nowhere else I’d rather be right now…

I wake up at 5am due to my jetlag and sit having a coffee on the porch before anyone else has woken up. I see green fields and all I hear is birds and it’s paradise.

This is how light it is out at midnight.

4 months

BURMA

The trip started in Burma, with my old friend M who lives in Shanghai these days, and her friend Mike. We started in Yangon and travelled north and I didn’t have a clue what to expect, truth is I didn’t know anything about the country when I got there.
I loved it though, the people are the nicest you’ll meet and there’s something about the place that you just like.

THAILAND

After Burma I spent a whole month going from beach to beach in Thailand. Railay beach on the Krabi side, Koh Pagnan on the east side, and finally Koh Chang when my beautiful mother came to visit!
Koh Pagnan is so far my favourite Thai island, with stunning beaches and laidback lifestyle.

MALAYSIA

The plan after Thailand was Cambodia but I changed my mind when I heard how hot it was going to be, so I booked the cheapest ticket I could find online and ended up in Kuala Lumpur. I didn’t know what to expect from this country, I knew very little about it, but I was pleasantly surprised. I met a great group of people who I travelled with for some time and Malaysia turned out to be my favourite country in SE Asia!

INDONESIA

Once again I booked the cheapest ticket I found online and this time ended up in Indonesia. From Jakarta I travelled east to Yogjakarta, from there to the Bromo and Ijen volcanoes which was my highlight of the entire Asian trip – amazing… Then left Java on a boat to Bali and stayed in Ubud for a week before heading to Lombok and later the Gili islands.
30 days in this country is not enough, there’s still so many things I want to see and do here so I’ll definately come back soon!

THAILAND

I went back to Thailand to celebrate Vesak in Chiang Mai. 2 weeks in Chiang Mai and in Pai, I met some awesome people in these two places and was surprised how different northern Thailand is to the south.

LAOS

Maybe it doesn’t really count as I was sick 7 days out of 8 in this country and didn’t get to see more than the boat trip on the Mekong. The plan was to stay for a month and even though I don’t have a great first impression, I will come back here one day soon.

It’s been an amazing 4 months in Asia and I wish it didn’t have to end like this. I didn’t have an end-date but I would’ve been away for at least another month or so before taking a break.
I don’t want to get to the point of travelling when you stop appreciating what you see; I prefer to travel often than being away for a very long time. So I guess I’m going to have to start planning my next trip when I get back home!

Last day in Asia

This was my hostel all those days I was sick in Laos – Spicy Laos hostel. Pool playing communists. Nah, joking, I don’t know if they were communists. But they played a lot of pool to a lot of crappy music at the loudest volume.

I finally left the place and got on a 18h bus ride to Chiang Mai. In Asia you always add a few more hours to any time schedule, in this case add +5h.
The roads in Laos are non-existant in some places and you can’t drive very fast with a bus on a dirt road. At one point close to midnight the bus stopped and we were left for an hour in the dark not knowing what was going on. Finally the driver came back and told us we had to walk. Thankfully we only had to walk up the road, passed this queue of cars and our bus came driving behind us, he needed to pass a brokendown lorry.

It felt kinda crazy to arrive in Chiang Mai that afternoon only to jump straight on a night train to Bangkok… but at least the train has comfortable beds! I crashed at 8pm and slept until the train pulled in at 9am.

Now I’m in Bankok for my last night in Asia. I’m feeling a little sentimental… I’ve been in and out of this city so many times during these last 4 months and it still feels like I’m only getting started! But right now I just want it to be morning so I can get on that plane. I hate waiting for planes, especially when you got a family and Swedish summer waiting on the other side.

Going home

So I was diagnosed with Dengue Fever. Not cool.

It’s a very common disease these days but I still can’t help but think that out of all the billions of mosquitos, I got bitten by an infected one. What sucks even more is that there are no vaccines and no medications for it, you simply have to ride it out and recover naturally.
I’ve decided to recover at home because it simply sucks to have to stay in bed in a hot dorm with strangers in a strange country. Tonight I start my 2 day journey down to Bangkok and on Tuesday I fly to Stockholm.

I’m happy to see my family, their new house in the country side, and the European summer, but I’m also gutted to be ending my journey because of something like this. But health comes first and I will just have to come back to Asia again soon.

So see you in Europe in a couploe of days.

It’s time to be crazy

Such a cool song!
Discovered it while watching Coriolanus last night.
Can’t wait to go a little crazy myself.

Boat into Laos

After hearing everybody raving about Laos I was pretty keen to check it out so I took a slowboat on the Mekong river from Chiang Khong, just outside Chiang Rai in northern Thailand, which was going to take 2 days before reaching Luang Prabang.

I expected some kind of ferry like boat which you could move around on a bit but this slowboat was pretty standard – a small wooden thing which they filled up to the max (and then some). Thankfully they’ve changed the notorious wooden benches for old car seats so at least it was fairly comfortable to sit.

A handful of people were there to relax – enjoy the scenery and read a book. But most people were there for the party. Thankfully we’re in low season now so it didn’t turn into a rave or anything.

The boat stopped in the evening in a tiny village where we were to spend the night. Charming little place but heavily overpriced with locals ripping off tourists who still haven’t got their head around the new currency. I was also surprised by all these dodgy guys constantly trying to sell you drugs while you’re having dinner…

I shared a guesthouse with this English guy I’d met earlier in Pai and then again on the boat.

I’m now in Luang Prabang since 3 days but I still haven’t seen anything of the town as I’ve been sick and stuck in bed! Well, the fever went away yesterday so I could drag myself to the night market for some dinner and a little stroll.

Although I haven’t seen much of Laos yet I don’t actually have a great impression of it so far! I thought it would be a lot like Burma but it’s really not – the locals don’t seem very friendly at all, they must be so sick of tourists so they ignore you most the time. When I see the kind of tourists who come here though I understand, everyone seem to be here to party. The backpacking crowd is much younger than in other countries, teenagers mostly, and they all talk about how wasted they got at last night’s party and where to go for this night’s party.

So while the kids in my dorm go crazy at some waterfall I’m going to be responsible and go to the hospital to see why I keep getting this annoying fever. How dull.