Part Of Thailand example essay topic

It's summertime and I'm sitting on the back of a motor-scooter. The air is sweet with flowers, and the dropping sun is casting an almost ethereal glow against a canopy of sunflowers as far as I could see. And as I'm cruising down the rising and falling terrain, alongside vineyards that look as old as the land, I'm thinking: THIS is why I flew 1000's of miles. I was experiencing a new kind of high and it was at that point that my love affair with traveling began. So, rewind back in time 22 years. I was born in Canada, in the city of Toronto.

I don't remember much about the place because my parents packed me up and moved us to Santa Clara when I was 4. We settled in this area because my dad is an engineer and it was a great place to be if you were one, even back then. I finished high school in Santa Clara, and then chose a college 2 hours from here. Up until then, I had done many a car trips around the U.S. with my parents...

So, it never crossed my mind that traveling to a distant land was something I even wanted to do until a friend of mine called me up and said 'hey, my boyfriend just dumped me, lets go to europe. ' And I said, "what?? (you know, after I assured her that her ex was worthless anyway) I'm a poor college student, and I don't know anything about Europe. And she said "all we need to know is right here in this book "Europe on a shoestring" book. And I thought, hey this could be fun and I can practice my French. So we made the most minimal of plans and went that summer. So, back to my story of me on the motor scooter: I was in the village of Avignon, in the Provence region of France.

The week before, we were busy discovering the joys of all-niters in Paris (which is way better than all-niters in college) and London. And somehow we made our way to Italy and discovered the plethora of history and art that Florence has to offer and also found some killer deals on leather jackets. This trip was just a sample of what was to come in my quest for travel highs. The following summer I was approached by another friend to go visit Thailand.

She had some family in Bangkok we could stay with and who would give us the insider's tour. I couldn't pass that up, so off I went into the Paris of the East. We also decided to go standby, which is an adventure in itself if you ever try to do that in the summer. Thailand, in particular Bangkok, was a place of extremes.

You could, in the same street, buy fried grasshoppers, fake Rolex's, wander into a temple to burn incense for your ancestors, and crowd into a sauna of a market to buy all kinds of foods alongside women in designer apparel and kids with no shoes. The part of Thailand that spoke to me the most, was not to be found in the crowded areas of Bangkok (though its not to be missed) but in the more remote areas of Northern and Southern Thailand. My most memorable moments included staying in a "rustic" cabin up in Northern Thailand fighting off insects as large as a half dollar. Hiking into a mountain cave filled with stalactites and stalagmites along side Buddhist relics that were placed there 100's of years ago, and watching monks wander in and out of temples that looked like a scene from Indiana Jones. I stayed there for 6 weeks, leaving just when I couldn't take any more Thai food. A couple years lapse, and I was hungry for more adventure.

This time I joined an eco-tour that for 3 weeks had us living with the locals and taking public transportation all around Peru. I can't even begin to describe a trip like that in less than 6 hours, much less 6 minutes. But suffice to say I got my adventure trekking 4 days along the fabled Inca trail towards M accu Picc u and watching it appear from under the mists, shelling fava beans in a kitchen that was nothing more than a clay hut on an island on Lake Titicaca, where they still don't use electricity, and spotting wildlife while cruising down a tributary of the Amazon river. Through it all, along with my trusty guidebooks, was the Dramamine for motion sickness. I absolutely hate the whole flying part because it always involved a significant amount of queasiness as soon as the plane took off until the moment it hits ground again. With the help of drugs, I can survive a flight, but not without feelings of being drugged for the rest of the day.

However, the joys I get from discovering places far away, is worth all the trouble and pain of flying. I look forward to the day when someone invents some sort of molecular transporter that can beam me from one city to another, but until then... "please pass the Dramamine".