Southeast Asian Adventure:

It took over 15 hours of flying, three countries, and one piece of lost luggage, but on June 28th we finally made it to Southeast Asia. While we waited for one member of our group to reapply for a visa, we sat with our jetlag and finally took in that we were halfway across the world. The signs in the airport were illegible. We couldn’t listen in to passing conversations and asking officials for help was a challenge. For a bunch of kids from one of the wealthiest counties in Pennsylvania, we experienced a significant culture shock from the moment we landed in Southeast Asia. 

The first country I stayed in with my travel group was Vietnam. In the city, the streets were constantly in motion and the motorists were unstoppable. If New York City never sleeps, Ho Chi Minh City is the one keeping it awake. There was a bustling nightlife, filled with mysterious night markets and massage parlors that never closed. I drank my first bubble tea in a local mall and every morning I got to drink some of the strongest coffee I have ever tasted. 

The second country we went to was Cambodia, which seemed to have an endless amount of temples. While there we saw a circus troupe filled with young artists from around the country. A few of the people in my group rode an elephant and in Angkor Wat we saw some devious monkeys. At night we went to a market where we got to eat snake and scorpion from a food cart on the street. To get back to the hotel we were staying in, we rode a tuk-tuk, which is a small cart that goes almost dangerously fast on the road. 

After our third day in Cambodia, we were bussed to the border and went through border patrol on foot. As we wheeled our luggage into Thailand, we were the sweatiest we had ever been. In Thailand, we watched a traditional dance while we ate dinner without our shoes on. We saw a massive, unopened, gold shrine where it is said that a part of Buddha is preserved. On the ninth full day of our trip, the last day, we took a boat through Bangkok. 

By the end of the trip, three people were sick and some of the rest of us felt pretty unwell. The flight from Thailand to Hong Kong was sad, but easy, as we knew that the long flight from Hong Kong to Chicago was coming. It was long enough that we had two meals and they put the cabin into “night mode”, where they have us close all the windows and they dim the lights. In the middle of the flight, a small child accidentally climbed into my row of seats. Needless to say, when we finally landed, we were all very eager to stand and stretch out our cramped legs. However, the trip was not over yet as we still had to make it back to Pennsylvania. 

In the Chicago airport, our stomachs desperate, we got into the line for McDonald’s, like true Americans. We had a short layover, so we got on our flight pretty quickly and it only took a few hours. The total travel time was a two-day ordeal, but it felt a lot longer. We got to Philly, took our bus back into Perkasie, which was a quiet ride, and finally reached our pickup spot, where our parents were waiting. Though we were tired, we stayed to say all of our solemn goodbyes. While everyone was glad to be home, we had just spent nine days in a foreign country together, which created a very strong bond between us all. The trip exemplified that by putting a somewhat unlikely group of people together in a foreign place that they will still make the most out of their experiences and create a trip to remember.