Thailand, top to bottom

After a 21 hours of flying without a lick of sleep, we landed in the stickiest, most humid capitol city had ever been in. Bangkok was hectic and in the most literal terms "never slept." We landed around 10PM Thai time, it took us around 2 hours to get to our hotel/guest house. Right off the bat Bangkok and I didn't get along, it wasn't my kind of city(not many cities are) it felt very commercialized and it had a sort of all work no play feel that I really wasn't down with, needless to say I was ecstatic to be flying out to Phuket in the morning.

Again, no enjoyable sleep was had but I pushed through knowing what was waiting for me in Phuket. 50 dollars and an hour play ride with AirAsia later we had landed and jumped on a tuktuk through the much more enjoyable air and sights that were Phuket. Within the first few hours we met up with the people responsible for this trip in its entirety, a group of Martial Art/Combative instructors from all over the world. Half the group had flown in from Japan, a handful from all over Australia, 3 or 4 from different parts of the UK and 1 from Brazil. All coming together in Thailand annually to train and hangout together as part of a large intercontinental team. That week went by incredibly quickly, with days of training Muay Thai on the beach, doing Combatives in the jungle and chilling out with and getting to know all the other instructors. It was action packed and so much more than amazing, but it was short, and only the beginning of our trip.

Jo(The friend I was travelling with) and I parted ways with our new worldly friends, took several night buses and a ferry to Chiang Mai, which was a completely new feeling Thailand had to offer. There were so many options in this Country alone it was almost overwhelming and to be quite honest a month was barely enough time. The next week an a half was more relaxed but still quite packed with adventure, out first trek was up a mountain and down into a valley to visit a self sustained village built up off the ground in little huts, I definitely felt more at home there than I did in Bangkok. The people were welcoming and even gracious enough to allow us to share dinner with them. It was an amazing experience. A few days in the jungle went by and we Bamboo rafted out back to Chiang Mai.

Flying back to Bangkok was bittersweet, choosing a different guest house(The Flapping Duck) helped a lot, it was a much more enjoyable time and a good ending to a unbelievable trip.