Stories of a Traveller Girl

Photos: Island life on Koh Ta Kiev!

travellergirl — Fri, 22 May 2015 15:41:00 GMT

Gotta love escaping city life with the best company! =)

Island life on Koh Ta Kiev!

travellergirl — Fri, 22 May 2015 15:40:48 GMT

The one thing that sold me about Koh Ta Kiev? An island to get away from it all!

Hailing from Singapore where we are a city in a country and vice versa, being away from everything was just perfect. I loved that I got to escape everything about city life.

My awesome island life for 3 days started with our ride to the island. No, we didn’t have a ferry. We rode the local boat and it really was experience on its own, especially when you have to balance everyone’s weight out! The 1-hour boat ride was absolutely beautiful as you get a 360-view of the scenery around.

Stepping ashore, I did not expect the water to be crystal clear, and actually forgot that there was an absinthe distillery on the island till I got there. I felt so alive swimming in the water, and then sitting up in the tree house-like bar drinking Cambodian absinthe (it was 85% alcohol!). Trying Cambodian absinthe was quite the experience as the base of the absinthe is rice wine, which is totally different from absinthe that originates in Europe!

Koh Ta Kiev was simply paradise. I loved that we got to just be with nature, and amongst good company of those who went to the island together.

I stayed at Ten103 Treehouse Bay, a place on the island I found while doing research for my NYE 2014 trip to Cambodia. The hangout area is simply divine, and so is the food. Everyone who goes there is just chill and we had the best times hanging out with a beer by the beach where cows, chickens and dogs joined us, trying to find luminous organisms at midnight, and sharing our torchlights so we could find our way back to the dorm!

Being a girl, I do get particular about toilets (I guess it is a girl thing amongst us ladies, right?) but when it came to Koh Ta Kiev that did not matter at all. I loved that we had to use a scoop to pour water over ourselves to shower. Okay, so the toilet did not have a flush and there was electricity for only 5 hours in a day, but I felt that all of this added to the whole experience of being somewhere secluded and getting back to the basics of simply enjoying the moment. I really felt at one with myself.

Replicating my experience isn’t hard at all! Just Google “Ten103 Treehouse Bay” and book a dorm bed/hut/hammock for yourself, or get to Sihanoukville, Cambodia, and call them from your hostel to book! Do ensure that you check the weather forecast because you definitely need it to be sunny when you’re there.

Oh yes, and don’t forget to pop by the absinthe distillery!

Photos: It's LOTR in... LOTR country!

travellergirl — Wed, 14 May 2014 13:13:00 GMT

Conquering NZ my way!

How I started LOTR: Life On The Road!

travellergirl — Wed, 14 May 2014 13:12:25 GMT

I’ll never forget the day I started LOTR. What drove me to it? In a nutshell, the want for freedom, the lust of travel and the need to live. So I played a pun on the Lord Of The Rings, but admit it, it’s perfectly apt when one is writing about New Zealand!

Yes, it all sounds so dramatic, but that is how I found my way in the insanely beautiful, amazingly friendly country of New Zealand. I’ll never forget the day that I left on a one-way ticket from my home country of Singapore. It was the first time in my life that I’d done anything like this.

It was uncertain, crazy, and almost an unfathomable idea to many of my family members, but it was something I had to do.

And over 17 hours later, my feet touched ground in Auckland. Everything was a new experience, from walking down to the Viaduct Harbour in the afternoon, to going to the bar in the evening for a drink. Every day was a blessing, every new place was an adventure.

LOTR in New Zealand is something very different. There is something about this country that makes you question your own life. Every lake, every river, every mountain, every road, every field, every valley, every beach – it’s not just travelling or experiencing, it’s life; life on the road.

It’s more than just visiting Auckland, having a walk along Lake Taupo, trekking at Abel Tasman or partying in Queenstown; the people you meet, the experiences you go through, the times you are alone and just looking up at the night sky, they all change you. Travelling alone in New Zealand, it changes you.

Because a travel story of a place, is something everyone can write about. But the travel of life, especially when it comes to LOTR? That’s something that we all look for through our travelling. What does LOTR mean for us, and what exactly do we find when we reach “the end”?

I’ll never forget the day I got to New Zealand, the day I truly started my own LOTR. LOTR taught me more than I could ever know. In the waves of Tawharanui, the blue of Lake Taupo, the rush of Huka Falls, the ice of Fox Glacier, the height of the Sky Tower, the greenery of the Coromandel Peninsula, I found myself. I found the girl who travels, the girl who wanted to be free, the girl who loves, the girl who cries and most importantly, the girl who survives.