Laurel's SE Asia Trip Summary

It wouldn’t be a Dettering family trip without me writing a blog post. Let’s get to it.

First stop: Osaka. What a cute place. Japanese culture is so great. We hopped off the plane and were immediately greeted with Security Dog, a cartoon dog with eyebrows who is a recurring character on Japanese customs signs. He’s small, round, and very Hello Kitty-esque, and Bryce and I were infatuated instantly. The hotel was not so great, but it wasn’t bad. I had a near-death experience with a massage chair that has probably traumatized me from ever going in one of those things again. Each hotel room had a black leather massage chair in them, and it was built for somebody under 5’0. Of course, I didn’t know that when I first got in this terrifying contraption. While the shoulder massage rods would have comfortably rested on a shorter person’s shoulders, they clamped down onto mine and would not let me out of said massage chair. There was also calf clamps that prevented your legs from moving, and what would a massage chair be without that function that’s probably supposed to be patting you but feels like being punched by a garden gnome.

Anyway, I digress. Our second city was Hong Kong. It was like a hot, humid San Francisco, which I was grateful for, because for the entire trip I was a homesick disaster. The coffee was on point, both very strong and sweet, and all the food we had was also amazing. It was a pretty relaxing place and the hotel was nice. I didn’t almost get violently slaughtered by a massage chair so there’s not really much more to say. Moving on.

Our third location was the crowded city of Hanoi, Vietnam, where we met up with our group. I was happy to have some girls on our trip this time, as teenage boys can be quite overwhelming sometimes. The hotel was nice, and the shampoo left my hair feeling silkier than ever so I made sure to take the hotel tube with me. Mom and I treated ourselves to a spa day, which was awesome and quite relaxing. A Vietnamese custom is giving tourists cold face towels, and in the humid 100º weather, this was the best thing anyone could ask for. There is no experience quite like breathing in the scent of a cold towel just before you put it on your neck.

In all honestly, our trip through Vietnam is pretty much a blur to me. This is not to say that it was not interesting, in fact, everything was so interesting that nothing really stands out to me as the most interesting. We visited the following places: Hanoi. Hue, Hoi An, and Ho Chi Minh City. Wow, all the names start with H! Vietnam, you should probably cool it on the H city names.

Of course I remember some things from Vietnam! I didn’t tune out entirely. The best part was a 3-day cruise through Ha Long Bay. It wasn’t really what I expected a cruise to be - we weren’t allowed to swim in the water because of killer jellyfish, and the ship was “only” three floors. It was still amazing because of the beautiful islands that looked like they could fall into the sea at any moment, and that I got to spend a lot of time with my new friends. Bryce was addicted to this BMX iPhone game, so he didn’t spend much time outside of the room, but I sure did! My crew would play Uno, Mafia, BS, and other card games late into the night. There was an unspoken rule that nobody under 13 could join us, and the smaller kids respected this rule, which I am so grateful for. We covered a lot of mature topics in conversation, as teenagers are wont to do, and thankfully every time a boner joke came up the children were pretty far away. The last trip with this crew we had the 9 year olds mixing with the 16 year olds, and I can safely say that some of my youthful innocence was spoiled in Africa.

After Vietnam came 4 days in Siem Reap. This was second coolest to Ha Long Bay. I did lots of shopping and eating, which are both good things, and our hotel was beautiful. The reason it’s second is we toured Angkor Wat and the surrounding temples, which probably would have been cool if we spent an hour there, but our tour guide WOULD NOT stop talking. And he didn’t walk and talk, he would stand in the same spot for hours talking about the same thing. Whenever I’m doing a boring thing, I like to eat frequently in between / while doing so, so that I don’t lose energy, but only when I was about ready to pass out did we arrive at a pretty bad Thai restaurant. It wouldn’t be a trip if my parents didn’t drag me around to temples, and they always tell me that I’m learning stuff, but really I never am. I just tune out pretty much everything until we get out.

And speaking of temples! The next 5 days were spent in Bangkok. Bangkok was also pretty great, and they had lots of shopping centers and great food so I got to spend some time doing that, but of course we had to visit a few Buddha temples. Now, religion is great! I’m not judging if you’re religious! I just find religious artifacts not interesting in the least and I don’t enjoy being forced to look at nothing of importance to me. We spent what felt like days at the temple of the Buddha lying down, and that’s probably not it’s official name but I can’t be bothered to remember it. Although, I did get to see Now You See Me 2 in theaters, which was a great movie and awesome experience. Before the movie started, they played the Thai national anthem and you had to stand up to pay respects to the king. NYSM2 is a fantastic movie and, while not even comparable to NYSM in greatness, it does elaborate a lot on the backstories of the characters, especially Dylan Rhodes.

After that, we headed to Tokyo for a 19 hour layover. That was also great. Of course, I needed to go to the Pokemon Center, and so we went. Bryce even got a stuffie. It was awesome. And I got a birthday crown from the pokemon company because it’s my birthday soon, so yippee! I wish we could have spent more time there, but alas, my dog was missing us and I was missing cold weather. So home we went, of course spotting Security Dog on the way out.

And now I’m home.