Hello my loves,

I know, I know, failing pretty miserably with my posts as of late! But I tell ya it’s hard to keep up. I’ve been busy learning new things and trying to find what makes me the most happy and you know what, I found it! YOGA…
Whilst traveling around in 2016/2017, I decided to get my 200hr yoga teacher training which has changed my life for the better and I wanted to share it with all my lovely followers! I am hosting my very first event with Purple Lotus and I wanted you guys to be one of the first to know. Here are all the details.

45 minute Yoga Class for all levels lead by myself, followed by an Intro to Mala Bead Workshop with Purple Lotus.

Explore the therapeutic energy by creating and practicing your own mala during a 2.5 hour workshop. Inspired by tradition, you will be guided through making your own mala and how to use it to recite an affirmation or mantra. As you create, you will have the opportunity to infuse your mala with the power of your intention! A  variety of materials including wood, seeds and or gemstones will be used. All mala materials are provided – just bring yourself and your mat.

Click here for more information and grab your tickets! Limited spots available!

Laurelle, xo

  
The next morning we woke up fairly early because we had a big day ahead of us. About 15 of us piled into a truck and drove about 20 minutes to the river. As soon as I was in the truck taking in the beautiful Vang Vieng, I had one of those perfect moments of pure happiness and joy. This is why I love traveling so much, little moments like these. I cherish them with all my heart. It’s the kind of feeling that makes you excited to be alive.

We got to the river and climbed out of the truck, we were starting our day off with kayaking. Now when I signed up for this activity filled day I thought we were kayaking Ha Long Bay style, super laid back and really not much actual hard core kayaking. Boy was I wrong! We went 10km on the river, that’s right 10km! Now I don’t know about you but I have zero upper body strength, so it was a struggle, but lots of fun as well. 

We kayaked for what felt like ages, got ourselves lodged on a rock at one point and had to be rescued and then finally stopped to do some “Cave Tubing”. It was not Cave Tubing. We were literally in the tubes for about 1 minute and then we started hiking through these caves, it was pitch black, slippery and freaking terrifying. We had head lights on but they were not giving off nearly as much light as I would have liked. And when we got to the end of this adventure of cave climbing there were two tiny holes we had to squeeze through. Terrifying. Not at all what I expected.

After “Tubing” we all jumped in the river and swam for a bit and headed off for some lunch. BBQ Chicken, Vegetable Skewers and Fried Rice, it was actually quite delicious. After lunch we were off to do some zip lining, which ended up being far more fun than I thought it would be. I normally find zip lining a bit boring but we were able to go pretty fast and the views were extraordinary. 

With zip lining done we were off to the river again for some more kayaking… Yes that’s right a shit ton of more kayaking. I was not impressed. We kayaked for another hour down the river, coasting whenever we could (which was not often), managed to avoid all the rocks this time around. 

Thankfully the truck was waiting for us at the end of the river and we all piled into it again. From there we were headed to a place called the Blue Lagoon, it was meant to have a swing and water slide (oh man did it have a water slide). The Blue Lagoon was fairly small and filled with tourists. There was a tree you could climb and then jump off into the water. It was much higher than it looked, but it was a lot of fun. Lots of people were doing flips off it which was pretty cool to watch. 
We swam around for a bit and then we discovered the water slide… Now our guide warned us about the water slide, telling us we shouldn’t go on it because you could get hurt blah blah blah. If you had seen the water slide you would have done exactly what we did. It looked like the worlds smallest, most pathetic water slide, so we obviously went on it. How bad could it possibly be? I watched my friend go down first and I can’t even begin to tell you how hard I laughed. No word of a lie the slide jolts you and literally throws you. His facial expressions and screams were priceless, we were practically crying we were laughing so hard. 

Now it was my turn, the guy at the top of the slide eyed me carefully and said slowly don’t lay down. HELL NO, I launched myself down the slide, laying die in a pencil shape position and I could faintly hear the guy say, “Oh no”. And I went fast, the way the slide is designed, the turns come so fast that they jolt you, suddenly you are flipping and catching air, when you reach the water you really have no idea what position you are going to be in. It was insane and most definitely dangerous, so we went on it again. What can I say, we couldn’t resist. After a couple hours at the Blue Lagoon we piled back into the truck, showered and went for dinner. It was definitely one for the books. 

  

  
After we watched the beautiful sunset we headed to a local families for a nice home cooked meal. I was so excited the meals the locals cooked were always extraordinary. The food was unreal, the chicken curry was absolutely amazing, I had to stop myself from eating it.

After dinner we were told that there were children that were going to teach us a local dance. The women in the house starting wrapping skirts around all of our waists, including the guys. We really didn’t know what to expect.

There was a little girl standing off to the side in the door way watching us, I gave her a smile and she immediately came over and grabbed my hand and pulled me outside. There were a bunch of chairs set up on the grass outside, one of which she led me to and instructed me to sit down. She was so adorable and just kept smiling at me any chance she had. The music begun and they showed us the local dance, it was so so cute. They were lined up in a row, all just beaming at us as they danced to the music. Once they had showed us the dance they were to choose one of us to teach the dance to. The little girl ran over to me immediately and grabbed my hand pulling me onto the grass and starting reciting 1,2,3,4,5,6,7 Turn, 1,2,3,4,5,6,7 Turn. She was giggling because I’m a dreadful dancer and was having trouble with the steps but she had lots of patience. Once we had the steps down, the music began and we were all dancing with our new partners. 

We sat down once again and watched them perform two more dances, my new friend and dancing partner just danced away beaming at me the whole time. She really was just the cutest thing. They brought out these bamboo sticks and set up a little game almost, like jump rope or hop scotch. You were to jump between the spaces while the sticks moved, the kids were so good at it. It was a little tricky but we eventually got the hang of it. It was so much fun. After we all got a turn with the bamboo sticks they started playing music and were literally just all dancing and jumping around in the grass surrounding by all these happy, dancing children. And of course we couldn’t not have limbo, which got the kids so excited. It was a ridiculously fun evening, probably one of my favourite nights. 

  

  
The next morning we woke up early and headed to a yoga class that one of the girls had discovered. I was missing yoga so I was super keen on taking a class. The yoga studio was tucked away down a street, so we almost missed it! The studio had open windows, so as you practised yoga you could feel a nice breeze come in, it was lovely. The class was a much slower pace then what I’m used to, but I think it was exactly what I needed. I felt relaxed and rejuvenated after days of Go Go Go. It was a lovely experience and I was really glad we did it. 

After our yoga class we headed out to see one of the Temples. It was gold and looked stunning in pictures, so I really wanted to see it. But like most tourist attractions it was a little disappointing and wasn’t really that gold or clean. However, it photographed well and that is all that really matters isn’t it?! We also went to see the Reclining Buddha which was really awesome! And gold! I was glad we got to see that at least, it made the temple visit far more worth it. We had a short amount of time to explore Vientiane because we were headed for our next destination Vang Vieng in the early afternoon (a 4 hour bus journey). 

We arrived in Vang Vieng just before sunset at 5pm, dropped our bags off and immediately headed straight to the Mekong River to see the sunset. It was so beautiful down by the water. I had hardly seen any of Laos and I was already in love with it. Music was playing from the bar while we sipped our drinks and watched the sunset and took in the surroundings, it was amazing. 

   
 

Hue to Hanoi to Ha Long Bay

      
We arrived in Hanoi around 6:30am and immediately boarded a bus for another 4 hour journey to Ha Long Bay. It was much colder in Hanoi than it had been anywhere else on the trip thus far (I mean 17 degrees cold, which realistically was not that cold, but none of us had prepared for the cold weather, luckily I had my beanie with me!).

We arrived in Ha Long Bay around 11am and I decided to quickly get in touch with my parents on Skype because it had been a while, but the connection wasn’t great so we only chatted for about 20 minutes. We had a boat tour planned along Ha Long Bay but it was super foggy, rainy and cold which was unfortunate because Ha Long Bay is beautiful. However, we didn’t get the weather get us done, even with the gloominess Ha Long Bay was still breath taking. We took so many pictures and the fog actually made the photos look really cool. It was absolutely amazing. 

We had lunch on the boat and then stopped for some kayaking through all along the bay and through caves. My friend Anna and I decided to be Kayak buddies, which was an excellent idea because we got a good rhythm going and had a lot of fun. Sadly we only had 30 minutes to Kayak around, we would have liked to have a little longer since we were having such a good time. I was soaked by the time I got out of the kayak which was unfortunate because I stupidly did not bring a change of clothes and as I stated earlier, it was cold, so now I was even colder and wet and we still had a couple hours to go. 
We cruised along in the boat a little longer and then headed to a cave that we were able to walk around in. The cave itself was beautiful but they added all these different coloured lights making the entire cave look fake and man made. I understand why they add the lights (so you are able to take pictures) but I would have preferred normal white lights or no lights at all, it would have been more enjoyable. It took about 20 minutes to make it through the entire cave and then we hopped back on the boat and headed back to our hotel. 

There weren’t a lot of food options in Ha Long Bay so I opted for a pizza from an Italian restaurant (it actually tasted like a REAL pizza). Anna came over after we had both showered and warm ourselves out and one of the other girls joined us shortly after. I cleaned up their eyebrows for them (being the beautician on the tour) and we had a proper girls nights. We chatted and laughed for hours, it was actually one of my favourite nights. Every so often someone else would join us until we finally had a group in my room. We had some drinks and chatted some more. Sometimes the low key nights where nothing is really happening turn out to be the best nights. 

   
 

        

   Woke up early on our second day in Sihnoukville for a boat trip that we had all signed up for before we knew we would be partying the night before. I woke up with a pretty bad headache and wasn’t feeling so hot. We went down to the beach and I immediately submerged myself in the sea. It’s amazing how going in the fresh water can make you feel so much better. 

We jumped on a rustic looking boat and headed out onto the beautiful blue water. It was a gorgeous day, even if most of us weren’t feeling the greatest we could still appreciate the beauty of Sihnoukville. The fresh sea air was exactly what We all needed. We first stopped in a little area to snorkel. I jumped in the crystal clear blue water and swam around looking for fish and coral. It was amazing, the water felt so great and there was so much to see. I ended up taking a chunk of skin out of my big toe, hitting it on some coral reef, that would not stop bleeding. Just my luck. 
Once we were finished snorkelling we headed off to a little island to relax for a good part of the day. We played beach volleyball, swam in the ocean, soaked in the sun, it was the best day. When is a beach day not a good day really? We had lunch on the beach and then finally headed back to the main beach. Most of us got a little too much sun, but hey I finally had a tan. 

 

   
        
  

 

The Temples in Siem Reap 

We got up at 4:45am to see the sunrise behind Angkor Wat “The City of the Monastery” the next day. There were a lot of Tourists doing the same thing so the grounds were filled with people. It was a little difficult to get a good picture, but it was quite beautiful even still. The temple itself is absolutely stunning. 
We then set off to see two other temples one of them being the location where they filmed the movie Tomb Raider, called Ta Prohm. I think I enjoyed this temple the most, it had a massive tree growing right in the middle of it. The tree was beautiful, it gave the temple some character and somehow made the temple look more stunning. The other temple we went to see was called Bayon.
The night before I had purchased a pair of light weight pants from the market down the street from our hotel. They were black and white with little elephants all over it that I managed to get for 3 American dollars. I decided they would be perfect to wear to see all the temples because my knees had to be covered and they were light weight enough that I wouldn’t get too hot, not so much the best idea. I managed to get a tiny tear in the crotch while climbing the temples which quickly turned into the most gigantic tear exposing my undies. One of the Aussie girls I’m travelling with gave me a black sarong to cover myself for the rest of the day. So much for one size fits all… At least I provided the some humour for the group. 
Exploring the temples took up most of the day, we arrived back at our hotel at about 3:15pm and had to quickly change because I opted to do an atv tour to see the sunset in the country side. It was my first time on an atv so I wasn’t very good, I had a guy helping me steer and use the right amount of speed. I don’t think they trusted me to drive alone. However, I was told at the end of the ride that I was a good driver and could ride alone next time. Woo Hoo. We got to drink beer while we watched the sun set in the country side of Siem Reap, it was an incredible day to say the least.

  

     Bangkok to Cambodia

Having gotten to the hotel at about 2am, finally settled and in bed by 3am I had roughly an hour sleep before I had to get up for breakfast and begin the 7 hour departure from Bangkok to Cambodia! I met my tour group for the first time that morning, I used a company called G Adventures. If you are a solo traveller or want an easier way to travel around a foreign country I highly recommend looking into G Adventures, they are amazing and make travelling through so many different places a much smoother process.

My group consists of about 17 of us and they are all amazing. We have 4 Canadians, 4 Germans, 3 Aussies, 1 Kiwi, 3 Brits, An Irish Guy, and a Polish girl. Such a good mix of people, I love every single one of them and our group gets on really well. The age range is 20-31 and everyone adds something special to the group. Our group is going to be together for a full 30 days, Bangkok to Bangkok.
Our first part of the trip started with our bags on our backs as we walked across the Cambodian border . Crossing the border was definitely a process, they are so many different steps and stops that you have to do just to be able to actually physically cross the border. As your walking you have to keep your bags close because little kids will run up and try and grab stuff or steal from you, but I felt safe and we had no issues.
Cambodia is one of the oldest countries in the world and is know as “The Kingdom of Wonder”, they have over 2000 temples and 901 are in Siem Reap where we were staying. I was really excited to see the temples the following morning.