A Taste of Southeast Asia

A Taste of Southeast Asia

A Taste of Southeast Asia is a blog post about my favorite photos from a month trip to Indonesia, Malaysia and back to Thailand… For the third time. Asia always held a piece of my heart. From the minute I set foot in this scented, humid, heavy heat. I loved there. I was happy. And I fell in love again. I also discovered a passion there. Asia is very particular for me.

In 2015, I visited a lot of places. Some trips went quick. Lots of lights involved. Not my favorite way of traveling. I like taking the time and watching sunsets. I like reading for hours and hours in long bus rides. When I fly, it’s like the time to listen to music or to read has been ripped away from me.

This time Asia was different. I didn’t like everything. I guess I expected much. That’s the thing, when you go back to places you’ve loved deeply: when you go back, you try to recreate a feeling that’s not always possible to reach again. I saw volcanos and beaches. Temples, monkeys and gorgeous sunsets over rice terraces. I saw people on scooters and in tuk-tuks, chicken fights and wooden sculptures. I saw mountains and jungles, bugs and people almost stuck in time, in other ways of life… And then I did something I dreamt about since 2004: I scuba dived.

And that… was as incredible as walking for the first time.

I went to Malaysia for it. I wish I had all the money in the world and I could have spent a month there, diving every day. A month or 12. It was so hard and heavy and scary at first. I couldn’t breathe underwater because, well, can you? I had to open my eyes underwater, to see the tubes and then I had to convince my brain that it was ok, that I wouldn’t drown. After the learning and the first fishes, I did an actual dive… then another one… then another one.

And I flew to Thailand. On an island, I scuba dived again. This time, when I went underwater, I turned and looked up. It was a dark blue and the bubbles of my air tank were flying up to the surface. This moment was a forever moment. you know, those moments that, while you are still in them, you already know you’ll always remember them and they’ll be with you, meaningful and deep, for the rest of your life? This was one of them. I was slowly going down and I gazed at the bubbles, little moving creatures shining from the inside… Suddenly, I felt like all my worries were up there, with the boat, right at the surface. Maybe above it. But they didn’t come with me.

Here, I was light as a snowflake, floating in the wind. Except I was floating at a level that’s not normal. That I shouldn’t have been at. It was so freeing to leave my life up there with the world… While I was going deeper and deeper… To a peaceful place, where light was tracing arrows. I started laughing, and the laughs became sobs. And the tears were everywhere. The feeling was so deep and so overwhelming.

I called it serenity.

A Taste of Southeast Asia

A Taste of Southeast Asia