5 Travel Lessons From Our SE Asia Trip

By David

Since we’re getting ready head out on another adventure in a little over a month, I figured it was time to finally finish this post I started back in October (you are correct, I’m the worst).

When we got back to Chiang Mai after our Borneo, Bali, and Ko Lanta trip, we said we would post about the latest travel lessons we learned. Obviously, that never happened. But now, as we’re gearing up to leave Thailand and become even more nomadic, moving from one country to another every month, it’s the perfect time to go back and remember what we learned and apply them to this next adventure.

So here we go, the 5 travel lessons learned from our SE Asia trip and how they can be applied to where we’re heading next:

1. AirAsia, while cheap, has really stupid rules.

Gili Air: Three Steps to Paradise

By Alexis

For our last big vacation, we traveled through Malaysia, Indonesia, and southern Thailand, and during one leg of the trip, we met a friendly German guy who’d been on the road for months. Tanned skin, wild hair, he was the kind of guy who literally did not own shoes because he’d been living the island life for so long.

We got to talking and it turned out he was getting his dive master certification out on the Indonesian island of Gili Air…right where we were headed!

We told him we’d just been in Bali and that we decided to pass up visiting the bigger, party-island of Gili Trawangan (aka Gili T.) in favor of the less crowded Gili Air. With that, he said he immediately liked us. According to him, we adhered to his three step travel theory, which I haven’t been able to stop thinking about since. He told us…

Why We Shouldn’t Have Gone to Lombok Before Gili Air

By David

Yes, it was beautiful, but was it worth it?

After three perfect days in Bali, we trooped east to the next island in the Indonesian archipelago, Lombok. We had heard Lombok was how Bali used to be before it became over-touristed and devoid of the real and natural beauty that made it so popular in the first place. We can’t speak too much about Lombok as we were there for less than 24 hours, but we absolutely loved Bali, so I don’t think we’ll jump on the “skip-Bali-head-to-Lombok” bandwagon.

Heading to Lombok at all was a bit of a mistake for us. As seasoned travelers (ugh, I hate myself for saying that), having two time consuming and financially costly mistakes (you can read about the first one here) in one trip was a bit embarrassing, but to be cheesy, you live and you learn, right?

The reason we regret visiting Lombok is pretty simple: we just didn’t have enough time in Lombok to justify making a stop there. Instead, we should have just gone straight to Gili Air from Bali by boat because it’s cheaper, quicker, and easier.

Still, every mistake has a story. Our time in Lombok was no different…