“A journey is best measured in friends, rather than miles.” – Tim Cahill
Friends we’ve made around the world:
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- Alina Masters…for being my personal travel agent when it comes to traveling around Spain.
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- Iona Mochado…for consistently providing tons of unsolicited advice on our winter ’11 trip to Spain, even though we had only met for 5 minutes when you interviewed at my medical school. One of these days you’re going to have to join us.
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- Naina Sharma…for gently nudging me to choose Belize for Thanksgiving, which I eventually did.
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- Dalea Dyer…for insisting (and convincing) me to go to Belize for Thanksgiving, and keeping up with me through the duration of the trip. Wish you could’ve came with us.
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- Evan Jones…for contacting his local friends in the Middle East about the situation in Syria and advising me whether or not I can still get a visa as a U.S. citizen.
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- Diva Datwani…for not only giving valuable advice on Luang Prabang last summer, but also on Dubai for the 2011 trip. One day, you’re actually going to join me and personally show me around!
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- Felipe Tarud…for setting me up a place to stay in his native city of Bogota and letting me under the care of his best friend
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- Dara Chen…for giving valuable travel advice on Machu Picchu and Cuzco before I left
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- Brian Foo…for designing this sexy blog and indirectly teaching me how to decipher & code .css stylesheets
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- Nilam Patel…for overall emotional support, making it hard to leave, and making sure I have a way to wash my clothes
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- Isaac Silverman…for teaching me the difference between “tourist” and “traveler”
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- Jess & Kim…for offering a place to stay, a family as guides in Manila, and advising us to the biggest mall in Asia
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- Christian Pina…for throwing me a surprise going away party and for setting up a pool of all the diseases I’m going to get
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- Shyama Rajendran…for meeting up with us in Manila, buying us bus tickets to Banaue, and sharing random stories about her family via gchat
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- Trina Tran…for demanding me to go to Dalit over Hanoi
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- Quynh Nguyen…for providing travel advice on Vietnam, Malaysia, Cambodia, and Singapore, and sharing her 10+ facebook albums
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- Linus…for being my big brother all my life, making sure my legal docs are intact in case anything happened, and being worried about this trip for me
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- Avanti Maluste…for chastising me to stay longer in Mumbai instead of going to Goa, and letting me play with her cat when I arrive there
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- Shivani…for chastising me to stay longer in Mumbai, after Avanti told her to
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- Van Nguyen…for providing travel advice on Vietnam in the longest facebook message I have ever read
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- Hong…for providing me travel advice on Vietnam, and a guide whom I will meet for the first time in Hanoi
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- Shari Setyawinata…for providing pages of travel advice on Indonesia, and making us consider taking airplanes instead of the trains
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- Lorenzo…for introducing me to his family in the Philippines via e-mail
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- Huei…for advising me on Malaysia but never really coming out to see me before I left, even though she was 5 blocks away
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- Jessica…for providing advice on Thailand and giving us the awesomeness that is airbandb.com
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- Nazeela…for giving indispensibly aggressive advice on India
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- Sarah Eberle…for providing travel advice on pretty much 60% of the places we’re going to, and tempting us to skip Bali for the Gili Islands
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- Pamela & Julian…for providing me great advice upon request on Thailand and Singapore
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- Julian and Genna…for suggesting titles for this blog, especially my favorite: “How Chen Ho Got His Balls Back”
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- Poh Choo…for providing travel advice on Malaysia and adding Penang to our list
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- Michael J. Novielli…for sending me a super awesome color map of Southeast Asia as a surprise gift
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- Vaibhav…for advising us and getting us a place to stay in Calcutta and Varanasi
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- Corinne Fukuyama…for joining us on this trip for the Philippines and Vietnam
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- Caitlin Halpern…for joining us on this trip for Laos, Thailand, Malaysia, and Singapore