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26 Sep '11

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My Home Away from Home: Back to Southeast Asia

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I'm a New York native who left my home to explore the world slowly and thoroughly. I’m just a little obsessed with photography, scuba diving, and reading guidebooks to countries I have no immediate plans to visit.

My old home sweet home 🌷 May is one of my favo

My old home sweet home 🌷

May is one of my favorite months of the year in Albany thanks to Tulip Fest, a nod to Albany’s Dutch heritage (I can’t wait to go see the tulip fields in Amsterdam someday as a little tribute to my hometown!) So it was a perfect month to spend some time there abjectly panic packing to move myself back to Brooklyn, a big career milestone trip to Puerto Rico sandwiched in between.

Got to squeeze in an official tulip tour with the head gardener and @kenznach, a tulip fest boogie with @monikatheplant @aamcoates @steph_june (and many other not pictured @wanderwomenretreats girlies!), yearbook belly laughs with @lizfromthegardens, a Mother’s Day FaceTime from my godson 🥹, Little Mermaid at the drive in with my old nanny Kate, and lots and lots of lovely memories as I frantically packed up my childhood home.

I thought I’d be back and forth Upstate all the time but I quickly fell super hard back in love with my life in New York and found it harder than expected to leave. I’ve been back Upstate just twice since, each for a quick couple of days, both times wishing I had a bit longer!

Here’s to always having something pulling me back to the place that made me… 🫶🏻

PS: If you have tips for seeing the spring flowers in Europe and/or the European Easter Markets, let me know! I feel like that trip is brewing in the next year or two…

Sometimes goodbyes lead to big hellos ✨ Back to

Sometimes goodbyes lead to big hellos ✨

Back to that question so many of you asked — why Bali and not Koh Tao?

I came back from Thailand in May in the midst of absolute house hunt agony. I was trying to talk myself into certain properties, feeling anxiety over the commitment, and wondering why my perfect dream home hadn’t appeared.

I think going back to my old home on Koh Tao, and feeling so happy there, ironically gave me the peace to fully embrace this nerve-wracking, uncertain new future and manifest my dream home, which I got the call about in Bangkok and viewed the day after I flew back to Indonesia.

Going back to Koh Tao reminded me how deeply homesick and adrift I once was as I tried to set up a home halfway across the world on this teeny tiny island back in 2011, googling “how to cure homesickness” in tears then clearing my browser history so my boyfriend at the time wouldn’t see it.

It reminded me how I arrived there totally alone, knowing no one, and fifteen years later come back and and pay tribute to my deep friendships and loves that grew and flourished here.  It reminded me how brave and scrappy I was, to move across the world and start a new life, and how I was rewarded with the happiest, wildest, free-est years of my life in return.

Koh Tao is my past — and I feel like the luckiest girl on earth to say that. I grew up there and so much of who I am today is because of blessings and tragedies and joys and heartbreaks that took place on that tiny 8 square mile island.

Going back would be easy, in some ways, but it would be chasing ghosts.

Bali, I hope, is my future.

As at peace and happy as I felt spending the month back in Thailand, I felt certain that the true joy I found there would be found not in returning but in once again leaping bravely down a rabbit hole following the quietest whisper of intuition.

A new adventure. A new chapter.

Looking forward to all the lessons and joys that are to come this beautiful new 2,230 square mile island.

Be back soon 🥂

📷: First photo the incomparable @jonesaroundtheworld

And then I found my dream house 💭 Are you guys

And then I found my dream house 💭

Are you guys following @villakerangsue? It would be such an honor if you did! I realized I didn’t finish sharing my stories about the home buying process so I’m throwing a bunch of those up over the next few days so I’m all caught up by the time I land back — which is so soon ahhhh cue packing panic!

Truly though, starting any new venture can be a little nerve wracking no matter what stage of life you are in and I think that’s the fun part… you can always start a new chapter when you’re feeling a little stuck or stagnant. It’s also the totally freaking wild scary part too 🤪

I’m just so super grateful for all the love and support you guys give me! If you don’t work in an industry that involves social media marketing you might not realize how incredibly helpful you are being to small businesses when you:

✨ like their accounts
✨ turn on notifications for their posts
✨ like or comment on their feed posts
✨ and of course, share them with anyone you think might be interested! 
The golden years of easily organically growing small business accounts are over which makes me extra appreciative of any of the above! 🍾

Speaking of commenting on a post… I would absolutely love to know what the number one thing you look for in a property rental property is! I’m aiming to make this not just my home but a home away from home to all who rest their weary travel heads here 🫶🏼

Three weeks to go 💕 Moment of honesty — my h

Three weeks to go 💕

Moment of honesty — my heart has really been torn in two directions about going back to Bali. I’m just overall so dang happy and content in Brooklyn — it’s felt good to reconnect to my roots and be surrounded by family and friends from all stages of my wild life.

That said, I can feel the sanity draining from my body every day around 4:02PM when the sun starts to fade into the winter sky 😂

I know me — I’m a migratory bird and it’s time to fly away!  Right now life feels super open and there’s a million different paths it could take. I could decide @villakerangsue is a creative project and business venture and simply vacation there every year. Or, I could realize my heart is indeed back in Southeast Asia and this chapter was a transitory one. Or, I could find that my plan to spend half a year in each really is the perfect balance for both halves of my forever fickle heart.  The Brooklyn path is kinda the cozy one for me, because while life in New York is full of challenges and frustrations, I have an incredible community there, I know it intimately, and it’s been part of who I am since I first moved downstate from Albany at 17. My body composition is like, 11% thin crust pizza lol.

The Bali path is, vulnerably, a little daunting. I’m still building a community there, still figuring out who my people and where my places are. I know the basic rhythms of life in a Southeast Asian tourist island, though Koh Tao was a bit more barefoot and Bali a bit more bougie.

That being said I’m sooooooo enamored with this place; so excited to have laid down a foundation in @villakerangsue upon which I can build a life — a new accessible languag to learn, food and dance and art to embrace, waves to poorly surf, getaways to take, kindred spirits to connect with. I look forward to becoming 1% sambal, haha.

I remember having these same nerves on a smaller scale when I left Thailand earlier this year after the dreamiest month — would I still feel the same way about Indo? I had two weeks there before I left back for the US — and from the moment I touched down I knew yes, I still had butterflies for Bali.

Thanks for coming along for the ride… 🥂

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