In mid-January I travelled to Southeast Asia. More specifically, Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand.

I travelled with my boyfriend, with our first stop being Jakarta. I would like to start off by stating that didn’t really plan things well, or do much research. I decided for this trip that we would go to Bali. I actually never really had much interest in visiting Bali, not to say I never wanted to go, but I always had the idea in my mind that it was very much an ‘Instagram destination’, and thus it was much lower on my bucket list.

Despite this, I am currently working in China as a teacher. I had a month-long holiday for Chinese New Year, and while I would usually love an activity fuelled trip, my life has been pretty stressful here. So, I decided that on this holiday, all I really wanted to do was chill on the beach and drink cocktails, with a few city breaks in between, to switch things up in case we got bored. And so, Bali seemed like the perfect destination.

Anyway, I digress. Our first stop was Jakarta, and if I had done more research, I would have known that this was not the best idea. I wanted to visit Bali, but I didn’t want to be ‘basic’ and have that be the only place we visited in Indonesia, so I googled “best places to visit in Indonesia”. If you were to do this, you would see the top two recommendations for this search are ‘Bali” and ‘Jakarta’. If you bother to do a little bit more research, you will find numerous people stating that Jakarta is not a holiday destination, but for some reason unknown to myself, I only bothered to do this after booking my flights and hotels.

A few weeks before my holiday I took to TikTok to find ‘things to do in Jakarta’. The first result was “best thing to do in Jakarta… Leave”. Great.

By this point there was nothing I could do, and I was only going to be there for four days out of my month-long trip. I was determined to enjoy myself nevertheless, and while we didn’t really get up to much, it really wasn’t as bad as people were saying. Yes, it was super overcrowded and there wasn’t much going on, but the food was great, and we met some of the kindest people ever there.

Next stop was Bali. Like I said, it was never on the top of my list, but wow was I proved wrong. I expected this to be a chill on the beach, do nothing kind of holiday, but it was nothing of the sort. We rented a bike, which allowed us the freedom to travel all over the island, which we did nearly every day of our nine-day trip. We saw crazy waterfalls, monkey forests, volcanoes, and I tried, and failed, to surf for the first time.

Third stop on the itinerary was Kuala Lumpur. It was really nice to visit a city that had a lot going on, unlike the city I’m currently living in. Again, the food was amazinggg and there were a lot of cool places to eat and have drinks (though bear in mind, this is a Muslim country, and alcoholic drinks were NOT cheap here – think London prices). The highlight of this stop was probably this random luge place (I didn’t even know what that at the time) that I had seen on Instagram. Basically, you just slide down a hill with obstacles on this plastic sleigh – trust me, it was a lot more fun than it sounds.

Our final stop was Thailand. Now, Thailand is somewhere I’ve ALWAYS wanted to visit. I know I’m not alone in this, and it’s at the top of many people’s bucket lists, but it’s for a good reason. If anyone is thinking of visiting Thailand and you have the means to do so, DO IT. I literally could write a whole piece on Thailand alone. The food, people, views, nightlife, EVERYTHING was just 10/10. I could ramble on for hours, but I’ve already written too much and you’re probably over it by this point, so I’ll just let the pictures speak for themselves. I can guarantee I will be back in the future, and I’ll dedicate a post to Thailand alone, because trust me, it deserves it.

All in all, I had a great time, and Southeast Asia has not seen the last of me.