After having finished my year abroad in Hong Kong, I decided to travel to a few countries before returning to London.

First stop: Myanmar.

Myanmar was amazing, because the borders were opened relatively recently the transport links were definitely not efficient. The food was really good and everything was really cheap. Myanmar was definitely the historical highlight of our trip, my favourite moment was exploring the ancient temples of Bagan. Bagan has over 2000 temples, some of which you can still enter and explore. Our guide was really lovely and was almost our age so hearing his stories of the military dictatorship was such an eye-opener.

Cambodia:

The highlight of Cambodia was paying for a full day boat tour and getting driven around by a 10 year old!

By the time we arrived in Cambodia, it was the rainy season which hindered a lot of our beach days and outings, some days we just had to spend inside which was annoying. However on the days where the rain wasn’t so bad we did so many amazing trips, these included: renting motorbikes and riding around the cities, staying at a hostel that had a huge water slide and rope swings, staying in a bungalow on a remote island with absolutely no wifi (shock horror!) and snorkelling and fishing with a 10 year old driving our boat.

Vietnam:

Vietnam’s highlight was the food, every day we ate fresh fish for about £4 each!

We rented quad bikes and rode around the sand dunes of Vietnam, although we got caught in a mini sandstorm which was actually really painful!
My advice for Vietnam is to do an ‘easy rider’ tour: you just sit on the back of someone’s bike for the whole day while they drive you to the most interesting sights in the area of Vietnam that you’re in. Hopefully you get a good driver who’s talkative, my driver wasn’t always that up for explaining what the sights were which did get annoying but I definitely think motorbikes are a better way to see the city than being on a stuffy coach all day.

Japan:

Japan is my favourite place in the whole world! The food and the clothes are completely amazing, and I hope to move there at some point after graduating. This was my second time in Japan, so I felt more confident using the public transport etc. My recommendations for Japan are: going to Harajuku area on a Sunday when all the Kawaii girls are dressed up in their fun clothes, eating lots of sushi (obviously!), going to gonpachi nishiki which is the restaurant where Kill Bill was filmed, climbing the Inari shrine mountain in Kyoto and buying clothes in the many vintage shops around Japan.