Your Travel Flamingo

Digital Nomad & Female Travel Blog

Digital Nomad, Journal

That Time I Went to Asia and Came Back with a Boyfriend

I started traveling over a decade ago, so it goes without saying, I’ve met my fair share of characters in this crazy adventure called life.

Amidst the whirlwind and and chaotic nature of digital nomad life, there’s one encounter that finally forced me to slow down and rethink the way I live and travel – the time I fell headfirst into love on the road.

This story takes place when I was traveling through Southeast Asia.

Vietnamese girl with a palm leaf hat on a boat in Trang An, Ninh Binh province, Vietnam.
Backpacking Southeast Asia in 2019

And in honor of the day of love this week, I’d like to share that story but first, I’d like to give a quick shout out to Safety Wing Travel Insurance.

How does travel insurance tie into this story, you ask? Well, this story starts in Chiang Mai 2019, a trip that I was on the brink of canceling after I was involved in a string of travel disasters – one after the other.

From getting hit by a garbage truck on my motorbike, to having my laptop (aka my work gear) destroyed and needing costly replacement, plus a month long bout of persistent food poisoning all while in Lombok – it goes without saying that I was seriously not having a good time.

Mountains in Komodo Island from the Flores province in Indonesia.
Hiking in Indonesia, before the motorbike crash

This month of bad luck drained both me and my bank account.

It was so stressful that it almost sent me home, but I was able to make it work because I had awesome travel insurance to reimburse some costs and put my mind at ease.

In summary: get travel insurance. If you can’t afford it, you probably shouldn’t travel. Luckily Safety Wing Travel Insurance has plans starting at just $45 a month. So for a little more than a dollar a day, you can travel safer and longer without worries.

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Chiang Mai, Thailand 2019

Benchamabophit temple in Bangkok, Thailand.
Thailand, 2019

By April 2019, I had already been living the digital nomad life for almost a year. In those early days, I was flying solo. And with that freedom, I’ll admit that I dated around a lot.

I mostly dealt with those typical digital nomad situationships. You know, the ones that start up really fast and end as soon as you get on a flight to the next destination.

Truth be told, I am a hopelessly sentimental person (my horoscope sign is a Cancer, after all) and I often romanticized the idea of meeting someone special on the road. It was fun to day dream about, but I thought it was impossible to date someone long-term living the lifestyle I did.

Two lotus flowers and golden Buddha statues behind.
Chiang Mai, 2019

In other words, it was easier to keep things casual and expectations low (like on the floor low). To keep a guarded heart at all times because it was safer this way. It was also really fun just being single and traveling the world.

Fast forward to the weekend of Songkran, Thailand’s annual New Year Festival that takes place every April.

Songkran is a pretty unique celebration that involves multiple days of festivities amongst locals and tourists. It’s essentially a 3 – 5 day water gun fight and massive citywide party that takes place in the streets across the country, and since it typically involves a lot of madness and alcohol, I don’t have any good pictures to show for it.

The White Temple in Chiang Rai, Thailand.
White Temple – the calm before Songkran

I joined a massive Couchsurfing Group chat ahead of the festival and spent each day meeting up with other travelers to hang out and party together. One the second day, I lost my group at an outdoor nightclub after one too many whiskey sodas.

In the process of looking for them, I noticed another foreigner by himself who happened to be really hot. I passed him several times, but he never approached me, so I chose to exercise my unmatched flirting skills by asking him if he knew the wifi password.

Also worth mentioning: we were standing outdoors at that time – there was definitely no wifi. But as Kobe Bryant once said, you miss 100% of the shots you don’t take, so shoot your shot. And I’d clearly taken a lot of shots, mostly in the form of dark liquor.

My liquid confidence preceded the actual words coming out of my mouth, but he took the bait and we started talking. I eventually gave him my number, and we met up the next day. We ended up spending the entire Songkran festival together, and every day after until he finally had to fly back to Europe.

Iceland, 2019

A woman looking at the snowy mountains in Iceland.

Against all odds, we kept in touch even after saying goodbye. It turned out we had a lot of mutual interests and more importantly, the same burning passion for travel that kept us on the phone for hours every night, sharing our travel stories and dreams of where we wanted to go with each other.

We kept in touch for 5 months as he was in the process of moving to Iceland, and I continued traveling around Asia, North America and Europe.

After almost half a year of doing long distance, I finally took a leap of faith to pause my single travel girl lifestyle and meet up with him in Iceland.

Icelandic horses in Iceland.

But this decision did not come without a ton of fear and doubt.

I remember vividly getting on the plane and honestly feeling stressed. Because who the heck flies to another country to see someone they met once in a foreign country?

My friends thought I was delusional, as did my family.

But my intuition kept me grounded. It told me that this was going to be the biggest adventure yet.

A New Chapter in Travel

couple on a beach with many penguins all around in Cape Town, South Africa.

Once we reunited in Iceland, you could say the rest was history.

It’s now been almost 5 years and I’m happy to report that this travel fling actually made it out of the situationship phase.

We have since traveled to 4 continents and 29 countries together, making endless travel memories along the way, including getting stuck in South Africa during the pandemic, reuniting during lockdown in Ireland, and moving to Switzerland together.

Man drinking wine in Cape Town, South Africa 2020.
Cape Town, South Africa 2020

So, what’s have I learned from all this?

For starters, I’ll never again underestimate the power of travel in bringing people together.

It still blows my mind that by traveling, we end up crossing paths with people we may never have known otherwise, and that you really can meet someone amazing anywhere. Even while drunk and soaking wet, holding a Hello Kitty water gun and stumbling around the streets of Chiang Mai – I would know.

And secondly, we should never let fear hold us back from going after what we want – whether it’s love, adventure, or a third plate of pad thai, travel is your story and you should write it exactly how you’d like.

So here’s to love, laughter, and the wild, unpredictable journey we call life. On the road, all it really takes is a bit of luck and an open heart, and anything is truly possible.

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