11 Things I'll Miss About Asia
1. Pursing your lips to point at something.
2. Asians squatting while they wait for buses, trains, etc.
3. Bowing to say thank you and hello.
4. Quiet people.
5. Transportation – tuk tuks, songteaus and how inexpensive and easy it is to travel.
6. Monks.
7. Taking off shoes at the front door and putting on house shoes.
8. Being told how my pale, white skin is beautiful.
9. Japanese hospitality and their bidets.
10. Food: first of all – chopsticks for your food, melon buns (aka cookie buns), fried bananas, milk tea, condensed milk, roti and how it's possible to get a good meal for well under $1.
11. The countries of Cambodia and Japan and these people – Victoria, Yen Yen, Cindy, Billy, Utry, Umong, Nary, Paleong, Yati, Sherata Sensei, Masahiro, Kyna and Zach Cobos.
11 Things I won't miss about Asia
1. Water and electricity outages.
2. Slow wifi when trying to talk to my family and then hearing my mom cry when it's not working.
3. Mosquitos.
4. Loud Cambodian music.
5. Sleeping on cement.
6. Easily offending an entire culture.
7. Hanging up laundry.
8. Washing my hands/face/dishes in ice cold water in winter in Japan.
9. Food: rice, your lack of cheese, your overabundance of Nescafe and how so many times I thought I was getting chocolate to find sweet red beans in it's place.
10. Bathrooms in general – No shower curtains, showers with the toilets, showering my veggies and dishes clean, squatty potties, paying to pee, always needing to bring my own toilet paper and then realizing I forgot it.
11. The thing I will never ever miss for the rest of my life: The horrible Chinese train we took the first day we arrived in China to start our 11 month journey.
And the 5 major things I want to bring home from Asia
1. The friendliness I was given in China.
2. The quietness I experienced in Thailand.
3. The love that filled my heart in Cambodia.
4. The lessons I learned in Malaysia.
5. The hospitality I didn't deserve in Japan.
