Having Jenn join us for this leg of the trip has really given me a bit of perspective about the months spent traveling in developing world. For me, after five months of backpacking I really lost track of the delineation between my developing world experiences and life back home in the states.
Jenn though had no such confusion when she arrived with shiny-clean clothes and a backpack that smelled distinctly better than mine (what is that funk!?!). Jenn knew two things about herself when deciding to join a leg of …

I have come to a pretty clear conclusion from my four months of travel in Asia -the name Shannon is not common, normal, or in some cases, even comprehensible. It’s completely normal in the United States…and Ireland for that matter!…but Asia is a whole other story. I dare-say that the theme for my journey over the past seven months could be summarized as “The Changing Names of Shannon” or, perhaps even more appropriate:  “The Complete Bastardization of my Name.”
Where did this start you may ask? Well, in Australia actually. Shannon …

I don’t want to be too overly dramatic here, but I feel as if this trip has firmly closed a chapter of my life for good.  I started the trip as a quarter-life crises of sorts as well as because of a general yearning to see the world and break out of the borders of the United States.  A lot of friends and family have sent emails and made comments about how lucky I am to have a year of vacationing.  Let me clear something up just …

I have largely neglected my duties to this blog so far by not updating all of my readers on the state of driving on this side of the world.  For those who have not yet had the pleasure of traveling or backpacking through Asia, well, it’s unique and an assault on Western safety sensibilities.  To understand the way these people drive you pretty much have to completely abandon your conceptions about Western driving tactics and strategies and instead accept the organized chaos of a free-for-all.
From what I’ve discovered so …

Now for part two of the zipping adventure…videos at the end!
We had three days and two nights total in our tree house and the six of us really didn’t want to waste any of our time on the first day.  Once the guide dropped us back off he told us we were free to zip around to our hearts desire…and when we got hungry, the guides would zip some food right into our tree house.  The only warning we were given was to not use the zip-lines at night…oh …

As a way to break up the boat ride along Mekong river Laura and I located a small town that is just off the river and decided to see if we could hunt down some of the “real” Laos.  The major cities we’ve seen have been great, don’t get me wrong – most of Laos’ cities are so very quaintly sweet and comparatively small – but they’re still extremely westernized and we were hoping for something a bit more authentic and off the beaten path.  With that in mind …

Ok, I know what most of you are thinking…what could Shannon possibly mean by the title of this post?  Surely her RTW travel adventure didn’t take her on a zip-lining adventure through the upper canopy of trees in the Laos jungle?  Well, let me assure you that I did all of that and more.  I think that I’ve now lived out nearly every American boy’s (and girl’s though this seems a bit more up the boy-alley) childhood fantasy – I lived in a tree-house Swiss Family Robinson  style and …

It was pretty hard to pry myself away from the delicious Oreo shakes and veggies subs within the city of Luang Prabang for long enough to see the sites outside of town but somehow I managed to rouse myself from my laziness for long enough to book the tuk-tuk.  Laura and I met up again with three friends from our tubing adventures in Vang Vieng, a group of Israelis led by the thoroughly lovable Shimi, they had also traveled northward to Luang Prabang and we all decided to share …