Here starts our hitchhiking journey from Thailand to Spain!

We had just made one of the biggest decisions of our life together - We were going to hitchhike all the way back to Europe. It felt completely overwhelming and like an impossible mission. However, we had watched other people do it and also read stories about people's journeys crossing the world in this way and we felt very inspired by them.

Before we could start this adventure we needed to buy all the necessary equipment for the trip and this meant spending a few days in Bangkok arranging it. After a few days we planned our route to get out of Bangkok and head up to the North East of Thailand, Isaan Province, where we would cross into Laos.

We caught a local train out of Bangkok to a smaller city on the main road heading North-East. We spent one night in a hotel before heading out the next morning to try our luck hitchhiking.

In Isaan it was amazing how quickly we got rides! Standing at the exit of petrol stations almost everyone stopped to see if they could help us, incredible!

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We made it almost all the way to our final destination in Thailand on that first day but instead of going all the way we decided to spend the night in a Buddhist Temple. This temple was actually still under construction and they welcomed us to put up our tent in the main Sala and invited us for evening prayers.

temple 1.jpg

The next morning we were woken up at 5 am by the monks getting ready to go out for morning alms. They returned a few hours later with plenty of food but before they came back the helpers at the temple took for a tour of the temple area and even allowed Alex to climb up to the top of an incomplete building just as the sun was rising above the Lotus Flower Lake. Amazing!

After breakfast (food collected during the alms) we packed up and hit the road again to reach our final destination, Nong Khai. Funnily enough this was actually Alex's birthday and we stopped in 7/11 to buy him a small birthday cake before heading to our guest house where they were kind enough to let us pitch our tent and even lend us a mattress for the three nights we spent there!