It all started with a group tour. Those types of trips are quite good because they provide you with a theme, such as “Northern Thailand” with all of the logistics behind that are taken care of such as hotels, local transports and a guide. The trip itself is much easier than organizing it all on your own, especially when you decide to travel solo to a foreign country. Although traveling within Europe by myself does not scare me, the fact that Asian countries have a totally different written language did not put my mind at ease when it came to communicating and traveling alone. So I took the decision to book a group tour with Geckos Adventures, as I thought that their Thailand adventures seemed well-rounded.

Because the trip was separated into “northern” and “southern” Thailand, my guide explained that both week, there would be different people joining or leaving us. I quickly realized that I might be the only one doing both weeks, until two other girls mentioned that they were continuing their journey with me. Sheena from England and Nicole from Switzerland had the same travel plans as me, traveling through Thailand for 2 weeks with the same tour booked; great relief!
Being in a different environment than home I believe brought us closer together, challenging the backpacking lifestyle we endured for those 2 weeks. None of us has done such a trip before, and all 3 of us being girly girls, it made it that much more entertaining to see who could pack their backpacks fastest! The hardest part was leaving Thailand, each our separate ways, but the best part ended up that we created a forever friendship.

Promising to see each other soon, we Skyped a few weeks later, and booked ourselves a common destination: Berlin. Easy to reach for all 3 of us, it was the perfect meet-up place from France, Switzerland and England. Our weekend getaway in Berlin made our friendship stronger. Little did we know, Nicole ended up getting engaged after this trip, and invited us all back to her wedding in Zurich in September!
We’ve cherished some ups and downs together, and making friendships while traveling can sometimes be even stronger than those back home. The perks of making friends abroad are that we get to meet worldwide, wherever our little hearts desire. The effort it takes to maintain long-distance friendship though is enormous, but most definitely worth it.
