Sawasdee Kah!

My name is Prisana and I have been traveling since before I could walk. In the past five years, I’ve traveled to the Maldives, Thailand, Raja Ampat, Cambodia, Vietnam, The Bahamas, Costa Rica, Cozumel, and numerous other locations.

I’ve hitchhiked on the back of a coconut truck in the Philippines, flown in a Russian helicopter in Laos and swam with whale sharks in the Maldives.

If you’re thinking you don’t have enough money to travel, read on. You do.

It just takes a bit of thinking outside the box.

How my Traveling Exploits Landed me a Journalism Scholarship

When I was 17, I was in Switzerland visiting my Italian father and decided to take the train to Venice, where my father had spent some of his earlier years. I had enough money to reach Venice, but on a whim decided to continue my solo trip onward and went to Florence, Rome, and eventually ended up camping with a marine biologist and a painter on a black sand beach in Santorini, Greece!

To afford the trip, I quit smoking, basically fasted for most of the trip and slept on a roof top in Athens ($1 per night) with fellow backpackers and a few rats.

Years later when I was being interviewed for a journalism scholarship at the University of Colorado in Boulder, I was asked what was one of the most challenging experiences of my life.

I had just given birth to my adorable son Brandon, (3 weeks prior to my interview) and wanted to tell the panel of three male judges that in fact, the most challenging experience of my life thus far was natural childbirth. Not a unique story, but definitely quite an immense accomplishment!

It was a tough question, considering all of the challenges I had faced in my lifetime.  My sleep deprived brain raced to come up with a coherent answer. Tell them something noteworthy. Unique. Compelling. Something.

Desperate to tell them a story that was scholarship worthy; I described the challenges of traveling solo, without a realistic budget, without a backpack, or any sort of itinerary or real plan.

I had no destination. I just had absolute determination.

Was it difficult? Absolutely. Was it worth it? Completely.

In Helen Keller’s words; “Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing at all.”

And fortunately, sharing my “daring adventure” landed my scholarship!

Overcoming Life Changing Challenges

Fast forward a decade, and I was working as a freelance journalist based in Phuket, Thailand. Meanwhile, my husband Eric was working his dream job as a dive instructor/manager of a liveaboard boat in the Similans.

It was a perfect match (aside from a few hiccups).

I was regularly contributing to The Bangkok Post, Sawasdee – Thai Airways Inflight Magazine, The Asian Wall Street Journal and numerous other publications, and then one day my sister said she had some bad news and asked me to please sit down.

When someone asks you to sit, either someone has died or all your money was just frozen in Thailand.

ASIA’S FINANCIAL COLLAPSE IN 1997

I will never forget 1997 or 1998. Long story short, I lost quite a bit of money when Asia went bust and most of my baht was invested with a company called General Finance (or more accurately Generally Fu–ed). Walking on Kata beach in Phuket, after crying quite a bit because my ATM card had just informed me that I was flat broke, I finally reached that place where you realize what matters most – and what mattered most was that my two children Brandon and Amber were healthy.

LEUKEMIA DIAGNOSIS 1998

About a year later, my 15 year old son Brandon was diagnosed with aggressive leukemia. The doctor in Bangkok told us he had a 30% chance to live and our world basically collapsed. Within a 3 day period, our lives completely changed. We packed a few suitcases, boarded a plane and flew back to Denver, where Brandon began his intensive chemotherapy treatment. At first, he was doing well and went into remission, but a week later he had a total relapse. Thankfully, after a year of battling unimaginable days and nights, Brandon survived a cord marrow transplant and eventually recovered his health.

 

An Adventure Worth Having

It has been 20 unbelievable years since Brandon’s recovery and every day we celebrate the miracle of his life. As I write these words, he is with his beyond adorable 5 months old son Chase and his beautiful wife exploring the Grand Canyon and discovering so many more wonderful corners of our world.

In between planning for her adventures to Italy and elsewhere, my amazing daughter Amber continues to dedicate most of her spare time captaining our Wheels of Justice cycling team. Every year our family rides in the 157 mile Courage Classic at Copper Mountain to raise money for Children’s Hospital of Denver.

To learn more about the Courage Classic or to donate to my ride please go to the following link:

http://support.childrenscoloradofoundation.org/goto/prisana

We all share an immense love of traveling and a knack for getting lost. Except my daughter, who I believe has never been lost.

The World is Full of Wonders, Don’t Get Lost in the Chaos.

Chaos comes in many forms. It can be a mental state, or a state of a nation or world.

When we travel, we become connected to the people and places that we’ve visited. They are no longer strangers or a foreign place. Hopefully, our journeys teach us something meaningful about ourselves and the world around us.

Hopefully, the wonders of the world inspire us to do what we can to silence the chaos.

~ Prisana ~