Day 365!!! Well, here it is! The official post marking a full year of traveling! It’s been a whirlwind of a year with a bunch of crazy adventures… let’s recap!

I started January 3rd with a flight to England! I spent two amazing weeks hanging out with my dad in the city of London. I’d never had a trip just one on one with him before and it was a wonderful time!

I then purchased a flight and headed to Vietnam, where I changed course quickly and bought a motorbike. Over the next 2 months, I rode my motorbike across the country and even with a couple crashes, I had an incredible experience. Vietnam will forever hold a special place in my heart… the locals, the travelers, and the amazing scenery (and food), all of it was beautiful.

I then, crazily enough, decided to keep motorbiking and crossed a freaking border on my motorbike with no idea what lied ahead. I ventured into Laos and immediately got food poisoning. But after that mishap, I was back on my feet in a few days. I saw the entire country, minus parts of the very north. And again, I met incredible locals and travelers! I ended up traveling around with about 8 other travelers and we even made our way into the next country together.

We took the (VERY) slow boat over two days into Thailand. Where… my “traveling” pretty much stopped. I had plans for going to other SE Asian countries. I spent around a month in Chiangmai, did a silent retreat, celebrated Songkran, and spent a couple weeks in Bangkok where I stayed with a friend’s family and saw his university! And then MY COUSINS VISITED!

We had a wonderful two weeks together in Chiangmai, Koh Samui, and Koh Phangan. Unfortunately I was sick for some of it, but it was so nice to be able to spend time with them in a country I love so much. After they left, I wandered into a hostel on Koh Tao that would change the course of my travels…

I got a spot as the volunteer at Taco Shack, where I was everyone’s “first friend” at the hostel. I also hosted all the nightly activities and met some new friends too! And then… I got sucked into the world of scuba diving! Over the next 3 months I spent just shy of 153 hours under the sea and received my Dive Master, which means I’m now a professional scuba diver and can guide dives. And I did just that for a few more weeks before heading onto the next country!

I landed in Melbourne, Australia a few days before my work and holiday visa would’ve expired. I luckily had my friend Sammy to stay with and then after a few weeks of his families hospitality, I moved into a hostel where my friend Immy was at and started laboring. That turned out to be a pretty intense job and after a month, I needed out of the city and a better job!

I took a chance on a small town called Yamba and it ended up working out! I’ve been bartending and enjoying the beach and warm weather ever since! Well… most of it. I did fracture my foot and have 2 more days until I get an update on if I’m all clear to stop wearing a moon boot.

5 different countries in 1 year, and these weren’t quick visits, but full on immersions! This was a very brief rundown on what I got up to… but every day was documented so you can see exactly what I did and who I met!

Now, let’s get into my current day!

Well… to be honest, I didn’t do too much today.

My day 1 of 2025 consisted of me sleeping in till around NOON! Going to bed at 4am really messes with your sleep cycle. But at least I got 8 hours of sleep in the end.

I finally rolled out of bed, took a shower, and made myself breakfast. And after that, I laid back down into bed to just relax the rest of the morning.

I did watch a couple episodes of My Hero Academia… for the most part of the morning though, I read Oathbringer, the book I’ve been chugging along through. I’m under 100 pages now and I can already tell it’s going to leave me on a huge cliff hanger.

My work shift started at 4pm, so just before I had a quick snack of a tuna wrap, hummus, and crackers. I then put on my moon boot and made my way up the hill to work.

I thought work today would be nice and slow because everyone partied hard the night before. But I was wrong! We ended up having a very busy night. There’s a bunch of holiday families (and their friends) in town now, and they were very excited to tell us that we’d be seeing them for the next month. Thankfully they were all very nice people and not a group of entitled tourists.

For my dinner break, I had a chicken parmi. This usually isn’t the best at the pub, but I was craving one and today’s was actually really good!

My 30 minutes went by quicker than I’d hoped and I was back into the thick of the busy bar. We ended up closing the bar at 10:30pm, but it was still super packed and people stayed for another 30 minutes after that.

All the bar staff still on was exhausted, so we skipped over playing pool and one of my coworkers gave me a lift home!

And then I passed out before writing this blog post.

A whole year of traveling! I’m very fortunate to be able to be in the position I am and I’m glad I was able to document every day of this past year! To be able to have this time in my life where I can just fully do what I want to do and work on myself is invaluable. And being in tropical places is always a plus too!

Now, the traveling is nowhere near done yet! I still have a little over 4 months until I make a pit stop back in the US, but I have plans to continue on after that!

But… we’ll wait and see!

As I alluded to in my last post, starting this week, I’ll be switching to weekly blog posts! So the next post will be on January 8th. This wont be a permanent switch, but at least while I’m doing the same thing every day I’ll be able to condense the posts down and give a bit longer updates!

A special shoutout to my mother! My behind the scenes editor. She has silently edited every single one of my posts after my tired nights of misspelling and the VERY occasional autocorrect which wasn’t so correct.

Thank you to everyone who’s followed along this past year and to those of you who just started following along, welcome to the adventure!

I can’t wait to see what this year has in store!

– Elie

(I realized I didn’t take any photos today… so the cover photo is me just before going to bed 😅)