Amanda

Intelligent, practical, and game for nearly anything, Amanda Hacking is exactly what you want from an international traveling partner. She meets me at Bangkok airport with a hug and a smile and, as with Marty, it's as if we never parted. In the four months since we graduated school, she has moved back to Thailand to help her parents rebuild the family boat, and is taking a well deserved break from that to meet up with me and travel Thailand and Cambodia for two weeks.

Amanda is a unique personage. After her first year of middle school, her parents decided to go sailing, permanantly. They rented out their house in Seattle and sailed off into the sunset. Amanda and her brother spent the last portion of their teenage years on their boat, the Ocelot. Years later, she applied and was accepted to the University of Washington, where we became friends through a few mutual associations.

After traveling most of Japan and all of China alone, I'm more than glad to see a familar face. Traveling alone is fun, rewarding, and above all other things challenging, but traveling with a good friend is even better.         

- Doug