Megatrip posting has been sparser than vegitation in a Namibian desert recently. And while some of that has been due to our psyches going through a John Glenn-esque re-entry melt for the past few months, it has a lot more to do with the fact that our site was hacked by a Bangladshi guy named Sid. A name we only know because he wrote it as plain as “Your Site Was Hacked By Sid” on our homepage. At least the Wet Bandits had subtlety…
But the silver lining is that for every month we spent under cyber-siege, we also had more time to appropriately ruminate the third most frequently asked question we receive about Megatrip. Right after “Did David’s excessive sweating ever create a flood warning in Laos?” or “Wait I don’t understand, is Sara’s bag behind the upturned shipping container with wheels and a retractable handle?”, the question of “What was the best place you went?” is usually the next in line. 
And while we’d like to be reductive enough to provide an casual, laconic answer to this question, usually what happens is we ramble on about cities we loved and sites we adored and toilets we destroyed until we realize the person who actually asked us the question left 10 minutes ago. But, just like parents and people who claim all Skittles are the same flavor, of course we do have favorites. Naming only one would be straight irresponsible. But we’ve narrowed it down to a respectable nine.
These are our absolute all-timers, the ones that still keep us up at night, the places that defined Megatrip, which the hacker-enabled prism of time has allowed us to fully appreciate. This is why we’ve included our initial thoughts, written while actually visiting these places, alongside our hindsight-assisted retrospectives. Good looks and first impressions aren’t enough to get you in this exclusive group. You need to have made a lasting impact. The chances of this exercise putting an end to our extensive travel musings are precisely zero, but at the very least, when people ask us where we liked best, this will give us a pithy link to provide instead of a night-ending TED talk no one asked for. So without any further delay (looking at you, Sid), we present the Megatrip Allstars in evasively chronological order. Let’s get into it.
Railay Beach – Where The Trip Got Its Mega
What we said then: “Rugged, Land-Before-Time karsts, seemingly recently ripped raw and smoldering out of a violent earth, plunge recklessly into the blue Andaman sea, perfectly poised to serve as a prehistoric frame for the setting sun every single night. It is the earth at it’s most primordial, gorgeous, mysterious, and engaging. The kind of place that you feel in your gut when you see it. Especially if you ate at some of the restaurants…“
We’ve already waxed excessive about the magical healing powers of the postcard-iest beach in Thailand, but it really deserves every self-indulgent word of it (including these). Railay is not only perhaps the best beach we’ve ever been to (an utterly arresting interplay between vertical rocks, horizontal seas, and delicately slanted watering holes, it stands as probably the most confined expression of what people love about Southern Thailand), but it was also Megatrip’s first hit single. Its Baby One More Time. Its Bodak Yellow. We had been to Bangkok before. 
Ao Nang is great if you like shopping at the bargain section of your neighborhood strip club. But Railay was the place we first came to terms with what we were doing. Even if you’re Gravity’s-Rainbow-level SE-Asia-travel-literate, there’s something about the isolatory Giligan’s Thaiand vibe of Railay that will put you in your wonderfully diminutive place. Its the kind of beach that makes you ask questions whose answers you can’t wait to hear. We get to stay here for several nights? And after that we get to go to other places? This trip lasts for as long as we can physically/mentally/financially withstand? You can buy weed at the beach bars?? Railay is a mind-shifter. The moment you arrive, you have no choice but to adjust your wordly bullshit and toggle your default setting from day-to-day logistics to open-mouthed appreciation. If you’re looking to throw everything away in the name of the ultimate travel experience, we recommend giving yourself an early showstopper like this.
Laos – Aot There
What we said then: “After a week in Laos, we can definitively say we are such big fans we would throw undergarments at it from the front row the next time it goes on tour. The pictures above are from Luang Prabang, a French colonial jungle town with beautiful architecture, stunning scenery, and a license to chill like none other. Expect this to place to continue to climb up your yearly travel publication rankings, it’s ready for the stadium show.”
We felt some pressure to narrow down Laos to a specific destination, but it was impossible to separate any piece of this beautiful country from the commensurate whole. And this is not an accusation of homogeneity or anything close to it. The places we went in Laos were distinct as could be, but they all came with the same wild, untamed traits entrenched in their genotypes. There was the sleepy, dusty, neighborhood-esque grid of Vientiane, flying in the face of Asian capital cities with its relaxed pace and approachable scale. 
There was the debauchery outpost of Vang Vieng, a sordid hybrid of patchwork aquatic bar crawl and serrated limestone ridges that was equal parts gorgeous, concerning, exuberant, and nitrous oxide. And there was Luang Prabang, the French colonial wonder in the heart of the jungle; a foodie dream town within tuktuk distance of paradisiacal waterfalls and home to arguably the best night market in Southeast Asia. All were unique, but also cut from the same rugged, entropic fabric. Laos was where our inner full-time travelers first felt truly emancipated. The caged animal of Megatrip finally set free to clumsily discover what it was capable of. Which it turns out was a reckless ammount of Laab and Beerlao consumption.
Hoi An, Vietnam – Restraint In A Land Of Excess
What we said then: “Any town that seems to exist solely for the purpose of sunset is one we’ll instantly bond/sleep/get matching tattoos with. And we’d like to welcome Hoi An, Vietnam to the butterfly-on-the-inner-thigh club.“
We spent more time in Vietnam than any country on this trip aside from Italy, and doing so afforded us the opportunity to see this beguiling place from all its broth-soaked angles. The relatively recent surge of tourism in Vietnam has resulted in a markedly double-edged travel sword. One on hand we now thankfuly have access to places like the endorphin-manufacturing motorcycle convention of Old Hanoi, and the topographic marvel of Ha Long Bay. One the other hand, we have fabricated Insta-bait like Hue’s abandoned water park from the bygone early 2000s, and the organized tour cavalcade of Ha Long Bay. Amidst all this contradiction, Hoi An separates itself by exercising a rare trait in this attention-demanding landscape: subtlety. 
Yes there is intimidating traffic, but it’s diluted to exactly the point where we were confident enough to hop on a bike of our own, speeding across rice paddies and spending more time in the same traffic circle than can be considered healthy for our inner ears. It has natural beauty (the placid river, the aforementioned paddies, the overlooked nearby beaches), but it invites you to explore them on your own terms. And yes, it has its own brand of travel industry artifice, but this time with a degree of charm in place of cash grab hoodwinkery.
So when a boat operator charged us to release lanterns into the Thu Bon River, surrounded by traditional sloping roofs, noodle stands, and a tangerine sunset, and then proceeded to set a mere folded piece of tissue paper on fire and throw it in the water, it felt more like a playful prank than an outright betrayal. And in a town this picturesque, it’s hard to hold a grudge against some gentle profiteering. Speaking of which, reading this paragraph costs 1000 VND. It’s fine, you can pay at the end.
Ubud, Bali – The Infinitely Pleasant Surprise
What we said then: “Ubud snuck up on us like a flash Chipotle craving: lightning fast, immensely satisfying, and concerningly sweat-inducing. And to continue to the parallel even further, it might just be the beginning of a lifelong addiction. This place has something for every variety of travel diet: scenery, history, culture, food, traffic, you name it. And although it might seem excessive, we can’t recommend the private jungle infinity pool enough. Every burrito needs a little guac after all…”
Ubud almost feels too predictable to be on this list. Of course this was one of our favorite places. Have you seen pictures of it? How could it not be? And perhaps because of that predictability, that Eat Pray Love affiliation, that weekly subscription to Basic Magazine, we almost didn’t include it on our itinerary at all. But it turns out that the most surprising thing about Ubud isn’t that it flips the script on its well known tropes, but that it fully owns them. 
And absolutely crushes each one. Yes the jungles are that green. Yes the carvings are that ornate. Yes the coffee beans were picked out of that cat poop. That’s what Ubud is: living, breathing, sweltering proof that some places deserve all the fuss they generate.
But maybe Ubud’s most lasting personal impact is how it, likely permanently, reconfigured our entire approach to hotel booking. The temples and rice terraces and jungles and mountains were incredible, but just as valuable a player on this hall of fame starting lineup was the life-affirming private infinity pool we got to return to every day; years of Chase rewards points made manifest in the most shimmering, precipitous, panoramic way possible. For years, travel lodging to us was secondary to almost every other consideration, a place for necessary intermissions of unconsciousness between exploratory gauntlets, and not much more. 
But ending night after night watching the sun set behind verdant hills from your own aquatic overlook, no one around but the occasional primate interloper, has an undeniable effect on a person. It’s a high that’s hard not to continue chasing. Which is essentially what we did the rest of the trip (see: Maldives, Stellenbosch, Namibia, Fez, Matera, Positano, Manarola, Halstatt, Amsterdam, Colorado). And if that robs us of some of our true explorer cred, if that renders us mere drops in a massive ocean of indistinguishable Insta travel couples, if that anoints us editors in chief at Basic Magazine, then that’s fine. If you’re going to grow up and lean into predictability, Ubud is pretty solid place to learn.
Jordan – King of Kingdoms
What we said then: “Petra stuns in so many ways it’s overwhelming. There’s the site you’ve heard of: Ornate ancient structures chiseled into sheer stone faces, several civilizations worth of hidden desert metropolis, a veritable champagne room for history nerds. But then there’s also the unexpected mountain panoramas, the naturally multicolored whirlpool paint jobs, the sinusoidal canyon passageways. To say it stuns is insufficient, it petrifies.”
No destination had more expectations to live up to than Jordan. No other place was as pined over and dreamt of for as long, and very few truly embodied the “now or never” ethos that was Megatrip’s oxygen. Not much was set in stone prior to this trip, but Jordan, having been set in stone forever, was just about the only firm date we had when we boarded our first flight. 
Even with all of this build up, even after stoking the masses with an immaculately edited teaser trailer, even after turning heads with a jaw dropping combine performance, it managed to outpace the hype every step
of the way. Much like the final season of Breaking Bad, Jordan delivered again and again, relentlessly, especially when it seemed impossible for it to do so. And we were floored participants at every turn. 
From upping the ante on the relatively pedestrian Salinity Times pose in the Dead Sea, to roaming the juxtapositional satellite forums of Amman and Jerash. From slumber in a climate controlled star bubble in the middle of the Wadi Rum desert, to speechless awe in the timeless glory of Petra, decades of anticipation and millennia of existence fused together into as perfect a day as I can envision. We saw wild camels on the side of the road. We saw elderly Germans coat themselves in layers of supposedly therapeutic sea sludge. We saw Bedouin camps nested under nooks in sandstone skyscrapers. We saw Jordan. We looked upon its works and rejoiced.
Namibia – Desert Quintessence
What we said then: “If the Deadvlei were throwing a swanky cocktail party, there would be a long guestlist including Optimal Lighting, Dry Heat, and The Passage Of Time in the VIP booth, but Comparison’s invite would be conspicuously absent. Because what else is this place like? Popular travelisms like “haunting” and “lunar” miss the mark. This is the Deadvlei. And it’s a petrified forest in a sunbaked former lakebed surrounded by skyscraper dunes. I’ll let you get acquainted while I try get a selfie with Time.”
In a journey of wild lion sightings, venerable tannery inhalation, and vintage wine consumption, perhaps the defining memory of Megatrip was descending the Sosussvlei’s Big Daddy dune. After a taxing hike up the tallest pile of sand on the planet, there’s a communal “what now?” moment shared amongst those precariously situated on the narrow, granulated summit. 
A feeling that quickly dissolves in to trepidatious excitement as everyone simultaneously realizes the only way to excuse yourself from this windswept mountain, this crumbling colossus of erosion, this titanic mound of misplaced beach, is to bounce. And bounce you do. Like Neil Armstrong with the maturity of a 12 year old, you bound recklessly down a sheer incline only to be absorbed knee deep into the softest sediment imaginable upon landing. You do this until you reach the dehydrated spiderweb of petrified former lake at the base. You catch your breath and get your laughing under control. And then you still have to walk to the Dead Vlei, which is the whole reason you came in the first place.
It was an absurd experience. It was at once unexpected, bizarre, hilarious, and something we couldn’t do anywhere else. And the same can be said about the country itself, which there’s really nothing in the world to compare to. Deserted highways rumble on for hours, leading either to galloping oryx or the most perfect, textbook representation of desert you’ll ever see. Or both. In a journey tasked with bypassing every landscape, climate and ecosystem imaginable, it’s telling that desert was the most memorable. And we have Namibia to thank for that.
Matera – Italy’s Next Rock Star
What we said then: “Towns like Matera showcase how absurdly stacked Italy’s deck is. How many other millennia-old cave settlements does it have up its already diamond-studded boot sleeve? What other steeple-scapes seemingly sculpted from a single primeval monolith is it hiding from travelers? Keep holding your wine-soaked cards close to your carb-encrusted vest, Italy. If we found this one we’ll find the next”
Matera is going to be a big deal. Right now it doesn’t have the brand recognition of the Amalfi Coast or the prestige of Lake Como, but it’s one televised Kardashian vacation away from occupying the top spot on everyone’s Italy list. And for a country with so many heavy hitters, what impresses about Matera is how different it is. The Renaissance flare, the Papal grandiosity, the Mediterranean vibrance, are all viscerally replaced by ridges of chiseled, monochromatic, borderline azoic, stone. Matera is an entire city that looks carved from a contiguous slab of earth. An intricate stack of tiny churches, primitive dwellings, and aromatic bakeries, so dense and kinetic it feels like it might burst if it weren’t harnessed by that omnipresent blanket of igneous.
And if that seems uninviting, it isn’t. The city is less mausoleum, and more newly gentrified hipster neighborhood, with cozy wine taverns, craft beer bars, and artisanal coffee roasters occupying just as many of the rocky protrusions as ancient basilicas. It’s one part Capadoccia, one part functioning movie set, and one part Logan Square. But it’s also, despite all of its eccentricities, pure Italy through and through. Garlic, basil and tomato redolence thickens the air at every turn. Catholicism is inescapable. Joy is pursued with economic and hypertension-threatening abandon. This is Italy unearthed, a twinkling geode of past, present, and pasta, forever unchanging yet emphatically dynamic at the same time. See it now before Kylie beats you to it.
Kotor, Montenegro – The Adriatic Overachiever
What we said then: “Remember that kid in 5th grade who had almost too much going for him? The most friends, the coolest skateboard, the ability to talk to girls without urinating, a tortuous fortress wall meandering its way up the staggering valley that almost pushes his labyrinthine old town into the sapphiric water at his doorstep? Yea, Kotor is that kid. And just like him, its also infuriatingly likable. Damn you, Kotor. Now please come to my sleepover on Friday.”
It’s tough to pinpoint a specific characteristic that makes Kotor so special. Which is a direct result of it just how much it has going for it. There’s the city itself, which outshines a crowded field of Adriatic fortifications by favoring the intimate over the palatial, the disorienting over the approachable, and the uniform over the unintentional. There’s the bay the town calls home, a narrow sliver of crystal water bordered imposingly by walls of gravel gray terrain sporadically speckled with coniferous color.
In a trip that took us to Ha Long Bay, Lake Como, and Halstatt, the Bay Of Kotor stood alone in the category of geographically dramatic water bodies, its staggering scale and unimpeachable beauty elevating it into a class of its own. Then of course there’s the palpable charm, revealing itself through the relaxed friendliness, the insatiable appetites, the feeling that by merely being there you’re being let in on a precious family secret. There’s alleyways that become raucous nightlife epicenters. There’s casual shoreline swimming spots. There’s all those wooden shutters. Of course if you focus on all of this you’ll miss the iconic fortress ruins in the hills above town, the proximity to nearby gems like Perast and Budva, and the preponderance of 2-liter beer bottles. You might be doing too much, Kotor. But we suggest you keep it up.
Colmar, France – Wine Country Whimsy
What we said then: “Already a majority shareholder of “quaint”, “charming” and “occupied”, small-town rural Europe has monopolized the word “fairytale” to free-trade-threatening levels. But take 10 minutes to evaluate Colmar’s dense tangle of sherbet streets, hidden canals, and external foundations, and you’ll be rescinding that antitrust lawsuit to cozy up with Big Flammkuchen faster than you can chug your Gewurztraminer. A fantasy of consortial proportions. A conglomerate as old as time.”
At this point in Megatrip, the goal was less to see the world’s great sites and prominent cities, and more to find small nooks in which to peacefully delay the inevitable. This was the retirement home phase. The second semester senior year. The farm your childhood dog “relocated” to. Which may have contributed to the left field trajectory Colmar hurtled toward us from. We had already hiked the dunes and rafted the rivers and scaled the ruins. We had no idea biking the vineyards was still on the docket.
Colmar, and really all of Alsace, is small town Europe at its most whimsical and instantly-gratifying. The beam-clad edifices are enchanting, vivid, and unmistakable. The bucolic natural surroundings exude old world grace. The culture rests comfortably somewhere between Bavarian cheer and French indulgence. The food alone was enough to earn a spot on this list, with flammkuchen permanently cementing a pizza-adjacent sidewalk slab on our eternally dysfunctional dietary thoroughfare. Oh also, it’s wine country. The kind of wine country that forever casts American tastes in a conspicuously suspect spotlight. Wait, Riesling is amazing as long as it’s not crafted for sugar-addled kindergarten palettes? Hold on, Gewürztraminer is as fun to drink as it is to pronounce? Back up, we get to pedal aimlessly through the fields cultivating these elixirs as we peruse medieval towns, picked off a map based on nothing more than the hilarity of their names? Colmar was one of those places that reminded us Megatrip was as much a sentient part of this adventure as we were. We created Megatrip and raised it, sure, but by this point it had grown up, left home, and lived enough on its own that it could afford to foot the bill for dinner. Farm or not, this old dog still had some new tricks. Most of which were slathered in butter and fermented grapes.
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So there you have it, our extensive verbal response in written form. And lengthy as it is, the process of whittling our entire adventure down to these 9 was not an easy one. The result is a stockpile of countless honorable mention locations that were extraordinary in their own right and for some likely arbitrary and subjective reason, didn’t quite sneak past the velvet rope into Allstar Lounge. We will give these destinations the rambling pontification they deserve. So stay tuned for more.
Your description was as fantastic as ur trip( and I have been to several of those places)!