Erin & Troy: Selfies Through Asia or “The 30 Faces of Troy”

Whenever a person travels, the most commonly present item is a camera. It’s only natural for a person to want to capture images of the new and fascinating sites they see. Lately, however, the trend of taking selfies has taken over. Instead of just taking photos of what they see, more and more people are taking pictures of themselves along with those sites. In this post, I have compiled 30 of my favorite “selfie” photos from our year of living and traveling around Southeast Asia. A few of them aren’t quite selfies, but they’re close enough.

One of the things I noticed in these photos is that while I tend to adopt a similar pose in most of them, my boyfriend, Troy, has made each one unique. He can’t just smile in a photo. I love all the different faces he puts on for each pictures. It really shows off his crazy, goofy personality. I hope you will enjoy them as much as I do.

Seeing the Terracotta Warriors was really neat. There are just rows upon rows of these guys down in the ground. Truly epic. I’m really glad we took this photo shortly after we got in there. AC is limited in that room and there are a million other people all cramming to see the warriors, so we were covered in sweat with soaked shirts before too long.

When wandering around the Temple of Heaven in Beijing, we came across this area where people were standing on this circle and taking photos of each other. We thought it was cool, so we did it, too. lol. People pointed and laughed at us, so I’m sure they knew we had no idea what this thing was. When I got home and researched it, I discovered that this is an alter stone used during the Ming and Qing Dynasties to ensure bountiful harvests and plenty of rain.

The Sydney Opera House! This photo cracks me up because it was so bright and we both kept squinting or having to closer our eyes, so I cheated and put the camera shadow over my face while Troy did his usual thing of being goofy, but looking to the side.

This water palace was pretty cool. I mentioned to Troy that it would be nice to go for a swim (it was really hot that day) and he offered to push me into the water. We actually almost didn’t make it there. A local heard us talking about going there and told us it was closed for prayer time, but that we could go check out some batik shops where we could get batiks for cheap. Yes, we fell for that. By the time we looked at the batiks (didn’t buy any, thank goodness), ate lunch and went back to the place, it was just about to close. We literally had 5 minutes to buy our tickets to get in, but once we got in we were able to stay for half an hour. We were so glad that guy’s lie didn’t keep us from seeing it.

There are two of these instead of just one of us together because none of the ones of us together have interesting backgrounds. In these photos, we were on top of the Marina Bay Sands Hotel, the one that is shaped like a boat and has the really awesome swimming pool on the roof. The ferris wheel we were goofing off with in the background, The Singapore Flyer, was, at the time of the photo, the world’s largest ferris wheel. It held that record until March 31, 2014, when it was supplanted by a ferris wheel in Vegas. Oh well. At least we got to see it when it was still the leader!

There are two of these instead of just one of us together because none of the ones of us together have interesting backgrounds. In these photos, we were on top of the Marina Bay Sands Hotel, the one that is shaped like a boat and has the really awesome swimming pool on the roof. The ferris wheel we were goofing off with in the background, The Singapore Flyer, was, at the time of the photo, the world’s largest ferris wheel. It held that record until March 31, 2014, when it was supplanted by a ferris wheel in Vegas. Oh well. At least we got to see it when it was still the leader!

The Sanctuary of Truth! This place as amazing! I can’t wait to post my photos of this. Along with all the other photos of all our other trips. lol. They made us wear hard hats during the tour because it is still under construction. And it will be for a reeeeeeeeeeeeeally long time. It was started in 1981 and is set to be completed in 2025.

This mosque is absolutely beautiful! Visiting it, not quite so. lol. I wore long pants, a long-sleeved shirt and a headscarf, but apparently my jeans were too tight, so they made me wear the burqa. And Troy decided to keep his facial expressions in check for this photo because he didn’t want to offend the locals.

Snorkeling! Troy introduced me to snorkeling while in Asia and I have to say that I absolutely love it! We had so much fun snorkeling in so many different places and we’re always looking for somewhere else to snorkel.

Perhentian was such a fun island. We spent one evening (this photo) wandering around the beach on the opposite side of the island, looking for shells and watching the sunset. It was one of my absolute favorite island evenings from our entire time in Asia.

Ah, Ayutthaya. That place was such an adventure. Getting there, the entire time we were there and getting back to Bangkok. All of it was crazy. But it was still fun. There are so many well-preserved ruins there and we just had a blast exploring them.

This place was fun. Our first floating market. We hadn’t expected rain that day, so I wore my pretty blue and white dress. Oopsies. When we got to the floating market outside Bangkok, it just started pouring and didn’t let up the entire time we were there. Thankfully, the boats had covers and the proprietors had those thin little rain ‘jackets’ that we were able to purchase for a very ‘reasonable’ price. haha. Not.

This is what we did for Troy’s birthday. He said that the only thing he wanted to do for his birthday was to go somewhere and snorkel, so we hopped in the car and went up the coast, hopped a ferry and got to an island! We rented a kayak and kayaked out to another island where we spent the day snorkeling. It was a lot of fun.

Batu Caves! This was the very first thing we visited in Malaysia after moving there. Seriously. We arrived on Sunday morning and early Saturday morning (Troy had to work all week and I was dealing with getting my cat into the country) we took off for the caves. That place is amazing. We went back several other times while we were there and enjoyed it each time.

Bali was wonderful. Finding the rice terrace was a bit of a fluke. We were both under the impression that the rice terraces were only on one part of the island and that we’d have to drive several hours to get there. I was sad because we decided that would be one of the ‘if we have time’ things since we had so many other things on our list of things to do that were closer. But, lo and behold, on our way to the very first thing we went to see, we found some rice terraces. 20 minutes from our hotel. Troy thought I was such a dork because I started crying when we got out of the car. I was that happy to be at the rice terrace. That’s how much I wanted to visit them.

Oh, Bagan. I could spend a month there. I do have about 5,000 other selfie photos of us there (many of which are much better), but this one got picked because it just cracks me up. Troy is such a goofball and this totally captures his personality. I told him I wanted a picture of us with the pagoda to the side and he helped me get that shot. And made me laugh at the same time.

This was the first place we visited in Myanmar. We got off the plane, stashed our bags at the hotel and immediately came here. It was a great choice. Shwezigon Pagoda is beautiful and we got the added bonus of being able to pay to release birds! And, in all likelihood, those birds probably flew right back to the people we bought them from so they could have another set of tourists pay to release them again. Ah. Ingenuity.

Maya Bay was fun. It was where The Beach was filmed in either 1999 or 2000 and seemed like the place to be. There wasn’t a lot of room for snorkeling, but we snuck off to the side of the beach where people were avoiding and snorkeled around in about 5 feet of water. And chased crabs. It was a lot of fun.

Man, I felt so bad for the guy that drove us around town on this. Troy is not a little guy and he has about 5,000lbs of camera gear that he carries around. Add in my 135lbs and 50lbs of camera gear and the driver (biker?) had to pedal up and down hills with almost 400lbs. lol. He ended up pushing the rickshaw up the hills. Troy and I offered to help, but he was very adamant that we stay inside and rest. lol. And, yes, we both sat on that seat. It was very tight and not entirely comfortable. But don’t tell the rickshaw guy that.

The Leshan Buddha was quite the experience. We got to wait in line for 3 hours, climb down an insanely steep and narrow staircase carved into a cliff and then dodge tiny Asian people as we tried to get decent photos. It was fun. You can see from my shirt how hot it was and how much we were sweating. Would we do it again? Probably.

This was our first ‘out of Kuala Lumpur’ excursion. We went with a bunch of Troy’s coworkers and their families to go see the elephants and had a really great time watching them play and feeding them. Elephants have such great personalities.

Ha Long Bay is absolutely beautiful and was a great place to visit. The rocks jutting out of the ocean are intriguing and all the floating villages are fascinating.

The Great Wall of China was AMAZING! We spent hours walking up and down it. How far did we walk? We walked to the very far green peak, just where it starts curving left. Yeah, we walked all of that. It was hot and muggy and sweaty and oh so much fun. Hardly any people were there and we just had a great time. Oh, and take note of Troy’s disgusting goatee. They were having a facial hair contest at work and he was growing his goatee out. *shudder* I was so glad when that ended.

The circle train in Myanmar was a really great experience. We got to interact with the locals and see Myanmar from a local’s perspective. The people there are just so neat. The little girl in the window just behind us? She was hilarious. She kept telling us to take another picture and requesting certain poses. Such a character.

Borneo was a rough trip. Aside from the Philippine conflict where tourists were getting kidnapped and killed, Troy had appendicitis and an intestinal infection. We didn’t find that out until the day after this photo when he ended up in the hospital. You can totally tell in this photo that he wasn’t feeling very well. Poor guy. He thought it was just pain from having eaten flour (he has Celiac’s Disease and can’t eat flour) and just kept on going. He’s such a trooper.

This was the only beach we visited on any trip where we didn’t get in the water. It was pretty chilly in Australia when we were there and we had a ton of things on our To Do list, so the beach was just a quick walk for an hour or two and then off to tour the town!

The Blue Mountains are gorgeous! And not really all that blue. lol. We spent an entire day trekking around the mountains and wandering down different paths. It was fun…….until is started raining (shortly after I took this pic) and we had to rush back up the trail to the car. Sort of. There’s nothing like watching a sunset from inside a mountain range while it’s raining.

This was one of the quick detours we made in China. We had some free time before getting on the train, so we went across town and caught a water show. This water show is nothing like the one at the Bellagio in Vegas. The video of it will have to be one of my next few posts. It was very entertaining.

Adilah is one of the women Troy worked with at the Custom’s Department in Malaysia and she invited us to her wedding reception. It was nothing like what I was expecting and we really enjoyed being there. You can read my post about it here.

Malacca was that place where Troy kept promising we’d go…………….and then his work would have something going on. He was going to take me there for my birthday, but then his work had a dinner party the night before. He was going to take me there another time, but his work had another dinner party. Another time we ended up going somewhere else, so by the time we finally made it to Malacca (for Adilah’s wedding), I was super excited to be there. Anything with ruins is my favorite place ever. 😀

This temple was something we looked at all the time and always talked about going to, but didn’t get there until just before we left Malaysia. We could see it up on the hill from our apartment window and had a really great view of it from the roof of our building. I finally figured out how to get there (while getting myself lost in the process) when I was driving to the mall one day, so I dragged Troy there a few weeks before it would be too late.

Koh Phi Phi was awesome. We went on several snorkel/island tours while we were there. This was one of the islands we stopped at for a few hours and alternated between snorkeling and just swimming in the waves. It was the end of the day, so we were pretty tired, but we had a fabulous time and felt that our super sunburns were totally worth it.

Living in Asia was such a great experience. We got to do so many new things and travel to many new places. How can you not explore as much as possible when you are living in a completely foreign environment? I really miss being in Malaysia and being able to have all the ‘new experiences’ all the time. I REALLY miss being able to hop a plane to somewhere different at the drop of a hat. It was so much fun and I hope to get back to that type of lifestyle before too long. Traveling is wonderful and being out there with your best friend is the best of all.

I hope you’ve enjoyed all of our selfies from our travels through Asia. There are actually TONS more and it was hard to narrow it down to just these. One of these days I’ll have to do a Part 2 of this to share more of our fun selfies. Stay tuned.

If you have any questions or comments, feel free to add them in the comments below!