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While the internet is saturated with these “what to wear” posts, I always enjoy putting them together, and I like having go-to resources for people who write to me about certain topics. I get a lot of emails about what to wear in countries I’ve been to, and I’m slowly but surely trying to get them all done. I may as well keep going with what to wear in Thailand.

First of all, Thailand is hot. Really hot. Depending on where you go and when, you’ll most likely experience very warm weather and possibly some intense humidity and rain. It’s always important to dress comfortably while still being culturally appropriate. Here, then, is what I recommend to wear in Thailand.

I’ve been meaning to write this post for a long time. I remember thinking I should write it after the Paris attacks, and then again after the Ankara and Istanbul attacks. I thought about it after Tunisia and Kenya and Yemen and Cote d’Ivoire and Indonesia and Mali and Somalia and Lebanon and California and so many other places, not to mention what’s happening in Syria, Afghanistan, and other war zones. I meant to write it after certain politicians in various countries continued (continue) to incite hatred and racism. And then, yesterday, after the horrible events in Brussels, I felt like I couldn’t hold it in anymore.

When I was growing up in Winnipeg, Manitoba, a mid-sized city smack-dab in the middle of the Canadian prairies, I used to lose myself in books – they were a way to take adventures. Later, in my teenage years, I became completely obsessed with the idea of travelling. I studied maps, I read National Geographic magazines, I watched as many travel documentaries as I could. And while I come from a family of travellers – my parents lived in a van in Europe in the 70s, and my sister went backpacking with friends around Australia and Asia just out of high school – most of the people I was seeing on TV or in magazines were men. I hadn’t yet discovered women like Freya Stark or Dervla Murphy, and blogs weren’t even a thing. The travellers I saw were weather-beaten and bearded, their names Pete and David and Jack. One of the first real backpackers I met, the one who helped actualise my wanderlust, was also male.

So, without further ado, here are fourteen amazing female travel bloggers – they are travellers, they are businesswomen, they are photographers, they are writers, they are innovators, and, to me, they are inspirational. They also happen to be my friends.

I once met a girl named Courtney while I was travelling through Nicaragua. She was tall and rail thin, her body covered in tattoos. From Seattle originally, we met on a volcano-boarding tour just outside of Léon, a small colonial city where all the buildings were painted dark pinks and greens and blues. We’d spent the day climbing Cerro Negro Volcano and then riding on sleds down the side of it, hurtling ourselves down the soft black ash.

“I just got this one before I left for Central America… look.” She instructed me to pull down the back of her t-shirt, revealing sprawling script across her shoulders. I recognised the words; it was a quote by Saint Augustine. I had heard the quote a few times before, seen it on a mug or read it on a blog. This was before it became one of the most popular travel quotes splashed across the internet, found on thousands of Pinterest boards, the text always written over the image of a pristine beach or a young woman standing on a mountaintop, her blonde hair blowing in the wind.

The thing is… I hate this quote.

While this is primarily a travel blog, I’ve never been shy about writing about other aspects of my life, including romance. If you’ve read this blog long enough, you’d know that I haven’t been in a serious relationship for a very long time. I’ve dated here and there, and met some absolutely lovely people. I have never considered myself unlucky in love, not at all; in fact, I consider myself extremely lucky in love, simply from the fact that I’ve had the chance to get to know some absolutely wonderful people from around the world. Because I don’t put much pressure on myself to get married or have kids (nor am I sure that I want either of those things), I’ve been able to date around, have fun, and figure out what it is I truly want out of a partner.

And then I met Scott.

Back in October I wrote a post called My 2016 Travel Goals. In that post I talked about wanted to visit Greece, Moldova, Belgium, Turkey, Spain, France… basically, a whole lot of countries around Europe. At the very end of that post, I said I also wanted to see a lot more of the UK, though I didn’t really go into specifics.

I want to do more. I want to see more. I want to eat more (seriously, English food is delicious, I don’t know why that rumour still stands). While I’ve slowly been curating a list of fun things to do in London, I’ve also decided that I want to travel outside of the city at least once a month. I might not always be visiting new-to-me places, but I feel an urge to really explore this wonderful backyard of mine.