From Bangkok to Vienna: travel stories of Mint & Max

Hello Everyone! - Sawaddee ka! - Hallöchen!

About us
The viewfinder is a project of two friends, lovers, soulmates, or call it whatever you want named Mint and Max. They've met in February 2016 when Max traveled to Bangkok to visit his sister where he coincidentally gets to know Mint, an architecture student at Chulalongkorn University. After one month of tears (joyful and sad) and sweat (a lot of secrets were hidden that time), Max was supposed to leave but instead just canceled his flight and stayed a while longer. Now the year is 2018 and the two traveled to quite some places and went through quite some adventures in Thailand, Switzerland, Germany, Austria, Hungary and some other occasionally weird but always wonderful places. Sometimes together, sometimes alone, sometimes just connected over a small display on each other's phone. Mountains got climbed, rivers swam through and parties celebrated. The time is now, and both are separated again: Mint is in Bangkok and Max in Vienna, but the wild journey goes on.

So what can you expect from our blog? For sure there's gonna be a lot of travel and adventure stories. Wild tales about punk festivals in the Lithuanian wasteland, sneaking through Berlin subway tunnels, lonely nights wasted at gas stations just to find the next hitchhike ride, wild camping in a polish forest with street dogs around your tent, creepy Couchsurfing or hostel experiences and the lively loneliness, you feel when you are a bit tipsy in a strange city, where you don't know anyone and everything seems possible. Beside the foolish hobo stories (mostly Max), there's gonna be some more intellectual posts about art and architecture, where to search for cheap but awesome food, taking you through vintage stores in Vienna, or even a short weekend getaways from Bangkok (mostly Mint). Maybe there's also gonna be some more personal posts about how it was to date with different cultural backgrounds or also some critical thoughts about how the mass tourism from the west affects Thailand, but we will see. Let's jump to our personal introduction.

---

Mint

Hiii Everyone!! my name is Mint, a 22 year old girl. I am a half Thai Chinese - my grandfather fled from China during the world war but don’t expect me to speak Chinese though (haha). I live and grew up in a city called Samutsakorn which is about 40 km away from inner city Bangkok.

Last year, I graduated in the field of architecture (woohoo!). Studying architecture really helped me to be patient and be hardworking to accomplish some thing. The semester before the last I did an exchange program in Switzerland which gives me a totally different aspect of studies and also in life. Right now I’m working full time, not what I wanted the most, but it is okay for now. I know you’d probably think I am finishing uni at such young age but this is the most common thing in Thai society, we go straight to uni after high school.

My parents always take me and my brother for a trip abroad since we were really young and this really widened my world. It always gives me thrill to be somewhere new. I remember how much I enjoy doing High School exchange or summer trip abroad. Now my kind of travel changes a bit I got to experience with hitchhiking and Couchsurfing (thanks, Max, felt safe with him), all these hippies stuff and I really enjoy it. I have been in total to 34 countries and I am grateful for that. Due to my short-term memory, I document stuff. And since I travel so much I just started my travel blog and I would appreciate it if you check it out at https://www.facebook.com/thewanderdaze and www.thewanderdaze.com

I enjoy traveling so much sometimes I pretend to be a tourist in my country. I am aware that foreigners love to come to Thailand: that it is nice, it is a paradise, food is awesome, living is cheap, and people are super friendly… Yes, I appreciate that of those who appreciate Thailand but sometimes I am angry with some tourists who came here just to party, be drunk, trash the ‘paradise’ , destroy the beach and simply leave. I hope sometimes we all care more.

Besidessss, I am a happy person. I enjoy photography and creating imagery. I also love plants as I think it brings spaces to live (random). I have a dream of building my own camper van and live in it because I like the idea of being able to travel anywhere and any time. But unfortunately, Thailand is not the best place to do so (not a lot of parking space, safety), weather, etc..so maybe I’ll have to wait for my undestined future.

here are some of my favorite photoshop work

I came across steemit because Max told me about how interesting it is. We also see it as a project we do together that would in a way keep us connected. I will be writing mainly about traveling and food, or even about relationship if anyone is ever interested so don’t forget to follow us @theviewfinder and I look forward to hear your opinion!

---

Max

My name is Max. I'm 24 years old and grew up in Chemnitz, which is located in East Germany. After high school I've moved to Vienna to work for an environmental youth organisation as part of a gap year. I always had a good relationship to my family, but moving away after school was a necessary and a long-planned step for me. The limited possibilities in my small hometown just frustrated me and I wanted to achieve independence and self-determination to grow as a person. I've learned a lot useful stuff in my first months alone in Vienna: how to overcome fears and loneliness for example, but also how to cook, do my laundry and fix my bike (very essential in flat Vienna). Living in a shared flat with ten people at that time really helped me to find friends in the new city and to figure out, how to live in a bigger community with lots of different characters. We even adopted a small cat called dog.

After one year I've moved to another shared flat due to some problems with the landlord. Around the same time, I also started my studies of journalism and communication sciences, which I plan to finish this summer (fingers crossed!). It took me a while since I didn't spend too much time in Vienna the last three or four semesters due to longer stays in Bangkok and Bern, traveling and work (If you wanna read some of my work for Vice magazine you can check it Here, Here or Here, unfortunately only in German).

Traveling and adventure stories will probably take a big part in my written content, since it was one of my main activities within the last years to just grab my backpack and leave through the front door, as soon as I had some free time from work or studies, sometimes even in spite of ongoing obligations. Driving with a bus in the beginning early evening twilight to a unknown destination or standing on a lonely road with my thump up in the middle of nowhere; sleeping in a dense forest under a cloudless starry sky, in a crowded noisy hostel room or a squeaky tight couch of some Couchsurfing host; these were the senses I was chasing after when I broke out of my everyday life, and still is though. So far I've been to 37 countries and I'm thankful for that, because I know, that it is a huge privilege to travel while others have to work hard to get their family through, are in danger of wars or famine, struggle everyday to find a shelter and just because they where born in a different part of the world with a different kind of passport.

Sometimes I'm angry how this world works, then on other days, I'm just sad. When I was younger I was a passionate idealist with a strong will for social justice and political change. I thought things will change if you just keep hope and believe in good, but I saw many of my friends losing the battle against windmills for justice and social balance. Sometimes I'm a bit disillusioned with no idea how to make a change. That's why I want to use steemit as a platform to address some critical topics, besides the travel and adventure stuff, maybe just as a relief for myself, but maybe others are also interested in this kind of topics, we will see.

Sorry to end this post on a bitter note. I didn't plan to write it like this and rather just happened in the process of writing. Maybe because it was something I had in mind a while already.