Chronicles of a Mermaid: Scuba Diving and Backpacking in Southeast Asia

"The two things I've always feared most in life are drowning or being paralyzed. So naturally, I started scuba diving and racing motorcycles."Tiffani wanted a change when she left Los Angeles, but moving to Northwestern Montana for the winter might have been a bit too much of one. Six months of isolation, an absent partner, and endless snowfall was enough to send anyone spiraling into depression. As her heart and relationship held onto their last fraying threads, she made a rash decision to save them both. She quit her job, shoved her things into a backpack, and booked two one way tickets to Thailand. She was going to become a scuba diver. She was going to try to salvage her relationship. And like a true mermaid, she was going to swim her way out of the blue hole she had drowned herself in while taking a journey through a sensational world within our vast oceans. So what if she didn't know how to swim. Chronicles of a Mermaid stands alone as the third book in a series of travel memoirs, following the life of a young woman seeking adventure in spite of her clumsiness, anxiety, and fears. This chapter in her story will take you through three months of backpacking through Thailand, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Japan, with a sarcastic and self-deprecating sense of humor, and pictures included with every chapter! If you loved the exotic locales of Elizabeth Gilbert's Eat Pray Love, the heartfelt personal conquest of Cheryl Strayed's Wild, and the scuba diving accounts of Jill Heinerth's Into the Planet: My Life as a Cave Diver, you'll love Chronicles of a Mermaid! Tiffani grew up in Los Angeles, CA with a story in her head, a comic book in her hands, and eventually, a motorcycle under her feet. But after a long career in software development, she went off on a road trip spanning 2 years, exploring the US, Latin America, and Southeast Asia with nothing but a motorcycle, a tent, and a lot of hope.Over that trip, she discovered a love and talent for writing, and she's now a published Journalist in Motorcyclist Magazine, the world's oldest running motorcycle publication. When she's not behind the keyboard, she's a licensed motorcycle road racer and scuba diver, a motivational speaker, an artist, and a seasoned adventurer. After losing her job, Tiffani Burkett sets out on a journey with nothing but her wits and her motorcycle- a trusty Yamaha FZ-07. This series chronicles her experiences with the people she meets, the lessons she learns, and the fear and hardships she must overcome in her quest to see the world.