Our last day in Bagkok.
Wow, looks like we missed a couple months of any kind of update. Its time to wrap up our wonderful Honeymoon with the last stop: Bangkok! We had arranged to stay at a place that was away from the tourist area. It really came down to having he right price. The emails Jane exchanged with the place were well written, and friendly, so it sealed the deal.
Feb 27
Celebrating reaching our 21st foreign country!
After 3 months of go, go, going, we were definitely ready for some R & R. We spent 6 glorious days on Salad beach on Phangan island. The weather wasn’t the best – lots of wind and rain, but we didn’t care! That just gave us an excuse to do nothing but eat delicious thai food and drink yummy beachy drinks! Throw in a bit of swimming, snorkeling, kayaking and the occasional massage, and you’ve got heaven on earth! Life is good!
On a bike ride with kids from the Shelter Foundation
Chiang Mai is where we spent Christmas ~ yes, I realize how far behind we are on this blog! We didn’t decide to go to Thailand until two days before Christmas. Travel trip #72: if you plan to go to Thailand for Christmas, PLAN AHEAD! It is a huge destination for Europeans and we had a hard time finding a place to stay. I must have emailed at least 20 places before finding something. As always though, it ended up working out. Read the rest of this entry »
Jan 9
We made it! We are happy to have arrived home safely and grateful to find that our house is still standing, but it’s been very bittersweet for us. We had the absolute best time and loved every single minute of our trip & we weren’t ready for it to end! We are very excited to see our family and friends, but we were sad to leave Asia & can’t wait to go back!
We’ve been dealing with some serious jetlag. We’re both wide awake at all the wrong hours, and can’t seem to keep our eyes open during the right hours. During our brief periods of wakefulness we’ve been sorting through globs of mail, 98% of which is junk, and trying to come to the sad realization that our trip of a lifetime has come to an end and now we’re back to real life. Boohoo!
We haven’t quite finished blogging about Thailand, so stay tuned for a bit of back-blogging…..
Jan 1
Cheers!
We spent a quiet, rain-soaked New Year on Koh Phangan island in the Gulf of Thailand. We hope everyone had as great a time as we did! We wish you all a healthy, happy 2011!
"Smile!"
I was ready to leave Vientiane as I just wasn’t feeling it and excited about getting to Cambodia. Visiting Angkor Wat and the other temples was something I had been waiting for since we planned the trip. We had arranged a pickup from the airport via our hotel, and the driver who picked us up spoke decent english. He chatted us up quite a bit, and tried to get us to hire him to drive us around in his private car. Once we negotiated a decent price and our itinerary of where we wanted to go, we agreed to hire him.
Looking down at the Buddha Garden.
We could have easily spent more time in Luang Prabang, but decided it was best to move on to see more. Next on our list was Vientiane, Laos’ capital city. We decided not to go into the far southeast as the logistics of it didn’t fit our schedule. We would have loved to see the thousand islands in the river, and spent some time in the little island towns, but it was just not in the cards. I think this is the first time during the trip that our short time remaining had started really becoming a force to be acknowledged.
Dec 25
Sitting 'round the Christmas tree.
We just wanted to wish everyone Merry Christmas!!
Here we are in northern Thailand in Chiang Mai. I may have gotten a sunburn. Surprisingly, there are a fair amount of christmas decorations and people with ‘Santa’ hats on. Ahh, what they do for the tourist dollar. We are currently staying at a place with 40 some kids that live at the Children’s Shelter. They either were abandoned or the parents couldn’t afford to raise them. We got to see them have a Christmas eve party last night, and today we went to watch them dance at a local church, before watching a play all in Thai.
Our #19th country, Laos!
We had had such a great time in Vietnam, we were sad to leave. These feelings seemed to have become a common theme in our recent weeks traveling… we were excited to go, but hated to leave. Next stop, was a country that we were going to skip over, except Kristen Gill told us some of her experiences there, and then we found a way to fit it into our schedule. I definatly do not regret the decision of stopping into Laos for our 19th country, it was gorgeous terrain and a great vibe from the people. We headed to Luang Prabang because there were a ton of sights to see there.
Workin' the streets in Hanoi
Our last stop in Vietnam was Hanoi. It’s a very large, chaotic city that somehow manages to maintain a little bit of charm. At the heart of the city lies Hoan Kiem Lake. The lake is small; you can walk around it in about 30 minutes, but it’s the heart and soul of the city. At all times of the day you’ll find locals walking around the lake or just sitting quitely on a bench. In the early morning and evenings you’ll find them doing their Tai Chi as they enjoy the peacefulness of the lake. It brings a small town feel to a very bustling area.