Penang, Malaysia – I fell in love almost as soon as we got here but getting here was a bit of an adventure in and of itself. From Bangkok we took an overnight train south through the Thai peninsula to the Malaysia border. Trains don’t cross the border so we had to disembark, go through immigration and board another train to take us to Butterworth where we could catch the ferry to Penang. We arrived at the Malaysia border station…
After Vientiane our plan was to head south to Malaysia, Singapore and, eventually, Indonesia. However, all of southern Thailand lay between us and the next part of our adventure. We wanted to travel by train and, logistically, it made the most sense to break up the journey to Malaysia with a stop in Bangkok. This had the added benefit of giving us a few days to get reacquainted with a city that totally overwhelmed us when we visited it four…
After our two day trek we returned for one more night in Nong Khiaw. Chatting with Dan over dinner that night it suddenly hit me: I was ready for a city. The thing about traveling in Southeast Asia is that so many of the popular tourist towns (such as Hoi An, Chiang Mai and Luang Prabang) feel like they’re designed for visitors. In our experience it’s in the bigger cities that you feel like you can actually blend in a…
Laos is a sparsely populated, rural, landlocked nation whose geography is mostly defined by rivers and huge mountain ranges. Unlike other countries in Southeast Asia, there are no beaches or ultra-modern mega-cities to attract visitors. Instead, the draw here is the unique and awe-inspiring natural beauty. Therefore we knew that hiking would be the best way to truly see and get to know Laos. Trek #1 We did two treks in Laos. The first was a day trip from Luang…
My apologies for the long delay since my last post. I came down with a nasty cough which lead to me not sleeping for many nights and, turns out, blogging is really hard on little to no sleep. Once I was out of the rhythm I found it really hard to get back into it. For that reason I’m skipping ahead a bit to talk about the last place we visited: Jakarta, Indonesia. When we got to the end of…
Luang Prabang is a beautiful little town located on a peninsula at the intersection of the Mekong and Nam Kahn rivers in northern Laos. It is a UNESCO World Heritage site and thus retains much of its colonial architecture. I could feel the French influence more strongly in Luang Prabang than anywhere else in Southeast Asia thus far. Walking some of the streets I could almost fool myself that we were in a European village. But then a little Buddhist…
Chiang Dao Dan and I arrived in Chiang Mai about a week before our friends were scheduled to meet us. That amount of time, combined with the three days we would overlap with them there, seemed like a little long to spend in a city we’d already been to. We did some research and decided that the nearby mountain getaway of Chiang Dao would be a good break from the city for a couple of days. We hopped on the…
Back in 2014 Dan and I took our first big trip together. We spent two weeks exploring Thailand, spending a hectic day in Bangkok followed by almost a week in Chiang Mai and then a week on an island beach. We had been dating for a few years and things were getting serious. Although we weren’t living together yet, we were starting to broach the subject of maybe moving in together. At that point we had never spent more than…
One thing that Dan and I were completely unprepared for when we arrived in Vietnam was the air quality. When I think of places with serious air pollution problems I think of Beijing, Mexico City, and India. We had been to nearby Thailand a few years ago and the air was fine so it didn’t even occur to me that the air quality would be noticeably bad in Vietnam – but it was. When we arrived in Ho Chi Minh…
I’ve already outlined our somewhat stressful adventure trying to get to Monkey Maya from Kampot, but once we arrived at this secluded beachside hostel on the edge of the jungle and they handed us our welcome beers life was all good. Monkey Maya is located on the southern coast of Cambodia in Ream National Park about 45 minutes from Sihanoukville proper. It is isolated, with no other resorts, restaurants or shops within walking distance. They are not on the power…