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Entering Laos: Huay Xai, Luang Nam Tha, and Muang Sing
We entered Laos on January 12th, 2014. It’s not a country that I ever expected to visit and I’m very glad that we did. It’s the least developed of the places that we’ve been to so far but it has some of the warmest and friendliest people that we’ve met so far. The country only…
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Chiang Rai: Chiang Mai’s Nerdy Little Sister
We almost didn’t go to Chiang Rai, which would have been a huge mistake as it is home to one of the coolest things you’ll see in all of Thailand: The White Temple (or as the Thais call it, Wat Rong Khun). Two American girls in our Bangkok cooking class happened to mention that it…
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Chiang Mai
After visiting the ancient ruins of Ayuttayah and Sukkhotai, we were ready to visit a living city. Chiang Mai is considered the capital of the north and is in fact the only imperial capital in Thailand that is still around. We had heard a lot of good things about it and were excited to see…
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The Ruined Kingdoms of Ayutthaya and Sukhothai
After Bangkok, we decided it’d be interesting to have a completely different change of scenery and visit the ruins of Thailand’s former capitals. Ayutthaya, the capital of the Siamese Kingdom from 1350-1767, is located about an hour and a half north from Bangkok. According to UNESCO, Ayutthaya was one of, “the world’s largest and most cosmopolitan…
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Bangkok part II
The next day was New Year’s Eve. I’m sure that Bangkok was packed full of scandalous things to do on NYE but we decided to take it fairly easy and expand our public transportation resume while we were at it. Bangkok, as a city, is very oriented around its river, and one of the main…
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Bangkok: Part I
In the interest of bandwidth and the convenience of both readers and authors, I split up our Bangkok post into two parts. It’s a very image-heavy post and is tricky to work with for those of us here in the Land of Subjectively Amazing but Objectively Pretty Bad Internet. Marisa also mentioned this, but let…
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“Phetcha-what?”: Visiting Buddha Caves Off the Beaten Path in Phetchaburi
Before heading back to Bangkok from Koh Tao, we decided to make a quick stop in a little known town called Phetchaburi (not pronounced as I had originally hoped as “fetch-a-booty”, but “petch-a-boordy”.) There is pretty much only one reason for coming to Phetchaburi as a tourist: To see Buddhas in caves. Fortunately, this was…
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Koh Tao, Thailand: The Place to Learn to Scuba Dive
I was hoping that the slow pace of Laos, where we have been since January 12th, would mean that we could finally catch up with the blog and not be an entire country behind! Sadly, this slow pace has also translated to extremely slow internet and so I have had no such luck (although, internet…
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Wrapping up India: Varkala and Trivandrum
By the time we left, I had become a little attached to Munnar despite it’s general lack of charm. I also felt like Velu (the guesthouse’s manager) and I had formed some sort of friendship. As Marisa mentioned, he let me help him make dinner a couple nights and we talked about his kids and…
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Drinking Tea in Munnar
I love tea. I really don’t know much about tea, despite loving to drink it so much, so Munnar was the perfect place to go to learn more about this wonderful drink. As our bus winded its way up and around the many hills on our 8 hour journey to Munnar (which included a minor…