February 18, 2010 – Day 420 – Muang Sing, Laos

Travel within Laos is an interesting experience. From the border town, we took a speedy but surprisingly cautious mini bus to Luang Nam Tha, about 4 hours north into the mountains. The road started off surprisingly good. It was paved and almost entirely free of pot holes or random missing sections. The farther we drove the worse the road became.

Down town Nam tha, Laos

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February 17, 2010 – Day 419 – Huaxy Xai, Laos

Up at 6:45AM. No breakfast. Tuk tuk to bus station, bus to Chiang Khong. No lunch. Crossed border on foot and boat ferried us across the gentle shallow river. Two minutes later, we bought our Laos visas for US$35 each and were zipping out of immigration. Uphill 20 seconds walking and we are officially “in town.” Welcome to Huaxy Xai, Laos side of the border with Chiang Khong (Thailand).

Crossing the Mekong into Laos

Thailand, sweet bastion of sanity in a world of chaos. We came to Thailand after a very trying 3 months in India. We were sick and tired of traveling and needed a place that would reinvigorate our lust for wonderment. Thailand was this and more. We strolled some of the most beautiful beaches in the world, dove with sharks, stuffed ourselves on glorious Asian cuisine, explored endless market stalls, and were visited by a comrade from the west.

We have very little to say about Thailand that is negative; if anything, it is subject to its own beauty. Everywhere is flooded with tourists and not just regular tourists but loads of loud, drunken, and culturally rude tourists. We are not just talking about Khao San road either. The economy is now largely funded by the tourist trade but is the slow prostitution of a people and culture destroying the very thing that has drawn people to the beautiful land for thousands of years? We are already looking forward to returning to Thailand and implore others to visit as well; we just ask that you be mindful of yourself and your actions.

(Click here to see the Thailand Photo Gallery)

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February 15-16, 2010 – Day 417-418 – Chiang Mai, Thailand

Spent a couple days getting things together for going to Laos and…amazingly, getting started (but not too much!!) on a few preparations for going home. Yikes! Anyway, we are really ready to move on from Thailand. Laos looks like it will be pretty fantastic and we’re excited to get there! Heading there tomorrow morning. Hurray for another very long travel day across the Lao border.

El Dorado makes the best mexican food in Chang Mai

February 13-14, 2010 – Day 415-416 – Chiang Mai, Thailand

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Happy Lunar New Year!

As with most holidays on the road, it can be pretty tough to have a proper celebration. For Valentine’s Day, we splurged on chocolate covered almonds from the 711 down the street and a couple cans of Fanta. Romance at it’s finest!

Soap flower in the market

February 12, 2010 – Day 414 – Chiang Mai, Thailand

Mama pajama rolled outta bed and went down to the station…Well, actually we both did and hopped on a bus to Chiang Mai. It was 10 hours and the closer we got to our destination the more the landscape began to resemble the Appalachians in our motherland. Well after dark we got an overpriced tuk tuk to Loi Kohn, the street where loads of guest houses are (and all the foreigners to match) to find a place to lay our weary bums for the night. Convenient as it is, Loi Kohn is Chiang Mai’s version of Khao San Road in Bangkok. Anyway it will do for now and there is certainly no shortage of good places to eat. Glad to be off a bus for a while!!

Eating waffles like a starving Belgian

February 10-11, 2010 – Day 412-413 – Bangkok, Thailand

Spent two glorious days lounging in beautiful Bangkok. We enjoyed some of Cambodia but really were not crazy over it. We wanted a couple of days to rest before taking another very long bus north to Chiang Mai. We restocked some supplies we could not get in Cambodia, ate some great cheap food (hurray for baht! paying with dollars in Cambodia was a real budget killer), and did a lot of walking around to stretch our legs. We never would have imagined how much sitting traveling the world really requires!

Saben getting a hair cut

On a scale of 1 to 10 we would place Cambodia at a firm …. eh. Its ok but didn’t really live up to the hype. Angkor was amazing and Kep was a little slice of paradise but inbetween that is very little besides flat plains that extend forever with only the occational dusty town along the path.

Granted we saw very little of this country and we hear that the north east is beautiful but we just were not feeling it. Its not that we disliked Cambodia it is more that it was rather bland and uninteresting. We really have no idea where all of this praise is coming from when we talk to people who “love” Phnom Pehn or S’ville. It just didnt’t work for us.

(Check out the Cambodia Photo Gallery here)

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February 9, 2010 – Day 411 – Bangkok, Thailand

“Get ready to feel like an asshole.” We looked at each other and got out of the tuk tuk and onto the idling bus pulled alongside the road. Waiting. For us. Against our usual protocol, we had booked a bus ticket all the way from Phnom Penh back to Bangkok thinking it was a bit cheaper than all the separate tickets.

Traffic in Phnom Pehn

February 8, 2010 – Day 410 – Phnom Penh, Cambodia

Well, in terms of Operation Super Bowl 2010, we definitely had an epic failure. We watched 2 sports channels from 6AM-10PM and absolutely so sign or even single word about one of the biggest games of the year! At any rate, we were happy for the Saints to win their very first Super Bowl but we are pretty bummed that we didn’t get to watch the game. At any rate, Saben’s birthday was today and we celebrated with a massive English breakfast and a massive amounts of sports watching and beer drinking!

Saben working on his old man scowl