Morning rolled around on Jan. 2nd, and we headed off to the bus station to hopefully meet up with our new friends and head north to Chiang Mai. It was very easy and straight forward, that is, until we found out the brutal news that every single bus to Chiang Mai was already full. Again, 'Happy New Year' was to blame, as it was the day after New Years and everyone was returning home after their holidays. The only possibility of getting to Chiang Mai that day was if we were to buy a ticket, get on the bus, and stand in the aisle for the whole six hour ride! It sounded pretty bad, but it was also better than staying in Sukhothai for another evening, since the buses were likely to be full the next ... read more

Remember the old eighties song, it went something like 'One night in Bangkok makes a hard man humble...one night in Bangkok and the tough guys tumble'. Well, we were about to find out if there was any truth to the lyrics. December 18th, and there we were in Bangkok! After a mini flight of 2.5 hours, and a couple of evil women at the Thailand customs who gave us a hard time, we arrived in the so called seedy and intense city of Bangkok, Thailand. We hopped on an airport bus which took us to the well known backpacker zone of Banglamphu. Most of the cheaper hotels in the area are centered around the infamous backpacker filled ghetto of Khao San Road. It's the kind of place you either love or hate. You would swear that ... read more

It's Dec. the 5th, the plane lands and what do you know, we're in Kuala Lumpur, the capital of Malaysia. We didn't really know what to expect, except what we had read, and heard from some friends. First we jumped on the 'KLIA Ekspres', a super efficient express train that whizzes you along the 50 km distance from the airport to the city in about half an hour. We got off at the KL Sentral station, then hopped into a rickety old taxi cab for a quick ride into the heart of Chinatown. 'No problem, piece of cake', we thought as we got dropped off at the hotel of our choice. It was close to midnight and there was a large gate drawn across the entrance, so we were thinking, 'Is this place actually open or ... read more

We arrived in Hobart, Tasmania after a very quick 1.5 hour long flight from Sydney. Our main reason for choosing Tasmania to visit was that our friends Tim and Jacqueline are both currently enrolled at the university there. Again, we were spoiled enough to have our friend Tim pick us up at the airport, accompanied by his gal Jacq's brother Mike, who was also visiting from Canada. We received good old bear hugs from Tim, met Mike, then made our way to his mode of transportation, 'The Pooge'. If you're wondering what a pooge is, it happens to be Tim's lovely carbon monoxide blowin, left leanin beauty of a car, a 1982 Peugeot. He had warned us before, but we learned that he really wasn't kidding when he told us that one had to drive with ... read more

After much delaying and postponing, we've finally sat down seven weeks into our trip to begin our travel blog. Well, I guess better late than never... So on October the 19th we were driving through New Westminster on our way to the airport (running a bit late as usual) when a news flash on the radio informed us that a plane had crashed into an apartment building in Richmond! Much panicking ensued, as we both assumed that there was no way in hell that we would be flying anywhere that evening. Not only that, but it's hard to want to fly immediately after hearing of a crash. Images of road and airport closures flashed through our minds, but to our surprise everything remained open. It was very kind of the airport staff to run continuous footage ... read more