Well we made it to Phitsalanok from Chiang Mai an 8 hour train ride. It was way more comfortable than the buses and a nice change of transport. From Phitsalanok we had to take another 1 hour bus ride to the ancient city of Sukothai. When we got to Sukothai I did not have a good first impression. Every taxi driver would not take us to the guesthouse we wanted or even to town. They would only take us to the guesthouse they would recieve comission from. So we finally agreed to go with them because there were no possible ways [View Full Entry]

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Well we decided we wanted to go to city about 4 hours away from Pai called Mae Hong Son to see the long neck Karen village. Again the bus ride was on a horrible road. When we got there it was a cool city but really nothing to do. We went to see a really nice wat(temple) on the lake and to go to a long neck big ear village. After that we were soo bored and had nothing to do. So we decided we would take a ngiht bus to Chiang Mai where we were going to go the next [View Full Entry]

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Well we have arrived in Pai from Chiang Mai on another 4 hour bus ride on windy mountain roads! It was definatly time to get out of the city. Our trip is a nice mix of big city, village and town. When we arrived in Pai we found a cute little bungalow to stay in the forest. We just explored the city and went to talk to different companies about the treks we could do. We decided on a 3 day 2 night trek. The night we got to Pai it poured rain the whole night! We were not impressed because [View Full Entry]

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Well Chiang Mai was a huge city from what we were used to in Laos but it was still amazing. The city is an ancient city that is bulit with a wall and moat around it. It was an experience in itself being there for the festival. The number of hot air balloons with candles in them increased every ngiht we were there. In canada these never would be legal. They would sometime just fall from the sky dropping fire and landing in the middle of streets. Im suprised at least one building didnt catch fire. We walked down to the [View Full Entry]

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Well after the long bus ride to get here it was a very relaxing place, just like the rest of laos. We didnt do to much here other than soak up the culture. It was more of a place to see how the locals live. We did go to see a few more caves and a whisky village. At the whisky village they showed us how it was made from rice and we could sample all the different kinds. There was also some gross ones with cockroaches, scorpions and snakes. We stayed away from those ones. yucky! We also went to [View Full Entry]

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Well the next few days in vang vieng were very advenurous! We first rented a bike and rode about 12 km through villages and farm country. Every few km's there was a turn off for a different cave. The first one we went to we payed 50cents each to get in and then we had 2 little 6 year old boys take us through the cave. It was sooo scary but these boys took good care of us. The cave was pitch black. It was filled with huge spiders and bats that the boys had to keep pointing out. All [View Full Entry]

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Well we made it to Laos a couple days ago on an overngiht train from bangkok. Wow is there ever a change from bangkok to even the capital city of Laos. In Laos there is only about 1/16 of the amount of tourists as thailand so the cab drivers and tuk tuk drivers and the rest of the community are not out to get your money like thailand. The people here are very intrigued by seeing us because tourism is not big here..they choose to ask us many questions about our culture and where we are from instead. So far i [View Full Entry]

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We left taipei on friday and arrived in bangkok. Thailand definatly has alot less money then Taiwan and you can tell that the minute you arrive. The people are still always smiling and the experience so far here has been wonderful. When we first arrived in bangkok it was about 40 degrees. So hot!! We were looking around with our backpacks on for a hostel. There are millions of guesthouses and hostels all along the area of khao sahn road. It is backpackers central. You can get hotels for 3-4$, food for 50 cents and big beers for under 1$ it [View Full Entry]

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Taipei is one city that i didnt think that i was going to enjoy much as it was just a stop over and I didnt really expect much out of it. The city is huge and there are scooters and people everywhere. So far we have done soo much exploring trying to fit everything into the 4 days we have here. The first day we were here we walked all over and went to Taipei 101. It is the tallest buliding in the world with the fastest elevator. It only took us about 20-25 seconds to get up 101 floors it [View Full Entry]

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Hey Everyone! I decided i should make a blog so you can check out what we are up to on the other side of the globe. We have 5 more weeks before take off and are just getting everything organized. We get our immunizations tomorrow...eeks i hate needles :( Our pretrip blog is located at ...check that out to see the basic outline of where we are going. Our going away party will be September 30th at Vibes Lounge here in Van so hope to see lots of people there! [View Full Entry]

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