LaBahn

As much as we loved Laos it was time to move on to Thailand, the last country we'll be visiting on this memorable and amazing trip. On our last night in Luang Prabang in Laos we decided to order a sandwich before we had to catch our bus to Vientiane when we felt someone come up behind us and give us a hug and say hello. It totally caught us off guard, who do we know in Laos? But it was none other than Matt and Kate! The couple we met on the first week of our trip on Cat Ba island in Vietnam. Oh how bittersweet it was to see them, we literally had no time to waste to get to the bus station and they had just gotten off the bus and were looking ... read more

The Khmer written language does not use the Roman alphabet, Aw Kohn means thank you, but the spelling in the title is only phonetic. It's really amazing how crossing the border into Cambodia has changed our trip. The differences seem subtle yet very apparent all at the same time. I tried to articulate the differences from the cuisine and I couldn't even form the right words, Khmer food is so similar to Vietnamese but the taste is distinctively different. We knew upon arriving that we were entering a country still healing from the genocide of the Khmer Rouge in the 70's, but meeting the survivors and their children puts a new perspective on it. Our first full day in Phnom Penh was a busy one. We first visited the Tuol Sleng Prison, a former high school, ... read more

When taking a trip to Southeast Asia for 3 months you have to expect some negative experiences to occur, its only natural. The good always comes with the bad and sometimes the ugly, but it's these experiences combined that make these kinds of trips worthwhile, hopefully you come away a better person with more maturity and a different way of looking at the world. In the last 2 weeks a lot has happened and I hope I can remember it all starting from mean tailors to giant cockroaches. But it's not all bad, just bare with me. We've already written two blog posts about Hoi An but we spent so much time there that there's even more to say. We spent the majority of our time right in the city and took only one sightseeing trip ... read more

After a 10 hour bus ride south from NInh Binh we arrived in Hue which is located on the coast of central Vietnam. Locals told us we arrived just in time to miss the heavy rains the typhoons brought in. We've enjoyed dry temperate weather since our arrival, the perfect temperature for sight seeing. Hue is interesting because it was the political capital from 1802-1945 under the emperors of the Nguyen dynasty. The biggest attraction in Hue is the Citadel where the emperors conducted their daily business and also where they enjoyed the pleasures of their private life. The Forbidden Purple City was reserved only for the emperor and his concubines and the only servants allowed inside where eunuchs (I guess the emperors were the jealous type). The Citadel is absolutely monstrous, 2.5 kilometers long ... read more

Sorry for our delay in writing our next post, we haven't had any reliable internet access in the last week because of our remote locations, but please read on, we have so much to share. We can't say enough about beautiful Cat Ba Island and Ha Long Bay, we enjoyed a full week of sunning ourselves on beaches and eating fresh seafood. We met a fantastic British couple the night of our bonfire on the beach and we had several dinners and drinks with them a few days after. When they asked us how long our holiday was we felt proud to say "3 months" but soon choked on our words when they said they would be traveling for an entire year, taking in SE Asia, Australia, New Zealand, and South America and lots of other ... read more