teirrac

Pakse is the second largest city in Laos - for visitors it is most known for being close to the Bolaven Plateau (full of waterfalls, traditional villages and coffee plantations), Wat Phu (a temple that pre-dates Angkor Watt), and the 4000 islands (laid back...at the time traditional...islands in the Mekong along the border with Cambodia). I first visited Pakse 8 years ago, and was surprised how much I loved it. At the time, it wasn't on the backpacker/tourist trail - there was one hostel, a couple of big hotels, and not much else - I walked around and saw a lot of temples and folks living normal life, and absolutely no one tried to sell me a thing - it was the best. Fast forward a few years and the backpacker trail has changed - Vang ... read more

I headed back to Chiang Mai for the annual Loy Krathong & Yee Peng Lantern Festivals, which were definitely trip highlight. Loy Krathong is celebrated across Thailand and involves releasing krathong - decorated rafts with candles - into the river. In Chiang Mai, Yee Ping is at the same time and involves a variety of lanterns, including releasing paper lanterns into the sky...there are so many on the main nights that they look like stars (and Chiang Mai has to cancel flights on these nights to prevent issues with aircraft). It's one big celebration for several days, with fireworks, parades, etc. in addition to the lanterns and floating candles - it was beautiful, colorful, a bit chaotic and absolutely fantastic. I also did a day trip to Wat Phabatpuphadang (one of its several names) - a ... read more

Luang Prabang also has oodles of temples and oodles of things for tourists, although also has the Mekong and Nam Khan rivers, French colonial influence, interesting element of the morning alms procession by monks (who collect their food for the day) and all sorts of fantastic scenery. Due to sediment from the limestone in the hills, some of the waterfalls are a spectacular blue color (and you can swim in them! but they are not warm :). In a completely random coincidence, I also met up with some friends I met years ago in Africa here - it's an oddly small world sometimes.... read more

The area around Rotorua is packed with geothermal features, one of my all time favorite things, I could have spent many more days exploring here. The region is somewhat similar to Yellowstone in that there are random features spread across a decent distance...although feels very different because it's fairly commercialized (e.g., in Yellowstone you pay to enter the park and then have access to everything, while in New Zealand every set of features is it's own area with entrance fees...and at one stop they literally poured soap in a geyser to make it erupt on their schedule). There were some amazing colored pools, and it was interesting to see how towns have been built around/on top of some of the geothermal areas. I was also pretty excited to eat corn cooked in a hot spring at ... read more

I developed a slight obsession with glaciers after seeing them up close for the first time in Iceland, and was excited to visit some others. We got lucky with the weather on the first day and were able to do a helicopter tour to walk on the glaciers, which was beautiful...although we both said we were glad we'd done it, but probably wouldn't do it again. You walk across the ice and through lots of teeny tiny crevasses (and I'm using the term walk broadly...as some points were too skinny/slippery to stand and we were pulling ourselves along by a rope above our heads) - lots of beautiful blue ice, but definitely not for anyone slightly claustrophobic.... read more