Basking on the Thai Islands

A very long (but comparatively comfortable… after previous mistakes we’d figured out the bus system) over night bus ride took us south to the coast. We caught a ferry in Chumphon to Ko Tao, and I found out that I’m not good at boat rides.  (more…)

Learning to Cook in Chiang Mai

Chiang Mai is known for all its outdoor recreation. We didn’t do any of that. Instead, we took a cooking class. (more…)

Riverboats in Laos

To get back to Thailand we decided to take the slow riverboat. This was an excellent decision, as our decisions so often are. (Just kidding. We make wrong decisions 87% of the time. This is a rough estimation.)

It was raining when we left Luang Prabang in the early morning, but it wasn’t a long tuk tuk drive to the muddy river docks, and it had turned into a hazy gray day. The rain had become a drizzly mist obscuring the horizon. We carefully made our way down the slippery shore to the anchored riverboat and climbed aboard.  (more…)

Drifting in Vang Vieng

After the misadventure in Vientiane, my brain just needed a few days to check out. Luckily we were headed to Vang Vieng, a chilled out river town where every restaurant seems to be a TV cafe where they lounge on big couch cushions all day and watch Friends while they drink coffee after coffee– or in Nicole’s case, milk shakes.

In Trouble in Laos

for my own dangerous stupidity

In Vientiane I demonstrated my previously untapped potential for complete and utter stupidity.

After taking an over night sleeper train to the Thai-Laos border, we stood in line at immigration. The young man in front of me had a problem–