A thousand floating lanterns

Sacha invited us to join her and her friends at Yi Peng, which is a Buddhist festival where floating lanterns are released to make merit.  Our adventure started at 3pm, when 15 of us headed to the university where the festival was going to be. Because it is a Buddhist festival, we were required to…

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A month in Chiang Mai

What else did we do in Chiang Mai aside from spend time with Partners and with Claire, Doug, Olivia and Sacha? Well, we connected with our friends Matt, Michelle and Josiah again (last spotted in Colorado) and met new friends Kim and Kenneth who are working on an HIV/AIDS project called Radical Grace.  We were…

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Spending time with Partners

We spent November in Chiang Mai, sharing our time between Claire and Doug’s house and Sacha’s house – we feel really fortunate to have such amazing friends and family hosting us.  Both of us have been to Chiang Mai lots of times, so we didn’t do many typical tourist things but instead spent our time…

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Over the border into Thailand

We had a long day of travel to get over the border into Thailand – firstly a bus that took us to the border in Cambodia (and averaged 30km an hour over 6 hours…extremely bumpy roads!) then a mini van to Trat, and then another mini van to Rayong.  There, our day’s travel was rewarded…

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Koh Rong – a little piece of paradise

We took a mini bus from Kampot to Sihanoukville, where we transferred to a two hour boat trip which took us to the stunning island paradise of Koh Rong.  Koh Rong is pretty basic – restaurants and guest houses run on generators,  there are no cars or roads and there isn’t much to do but…

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Down by the riverside in Kampot

We spent two nights at the delightful riverside town of Kampot.  We stayed at Olly’s Place, where for the total of $5 USD a night we had our own grass shack, a communal area right on the riverfront to hang out in (pictured above) and could rent a scooter right next door.  We spent our…

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Cambodia’s memorials

We spent five nights in Phnom Penh, mostly because we were waiting for our visas for Thailand (four days was the absolute quickest we could get them due to the King’s birthday, and we needed visas because our next stop was two months in Thailand). We had originally planned only three nights there, but we…

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Cycling around Angkor Wat

Angkor Wat is actually a complex of temples, which includes the temple known as Angkor Wat, dating from 1125.  It is the largest religious complex in the world.  There used to be a city there but since only holy buildings were made of stone, these are the only ones that remain. We decided to buy…

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Friends, food and a frog in Siem Reap

We had a long day of travel to get to Siem Reap, Cambodia – our day started at 6am when we went to the airport in Colombo, Sri Lanka.  We flew to Chennai, India, where we spent the day waiting for our next flight – unfortunately we were not allowed to wait inside the terminal,…

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On the beach at Unawatuna

After our time with Mum in Mirissa and Galle, we farewelled her and moved up the coast to Unawatuna beach for five nights.  This is the most popular beach along the south coast and there are lots of tourists and places to stay here.  Normally we book ahead but this time decided to be typical…

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