It has taken me awhile to get back to capturing our statistics…getting pregnant and starting a new job will do that to you! Reuben and I are expecting our first baby in October 2014 and meanwhile I am working on a four month contract as a social worker while Reuben does contract web development. But,…
Author: Karen
Some travel statistics – part 1
We have been looking back at our trip and decided it might be interesting to do some facts and figures! I will do separate posts on budget, packing, insurance etc for anyone who is interested but here are some initial statistics on where and how we slept: Nights away from New Zealand: 650 nights Countries…
The journey home
After 651 days travelling the world, we decided it was time to return to New Zealand for Christmas, spend some time with our families and work out the next stage of our lives. We had one final, epic journey to get there though as it wouldn’t be a Karen and Reuben adventure without some overnight…
Scooting, scandal and sacrifice in Koh Samui
To finish our time in Thailand, we had eight nights on the beautiful island of Koh Samui. Being the budget travel lovers that we are, we bought our bus tickets at the movie theatre in Bangkok (a little random, but it worked) and then headed on a 13 hour bus/ferry/bus/songtaew combo that brought us to…
Shopping in Bangkok
We took an overnight bus from Chiang Mai to Bangkok, where we headed to our hotel before exploring the shopping metropolis of Bangkok. We spent hours exploring the massive malls of Siam Paragon, going to the movies and shopping nearly every inch of the massive MBK mall (pictured above). We were exhausted after all of…
A weekend in Pai
We decided to take a weekend family trip with Reuben’s sister Sacha to Pai (pronounced Bye) – a cute little town in the hills. It was quite a road to get up there – hundreds of curves later we were very happy to find ourselves at Coffee in Love where we watched the sun set…
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…
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…
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…
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…
Meandering Kiwis 