Paradises

At airport. Go to bangkok now. So broken. We ate the mean food yesterday for lunch and then had a nap and then lisa got sick and then i got sick. I still feel the sick but lisa is better. Now she only has her head sinus sick left. We will maybe have a nap in bangkok and maybe wake up feeling nice again. I hope so.

Lisa's Turn

Lisa's turn! I generally don't add anything because I'm lazy and I am not sure if people actually want to hear about our trip while potentially getting hypothermia... But apparently you do! So I will talk! 

Good Morning Chiang Mai

Lisa and I are now on the airplane to leave Chiang Mai and go to Phuket. For those of you who have not spent the last four months planning a trip to Thailand: Chiang Mai is in northern Thailand and is definitely the regional capital. Phuket is an “island” on the southwest coast of the country, along the isthmus of Thailand. It has the potential to jump to the top of the list of my favourite isthmus...es? – stay tuned for final results!

Today is the first day since we arrived in Lao that Lisa and I both kind of feel normal. That has likely coloured our view of Chiang Mai, but I think we did pretty well, considering. We stayed at the strangely-named “Good Morning Chiang Mai Tropical Inn”. It became clear why when we saw this out our window:

Today I write about Laos

So. Laos.

We had a pretty quick stay in this country, only two nights. Our flight in was kind of delayed so we didnt land til after dark. Our on-arrival visas cost $42 each - the most for any country in their huge list. I don't know what Canada did to Laos, but I would be more surprised if it was nothing. Anyways. We cabbed into town with a few otyer tourists and were dropped off at our hotel on the peninsula of Luang Prabang. (pronounced more like bong than bang). We went wandering for food, and found a strange mix of places. Some were empty (bad sign?), some were too full for us, and a mix of indoor and outdoor. We found a spot finally. The Lao food was significantly different than anything yet, but yummy. Mine smelled kind of like feet but it tasted really good. They eat everything with sticky rice there, that is their thing.

Yesterday we woke up kind of late and had a nice breakfast by the river. Tue worst thing about Luang Prabang is the tourists (including us no doubt). At breakfast, we watched this group of three girls take every kind of selfie we could imagine, and more. Its actually amazing how much these asian girls love selfies. So many of them have selfie sticks, and its not for a lack of friend to take the photo; the whole group is doing selfies and rarely taking pics of each other. Is this me feeling old? Or just rationally Canadian?

After breakfast, we climbed the big hill to Mount Phousi, which (like everything there) had a nice Wat and a bunch of Buddhas on top. And a gorgeous view of the city. We exited by a different stairwell and were glad we did. The up-route was boring and plain, but the down route had all sorta if golden Buddhas, caves, Nagas, and other stuff. Even an anti-aircraft gun! So much to look at.

While not watching my feet, I misstepped on a down stair and started falling to my right. Thanks to my extensive fall-related training, i released the object in my right hand and executed a perfect reach to grasp reaction, getting a good power grip on the Naga handrail. Unfortunately, the object in my hand was our SLR camera. I watched in slow motion as it fell down onto a nice rock slope, then tumbled down about 20 more stairs before coming to rest. Lisa walked down, picked it up, aimed it at me, and took a photo. Whew. Somehow, it is dented and chipped everywhere except on the stuff that matters. Hopefully its not *just* off - hopefully all the pics from now on are not just a little blurry. We will see.

We got down from the mountain, said hi / sa bai dee to a few monks, and crossed the river to lunch restaurant dyei sabai on a bamboo bridge. A few days ago, instagram @natgeo posted a pic of monks crossing the bamboo bridge. Kinda neat to be there ourselves right after. For lunch, we had Lao Fondue. This is a fun mix of Korean BBQ, pho, and actual north american fondue. And so delicious that i ate toooo much again. In Laos they ask you yo take off your shoes a lot. So bending over to do up my shoes after lunch?  Not so easy.

We walked back over the bridge and walked over to the former palace / national museum to look at their Things. They're nice. Canada gave them a nice plate (*cough*$42*cough*).

Then it was time for changing the clothes and lying in the AC. It was 34 yesterday. I haven't sweat through a shirt like that in quite some time! And how!

We regrouped in time to catch an awedome sunset over a beer and scrabble. Thry have restaurant kiosks set up all along the rivers, but they lack certain facilities. In our next quest for dinner and a washroom, we walked and walked and walked and ended up at a hotel and thought okay fine. But then too many china mainlanders were yelling and being jerk tourists so we left. Finally we fought through the night market and found a table! We are rarely so happy to find an overpriced tourist restaurant.

FYI we are here in the so-called "dry season". (that's called foreshadowing). No sooner did we order than I saw some flashes of light down the street... Five minutes later, after a shrewd table change, there was a torrential downpour. Lights were flickering and people were running and shouting like rain is a new thing. The night market disappeared instantly. Tourists were huddling on our patio to get out of tue rain, so we offered a seat (since we are soooo nice). Eventually a couple of germans sat down, and while one beer turned into three, the rain stopped and we had a nice little night.

Amid all the distraction, we forgot to take our WITH FOOD malaria pills with the food. We took them when we got home. Bad choice. I had the worst dream hallucinations i have ever had, not even close. To sum it up... I caught up on Breaking Bad (apparently its not over / now it features James Franco), stressed out over leaving work for my upcoming four week vacation, and finally blew up during a weird family board game of paper ball baseball in chairs (what?). May i never have such night terrors.

Because of all of that, we skipped getting up to watch the Luang Prabang monk alms giving ceremony. There are mixed reviews about how much tourists, especially non-buddhists, shouod be involved anyway, so its okay i think. Wr have seen and continue to see our share of Wats and Monks.

We strolled around for a bit then caught a tuk tuk to the airport and flew to Chiang Mai in Thailand. That makes five countries in the last 9 days, which is kind of nuts. We slow down here for a bit which is well timed. Next stop is the beach and the doing of nothing.

We hqve explored Chiang Mai only a little bit so far, but we like what we see. Unfortunately, neither of us are feeling our best today - Lisa with the tummy and me with the sinus dry and sad. I feel like such a delicate Canadian flower: ohh, it's too hot outside and i need the air conditioning; the AC is too powerful and it makes me throat dry and my nose all stuffed up. #firstworldproblems #suckitup. Jeanie why did I not bring my Rhinaris? Anyways, if anyone knows how to defeat the dry, let me know. I had a nap with a shirt over my head today and i think i will keep that going.

Bedtime now! After a big dose of JD, we hope to sleep off the mean and wake up to the nice.

I wanted to add pics but the internet is too slow. Maybe later.

Hard Work

Boo hoo we are seeing too many awesome things and we are worn out. I know. But that is kind of how we feel. Today we got up at 5:30 so we could tuktuk 90 minutes to Banta Srei, another awesome temple about 60km from Siam Reap. We got there almost first, which was kind of cool. The carvings there were older and also way better preserved than at Angkor Wat or Angkor Thom from yesterday.

CAMBODIA

Well, i started writing this on the Blogger app, but then I added a photo and it crashed and now I have to retype words. Too bad for me, and also for you because there was good stuff in there.

Anyways. Lisa and I are now in Siem Reap, Cambodia. It's hot!

Lisa and Simon go to Asia

Well, the title of this blog is now a major misnomer, but we will let that slide, won't we? Apologies in advance for typos. I am writing this on our little tablet and I left the real keyboard at home. And I am trying to type fast to tell you all about the exciting excitings that we have been up to.

Flight Friday night at 1am to Hong Kong. 16 hourss later we land in HK. We each slept for four or five hours thanks to our ostrich pillows (Google it) and were not too bad upon arrival. We followed our instructions and got on bus A41 to Sha Tin and Shannon was there with TEA and COFFEE. Shannon is nice. And so is Andrew! I mean Jeezy! Awesome hosts. Zombie Lisa and I toured around HK for the day and had a nice time. It was very comfortable for us there. I think we could live in Hong Kong. We like the way that everyone lives is apartments, parks are near and plentiful, and transit is cheap and amazing. The city is modern and busy and fun and delicious!! We vowed to stay up to 8pm even though we were drunk tired by mid afternoon. After a game of Chinese settlers and a yummy beet pasta thing, we slept. A lot. Lisa got up after 14 hours, but I went for the full 17. It was spectacular. Lisa wasn't mad, but she was impressed.

On our own. we took the subway to downtown and went up the busy Peak Tram to the top of a mountain in the city. Where there were two malls, lol. We walked around for a while, then went to meet ourhosts for dinner. And then we went for more sleep. Mmmm sleep.

So that brings us to Tuesday morning. We got our S together (s stands for stuff, obviously) and took the bus to the airport. The airport is very fancy. Lots and lots of fancy. We were assigned to the dimmer gate and took a bus to our airplane. Then we got on it and it flew to Hanoi, the capital of Vietnam. We had to get our visa on arrival, and everything went very smoothly so that was a relief. Lisa and I don't really understand how politics work here. It is apparently communist, but it doesn't seem to be much different than our market-economy. And you should trust me because after two and a half days here I am quite the expert...

Hanoi is crazy. We heard it was crazy, but it's one of those things that you have to experience to really get. There are cars, and even the occasional bus, but for way more people, there are motorbikes. Not big bikes, mostly low cc bikes and scooters and mopeds. There are a few traffic lights, but they seem to be just a recommendation. Same with lane / direction markers. Follow it if you feel like it. Seeing a family of four on a scooter is pretty common. Most riders wear patterned mouthmasks to keep out dirt and pollution. Its just kind of how it is.

Okay, so. We took a taxi from the airport. He pulled over, pointed down a narrow lane where cars clearly cc would not fit, pointed, and drove off. Our hotel is lovely though. The staff and people are just so nice. On Tuesday night we arranged to go on a boat to Halong Bay Wed-Thurs. So we woke up on Wednesday waiting for a ride to the coast. I got up early so I went wandering around, inthe rain. I found the best coffee I've had this trip. A "Take Away Coffee" was advertised, so I went in. the man poured coffee from a plastic water bottle into a saucepan, heated it up, dumped it into a red solo cup, and put a straw in. Delicious, thick, black coffee syrup! I might have to go find that guy tomorrow.

Halong bay is an amazing place full of amazing. I took lots and lots and lots of photos, but don't have them on the right device so far. Google it. That place is real and we went there! We went to a huge cave! We went ashore and swam around and climbed to the top and looked around. Lisa caught a squid!!! We kayaked in a nice lagoon. It's one of those places. Go there. Plus, the people in our group were all super nice. One of the guys had a s erious case of resting bitch face,.  but you can't win em all. Our tour guide, Van, was the cutest. So funny! The scenery and the food and the hotel are important but it really is the people that make our vacations, and so far the Vietnamese people are awesome.

We got back from that journey at around 430 today. We went for rooftop coffee (cold, with cocoa and yoghurt... yup... it was weird but good!) and then had delicious street food. We saw Hanoi's water puppet theatre, had a nice BIA Hoi, and that will be all for tonight. Tomorrow we fly to Siam Reap, in Cambodia. We will see big Wats there. If you haven't heard of it, Google Angkor Wat. We will go to there! We are excited for hot weather, culture, and Cambodian food!

We are having fun and doing lots of activities. We heard it is super cold back in Toronto. Sorry!?

Lisa says: I caught a squid! Almost! I had it and then when I went to bring it in, it flipped off. I almost caught a squid!!