We went from the jungles of Laos and northern Thailand to the big city experience of Bangkok. From one lane dirt tracks to eight or ten lanes of traffic with hundreds, if not thousands, of scooters. We also went from small guest houses where we were often bunking in the same...
The Pak Ou Caves
The Pak Ou Caves are about 25 kilometers north of Luan Prabang on the Mekong. They have housed Buddhist icons for hundreds of years and continue to be an important place of pilgrimage. I was told that during the late 60s and 70s the royal family, whose capital was Luang...
Up the Mekong from Luang Prabang and into Thailand
In the early morning light, the long, dark wooden boat sat low in the Mekong River on the edge of Luang Prabang, Laos waiting for us as we worked our way down to board it. We had booked a two day passage going north up the Mekong to Huay Xai to cross Friendship...
Diving in the Bahamas
One of our goals on this trip was getting the boys PADI open water certified, which we accomplished in the Bahamas. Since then, we have gone diving in Thailand and on the Great Barrier Reef. This is a video compilation of our first few dives in the Bahamas.
Riding Elephants in Laos.
It was a forty minute drive to the Elephant village outside Luang Prabang, Laos, where we were to ride elephants. When we arrived at the entrance we all got out of the van and unloaded our respective luggage. Deciding not to roll the suitcases on the gravel, we lugged our luggage...
Luang Prabang, Northern Laos
After a few days of recovery at “Mike’s house” in Vientiane our family of four was off to our next stop on our around the world adventure. North, to the city of Luang Prabang. We had planned for the city to become our base for four days, we ended up staying...
Vientiane Laos
We arrived in Vientiane after 16 days in China. A few days before our departure from Beijing we decided that our time in Vientiane needed to be more recovery and less exploring. That decision led us to Mike and Xoukiet and their lovely home on the outskirts of Vientiane. I emailed Mike with...
A Few Days out of the Cities in the Relative Quiet of Guilin and Yangshuo China
As we move around the world with our kids we have tried to intersperse times in big cities with time in the rural areas of the countries we visit. In the case of China we went from the intensity of Beijing, to the less frenetic city of X’ian and finally after...
Happy Thanksgiving!
Happy Thanksgiving! We headed out from our apartment in Bangkok in search of dinner earlier tonight. I had identified a nice vegetarian/vegan restaurant and based on the map it looked like a 20 minute walk. As is often the case with TripAdvisor, the maps are just plain wrong. We ended up...
Traveling by Train Through China on Our Trip Around the World
We decided to save money and travel through China by train on our around the world trip. In addition to costing less than internal flights, we replaced the hassle of airports with the adventure of train stations! In the extreme, this decision meant a transit time of 26 hours from X’ian...