One year in Asia

One year ago today, 10th June 2010, we landed in Bali and began our Asian Adventure.  In the past year, we have seen and experienced more than we could have imagined before we left home.

The year has been filled with contrasts – both highlights and lowlights, too many to mention, but here are a few that come to mind:

Well, obviously, the connections we’ve made with the amazing people of Luang Namtha.  Thong, Paet, Mona, Kumbai, Pon, Bunmee, Alack, Udon, Un, Enic, Moneylen, Lai, Shahu, Deng, we love you all.  And of course the Forest Retreat Laos project.

Bukit Lawang – seeing Orang Utans face to face was amazing.

Halong Bay – thoroughly impressed even though Vietnam did not.

Seeing some of the most disgusting toilets on earth.

Watching someone die in a motorbike accident, with no helmet, and brains on the road.

Sunrise on Phou Si mountain in Luang Prabang – amazing.

Enduring many hours on public transport – discovering amazing first class buses, and not so amazing buses.

The kids.  Everywhere the kids are beautiful.  Especially Laos.  And Indonesia.

Emma, Eric, Tricia, Louise, Deniss, Fafa, Ying, Ben, Bo, you guys touched our hearts and we look forward to meeting again.

Food, glorious food.  We love the amazing food in Asia.

Unexpectedly falling in love with a country and town…. who would’ve thought?

We have put together some photos of the year, as well as a video.  The majority of the photos have never been on this site before, and the video is very ametuer but should provide some light entertainment.  Enjoy!

Our photos of our first year in Asia are here.

Our video can be viewed below.

Singapore Zoo

Singapore Zoo definitely lived up to our expectations.  We were surprised how close we got to a lot of the animals, they seemed to be really big on not having lots of barriers.  The jungle setting was amazing too.

We loved seeing all the different monkeys and especially the Borneon Orang-Utans and Sumatran Orang-Utans.  The white Tiger was another highlight.  Our photos are here.

Singapore

Our last few days in Singapore have been just the luxury we wanted.  We would split our time between the free food and drinks at the executive lounge, some gym time and playing music in our room (soon after we moved in we found out that not only did we have speakers in every room – we had  3 subwoofers too – one in the lounge, one in our bedroom, and one in the bathroom!).  We loved playing our music on awesome speakers – quite different to playing stuff on the laptops!!  We also had a fantastic 6 course dinner at the Szechuan Restaurant.  Our photos are here.  All in all a awesome few days and great pitstop in between the last month in Indonesia, and the next month in Indo as well.  Tomorrow we are off to the Zoo…

Singapore Surprise

View our location map at  Fairmont Singapore

A week before Dre’s mum left for Singapore, we emailed her telling her we had arranged a surprise for her and that she needed to go to Fairmont Singapore at 3pm on 9th July to collect it.  She didn’t know that her surprise was us!  We arranged for them to meet us at our hotel so that we could hang out in our room and also as Raffles Hotel is across the road, we went there for the obligatory Singapore Sling.  The whole afternoon and evening was great and we were so glad that neither mum nor grandma had an inkling that we might  be the surprise, and seemed really pleased that we were.  Photos of the afternoon and evening are here.