Tag: Travel south east Asia

Another Anniversary

Our 8th wedding anniversary began in Trat with a journey to the Cambodian border.  We got our first glimpses of ocean again as we traveled along the narrowest part of Thailand to reach the border.

Floating lodge

3rd time lucky, we made it into Cambodia!  After our first two attempts a couple of years ago when war broke out and the town we arrived in got evacuated, this was a welcome easy border crossing.

Staying at the floating lodge

We were really lucky to have found an awesome floating lodge in the Cardomom Mountains to stay in, and we definitely picked a winner – they picked us up from the border, took us for a special anniversary lunch, and then down to their pier to get to the floating tents which are only reachable by river.

Karen on our anniversary

The river journey was beautiful and as we headed further into the jungle we were really interested at how different it was to our rivers in Laos.

Sunset in the river

We spent the rest of the day enjoying the surroundings, seeing wildlife and swimming in the river.

Cambodian lodge

Dinner at the lodge was amazing and we spent hours looking at the stars – in this remote environment with no lighting or biting insects, it may have been the most stars we’ve seen anywhere in the world.

A very awesome day and definitely an anniversary to remember.

Holiday Time

Travelling Thailand

After a couple of days in Chiang Rai, we headed off for some exploring. Our first stop was Trat, a small town that we’ve briefly flown into and then got a van out of years ago when we went to Koh Chang, but had never spent any time in until now.

Wildlife in eastern Thailand

We were pleasantly surprised by the loveliness of the town, we had sort of expected it to be just a place to rest before heading to Cambodia, but we ended up really enjoying ourselves.

Wandering around Trat

Dre found a beautiful river walkway and we spent hours wandering along it, watching monkeys play in the vegetation across the river, discovering a 3m+ long snake skin stretched out to dry, and chatting with various locals.  We admired a lot of the houses along the river, mostly just simple shacks but with such an amazing location and river breeze.

Trat Thailand

We also spent far more time than we had anticipated exploring the abundant alleyways, seemingly endless cute little lanes almost all lined with plants made for a really pleasant time exploring.

Lovely Trat

Overall Trat was a really cool little place to spend some time, and we’re fully recharged and ready for our Cambodian adventure!

Rice & River

Wildlife in Luang Namtha

We have been making the most of the rice in the past couple of months, and now the harvest has begun. Our beautiful green lake of life has almost completed it’s annual life cycle and with that brings our winter time. Already the evenings are a lot cooler and we have had to get out our blankets.

Rice in Luang Namtha

Soaking up the rice Wildlife in the rice

Once the rice starts to form, even more beetles, insects and birds appear in the fields. There is only a period of about a month between when the first heads of rice begin to emerge and when the rice is harvested – up until that point you can only see the rice plants and no actual rice.

Chilling in the rice

Project Laos is coming along nicely, and we recently spent a chilled out day there picnicing on the Nam Tha river and learning to play majhong with Melanie and Bianca, and Wilke also joined us in the afternoon.

Nam Tha river fun

We also spent a few days staying on the Mekong, chilling out and exploring the Thai side of the border.

Near Chiang Khong Thailand

We welcomed yet more people to Luang Namtha to help Project Laos, Ryan and Melissa and their kids Talia and Elise (officially the first western children to live in Luang Namtha!) and also Dave have all come to help us do good stuff here in Luang Namtha.

Loi Krotong Luang Namtha Laos

Finally we celebrated another end of Buddhist Lent, our favourite ceremony of the year with releasing lanterns and sending flowers down the river to send away any bad luck and welcome good for the coming year. So it looks like now we’re all set for our next adventure – our third attempt to get into Cambodia!