Our Trip to Southeast Asia

Hi Everyone.  I hope y’all had a wonderful weekend.  We are now back full swing into blogging now that we have internet in our house, and I’m not tumbling over boxes.  I’ll have a before home tour soon.  Mom is here now, and we are going to spend the week painting.  Our ceilings are 10 feet high, and we are painting the ceilings, the walls, the doors and moldings.  Each surface is taking two coats, so it’s a slow process.

 

Well, this month has been a whirlwind.  When we found out we were relocating to Charlotte, we had to work around a trip to Southeast Asia that we had planned for our annual vacation.  We booked our airline tickets on frequent flyer miles and didn’t want to change our plans of flying out of Syracuse for the first leg of the trip.  Two days before our vacation began, the movers came and packed up everything, put it in the moving van to go into storage down south.

 

On the day the vacation started, we walked out the doors for the last time, closed the sale of our house, and headed to the airport.

 

 

I mentioned that we flew on miles.  Yankee is excellent at booking rewards tickets and works really hard to get the most bang for our miles.  A few hours before the flight, he called and found out they had openings in first class on Cathay Pacific. We could upgrade to the front of the plane by using just a few more of our saved miles.  Let me just tell you that we were both  giddy, and it was a great way to start the trip. The seat was huge and comfortable, and it even turned into a suite with a bed for sleeping.  Yankee could even come over to my suite so we could enjoy dinner together.

 

 

I am not usually a fan of airplane food, but this was in a category of its own.  When you are in an airplane for fifteen hours, it is nice to get luxury service.   Cathay Pacific is one of the top airlines in the world, and now we understand why.  We were served champagne, caviar, and shrimp along with other goodies.

 

 

The service was wonderful, and it was the best night’s sleep I have ever had on a plane.  It was such a fun start to our trip.

 

Once we hit the ground, we were rested and ready to go.  We travel fast and try to soak it all in, but we do make time to relax.  Our trip started in Hanoi, Vietnam, and the energy and craziness was so exciting.  I had always heard about the motor bikes in Vietnam, and it is amazing that we didn’t get hurt crossing the streets.

 

I love to visit the local markets when we travel, and they had a fun night market in Hanoi.  When we were walking around, we discovered a street that had homemade play equipment made out of bamboo. It had been turned into a playground for kids .

 

Our next stop was  Halong Bay, which is one of the seven naturally made wonders of the world.  I LOVED it.  I am only showing one picture because it doesn’t do it justice how breath takingly  beautiful this area of the world is.  We did an overnight cruise that included kayaking around and exploring some of the islands and caves.  If you ever go to Vietnam, this is a must-see even if it is a little hard to get to.  My mom was there a few years ago and loved it, too.

 

 

Our next leg of the trip was to Laos, which I was happy to visit again.  We did a volunteer trip building a school there a few years ago, and I loved the country and people.  It has a very laid back vibe for southeast Asia.  It’s very peaceful and calming, plus there are monks everywhere which adds to the calm.  We visited lots of temples and sights.  They had fruit smoothie stands all over the place, and I love how they displayed the type of fruit smoothies that were available.

 

 

In the mornings in Luang Prabang the monks walk the streets as the locals give offerings of food – usually rice.  It was raining so I watched them from my umbrella as they walked under their umbrellas.

 

Our next country was Cambodia, and we stayed in Siem Reap.  We were back in the land of hustle and bustle.  Siem Reap is famous for all the wats (temples), and the most famous is Angkor Wat.  This was one of many wats in the area that we visited.

 

 

It is unreal to just sit back and think about how these buildings were constructed so long ago.  The detail is unbelievable and so very impressive.  To give you an idea of the age, the upper right picture shows how trees are taking over this one wat.  That also happens to be the wat where “Tomb Raider” was filmed.  I think I now need to add it to my viewing list.

 

 

We also spent some time in Phnom Penh and went back to Vietnam to spend a few more days in Ho Chi Minn City and Hue.  Overall it was a wonderful trip with wonderful people.  We are looking forward to going back to that part of the world (Thailand) to pick up Little Miss.

Traveling and seeing the world is such a wonderful education and gift, and we realize how lucky we are to be able to do this.

 

 

 

Cheers!