Pulling out of our lovely Lai Chau hotel, we weren’t exactly sure what our last day on the motorbikes would bring us. We knew that we were heading straight into Sapa, one of the most touristy places in Vietnam and had heard reports of constant barrages of sales pitches and overcharging tourists. Since our last […]
It was sad to say our final,difficult goodbye to our bikes upon leaving them on the loading platform; we’d had such a great adventure on our scooters in Vietnam! Without our own wheels our mobility was limited so we spent the rest of the evening hanging out at the local park in Lao Cai. We […]
As we walked through the old quarter with our friends, a light rain began to fall. Our first instinct was to stop and find some breakfast while we waited for Flamingo Travel to open but we had a hard time finding an open cafe. The only open restaurant seemed targeted toward tourists and as such […]
Vietnam Airlines turned out to be nicer than any of the planes we generally board when we fly domestically and we had to laugh a little bit about the fact that 3rd world airlines are nicer than any run in the United States. We were fed a full meal on the 90 minute flight and before we […]
Upon planning our trip, something was prominently missing: bicycles. Our time in Vietnam included some of the most rugged, hostile terrain we have ever seen, cycling just wasn’t a realistic option. Cambodia, however, is flat. Bicycle rentals are also seriously cheap (a high-end mountain bike will cost $5 or $6 per day, while entry level […]
Having done Ta Prohm justice, we were back on the road again, but the cool morning was rapidly turning into a blazing hot afternoon. There’s a reason there are so many people selling cold drinks near the temples and we were buying them like crazy. As we pedaled, not toward anything in particular, we stopped frequently […]
The first thing many people think of when they think Southeast Asia is elephants. While they are much more prevalent in Laos and Thailand, they seem to be part of everyday life. They help with agriculture, transportation, logging (unfortunately), and anything else that an animal as common as a horse in the states might be […]
Our elephant encounter left us all smiles despite the fact that we really weren’t feeling any better, so we hastened our speed and spent some time climbing the Bayon in the shadowy afternoon light. Although the heat of the day was finally fading, the rocks of the temple were still radiating the stored heat from below […]
After a whole day of sitting on gender neutral bicycle seats in unbearably hot, humid weather, my rear was too raw to sit down comfortably and there was no way I was getting back on that terrible bike seat for another whole day. Running non-stop on our whirlwind tour was catching up to us and […]
Once the day had cooled even a tiny bit, we headed back into town to wander the markets in Siem Reap. We had our eyes on a few things to take home to our families, so we got busy trying to shop. As it turns out, we are two of the world’s worst shoppers. Even […]
We rarely travel without a bike, a car, or some other form of transportation, so it was a weird feeling this morning to ride in a tuktuk clear across Siem Reap to the bus station to head toward Phnom Penh. We had booked our tickets at our guesthouse and not given it as much thought […]
We picked up our scooter as soon as the shop opened, hoping to get an early start and to beat the heat as much as possible. The scooter for this round was not nearly as glamorous as our Vietnam rentals had been- we were assigned an old 50cc with Popeye floor mats. We figured out […]