Back from Thailand, Cambodia and Laos

Our Christmas break for this year was to Thailand, Cambodia and Laos. You might recall that NZ basically closes down over the Christmas holidays, so it is a great time to get away for a long vacation. We met up with some friends from Iowa that have been traveling in Thailand for a year. Their son who is a Senior at Iowa also traveled with us. We were gone for just over 3 weeks and we had a wonderful time.


Trip Pictures

Here are some highlights of the trip:
* Bangkok - we spent the first 3 days of our trip in Bangkok seeing the sites. We took a trip on a long tailed boat up the river, visited some of the temples, had a really nice dinner at the Mandarin Oriental and went to a number of markets. If you ever go to Bangkok, be prepared for a reallllly big city!
* Siem Reap, Cambodia- the attraction of Siem Reap are the temples of Angkor Wat. We spent 3 days seeing temples and could have been at it for another 3 more. The area was built up around the 8th century and the temples are magnificent. Our favorite ones were the Indiana Jones style with the trees growing through the rocks.
* Back to Bangkok for New Years Eve- we watched fireworks from our hotel along the river
* Chaing Mai- Chaing Mai is in northern Thailand, which is a more mountainous area of the country. This is also a much smaller city then Bangkok and we found it more enjoyable. We had an opportunity to rent motorcycles for a day here and ride to a Hmong hilltribe village, a mountain temple and to a river rafting excursion. We also did a cooking class and went on a zip line tour that was lots of fun.
* Hilltribe trek in the mountains - We took an overnight hilltribe trek out of Chaing Mai that was very interesting. The trek started about 4 hours out of Chaing Mai. We started off with a half day walk to a hilltribe village. We spent the night with the locals sleeping on the hardwood floor and drinking the local rice whiskey. The next day we hiked back out of the village and spent most of the day in the river valley. The hike ended by walking in a river through a bat cave using flaming bamboo to light the way. It is one of those things we are glad we did but won't be rushing to do a second time.
* Elephant Nature Park - this is one of our most favorite activities on our vacation. This is a nature preserve for elephants that have been abused by tourist parks and logging camps. Most of the elephants have been injured in some way. We got to feed the elephants, wash them in the river and watch their activities for the day.
* Mekong River - from Chaing Mai, we went to Chaing Rai for a night and then on to Huay Xai Laos to take a 2 day boat ride down the Mekong River to Luang Prabang Laos. The river had some beautiful areas. I was surprised at the number of people making a living off the river.
* Luang Prabang, Laos - After all our traveling, we found that Luang Prabang was very relaxing. It is a laid back town with a French influence. We spent 4 nights here. Our favorite site was a waterfall outside of town. It was a beautiful multi-tiered waterfall that had a really unique color of blue water.


We have been back in Auckland for a week now and are back to work. Our next holiday is next weekend. We have a 3 day weekend this coming week and a 3 day weekend the following week due to national holidays. We hope to take the boat out for the long weekends and explore some of the Auckland coastal area.