Mark proudly presents his shiny purple scooter helmet, called “Space Crown”.
After a marathon, week-long journey north from Sumatra, we finally arrived at the Laos border in Northern Thailand. We covered almost 3000 kilometers in just over 7 days, on a bee-line up through Malaysia and Thailand. Our goal: to reach the border and have about 10 days to wander south through Laos towards the capital, Vientiane, where we’ll be meeting our friend Rachel. We crossed the border from Chiang Khong, Thailand, to Huay Xai, Laos, and were all set to begin an exciting new leg of our journey.
Our first destination in Laos was Luang Prabang, an ancient city built on the Mekong River, and a Unesco World Heritage site. We opted for the true “slow travel” option to get there: a two day boat trip from Huay Xai down the Mekong River. We were excited and happy to slow our pace down a bit, after the string of bus and train trips we’d recently been on.
“Fragrant Recall
Very Lovely Smile
= Joy Time
We in life lucky”
~ As read on a blanket in our guesthouse in Pak Beng.
Our second stop en route to Laos was the northern Thai city of Chiang Mai. Although the city is riddled with noisy traffic and is ridiculously westernized, it is still very charming. The central part of the city, where most of the tourists are concentrated, is islanded off by a moat/canal keeping most of the traffic to the perimeter. We spent just two nights in Chiang Mai allowing our well-trodden travel bodies to recover just slightly. We spent our time meandering along the narrow streets of the centre, visiting wats, markets and tasting the local street treats. We got our first Thai massages at the affordable price of around $3.50 Canadian. Mark had masseuse envy because mine was doing all sorts of great things, climbing up and down my back and legs, stretching and pulling me in all sorts of directions. I think Mark was envious not because of my masseuses fine skills but because she was young and cute whereas his was old and haggard. He will admit to this partially.
Gear Review:
Rudy Project Zyon Sunglasses
February 5th, 2010
Tags: review, sunglasses
Posted in Gear and Gadgets by Mark
One of the most essential pieces of gear that any traveler must carry with them is a decent pair of sunglasses. Having the right pair provides you with much more than simply an elevated “cool” factor — good sunglasses protect your eyes from sun, wind, sand and dust while you explore beaches, mountain tops, glaciers, jungles, and more. The right pair should be comfortable, lightweight and durable. They should be as functional on a mountain bike as they are on a beach. It’s a lot to ask from a single pair.
Thai kingdoms: Sukhothai
February 1st, 2010
Tags: food, Sukhothai, Thailand
Posted in Destinations by Meghan
We are making a couple stops on our way north. Our first stop was Sukhothai, a 700 year old ancient kingdom. Admittedly, I was partly drawn to Sukhothai because it shares the same name as my 2nd favourite Thai restaurant in Ottawa.
[unrelated discussion]
Back home I take my Thai food seriously, and Ottawa has a disproportionally high number of excellent Thai restaurants. Of all world cuisines, Thai reigns supreme in my books. In order to make just and accurate rankings, I will order the same few dishes at each restaurant. These include the staple Pad Thai (Mark’s fave), chicken or beef panang plus a wildcard dish such as beef with lemongrass, yellow curry, green curry, papaya salad or some kind of meat with cashew nuts. Incidentally, in my mind there is no such thing as bad Pad Thai, it’s all satisfyingly good especially compared to Indonesian msg-laden mie goreng (fried noodles) bleh. My number one in Ottawa, fyi, is Siam Bistro based on quality, quantity, price point and ambiance (Sukhothai is #2, Nokum Thai is #3…). The food in Sukhothai did not quite live up to it’s Ottawa namesake, but the ancient city did not disappoint. I’ve gotten carried away with food again, back to the city…
[/end unrelated discussion]
It feels so good to be in Thailand. I can wear tank tops and shorts above knee-length, beer is cheap, and the food is delectable. We are on bit of a beeline trail up north to Laos. This morning we arrived in Bangkok after a 21 hour train ride from Georgetown, Malaysia. It was a breeze in contrast to any of our Indonesian travel terrors. As JT would say, as paid for by McDonlads: “Ba da ba ba daaaaaa! I’m lovin’ it.”
Farewell Indonesia
January 26th, 2010
Tags: Indonesia, volunteer
Posted in Destinations, Local Culture, Thoughts by Mark
Three nights ago we left the peace and quiet of Lake Toba to head for Medan, a large city on the northeast coast of Sumatra. The plan: to spend one night in Medan recovering from the 5 hour bus ride (this one had absolutely no leg room, a nightmare for me especially) and then to catch the fast ferry to Penang, Malaysia on Sunday morning. Our time in Indonesia was nearly up, and we were feeling ready to leave.
As it turns out, Indonesia wasn’t quite finished with us. We discovered upon arrival in Medan that the ferry only left on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. A warning to other travelers — the Lonely Planet guide is wrong on this one, at least the 2008 copy we have is. They were also wrong about the price. When we did buy our tickets they ended up costing nearly twice what the book said. I guess it’s important to learn early on not to trust the guidebooks implicitly. We’re usually much better at avoiding things like that, but we missed this one. As a result, we suddenly had three days to spend in Medan.
Some of you may have noticed a couple of new little icons in the navigation bar at the top of our site. That’s right — we’ve added new stuff! During our delay in Medan, we made some improvements and updates to our site:
1. Check out the new and improved About Us page! That’s the new little “i” icon up there, by the way. Many of you have been asking us about budgets and costs, so we’ve added a whole bunch of information about the financial side to our travels. We’ve also started to add some links to the sidebar, pointing to sites that we’ve found useful or inspiring as we go.
2. The footprints icon will take you to our Breadcrumb, were we’ve added some cool new stats, as well as modified the map to focus more on the most recent legs of our travels. Now when I write about a nightmarish 14 hour bus ride, it’s even easier to zip over to our Breadcrumb to see where exactly it took place.
3. Our main page now has two new items in the sidebar: “Recent Comments” and “Featured Posts”, to make it easier to keep up with the latest activity on the site, and to make our most popular posts even easier to find.
4. In the update category, we’ve posted two new albums on the Photos page: Sumatra pt. 2 and our Christmas in Singapore album, which we’d somehow overlooked until now.
We’re pretty excited about the evolution of wewander.ca. There are more changes on the way soon, so be on the lookout. We’d also love to hear what you think of the new content. So leave a comment or send us an email directly using the new “Contact Us” section on our About Us page.
Hello friends. Mark and I have no idea how to get to Africa this April for our overland journey. Nothing is panning out. We’ve been in touch with several freighter ship companies, cruise companies and have even spoken to several experienced freighter and cruise ship officers to no avail.
We are trying to get from Asia (HK or Singapore) to South Africa sometime before April 14th. The most viable options we’ve found are:
1. MOL Wish, freighter, leaving Singapore April 10, arriving Durban April 27.
Too late + too expensive
2. P&O Cruises, cruiseship, leaving Singapore March 17, arriving Cape Town April 4.
Too expensive + fully booked
So dear readers, any other ideas? Ya ya, we know we could fly, but we are trying our best to avoid that option. Know any talented travel agents or people with private yachts who need a hand on board? Can you help Toto bless the rains down in Africa?
