Postcard: Bangkok

Songkran in Bangkok, Thailand

Frequently Asked Friday: Best and Worst Bathrooms

We’ve got a new feature that we thought we’d try out, to replace our Bad Photo Fridays.  There are still plenty of bad photos, but most of them are just bad, not so much bad and funny. Instead of BPF, we’re instituting FAQ Friday, where we answer a frequently asked question each week.  If you have a question you’d like us to answer, send us an email or leave us a comment and we’ll do our best to address it.

Our first question was “What were the best and worst bathrooms on your trip?” 

Mekong Snapshots

We decided to combine the travel and border crossing between Vietnam and Cambodia with a tour of the Mekong river delta.  Sinh Travel had a very reasonably priced 3 day package that took us from Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam to Phnom Penh in Cambodia, mostly by boat, working our way up the Mekong.  We met some great travelers in the small tour group, and it was both a fun trip, and a practical way to make our way into Cambodia.  Some snapshots from the river:

Postcard: Ko Tao

Sunset on Ko Tao island, Thailand

Travel By The Numbers

Some numbers from our trip, along with pictures of some of the ways we got from place to place:

Gear After a Year

After nearly a year of continuous travel, our gear held up very well.  A few things failed and had to be replaced; others were eventually sent home or left behind after they were no longer useful to the remainder of our trip.  The bulk of it stayed with us, and with few exceptions we were happy with what we decided to carry.  We covered our gear in some detail originally; we’ll just mention the exceptions here.  This post is probably of limited interest to people who aren’t planning to travel extensively.  We found a lot of very useful, first-hand information on travel gear when we were planning this trip, and always wanted to return the favor to other travelers.

Postcard: Angkor Wat

Sunrise at Angkor Wat, Cambodia

Mekong Fashion

During our three day tour through the Mekong Delta in Vietnam, which eventually took us overland to Cambodia, we noticed a fashion trend that we hadn’t really seen before, and never really saw again.  We’re not sure exactly how to describe it except for maybe The Pajama Phenomenon.  The seemed to be infinitely comfortable knit fabrics in patterns I’ve never before experienced.

Travel = Buying Stuff?

We were determined not to buy stuff as we travelled.  We didn’t entirely succeed, but we did fairly well.  We both felt strongly about spending money on experiences instead of things, and we were quite motivated to keep the weight of our bags to a minimum, every time we lifted them.  The one souvenir we planned to take home from each country was the lightest and (nearly) cheapest thing we could get: the smallest denomination of local paper money.  The dollar bill is from Ecuador, where the US dollar is their official currency.  The single Euro note is a stand in for several countries (Montenegro, Germany, Austria, and The Netherlands).  Many of the bills are not paper—plastic notes were very common.  Many also used different sizes for different denominations, making them easy to distinguish by feel.  All of that said, we did end up acquiring a few things along the way.

Postcard: Phnom Penh

The Royal Palace in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.

Painted Petra

Petra was beautiful. 

Aside from the ancient, carved structures, the rock was extremely colorful and pretty in its own right, whether it was exposed by water and wind, or by hand. 

Some sections of the rock face looked like abstract art, and once I started looking closer, I saw examples throughout the canyons.

Postcard: Angkor Thom

Angkor Thom, Cambodia