This morning, we were picked up after breakfast and drove 1.5 hours outside of Chiang Mai, up into the mountains to the Elephant Nature Park. Founded in 1995 by a Thai woman, Lek, the Park is a sanctuary for rescued elephants, either from the logging industry (that was made illegal in 1987), or abused 'domestic' elephants. She started back then with 50 acres of land and 4 elephants, and now the Park spans 200 acres and houses 35 elephants. The land is surro...

The Sunday Night Walking street was a similar market to the one we'd visited Saturday night, but was much, much bigger. The food stalls were plentiful and we scored some great chicken shawarma, cheap pad thai, fresh sugar donuts, and amazing fish-shaped waffles on a stick! The vendors were mostly "same same" as the night before, but it was still fun to look and experience the chaos of the street. There was also a ton of live music floating around the market;...

Friday morning and it was time to leave Laos. We walked to the customs checkpoint and had our visas stamped to exit, then hopped on a long boat to cross the Mekong Rive to Chiang Khong in Thailand. This boat trip only took 5 minutes then we were passing through Thai customs. We had bought bus tickets to Chiang Mai already, so once we were stamped into the country, we took a tuk tuk to the bus station, hopped in a mini-van and we were on our way. This was de...

On the morning of Tuesday, March 20th, Mark and I were signed up to head in to the Bokeo National Park in northwestern Laos for 3 days of ziplining, trekking, and sleeping in a treehouse. Also, in this protected natural area, gibbons make their home and bounce from tree to tree. At 8am, we met at the head office in Houay Xai, and with the rest of our group watched the safety video instructing us how not to injure ourselves while zipping around the jungle cano...

We've been having a pretty relaxed week in Laos. We departed Nong Khiaw Thursday morning to head west towards Luang NamTha. To reach our destination, we took a 1 hour bus ride to a tiny village of Pak Mong, where we changed to another bus that would take us the rest of the way. We met a French traveller, Tim, who was taking the same route, and spent the bus ride and the 2 hour layover in Pak Mong chatting with him and hearing about his extraordinary experien...