We arrived in Vietnam about five days ago and spent the first few days in Hanoi, the capital city, located in northern Vietnam.The minute we arrived in the Hanoi airport, Vietnam felt very different from any of the other Southeast Asian countries that we have already visited - perhaps more similar to China than to Laos, Cambodia or Thailand.The people that we have met thus far in Vietnam seem much more aggressive than any of the other Southeast Asian countries an...

The last few days we spent in Phnom Penh, the capitol city of Cambodia.Our time in Phnom Penh was a mix of relaxing downtime and troubling experiences. On Monday, Christina and I visited the Choeng Ek Genocidal Center, otherwise known as the Killing Fields memorial site.Approximately 17,000 people were executed and buried at this site during the reign of the Khmer Rouge between mid-1975 and December 1978. As a point of reference for Americans, many historians att...

After a week in Laos, we flew to Siem Reap, Cambodia, the town outside of Angkor Wat.We expected Angkor Wat and the other Angkor temples to be incredible - it is considered one of the historical wonders of the world, after all.But the Angkor temples far surpassed either of our expectations.We watched sunset the first night from the steps of one of the temples and we both felt a bit overwhelmed by the number of tourists and the heat (much hotter than Thailand or L...

Once again, we have fallen a bit behind in our updates - it seems like when we have the time to write, we are in a place without internet access and when we are in a place with internet, we have no time to write. Since we last wrote, we visited Laos and the town of Luang Prabang. We began our time in Laos with a two-day journey on the "slow-boat" down the Mekong River from the Thailand border to Luang Prabang. The boat ride gave us a wonderful view i...

We have spent the past five days in the city of Chiang Mai, famous for its proximity to the wilderness along the Burmese border, its many cooking schools, and the tribes that live nearby who are known locally as "long-necks" due to their custom of stretching their necks with wide collars.Todd and I did our best to take advantage of these attractions.We attended an all-day cooking class, explored a bit of the jungle from the backs of elephants, rafted do...