A Shocking Day at the Botanical Gardens
With the day fading, I abandoned the idea of hiking the 10 kilometers up and down Penang Hill in favour of visiting the botanical gardens at the base surrounded by natural jungle. I was surprised to find out that entrance to the garden was free, and instantly made a b-line for the bamboo section. Al...
The Days Leading Up to Songkran
Full Moon My original plan was to travel to Koh Phanang to properly experience the full moon festival, but the closer the date came to the festival, the less I wanted to go. Instead, I chose to stay in the Tonsai area and enjoy the full moon and coming Thai new year (Songkran), in a home-like enviro...
A Tonsai Highline
For the 5 days that Chris's highline was up, many climbers, adventurers, and tourists walking along Tonsai Bay caught the incredible sight of him or others walking this tremendous line. This line is not for the feint of heart, and even caused a few climbers to question the approach (or sanity) of su...
Steph & Lambo And A Deep Water Solo Adventure
Meeting a cool couple the night before, I take off back to Railay with my new climbing partners Lambo and Stephanie from California. We head for Railay East, and find the 123 Wall. I was stoked to get back on the end of a rope, and yet more excited since it was the couples first experience climbing...
Day 3 Trek: Part Tu Village to Inle Lake
Everyone went to sleep with feet facing away from the Buddha shrine, so morning dawned much more peaceful than the last! After a breakfast of fruits and chocolate pancakes (I supplied the chocolate the night before), we start out on our finally stretch towards Inle lake. We arrive at the toll booth...
Trek Day 2: Satkay Kong to Part Tu Village
In the morning, we wake at 6:30am to quite the commotion. The owner of the house is scolding Alvaro and Helen, who are trying to figure out what is going on, in the same way the rest of us are. The night before, they moved their pillows to the foot of their bed, and now a group of locals stands arou...
Trek Day 1: Kalaw to Satkay Kong
Uncle Sam Travel & Tours: Despite waking before 6am, eating breakfast, booking a hostel in Nyaung Shwe for my arrival in 3 days, showering, and face-timing Nikki I found myself running with my heavy bags to Uncle Sam’s a few minutes late. We were relieved to find that only one of the members of the...
Bagan: The Indiana Jones Experience
Taking to the dirt roads in the fading light, we ran across another fantastic sight, and yet again, we were the only one's present. We walked around the Ywa Haung Gyi Pagoda, but saw that this one only had first floor access... but then we ran across one of the barred off gates leading to the stairs...
Mystery Parade
On my way over to visit a small monastery, I heard loud and heavy rock music coming from the other side of the large walls surrounding Innwa. I went over to find out what the commotion was, and saw a line of perhaps 50 ladies dressed in the most colourful and elegant of traditional dresses. Followin...
Yan and Zanyar
Yan & Zanyar: It's hard to sum up the nights emotions from this point forward. Most of it was very nice, and I consider myself lucky to have met those two local characters, but some of it definitely left me confused. I guess it all started with me trying to find the right bus from the city center to...
Straight out of the Horses Mouth!
Thanks to the suggestion from Steve 2 days earlier, and the beta from Josh as to how to find the narrow slit of an entrance, we descended down a narrow downward sloping corridor of rock into a semi-lit entrance chamber of the Windy Cave. Once gathered into the entry, with headlamps and flashlights o...
A Motorcycle Pilgrimage: Pai-bound
Tham Lot Caves: Though we were all worn out from the morning’s run and the 60km of focused driving, and were eager to get the last 50kms out of the way, we decided to take the 18km detour to go visit the Tham Lot Caves. We must’ve looked strange walking past the gates of Tham Lot National Park, all...
A Motorcycle Pilgrimage: Mae Hong Song
Roughly 4 hours and 165 beautiful kilometers of driving later, we are now in Mae Hong Son, and have all fallen in love with the city and want to move here. Many of the guesthouses were booked up with the ongoing Chinese New Year mayhem, but we lucked out and were able to find a place where we could...
A Motorcycle Pilgrimage: Mae Sariang
After hours of mountain driving, we arrived in Mae Sariang, a cute little riverside city with an incredible little night market. Sadly, the market was already mostly closed by 7pm - around the time we had finally found our guesthouse! Better luck next time I suppose. Lucky for us, a little cart sell...
Getting 'Flushed' at Crazy Horse
My last day of climbing at Crazy Horse (for now) was the best day yet! We started with 4 warm-up climbs in the Hanging Gardens, where the roots from the trees at the top of the crag can be seen snaking their way through the tunnels and pockets of rock... totally cool! Once we were thoroughly warmed...
Revisiting Doi Suthep - 7 years later
Being that it was a rain day, and no climbing was to be had, we chose to take a motorbike ride up to Wat Prah That, a temple which sits pretty 5500ft (1676m) above sea level on the mountain Doi Suthep. Though it rained off on and on for the majority of the day, the cloud mass lingered just above our...
A Late Flight Rush in Nanning
Getting in on a delayed flight, we arrive in Nanning with only an hour and 20 minutes to spare before the next flight was scheduled to take off. In that time, we had to grab our luggage from the Sichuan Airline baggage claim, then re-check our luggage with China Southern. The line for BKK (Bangkok)...
Airport Discomforts
Arriving back at the airport around midnight, we still had 7 hours left to kill before our next flight. The wifi didn't work, and we had both accumulated little more than a couple hours of sleep in the last 36 hours, so we decided to try our luck in the sleep department. It was cold, and I was thank...
Sichuan Hotpot
With 12 hours to kill, I exchanged some money into Chinese yuan, and Josh and I grabbed a taxi into town. It was great to do a little sightseeing in a new city, but quickly our focus turned to getting some traditional style Sichuan food. We found a nice hotpot restaurant, but the menu was all in Chi...
Flying over Harbin, my love
Dustin ดอย de Jong My love, I have eaten my beef-rice plane-food which came with a piece of orange, a piece of melon, and a piece of pineapple. I ate the brownie that came with it, and I ate Josh's too. I drank the orange juice, and the beers, and the purple covered peanuts before settling to watch...
Travel map created
Created my travelmap account... now to figure it out. One-way flight to Thailand booked for December 27, 2016.