Laos

We finally were able to make it over to Laos last week and loved the people, food, and beautiful scenery. Thanks to international labor day and "victory day" here in Vietnam (celebrating defeat of American forces), we had almost a whole week to explore both Luang Prabang and Vientiane.

Luang Prabang is located in north central Laos at the intersection of the Mekong and Nam Khan rivers and is filled with temples and beautiful architecture. One of the biggest highlights of the town is that around 6AM every morning the resident monks fill the streets in bright orange robes, where people provide them with sticky rice and other food. Our friend Alex and I both participated in the ceremony by offering rice, even though it was raining our first day. We must have snapped hundreds of pictures.

The rivers and mountains were pretty photogenic as well, which we enjoyed the next day while taking a two hour boat trip up the Mekong River to visit Pak Ou Cave, where hundreds of Buddha statues have been placed. We stopped in a riverside village along the way, where I sampled some Lao coffee and there was no shortage of cute kids. That afternoon, we hired a tuk tuk for the hour drive to Kuang Si Falls. We took an alternate path to the main waterfall, which involved a slippery muddy path and fording the river, but the sheer beauty of the place was worth it. I was able to fit in a quick swim and try out an awesome rope swing. They also had an exhibit with rescued sunbears, which Nikki of course loved!

The next day we visited an elephant sanctuary set amongst stunning mountains and a river. We were able to feed and ride the elephants, and I'm pretty sure Nikki was trying to figure out how to get one back to Ho Chi Minh City. From the sanctuary, we jumped in kayaks and followed the Nam Khan river for a few hours back to Luang Prabang, getting a riverside view of rural Laotian life.

Aside from these day trips, we had tons of fun touring around Luang Prabang proper. We climbed Phu Si to visit the hilltop temple, got Lao massages, checked out the night market and sampled street food, and of course gorged ourselves on delicious Lao food – Laap salad, pork-stuffed lemongrass, sausages wrapped in lettuce and herbs, dried Mekong river weed (good with BeerLao), various dips made from eggplant, tomato, and buffalo skin (yum!), and of course ubiquitous sticky rice.

We had only a couple days to see Vientiane, but had fun sightseeing in the Lao capital city along the Mekong river on the border with Thailand. We saw the famous gold-colored Pha That Luang Buddhist stupa, the Arc de Triomphe-like Patuxai monument, and several other wats and temples. One of the highlights was eating at restaurant Makphet, which is both delicious and benefits street children (part of Friends International, which also has restaurants in Cambodia).

In all, we loved Laos and found it to be a fantastic and somewhat overlooked travel destination. We will definitely have to return for more delicious food and adventures.

Busy Months!

Holy cow we have been crazy busy over the last couple months (hence the lack of updates to our blog). I'll try to hit the high points here, but the main gist is that I started some new projects, Nikki got to help host a VIP, we've sponsored a newly arrived couple, we saw two big concerts, I've got a big soccer game coming up, and by the end of April we will have travelled to three new countries (Philippines, Singapore, and Laos). Troi oi!

Our weeklong trip to the Philippines was fantastic. We hung out in Manila for a day, just to get a sense of the place. We had delicious food in Chinatown, checked out their pretty decent aquarium, watched the sunset over Manila Bay, rode around in a tiny tricycle taxi, and sampled the ubiquitous junk food in one of the malls. While interesting, Manila wasn't necessarily our thing and we were happy to escape south to the Bicol region to a place called Donsol. This is the place to see whale sharks, which show up pretty regularly in March and April (they are fairly rare elsewhere in the world). Here's the (WWF-approved) process: you jump on a tri-maran boat with your snorkel and wait for the spotters to see a whale shark before you roll off navy-seal style and swim as fast as you can to keep up – no touching the animals, but you are so close you could pet them if you wanted to. I was able to gaze into the eye of one of these big gentle guys for several minutes while cruising along next to him. The area also has decent diving, despite widespread use of cyanide and dynamite fishing (we even heard charges going off while in the water). I don't know if we have ever seen so many different types of nudibranchs and invertebrates, though there weren't a ton of bigger fish.

Content with our primary mission accomplished, we jumped on a bus for the hour-long drive back to the airport. Though our flight was canceled due to bad weather, and the original forecast for getting on another flight was grim, some combination of luck/persistence/bossiness landed us on another airplane the next morning, followed by a boat, tricycle ride, and walk along the beach to our cute hotel in Boracay. We spent the next few days relaxing on the white-sand beach, diving, parasailing, kite-surfing, zorbing, ziplining, and generally enjoying the food and nightlife along the sandy pedestrian beachwalk. Considering the small size of the island, there was plenty to do, and we were sad to have to head back home after a few days.

We were back home only two days before taking another plane to Singapore for the weekend to see a concert featuring John Legend and one of our new favorite bands, Trombone Shorty (this is our second concert since seeing the Backstreet Boys in HCMC last month). We traveled with our friends Alex, Liz, and Sam and thoroughly enjoyed the outdoor performances beside Marina Bay. The next day we had a few hours to explore the city and were impressed by how clean and orderly everything was! The architecture was super interesting too. Given how close/easy it is to get to Singapore, we will definitely be heading back for a return visit.

Back in Vietnam, we've been keeping in pretty good shape with yoga, running, soccer, and several exercise classes (sounds lame, but they're pretty good!). I've even had a chance to check out a local rock climbing wall. We are thinking of doing a triathlon together in a few weeks and next month is the big soccer game between the Embassy Hanoi and Consulate HCMC. The consulate team has been practicing like crazy and I've been enjoying hanging out with all my buddies while we prepare for the big match.

In other news, I started a new project helping to develop Vietnam's National Program of Action for addressing land-based marine pollution – it's great work funded through the UN Environment Program and I'm enjoying a slightly different focus than I've had in the past. Of course, I'm still involved in MPA work here and helping with an IUCN-run MPA meeting next month. Nikki is also enjoying her work, though it's been pretty busy. She was lucky enough the help host a VIP visitor last week and hopefully will have some similar opportunities in the future. In addition, we have been busy sponsoring a newly arrived couple (Eric and Danielle) – introducing them to folks, showing them around the city, etc. They are tons of fun and it's been great getting to show them all our favorite things about Ho Chi Minh City.

So that's the news. We are heading to Laos at the end of the week to check out temples, monks, and beautiful scenery. After that, Nikki's work will be picking up, so we will probably have to travel less, but if the past few weeks are any indication, I'm sure that we'll find plenty to do!