Wat Pho (also spelled Wat Po) is next door to the Grand Palace and complements a palace visit nicely.  It is the largest and oldest wat in Bangkok, and is also known as the Temple of the Reclining Buddha (its official name is Wat Phra Chettuphon Wimon Mangkhlaram Ratchaworamahawihan).  It is also known as the home of the traditional Thai massage.  There is a bodhi tree in the Temple’s gardens &#91read more]

Bangkok’s China Town is a popular tourist attraction.  It is centered around Yaowarat and Charoen Krung Roads, and contains many streets and alleys full of shops and vendors selling just about anything.  This is one of the oldest areas of Bangkok. The main roads are lined with gold shop after gold shop by day, and are always packed full of customers.  The streets and alleys are lined with vendors selling &#91read more]

It’s impossible to travel Southeast Asia without at least a few obligatory stops in Bangkok – the transportation hub of Thailand.  We made six separate stops in the city, and spent a total of 14 days.  We saw many of the “must-sees” (like Khaosan Road, the Grand Palace, China Town, and the Reclining Buddha) and a few more off-the-beaten path destinations. Our Explore Bangkok series will share a few of &#91read more]

As we’ve already said, our first month in Thailand was a bit of a whirl wind tour. There’s no doubt that we were feeling a bit short on time. We were short on time. Contrary to the open-ended, unplanned, free-to-do-whatever-we-want schedule that we’d grown accustomed to over the past 20 some months of travel, we arrived in Thailand having already purchased plane tickets out. We knew the day and the &#91read more]

It turns out there’s more to Koh Tao than diving and more to Koh Phangan than parties. Of course, that’s what they are famous for – Koh Tao for being one of the cheapest places in the world to scuba dive, and Koh Phangan for being home to the wild full moon, half moon, jungle, pool, and any other excuse they can think of parties.  While we didn’t spend much &#91read more]

We love diving. We really, really, love diving. That’s why a little over a year ago we became divemasters in Utila, Honduras. Utila, as far as I know, is the world’s cheapest place to learn to dive. It compares favourably with the island of Koh Tao, Thailand, which appears to be the world’s cheapest place for a certified diver to rent tanks and go on a fun dive. All in &#91read more]

I was lucky enough to meet up with my mom abroad not once, but twice during our RTW journey. First, she and her partner, Terry, joined us in Nicaragua and Costa Rica.  They had originally told us they would meet us wherever in the world we happened to be in February and we had left home thinking it would be somewhere in South America.  We didn’t make it that far, &#91read more]