My father in law described our travel segments using the word ‘jaunt’ and I love it. I’ll be using that from now on — well, at least for as long as we continue our current cadence of traveling for 5–6 months at a time and returning to the US during the spring and again in the fall.
Our travels over the past six months included all new countries for us. Neither of us had ever visited any of them. The jaunt started right after Thanksgiving when we flew from Houston, Texas, to Bangkok, Thailand.
Thailand
Our flight was on Qatar Airways with a layover in Doha. We were very fortunate to have been able to use travel reward points to secure business class tickets for the long flight. And not just any business class, but Q-Suits! That was a fantastic experience. Our layover in Doha was great and we spent a few hours in one of the best business class lounges I’ve had the great fortune of visiting: Al Mourjan Business Lounge, aka “The Garden.” It was very sad, recently, to see America starting a war in the Middle East which has thrown layovers in that area into chaos. I’m glad we got to travel through there before all of that happened.
In Thailand we spent one week in Bangkok, one week in Ko Samui and a month in Chiang Mai. After that we spent two days in Chiang Rai, and another two days in Chiang Kong.
Thailand is wonderful, both the people and the food. We started with a week in Bangkok, in the south. We liked the big city more than we expected too so we’ll probably return at some point to spend a longer time there. Public transit was easy to figure out. The malls were impressively large and modern. We met some other travelers for a meal, did a couple of tours… but weren’t there long enough to connect with any of the dance scenes.
After Bangkok, we flew to Koh Samui, a small island south of Bangkok in the Gulf of Thailand. It was a highly recommended place for tourists. I fully admit that we did basically nothing there aside from one hot and humid hike, but that was almost entirely because our Airbnb was absolutely unreal. Ocean views, private pool. It was a single family two bedroom house on the edge of a cliff facing over the sea. It was like having a private resort all to ourselves. So I feel like we didn’t really have a normal Koh Samui experience, but it was absolutely fantastic.
Next we went to Chiang Mai, the city that was most strongly recommended by our fellow travelers in the nomad communities. Chiang Mai is in northern Thailand and the climate was noticeably cooler and less humid than down south. We had a wonderful time meeting up with expats and other nomadic slow travelers there. A highlight of our time was meeting a wonderful expat named Amy. Amy’s originally from Ohio but has been living in Asia since before covid. She was living in China when covid broke out, and boy does she have some stories to tell. With Amy’s help we did a lot of excursions around Chiang Mai visiting national parks, elephant sanctuaries and even a gin distillery. Meeting her really took our trip to the next level. She runs a small tea shop outside of the old town called ‘Creativitea’. She’d been helping slow travelers and expats to secure transportation for affordable excursions. She mostly organized things on Whatsapp. So if you’re in Chiang Mai and are interested, let me know and I’ll see if she’s still doing it and maybe I can connect you.
Our Airbnb was ok, but if I were doing it again I’d choose a place on the eastern side of the old town, and a little closer to the action. Our place was near the airport which made for an inconvenient walk to see the main attractions in the old town.
After our month in Chiang Mai we had some fast travel days. We visited the white temple in Chiang Rai, the Catfish Temple in Chiang Khong and just leisurely enjoyed our days migrating closer to the Mekong River, which was our next destination.
Laos
We entered Laos from Thailand on foot crossing Friendship Bridge #4 with assistance from the tour operator (Shompoo Cruise) for our planned two-day river cruise into Laos. They took care of everything including picking us up from our hotel in Chiang Khong, and dropping us off days later at our hotel in Luang Prabang.
The river cruise was pretty cool. The voyage from the border to Luang Prabang includes an overnight stop at the halfway mark in the town of Pek Bang, and two daylight hour cruises on the river. Thanks to the detailed YouTube videos from The Retirement Travelers we took their advice and spent two nights at Le Grand Pek Bang, which made for a very relaxing experience. It was so nice not to have to get up at 7 am the morning after arriving there to get back on the river, but to instead spend a full day just hanging out at the practically empty resort.
After the river cruise we spent four days in Luang Prabang, Laos, which is a beautiful city. I loved the mountains and natural landscape surrounding the town. It’s pretty easily walkable to visit the main attractions. There are a number of temples and you can visit the royal palace which also houses the national museum, which I would highly recommend. The other thing we did was to visit the UXO museum, which I wrote about in a different post. Highly recommended, but it’s gut-wrenching.
Vietnam
We flew from Luang Prabang to Vietnam, spending an overnight layover in Hanoi. The weather in Hanoi in mid-January caught me off guard. It was so much cooler than in Laos, but we only spent one night. The next morning we flew to Da Nang which is in central Vietnam and went to our next long stay destination of Hoi An, which is about an hour outside of Da Nang by car. Some of the locals that we met were surprised that foreign travelers would come so far and spend a month in their small town. We’d heard good things about Hoi An from other nomads, so we just tossed a coin and stayed there. We had a great time there and even did the most social dancing of our entire jaunt there.
Hoi An is mostly known for its lanterns and the ancient town on the banks of Thu Bồn River. The old town is quaint, and fairly scenic, but it is heavily touristed, especially when the weather is at its best, which it was during our visit from late Jan to late Feb. I enjoyed grabbing meals and cocktails in the open air roof top bars, especially near sunset. We found some great food at great prices. That said, I was pretty happy that our Airbnb was not in the old town. I think that it would have been too much hustle and bustle for that much time. Where we stayed was about a 45 minute walk from the old city, or you could get a ride share (Grab) to bring you there for about 100,000 dong (under $4 USD).
Speaking of our Airbnb, it was what they call a homestay, which is quite common in the area. Our homestay was with Dinh, who runs a fantastic restaurant. The apartments that she rents are behind the restaurant and have a pool. The furniture was dated, but that was about the only real negative. Our place was a two bedroom apartment and it was quiet, comfortable and pretty much our own private space. You did have to go through the restaurant to get to the apartment, but the apartment is a separate building. There are two buildings behind the restaurant and Dinh rents out different parts, and she and her family live in one of them. I think that the one we had was the largest. It was probably too much space for us, but it was very comfortable. And having Dinh’s restaurant right there was just fantastic.
The other great thing about our time in Hoi An was that we found that they have a salsa/bachata scene. Their organizer, David, is a dance instructor and also an actor! (I found out later). He’s great and we were so thankful to find bi-weekly dance events there. We even did some rueda! Most of the dancers that we met were also travelers or expats but there were a few locals too. They have dances on Tuesdays and Saturdays at La Riva Italian Restaurant. Oh, and their pizza is wonderful! It’s less than a block from the beach.
We also met many other fellow travelers in Vietnam. We attended one of the largest Go With Less meetups we’ve ever seen in Da Nang and attended many smaller dinner meetups with other slow travelers in Hoi An. We had a great day trip with Chuck and Heidi to visit Ba Na Hills. And I’m so thankful for meeting Dan and Meghan (2 Traveling after 1) since Meghan was the one who found the excellent rooftop bar that we went to for Chinese New Year – fireworks in Asia are next level! By complete coincidence, it turned out that Dan and Meghan were also going to be on our repositioning cruise a month later.
We really enjoyed Vietnam and look forward to visiting more cities in the future.
Cambodia
We visited Siem Reap for about four days. We didn’t do much exploring on our own. Our main goal was to see Angkor Wat and let me say, that it delivered. It’s a peak bucket list destination for many, and it’s well worthy of that. We did the typical sunrise visit using a tour agency that we learned of from some other travelers, Chuck and Heidi, who shared their experience with us. They put me in touch with a local operator who takes you to the temples in an air-conditioned van instead of a tuk-tuk and since it was *so* hot and humid in the afternoons it was a great relief to travel between the temples in comfort. If anyone reading this is going to Cambodia, send me a message and I’ll share the contact info with you. It’s a small operation mainly run by the owner and his brother, but they did a great job.
Malaysia
We spent two weeks in Kuala Lumpur and I’ll admit that I really knew very little about Malaysia. Our primary reason for going was to get a full body health screening. These are a popuar thing for travelers to have done in a number of countries but the first place that I’d ever heard of was Prince Court in Kuala Lumpur so that was where we had intended to have it done.
I’ve written a bit about our experience before, so I won’t repeat it here, but we were very pleased with the process, and amazed at how easy and affordable medical care was in Malaysia.
We were kind of blown away by Kuala Lumpur. The city is huge, and very modern. It has a very different feel than other places we visited in Southeast Asia. The most stark and immediate difference is in the multi-cultural citizens. The country is a melting pot of Chinese, Indian and native people. It’s primarily a muslim country but christians and buddhists are also there in large numbers. We had some of the best Indian food i’ve ever had in KL.
If you ever visit KL, make sure you visit the twin towers. The history and the story of the design of the Petronas is really cool. And the views of the city from there are breathtaking.
New Zealand
After leaving KL we flew southeast to New Zealand. There are just not enough good things to be said about this country’s incredible landscape. The amount of variety in a relatively small place has to be seen to be believed. I was worried that NZ had been over-sold and we might be underwhelmed, but that was not at all the case. We spent a little over a month exploring the south and north islands. We saw glaciers, mountains, deserts, rain forests, volcanos and beaches. We were there from March until early April, which is pretty near the end of the summer season. We had amazing weather sometimes, but we also experienced a lot of rain both on the western coast of the south island, and around the west coast of the north island.
We flew into Auckland, the capital, which is on the north island. Then on the very next day we flew to Queenstown which is on the south island to start our travels. We did a one way rental from a local rental company called Apex which was not only much cheaper than the international chains, but they also allowed you to do one way and take the car across the ferry, which was a great way to go back to the north island.
The Pacific
Our last adventure on this jaunt was to return back to the United States from New Zealand. Since we’re still experimenting with all of the things that nomads do, we took this opportunity to experience one of the very long repositioning cruises. We boarded the Discovery Princess in Auckland and spent just about three weeks on the largest ocean on earth before arriving in Los Angeles. I’ve got a separate blog post about that experience. But suffice it to say, I’m still undecided as to if repositioning cruises are for us, but they do have their benefits. We had a great time during our port stops in French Polynesia and Hawaii. On Mo’orea in French Polynesia, we spent the day with Dan and Meghan, who had spent a month there a few years ago. It was cool visiting the small island with folks who knew where the best spots were.
We’ve been back in the US now for almost three weeks and it’s been quite a whirlwind tour. We’ve not fully unpacked since we left Vietnam almost three months ago. Traveling fast is tiresome. I’m very much looking forward to fully relaxing once we get to Split, Croatia, in a couple of weeks. It would have been nice to spend a little longer in St. Louis to see more of our friends and get in a few more dances, but I’m thankful for the time that we spent. And it worked out very well that we were in the country and were able to make it to my niece’s high school graduation.
I’m writing this in the Wingtips Lounge at the St. Louis Airport while we wait for our repositioning flight to Chicago where we will spend a couple of more days before we head to Europe to start Jaunt #3. More new countries, more adventures.
