June 25, 2015

Delightful Encounters in Inle Lake

June 25, 2015/ Anais

Inle Lake was one of those places we couldn't make up our minds on. Should we go or should we not go? We'd heard various testimonies from fellow travelers. Some who hated it, some who loved it. Isn't it so hard when that happens? The fact of the matter was this: it's incredibly touristy. In our minds, that alone was reason enough not to go. We always enjoyed places more if we could get a taste of the local life and from what we heard, Inle Lake was definitely not that. The funny thing is, we ended up with some of of our favorite memories there... despite all the tourists.

May 29, 2015

Pyin Oo Lwin

May 29, 2015/ Anais

Visiting an old British hill station in the middle of Burma definitely felt a bit unsettling. No matter how much I'd read about it, stepping into this charming little town felt so odd after we'd just spent days seeing hundreds of pagodas everywhere. It was now time for horse-drawn carriages, colonial houses and lots and lots of trees! We were most excited to spend a few days in Pyin Oo Lwin because of its much cooler climate (it's situated in the mountains, a couple hours by car from Mandalay). Temperatures still reached 25ºC during the day but after months in near 40ºC weather every day, the air almost felt cool and actually a bit cold at night, if you can believe it. Like most people, we came here to relax, which we sure did plenty of. But looking back on our time in Pyin Oo Lwin, what I remember most is the friendliness of its inhabitants. Yet again, Burma treated us with nothing but kindness.

May 18, 2015

Bonkers for Bagan

May 18, 2015/ Anais

After nearly a month in India, we returned to Bangkok for a short few days, applied for our visas and we're off again to one of the countries I was most looking forward to: Burma. We started our month in Bagan, an ancient capital city with more than 2,000 temples. All in an area of 104 square kilometers (40 sq mi)! And to make it even crazier. They're used to be 10,000 of these temples during the Pagan Kingdom's height between the 11th-13th centuries. 10,000 temples! I can't even begin to imagine what that looked like because with “only” 2,000 of them, it's impossible to look anywhere without seeing dozens.

March 21, 2015

Photo Essay: India

March 21, 2015/ Anais

2,207: the number of pictures I took in India over a short 24 days. The most out of any country we visited. From people, especially women & their beautiful saris, to street scenes to arches to lattice windows to monuments to carvings to signs to cows & monkeys, India inspired me so much, I couldn't put my camera down. We've shared quite a few pictures with you already, but there were so many more, we decided to add a post packed with photos we didn't already publish. Now, enough talkin', let's get lookin'!

March 07, 2015

Yummy Eats (India Edition)

March 07, 2015/ Anais

India is full of wonders and, without a doubt, one of those is its food. As Tyler previously mentioned, it took us 18 days before we repeated a dish. Not surprising when you see the number of vegetables, meats, & spices Indians like to cook with. We kept a detailed list of everything we tried so we could share with you a few of our favorites meals & those I actually took pictures of...sometimes the food just looked too delicious and I completely forgot. We even showed this list to our fellow train-mate during our trip from Agra to Delhi and he was very impressed with the variety and number of dishes we managed to fit in our short three & a half week trip.

Rapturous Rajasthan