Songkran Break 2015

Songkran is Thailand's most famous festival. An important event on the Buddhist calendar, this water festival marks the beginning of the traditional Thai New Year. The name Songkran comes from a Sanskrit word meaning 'passing' or 'approaching'. Events during the festival include water throwing, the ritual bathing of Buddha images, processions and performances. Before we headed off to our week long break, our school had a day of celebrations.

Chiang Mai is home to one of the country's biggest Songkran celebrations in the world, so of course off we go!  Our friend Katy flew from Portland to spend the week with us. 

As we arrived in Chiang Mai we decided to take a cooking class on our first day.  This time we made a dish we haven't before that is one of our favorites called, Khao Soi which is a traditional Northern Thailand dish.  

The next day we went to the Elephant Nature Reserve about an hour outside of Chiang Mai. The Nature Park is an elephant rescue and rehabilitation center where we were able to volunteer and visit dozens of elephants that were rescued.  So our day was spent learning about their past lives, walking with them, bathing them and feeding them.  This organization is truly an amazing organization that spends all its money buying and taking care of elephants that were used for illegal logging or as tourist attractions.

After our day with our new friends,we decided to partake in the the worlds biggest water fight. 

Next stop was Koh Chang.  This was the first time that we have been to this island on the east coast of Thailand, right next to Cambodia.  Koh Chang is the 3rd biggest island in Thailand and is definitely is one of our favorites.  There is deep jungle throughout the island and big hills that you need to motorbike over from one beach to the next.  We stayed on an river estuary with an ocean view in a redone fisherman pole house.

We were able to paddle out in a canoe to the beach and got some killer sunrise's and sunsets.

Katy and I headed out to a day of snorkeling and relaxing on some beaches.  The water or beaches weren't disappointing. Had a fantastic time exploring by motorbike this new island and this is one we will for sure need to get back to the last few months we live in Thailand

Siem Reap/Angkor Wat, Cambodia

We finally were able to make it to Cambodia.  Even though it was a quick 1 hour flight, we just didn't get around to making plans until this April to head next door.  The country, people and culture was just beautiful.  Cambodian's have been thru so much in their country with the Khmer Rouge killing 1 in every 4 Cambodians from 1975-1979, and still the people we encountered were happy and friendly.
    With our short time there we explored the Angkor Wat Complex and Beyond, drank good cheap local beer, ate great food, got massages and relaxed.

First stop was getting our Tuk Tuk driver.

 Sunrise at Angkor Wat.  Angkor Wat was constructed in the early 12th century and is the largest religious monument in the world.  The Construction of Angkor Wat involved 300,000 workers and 6,000 elephants, yet it was still not fully completed. 

          Below are pictures of Angkor Tom/Bayon, which you will see has faces carved into the rock.  It stands directly in the center of the Angkor Wat complex and represents, in Hinduism,  the intersection of Heaven and Earth.There are over 200 carved stone faces that are of the king at the time in 1886 AD.
  This was were Tomb Raider was filmed and you can really see why when you arrive.

Ta Som and Ta Prohm are temples that are taken over by nature.

Preah Khan was the last one for our first day as it was getting really really hot and were were exhausted from going all day long. Preah Khan is north of the Angkor Wat complex.

Day 2 was spend on a long......long....TukTuk Ride to a temple 60Km outside of Siem Reap. On our drive we saw the amazing beauty of Cambodia and its people.

This temples name is Being Mealea and we were able to climb all around this temple, exploring every place that we could.

At the days end we enjoyed walking around Pub Street in Siem Reap enjoying their yummy food, cheap massages( cheaper than Thailand) and beer for 50cents.