The amazing island of Koh Lanta

We feel like island children in this place…it is exactly what we were looking for.

This is Eirin. We decided she was as cool as us, so we kidnapped her. She is from Norway (Victoria, if you’re reading this, don’t get jealous… We still love you) haha and likes banana splits and quiet walks on the beach. She is almost as loud as us and wants to learn the mexican ways. We are teaching her.

If we look disgustingly happy, it’s because we are.

We have been here for 5 days now and we absolutely love it here. We are so relaxed, surrounded by bungalows, beach huts and family owned restaurants. Everyone here is super relaxed and friendly and the food, not surprisingly, has continued to impress us.

We are now PADI certified Open Water Divers! And the experience was absolutely amazing. There is nothing quite like going underwater and experiencing the underwater world while being absolutely present. We highly recommend it. Our instructor was Dene and we did it with Go Dive Lanta, a company we highly recommend to anyone who is interested.

first dive site

cho gettin ready

eirin gettin ready

Paty gettin ready. (note:my suit is not zipped up yet ahha )

Meditating 18 meters underwater

To celebrate our new diver status, we had a Greek feast. As good as it looks.

Now, all that is left on the agenda is relaxing and going back home. Paty goes to Monterrey; Fernanda will go back to New York and Eirin will keep traveling for another month and a half! Hopefully, she will dive again and send us pictures!

Thank you all for coming along with us on this journey. We still can’t believe it is almost over- we have met some amazing people, had crazy amounts of fun, satisfied our curiosity for the East (but still plan to come back, these Mexicans are not about to disappear) and have found a lot of peace, serenity and calm as to what is to come for the three of us! I think it’s safe to say we are all excited for the future and this trip helped a lot with that.

We are looking forward to seeing all of you!

Maybe we will post some cute pictures in the future but considering we are relaxing and becoming island hippies for the remaining of the time, we doubt it! Haha

Unti our next adventure!
With love,

cho and pat

All of us with Dene, our dive master/instructor, after getting our shirts and being official divers!

Bangkok, oh dear Bangkok

Bangkok is like New York Coty- fast, busy, colorful, scary to navigate for some and really loud and interesting. For this reason, people react to Bangkok in two different ways-they hate it with a passin or they love it with a passion. We happened to be the latter. But maybe we weren’t there long enough? Who knows!

We were only there for one full day and it thrned out to be on the weekend. We were lucky because we got to go to the weekend JJ Market- one of the most amazing markets we have ever been to- we believe it’s the largest one in Southeast Asia. Don’t quote us on that.

We had one of the best Thai food yet(spicy pork, fried chicken and papaya salad), and bought some cute clothes before heading off and having our last dinner as a group.

Now, we are off to relax in Thailand’s andaman coast, specifically Koh Lanta (Thanks, missy) and to get our PADI diver’s certification.

Bangkok’s Central Park- Chatuchak park

Coconut water

coconut ice cream with Sticky rice and pumpkin

Eirin and Paty with Thai hats

Chouza and paty with new clothes from JJ market and some Singha beer.

Luang Prabang, a very French SEA town

After Vang Vieng we bravely made the seven hour journey to Luang Prabang (you kind of have no choice in a group situation but still, we were brave ok?), up and around Laos’s terrifying mountains. Luang Prabang is a charming French colonial town with very delicious street food. When you walk around there, you forget you are in Southeast Asia and feel like you’ve stepped into a small European town.

We woke up at 4am to witness the giving of the alms to the Buddhist monks. The monks can’t eat anything that is not given to them by the town people, so everyone gets up to feed them. Basically,you give each of them a banana and some sticky rice. It felt good to be contributing to this generous ritual and even though we aren’t Buddhists, we did feel very Buddhist-y that morning. After, of course, we went back to sleep for a few hours to get ready for our day around town.

We rode bikes around town and along the Mekong River, stopping at a few sites. We also decided to all go to the nearby Kouang Si waterfall.

The waterfall was unbelievable. It was in a blue lagoon and the whole place literally looked like the set of a Peter Pan Disney movie.

We trekked to the top of the waterfall and swam in the pond and under the waterfall (pictures from underwater camera to come! One picture above). Further down the mountain, the waterfall became smaller and in a small lagoon, we swam and swung off of a tree like we were George of the Jungle! Or should we say, Jane of the Jungle? Pretty liberating stuff.

Cho of the Jungle

At night, in more civilized land, we went to the night market. We did some shopping (not too much) and had street food dinner. The street food is a mix of Thai food and French food, not fusion style though. Being the food-loving Mexicans that we are, nothing sounds better than some spicy Thai food followed by a just-made Nutella crepe.

“I’m so pretty with the flowers”- bye bye Laos, Hello Thailand!

Laos: Vang Vieng and Pat’s Birthday!

On Patys big 25th birthday we went to the town Vang Vieng- a place mainly famous for tubing! Tubing in Vang Vieng is unlike anything we had ever done before, basically you tube down a river on a floating rubber donu (para nuestra gente Meza querida: “llantas”)t, making the occasional pit stop at bars on your way down (or being pulled into it by people at bars with a bottle attached to a rope). More adventurous travelers do backflips into the river, but considering it is dry season and the tourist mortality rate is quite high in Vang Vieng we decided to stick to our tubes! (Pictures to come once we develop our disposable camera!)

At night we had dinner, cake and even played some life sized Jenga !!

Another big attraction in Vang Vieng, other than tubing which I’ll get to in a minute, is Family Guy bars. That is exactly what it sounds like, a bar you to go to watch Family Guy reruns, feast on ice cream and Beerlao’s and pass out until you get kicked out. Apparently there are also Friends bars, but we didn’t see any and we personally would have preferred some South Park, (or SNL?))), anyways…. You get the picture.

The crown that got Paty free drinks.

we played some life size yenga!

Mordidaaaa mordidaaaa

Laos: Vientiane, the capital city of rest

Laos is the Jamaica of SE Asia. Need we explain further?

We fell in love with Laos. The food is amazing, especially Lap, sometimes spelled Larp, Laph or Laap. Who knows how it’s really spelled and really, who cares when it’s so damn good?

The big joke in Laos is that everyone seems to be narcoleptic. It’s hard to stay awake in the heat and the jumbo sized Beer Lao’s will make sure to knock you out. ( a big reason why this blog hasn’t been updated is that we got caught up in Lao culture of Beerlao’s and napping, it was AWESOME)

We flew from Hanoi to Vientiane, the capital of Laos. Vientiane is maybe the tiniest capital city, ever. We enjoyed our first Lap which was SUPER spicy. Then we took a tour of everything on our own tuk tuk, that took about an hour. We visited the Champs Élysées of Lao, very charming ( fell asleep briefly under the Arc).

That night we welcomed Patys birthday midnight at a rooftop bar that looked over the Mekong River into Thailand. The bar had a large she-male population, quite the South East Asian experience.

Vietnamese School of Thought.

We’d like to make a stop from explaining the separate cities we’ve been to to explain how the Vietnamese think. If you assumed that everything in this part of the world was backwards to how we think in the West, you were right.

First of all, the Vietnamese don’t seem to follow the concept of “forming/following a line” and since they are smaller than us, they basically jump over your bag in the train if you’re blocking the hallway or if they have no bags. It’s not even rude, it’s just costumary.

-If you see a wedding, it’s bad luck (unless you are attending the wedding or it’s your wedding. (basically, they think it’s bad luck because it’s not them getting married so they are having a worst day than them).

-if you see a funeral, especially in the morning, it’s good luck. you are not dead!!
We have seen two funerals in the morning so far, and when we spotted the second one, we actually clapped… So it’s easy to get caught up in this. We’re turning Vietnamese!

-in the same way, we have heard from various locals the amazing attitude of: I wake up, I don’t die, I do things right. It’s a good day. They’re very chill people. I guess that’s one silver lining about having living In a country that recently went through war, it gives you perspective.

-the people here go out of their way to help you. Like our friend Chau, who brought Fernanda the ribbon for her hat without her asking.

Hanoi, otherwise known as Hanoisy

We were in Hanoi for two nights. Hanoi is in north Vietnam and is the capital city of Viet Nam (that is how it’s really spelled, by the way). The weather was cold, and the city bustling, definitely more of a big city than what we have been getting used to.
While we were there, we visited many of the main attractions.

cute Asian baby

First, we went to see Ho Chi Min’s Museleum. The building was given to Viet Nam by the Soviet Union in 1974. And when you go inside, you can see Ho Chi Min embalmed. It took us by surprise because we were expecting something more like the Napoleon tomb in Paris, where you cannot actually see the body, (but this was more like what you imagine when you picture a frozen Walt Disney). We also got a chance to see the pagoda where Ho Chi Min used to pray and the house where he used to live.

Then, we visited one of the largest and most infamous prisons of North Vietnam- where John McCain was kept for 5 years during the Vietnam War. Most of the block that used to be the prison is now a commercial center. But one of the wings of the original prison still remains as a museum and it was pretty haunting.

In the afternoon we went to see a Vietnamese Water Puppet Show. Mainly because, what does a water puppet show even look like, right? We were too curious not to go. I guess satisfying our curiosity was one positive thing about the show because for most of it, after seeing what it was, we passed out and slept. that is what happens when you become a full blown tourist for a full day.

Now we share it with you! Maybe when you’re in Hanoi, you don’t have to see it now. Or maybe, you are just too curious, like us.

That night we went for our last Vietnamese dinner, and also said goodbye to almost half of our group before catching our flight to Vientiane, Laos, the next morning !

delicious pork bun.

our group. Yes, these people are our friends haha and we love them.