Career Break Central

Pokhara to Ghorepani

Mar 16-18

The morning we were to fly to Pokhara to begin our Annapurna Circuit trek, I awoke at 4:30AM with a familiar cramping in my guts and had to make a run for the bathroom. This couldn’t be happening again! I wasn’t taking any chances this time and immediately took a dose of Cipro and went back to bed. Later that morning, I forgot my worries as our tiny plane took off for Pokhara and we got our first look at the snowy peaks of the Himalayas.
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Mar 13 – 16

I’ll never forget how my heart raced as our plane approached Nepal and I thought I was about to get my first glimpse of the Himalayas. When we had planned our trip, Nepal had been the place that Claude had been most excited about visiting as he had dreamed about trekking in the Himalayas for as long as he could remember (just like Bob Seger). His excitement was contagious and I was soon anticipating our mountain adventure as much as he was. Read the rest of this entry »

Feb 28 – March 6

We had enjoyed the company of our new friends in Chiang Mai so much that we decided to get together for a celebratory dinner before we all went our separate ways. It was so nice to have adults to talk to (besides each other) and the kids loved their company too. After dinner, we took the kids back to the guesthouse to put them to bed and Claude was having such a good time that I told him I would stay with the kids so he could go out with the gang. I must say, it was nice to be the one feeling good the next morning while the rest of them nursed hangovers over breakfast. Since we were all heading back to Bangkok anyway, we decided to take the overnight train with Candice and Mary. The kids thought it was quite an adventure to have a sleepover on the train and had fun colouring and drawing pictures with Candice and Mary.

After we put the kids to bed we played cards until the unsmiling train matron came and told us we had to go to bed (at 9PM!). Read the rest of this entry »

Feb 26-28

There were two things that we had wanted to do in Chiang Mai. One was to take a Thai cooking course and the second was to do a hilltribe trek. Thanks to the state of our gastrointestinal tracts, neither Claude nor I were remotely interested in cooking or eating spicy Thai food. However, we were determined to see the hilltribes and had booked a three-day trek as soon as we arrived in Chiang Mai. We had debated between the classic 3-day trek which included an elephant ride and a bamboo raft trip and the more expensive eco-trek to a remote area in the hills where we would walk more and learn jungle survival skills (no elephants or rafting). Normally we would have chosen the eco-trek, but we thought the kids would enjoy the elephant ride and rafting more. In the end, it was probably a good thing that we chose the classic trek, because, in my weakened state, I wouldn’t have survived the eco-trek. On the third day after I got sick, I was still feeling very weak and nauseated, but our trip was already booked and the thought of spending three days alone at the guesthouse while Claude and the kids got fresh air and exercise did not appeal to me. So I sucked it up, took a couple of Imodium, said a prayer that the worst was over and we joined our group. Read the rest of this entry »

Feb 22-25

After our less than inspiring introduction to Thailand, we decided to get out of Bangkok as quickly as possible. The next morning we got up early and caught the train to Chiang Mai, a small beautiful city in Northern Thailand (a 12 hour trip). Claude slept most of the way while the kids and I chatted with our neighbouring passengers. We met Leigh, a wheat farmer from Edmonton, who travels during the winter every year and was traveling around Thailand with a young couple who were friends of the family. He kept the kids and I entertained for most of the trip by playing with the kids and telling tales of his adventures abroad and, by the end of the ride, Simon was treating him like a surrogate grandpa.
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Feb 20-21

Even though we only spent a week in Cambodia, we were incredibly affected by its poignant history and remarkable people, not to mention the incredible temples of Angkor. In retrospect, we should have planned to spend more time exploring Cambodia and, perhaps even its neighbours Laos and Vietnam. When we were planning our itinerary we were a little nervous about our ability to travel with the kids in a developing country and had decided to keep our initial visit short. Now that we are “seasoned” travelers, we know that we can handle just about anything and will definitely make our next visit a longer one. Read the rest of this entry »

For us, one of the highlights of our visit to Siem Reap had nothing to do with temples. I had read about a small private museum just outside Siem Reap, called the Cambodian Landmine Museum, not to be confused with the government-run War Museum. Once we had seen our fill of temples, I asked our driver if he could take us there and, after conferring with another driver to get directions, he agreed. He took us off the main road onto a bumpy dirt road that wound through a dusty little Cambodian village for about 10 minutes before stopping at the side of the road next to a gate formed by two mortar shells with a sign suspended between them that read, “Landmine Museum.”
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While the rest of Cambodia is still struggling to pull itself out of economic depression, Siem Reap is booming, thanks to the presence of the temples of Angkor on its doorstep. Since the onset of peace in Cambodia in 1998, tourists have started flocking to the area to see Angkor Wat, one of the Seven Manmade Wonders of the World, as well as the forty other temples of Angkor. After reading about a family who visited Angkor Wat in the late 90’s and had pretty much had the place to themselves, I had fantasies of us exploring this ancient holy place like in some Indiana Jones movie. Well, apparently, things have changed a bit in the last 10 years and Angkor Wat has turned into a three ring circus complete with hundreds of tour buses and thousands of camera-touting tourists. Siem Reap is expanding at an alarming rate with 5-star hotels popping up like pimples to accommodate all the tourists arriving daily to explore this now attainable wonder. We had to pay $40 each (kids free) for a 3-day pass to visit the temples and our guesthouse provided us with a tuktuk driver, Vuthey, for $15/day to take us around the temples. Read the rest of this entry »

One of our primary reasons for visiting Cambodia was to see the temples of Angkor, the most famous being Angkor Wat, reputed to be the largest religious structure in the world. To get there, we decided to take the six hour “fast boat” ride to Siem Reap up the Tonle Sap River for $25 each. Despite the fact that the bus was ¼ the price and took the same amount of time, we thought it would be fun to see Cambodia from the boat. Well, “fun” is a relative term and, when I saw the boat we would be taking, I started questioning the wisdom of our decision. Read the rest of this entry »

Feb 14-21
As I sit here in Phnom Penh International Airport I wanted to capture my thoughts and feelings about the last week we spent in Cambodia. This won’t be one of my usual lighthearted tales of where we’ve been and what we’ve done; I was deeply affected by Cambodia and just want to share my experience. If you’re not up to reading about one of the most horrific events of the 20th century, then you may want to skip this entry. Read the rest of this entry »