Ups and Downs in Phnom Penh

After Battambang, we continued south towards Phnom Penh by bus. What was supposed to take 7 hours ended up being just over 10 hours because an hour after leaving our bus somehow broke down and though it was entertaining to watch the driver and attendant (there’s always another man who takes tickets and helps people […]

Bamboo Trains and Stomach Bugs in Battambang

Note: so the rumours about wordpress (and facebook for that matter) not working in Vietnam was much ado about nothing, so luckily we can continue our posts. Despite the memorable boat ride in, it was nice to step onto land when we finally did arrive in Battambang. This is Cambodia’s second largest city next to […]

Chanmantravels may need to go on hiatus

Well we’re a few posts behind now as we’ve actually been in Phnom Penh for 4 days after a previous 4 days in Battambang. But we seem to have run out of time… Some last-minute travel planning resulted in us deciding to head to Vietnam a bit earlier than originally planned…so we hastily got our […]

A Journey To Battambang by Boat

We decided a long time ago that we are happier when we are able to do what we call “slow travel.” This means taking our time when we visit a new place, always staying at least 3 nights, trying to get a feel for a city through random exploration rather than planning every second of […]

Temples and temples and temples, oh my!

So we are two engineers…neither of whom is particularly well versed in history, and especially not in Hindu-turned-Buddhist temples from the Khmer Empire. We tried to read our guide books and websites and brochures to understand more about the insane and intense city of temples called Angkor that we went to visit…but every other word […]

Siem Reap: our first taste of Cambodia…

As I mentioned in a previous post, we’d heard a lot about the scams that tourists run into at the Poipet border crossing from Thailand into Cambodia, so we applied for our e-visas online to help avoid some of the hassle. In addition to this, we took the advice of our hotel in Siem Reap […]

A special time in Salak Phet

Every so often in our travels it’s the place we stay at – and invariably the people we meet there – that end up having the bigger impact on our impression of a city/village/island than the scenery itself or the activities that we do. In the case of our four days in the small fishing […]

Chillaxin’ on the beach in Koh Chang

After Bangkok, Jesse decided that it would be best to start heading counter-clockwise through South East Asia and staying south for now in order to take advantage of the (relatively) cooler weather we are having in the “winter” months of the year. So we headed south east towards the Thai island of Koh Chang to […]

Bangkok Street Food, Yes We Can!

So we’d heard a thing or two about Bangkok’s reputation for being a real mecca for street food…which, for those who know us well, meant it was finally time for us to make the pilgrimage here. And so we came with empty stomachs …and boy did we eat :D Jesse and I often talk excitedly […]

getting over our jet lag in Bangkok…

A 12 hour time difference coupled with months of poor sleeping habits (mostly Jesse) can really throw you for a loop. The result for us when we arrived in Bangkok were some really early morning wake up calls, followed by afternoon naps that unexpectedly turned into 12-14 hour sleeps till the next day. Luckily we […]