Beijing was fantastic. We finally got a break from the hot weather. We arrived to rain, but the next day we went to the Great Wall and it was absolutely beautiful and in the low 70s (Beijing is at the same latitude as Philadelphia). The following day we went to Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City. Tiananmen Square is very well secured – we had to pass through security and have our bags x-rayed just to get onto the square. Police and soldiers watching too. We didn’t realize how massive the Forbidden City was, with square after huge square. It took 2 hours just to walk straight through the main areas. It contains 980 buildings and covers 180 acres. It is said to have 9,999 rooms and is supposed to be the largest palace complex in the world. The city was home to 24 emperors and the center of Chinese government for almost 500 years. Construction began in 1406 and it took 1,000,000 workers 14 years to build. The people in Beijing were very interesting – they would just walk up and stare, particularly at Thomas and Frances, like they’ve never seen a foreigner before. Some would even take pictures of us. A few touched Thomas’ arm and said “Hi boy”. I really expected to see more westerners around, but outside of the Great Wall there were very few.

Oh, if you’re thinking about visiting China on a ’72 hour transit without visa’, make sure the hotel registers your kids with the local police, otherwise you might need to sit in immigration when you’re trying to depart the country after chinese speaking security have taken the kids passports…

Laos was another great stop. Hot, humid, very rainy, very green, really nice people. The city of Luang Prabang is a UNESCO World Heritage site and we enjoyed exploring it.  We visited old temples and their National Museum, ate great food, went to the night market and climbed up a huge hill (twice) for a really great view of Luang Prabang. We saw lots of monks here in their saffron-colored robes and we even got up at 5:30 one morning to participate in the alms giving ceremony (giving food to the monks as they walk through the streets). The town of Luang Prabang is on the Mekong river and that river is huge. There was so much rain and flooding while we were there that we weren’t able to take a boat trip as we had hoped because of dangerous conditions. We’re back in Bangkok now and have decided to go to Beijing for a few days. We figured we couldn’t come all this way and not see the Great Wall when it’s less than 5 hours away. Initially we weren’t going to go because visas can be difficult for China, but it turns out that if you stay for less than 72 hours, no visa is required. After that we’re making a quick stop in Hong Kong, back to Bangkok and then on to Bali, Indonesia.

We’ve met only a few Americans since leaving the Disney boat. In the Bangkok airport, we saw a guy getting on the same propeller plane with us to Luang Prabang with a UVa bag – turns out he’s from Forest, VA. Less than 10 miles from our house. Go figure.

Cambodia was really great. And really hot. We saw lots of stone temples built almost a thousand years ago, and some of the carvings look like they could have been done yesterday. Angkor Wat was massive. The outer wall surrounds an area over 200 acres with a huge moat that was dug around the whole area. Inside are intricately carved stone walls stretching more than 600 meters. It took 50-100,000 people 35 years to build. The Bayon was built slightly later as a Buddhist temple and has carved stone faces all over that are taller than a person. Ta Prohm was our favorite. This temple is also called the jungle temple, as it has been left pretty much in it’s natural state with huge trees growing out of the buildings. We saw some other smaller temples, rode around in a lot of tuk tuks (motorcycle taxis), got to play miniature golf, visit a butterfly farm and had great Mexican food for Thomas’ birthday. We were lucky enough to find a great bakery that made a beautiful chocolate cake that we really enjoyed. We leave tomorrow for Bangkok, where we will hang out for a few days before heading to Laos.

Bangkok was awesome. Very impressive traffic. We did some temple visiting, went to a few huge malls (the kids even ice skated in one), took a river cruise, played in the pool a lot and caught up on school work. I (Ed) even shaved for the first time since Morocco. Mostly though, we just relaxed. It has been nice taking it easy for the past several weeks. We just arrived in Siem Reap, Cambodia 2 days ago and have already been out to visit the ruins at Angkor Wat, one of the largest religious monuments in the world. It is almost 1000 years old, and was built as a Hindu temple, but changed to a Buddhist temple somewhere along the way.  The whole complex is actually many different structures made of stone with very elaborate carvings.  We plan to visit the ruins twice more and won’t even see half of it. It is  very hot walking around but we were able to see elephants and monkeys in the jungle.  Rainy season in Southeast Asia continues, but we’re (thankfully) dodging the downpours and staying dry.  Everyone is doing well and we will be celebrating Thomas’ birthday on the 11th, which also turns out to be the exact half-way point of our trip.

We’re back in Bangkok after a long stretch staying south of here at the beach. We stayed in the northern part of Phuket, next to a national park and, as you can see in the video, the beaches there were really uncrowded. It is the rainy season here, so we enjoyed the short spurts of rain just about every day.  Lots of down time with no real touring involved. Swam, ate, relaxed and slept a lot. Thomas played a bunch of water volleyball and Frances tried her hand at fishing for the first time – no fish to be found though. She also tried badminton.  Everybody liked the billiards table.  Our hotel also had a really great fire lighting ceremony. We’re going to be in the Bangkok area for almost two weeks, then on to Angkor Wat in Cambodia where we are going to celebrate Thomas’ birthday.