Final Thoughts - SE Asia Land Trip

Final Thoughts 

Wow, where to start summarizing this trip. Of course, everywhere was amazing and how do you choose just one favorite place or experience? Which is why we generally don’t choose favorites. How do you choose amongst giving rice to the monks in Luang Prabang at their morning alms, the friendliness of the people in Cambodia, seeing Orangutans & Proboscis monkeys & the Pygmy Bull elephant in the wild on Malaysian Borneo and seeing the Orangutans so close on Sumatra, the fun guides in Yogyakarta and Siem Reap and the general vibe of the place, trishaw rides in Hanoi and Jogja, getting blessed by a monk in Angkor Ban, the sites of Angkor Wat and Jogja, sites along the Mekong river, holding a rat at Apopo in Siem Reap, riding through villages by oxcart, taking a local boat through mangroves and driving through a wedding reception to get there and more.

A long trip like this is much like a world cruise and how do you choose just one place? We often value an experience over the actual place. Cambodia stood out because the people are just so friendly and nice. Laos was a highlight because we got to take part in the morning alms to the monks. The monk that wanted a selfie with us was fun. We’ll never forget the Orangutans & the funky monkey in Sumatra. So, no we can’t pick a favorite.

We learned much about traveling to so many places on a land trip vs a cruise. We will pack better for the next one. We hopefully learned what to leave at home next time and things that would have been good to have. We all agreed that we prefer cruising for the ease of travel, but there are some countries that cruises can’t get to and sometimes getting a more in-depth experience in certain countries is important. Our next long land trip will be to Tibet, Nepal, Bhutan, Myanmar, Bangladesh, and India.

I feel Jason at China Highlights did a great job of setting up the guides as they all showed up as expected and had the correct itineraries. Only 1 confusion when he used 2 different operators for different days which could have been eliminated if Jason had told us. I had a list of feedback for him in hopes that it will make our next trip more tailored to our style. Like the type of guides that we prefer, level of hotels, separate reservations so we aren’t booked like we are traveling like a family, but 2 separate couples and the same with hotel reservations. He also told us we didn’t need record locators for our flights and all we needed to do was show our passports. Most airports required proof of when we were leaving. Plus, we couldn’t choose our seats ahead of time. Just small details that would have made the trip smoother. Overall, we were very pleased with the trip.

The main reason I prefer to use Asia Highlights (a division of China Highlights & now Global Highlights) is that you can choose what you want to do, and it can be just your group. They do have stock tours if you don’t want to be hands on in the planning, but I prefer to create my own itinerary. When on cruises I do mostly private tours and set up the guides for the day. I could do that for the long land trips as well, but I feel they are better at finding the flights on all the various small airlines in countries where we aren’t familiar with the airlines that operate there.

Random observations: 

A better camera would be nice as mine doesn’t handle variable lighting well. Cell phones do a better job of that quite honestly. Might be better to upgrade my phone as it is older for one with a better camera.

Since we were traveling in kind of an off season, most of the tourists were not Western. We went weeks without seeing other “white people”. We didn’t really notice until we saw a couple ordering pizza at a stand that was probably from the States.

Sometimes English has some interesting meanings to the staff. Greg ordered 2 eggs scrambled and got 1 egg scrambled on one side of his plate and the other on the other side of the plate with a big swirl of ketchup between them. Guess they figure all Americans put ketchup on everything.

At the same restaurant I ordered an omelet. She asked if I wanted one omelet or two. I said one. It was a tiny 1 egg omelet. So, the next day I ordered two. It came with one small omelet on one side of the plate and the second on the other. Too cute. I guess egg and omelet are synonymous to them.

Fellow tourists are also amusing at times. At one breakfast buffet in Bali a man walks up to the chef making the eggs and he acts like they don’t speak English on Bali. He points to the eggs, holds up 2 fingers and then makes a whisking movement with one hand. The chef responds by asking “would you like two scrambled eggs?” (in perfect English)

It was a long trip, and we are lucky that Tom & Cathy are still speaking to us. Honestly, we had an amazing trip!

I can say my shoulder surgery made the trip possible. It was strong and caused no issues! 

Our next trip is an Eastern European Capitals Viking River cruise in July & August. 

Bird summary: We saw 227 species of birds. 45 were new to add to our Life List. 

New birds: 

Chinese Pond-Heron

Greater Coucal

Asian Palm Swift

Common Tailorbird

White-winged Tern

Streak-eared Bulbul

Malaysian Pied-Fantail

Asian Openbill

Chestnut-headed Bee-eater

Black Baza

Square-tailed Drongo-Cuckoo

Ashy Tailorbird

Storm's Stork

White-nest Swiftlet

Plume-toed Swiftlet

Indian Cuckoo

Plaintive Cuckoo

Little Green-Pigeon

White-crowned Shama

Wrinkled Hornbill

Wreathed Hornbill

Rhinoceros Hornbill

Blue-eared Kingfisher

Chinese Egret

Slender-billed Crow

Black-and-red Broadbill

Bushy-crested Hornbill

Jerdon's Baza

Black Magpie

White-headed Munia

Javan Kingfisher

Cave Swiftlet

Javan Munia

Little Pied Flycatcher

Fulvous-chested Jungle Flycatcher

Sunda Warbler

Rusty-breasted Whistler

Golden-headed Cisticola

Black-throated Laughingthrush

Crescent-chested Babbler

Olive-backed Tailorbird

Chestnut-breasted Malkoha

Black-naped Fruit-Dove

Gray-cheeked Green-Pigeon

Green Junglefowl

Videos will take a bit of time, but as I get them done, I'll include them in my Google Albums.

Thanks for following along on our most recent journey! We added 2 new countries on this one to total 95.