Behind the scenes, in Thailand

Have we dropped off the face of the earth? You could be forgiven for wondering! It’s been over a week since we travelled the road to Chiang Mai, passing sulphuric hot springs and over a mountain pass on the way. The climb was challenging but not enough to tire us out for quite this long. So, what have we been up to? Well, now that’s a very long list…

We were fortunate to find the Wild Orchid Guesthouse in Chiang Mai. It’s one of those places that has a rare combination of friendly owners, clean and comfortable rooms, a reasonable price and free wireless internet with an excellent connection to the world. Result? A flurry of work going on behind the scenes on our site. Just check out the Resources section and you’ll see how much information we’ve added.

Friedel has also had an exciting breakthrough with her travel writing, getting an article published in an upcoming issue of Transitions Abroad, with the possibility of more to come. Paid work is always welcome but more than that it’s an honour to be included alongside big names in the industry like Rick Steeves and Tim Leffel. The article will be published in October. Watch this space!

When not attached to the computer, we’ve been getting medical tests done (nothing serious, just the usual yearly checkups), renewing our gear, cutting our hair, sorting paperwork, sending home stuff we don’t need and – most exciting of all – planning our trip to Australia and New Zealand! We now plan to be on our next continent by mid-December, which will leave us with at least five months to explore before we board a cargo ship to Seattle. Yes, a cargo ship! It’s hard to know which we’re more excited about, going ‘down under’ or sailing the seas.

And finally, you’ll notice that picture slideshow up there. We discovered a site called redbubble and decided to offer up some of our best photos for sale as cards, prints and posters. You can see them by clicking on the photos in this post or go to our redbubble gallery to browse our images.

Are we ever hitting the road again? Even with all our current comforts and the never ending list of work we could do, we are getting itchy feet. As soon as we can finalise our arrangements for the cargo ship, we’ll set a course west towards Burma and then south towards Bangkok. From there it’s on to Malaysia and soon afterwards Perth, Australia.