TravelBlog » chrisandbecky

chrisandbecky - Chris Robb and Becky Alleyne

We did it! We're packing it in and leaving our lives in Victoria ... at least for a little while.

We'll be gone for about six months and we plan to visit India, Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia, Malaysia and Indonesia. Although we've got our trusty guidebooks in hand, we don't intend to stick to any timelines or itineraries. We're going to go where the wind takes us ... okay, more likely where a third class train ticket takes us.

We've decided to create this journal so that our friends and family can check in to read about our adventures and more importantly, so that Becky's mom can see that we are alive and well.

Take Care! We'll see you when we get back. - Chris and Beck

To email us through the site, you can hit the "Private Message" button. If you'd prefer to reach either of us individually, you may continue to contact us through our personal email addresses.

You can also leave comments about our entries and pictures by hitting the "Add a Comment" button on the left hand side of any journal entry page. Any comments will be posted for all to see.

Also, if you want to be kept updated each time we submit a new journal entry, you sign up to receive an email notification by hitting "Subscribe" below. Otherwise, just check into the site any time after January 9, 2008 for updates.

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Joined on: December 20th 2007
Last Login: November 12th 2008

Blog Entries: 24
Photos: 526
Recommended by 1

TB Code: [blogger=55083]
Status: BLOGGER

Blogs & Travel Journals

by chrisandbecky, order by Date newest first.

By chrisandbecky
August 11th 2008

Back in the Islands

Asia » Thailand » South » Ko Tao

Sunset on Koh Tao

June 23 - July 6 I know, I know, we're home ... we should be done with these blogs, right? Unfortunately, we fell a little bit behind with the entries so we still have a couple to write to wrap it all up. Sorry if we have already told you these stories in person. After returning to Bangkok from Vietnam, we wasted no time in heading south to Koh Tao - billed as a diver's paradise on the southeast coast of Thailand. Although Thailand has more great islands and beaches than you can shake a stick at, we decided on Koh [View Full Entry]

Drinks on the Sandy Beaches of Koh Phangan

By chrisandbecky
August 10th 2008

On the Road to Saigon

Asia » Vietnam » South Central Coast

Old Man Selling Stuff from his Boat

June 10 - June 22 It was a long, long journey from Ninh Binh to Hoi An, made longer by the fact that every piece of information given to us by the person who sold us our tickets was a lie. Don't get me wrong, Vietnam is a great country, one of our favourites on this trip, and the Vietnamese people who are not involved in the tourist industry are friendly and interesting, but the bloodsuckers involved in the industry will stop at NOTHING to get every little cent out of you they can. Had it not been for our India [View Full Entry]

By chrisandbecky
August 6th 2008

We're Off to Vietnam ...

Asia » Vietnam » Northeast

Two Boys and Pink Buffalo
Sounds like a good title for a children's book.

May 31, 2008 - June 9, 2008 We arrived in Hanoi after a sweet one hour ride on a Vietnam Airlines jet. We'd heard too many horror stories about the 24 hour bus journey from Vientiane to Hanoi, so we decided to buy our way out of that headache. When the city bus dropped us downtown, we ran into our first and biggest hurdle in Hanoi - crossing the road. We'd heard about this terrifying right of passage from other travelers and we received lots of advice on how to tackle the challenge - close your eyes and just walk. We [View Full Entry]

By chrisandbecky
July 21st 2008

Back in the Swing of Things in Laos

Asia » Laos » West » Luang Prabang

Laos Fields

May 20, 2008 - May 31, 2008 After the Gibbon Experience, we planned to head south to Luang Prabang (LP), then Vang Viang (VV) and finally Vientiane before moving on to Vietnam. In first leg of the journey, we had three choices about how we were going to get to LP and none of them sounded all that good: 1) The slow boat - a two day journey down river in a very basic and uncomfortable boat; 2) A 15 hour bus trip through the mountains and this is if all goes well ... it often doesn't; and 3) The Fast [View Full Entry]

By chrisandbecky
July 15th 2008

The Gibbon Experience

Asia » Laos » West » Vientiane

Bex Leaving Treehouse

May 17, 2008 - May 19, 2008 We left Northern Thailand and headed to Laos. Our first stop in Laos was the "Gibbon Experience", which was highly recommended by fellow travellers. We'd been told that the Gibbon Experience is a jungle trek where you live in treehouses and zipline over the jungle canopy. Well, as you can imagine, that was all Chris needed to hear, so we contacted them to get booked in. The office was incredibly unorganized and did not return our emails. We were persistent, though, and finally managed to force a confirmation out of them. This different approach [View Full Entry]

By chrisandbecky
July 12th 2008

Back to Bangkok and on to the North

Asia » Thailand » North » Chiang Mai

A Face in the Tree
An image of Buddha in an overgrown ruin in Ayuthaya.

April 29, 2008 - May 16, 2008 I guess everything is relative. Your perception of a place can be changed so dramatically by what you have to compare it with. Our first blog entry about Bangkok back in January had a distinctly negative tone ... we may have even used words like dirty or chaotic. I guess that is because we were coming from little old Victoria. Flying back into Bangkok on April 29, after two months in India and Nepal, left us with a very different impression of the city - Amazing, Clean, Quiet, Ordered ... I could go on, [View Full Entry]

By chrisandbecky
July 7th 2008

Wet and Wild in Nepal

Asia » Nepal » Pokhara

Our Rafting Crew - The Crimson Tide!

The Wet - White Water Rafting Through the Mountains A day after returning from our trek, we headed back up into the mountains on another rickety bus, this time to raft the Kali Gandaki River with 16 other brave souls (made up mainly of Irish, Aussies, Brits and Canadians). We set out in two rafts and spent the first half hour learning a few basic skills. The first major rapid was called "Little Brother" and because it was reportedly too dangerous (several deaths in the last three years), we all got out of the rafts and walked around the rapids. This [View Full Entry]

By chrisandbecky
June 15th 2008

Getting High in Nepal: Trekking in Annapurna

Asia » Nepal » Annapurna

Us!
Posing before the Himalayan peaks and the Rhododendron forests

The bus ride from Kathmandu to Pokhara had its highs and lows ... quite literally. The scenery was beautiful as our bus careened along the exposed and guardrail-less mountain roads in a manner I thought better reserved for sports cars on the Autobahn. Every bus driver in Nepal seems to feel it is a personal insult to have to have another vehicle leading the way. As a result they desperately try to pass everything in sight, no matter how narrow the road or sharp the corner. Bex slept through scariest bits ... I, on the other hand, just clenched my jaw, [View Full Entry]

By chrisandbecky
May 28th 2008

Ahhhhh, Kathmandu

Asia » Nepal » Kathmandu » Thamal

Girls Playing in Durbar Square

Both of us let out a long low sigh of relief as we stepped off the plane onto the Nepali tarmac. After the stifling heat and pollution of Delhi, the cool mountain air of Kathmandu was an immense relief. We had heard that Kathmandu was a polluted and chaotic nightmare and that we should get out of there as quickly as possible...but those people had obviously flown in from somewhere other than India. As our cab pulled away from the airport towards the backpacker district of Thamel, we both couldn't help commenting on how clean and peaceful the city seemed. We [View Full Entry]

By chrisandbecky
May 27th 2008

Camel Humps and Sandcastles

Asia » India » Rajasthan » Jaisalmer

Chris and Disgusting

From Pushkar, we boarded an overnight sleeper bus to Jaisalmer. The bus was coming from Jaipur, so the bus was already packed by the time we got on - there were already a number of locals sleeping on the floor. We weaved our way to our reserved sleeper compartment (a little coffin like box the size of a double bed and just tall enough to sit up), trying to step on the fewest people on our way....and what do you know when the bus conductor pulled back the glass door about eight people were sleeping in our bed. This is India [View Full Entry]