Our trip to Thailand during Thanksgiving of 2008 started out as a wonderful family get together in an exotic resort home in Phuket. We enjoyed several days of living like rock stars at a really great house, kayaked, scuba dived and toured the Phi Phi islands by boat.
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We flew from Phuket to Bangkok International and no more than 30 minutes after we left the airport it was seized by civil unrest that is so typical of Thailand. Trying to ignore the unrest we toured Bangkok for a few days visiting the temples.
We knew it would be several days if not weeks before we could fly out of a Bangkok airport so we decided to modify our trip and head to Cambodia. Its a pretty bad day when Cambodia is the safe exit from a country. A rough bus ride eventually got us to our Angkor Wat resort which was a welcomed sanctuary from the otherwise worn-down countryside. The temples of Angkor Wat are a must see for any tourist. We took many photos of our bicycle tour around the temples.
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Our trip to Vietnam was the final destination for Carol's mom Kim since she was going to stay there for a month or two. We met up with her brother Ahn and enjoyed having them as our tour guides as they remembered Saigon of the past and enjoyed the culture that they had to abandon a long time ago. Vietnam was also a valid place where United Airlines was willing to fly us from since our flights from Bangkok were clearly not possible. We enjoyed visiting Shanghai for a few days and the Meekong River Delta before heading home. Our photos didn't capture the most intense part of Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City) which was the overwhelming number of motorcycles (scooters) cruising through the streets.
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Not every trip goes as planned, but honestly rolling with the punches and modifying our itinerary allowed us to enjoy two countries instead of complaining about being stranded at the airport for several days. Our trip was memorable and let's be honest...their civil unrest gives us a good story to tell.
