Burning the Inheritance

Kuala Lumpur is a Federal Territory and the Capital city of Malaysia with a population of about 2.2 million people and almost 8 million in the metropolitan area.  While it wasn’t initially a stop on our itinerary, logistics and budget strongly suggested and extended layover there on our way from Phnom Penh, Cambodia to the…

Phnom Penh, also known as Krong Chaktomuk Serimongkul (The City of the Brahma’s Faces), is the capital and most populous city in Cambodia with about 2.3 million residents.  It is located along the banks of the Tonle Sap River, at the point where it and the Bassac River join the Mekong River on its way…

Cambodia was a fairly late addition to our itinerary, one which we vacillated back and forth over quite a bit.  While Angkor Wat was definitely somewhere on our lifetime bucket list, we had some inexplicable hesitancy about going to Cambodia.  Certainly this was in part because (in the U.S. at least), other than Angkor Wat,…

Chiang Dao is a small town of about 16,000 people located about 40 miles north of Chiang Mai and about 25 miles from the Myanmar border.  The town of Chiang Dao is located in the valley below Doi Chiang Dao, one of the tallest mountains in Thailand which rises to a peak of over 7,000…

Chaing Mai was another place we had planned on visiting during our last trip to Thailand but were unable to make and was arguably the place we were most excited to finally see in Thailand.  Our trip there started a little rough as there was some confusion over when we were supposed to meet the…

Ayutthaya Ayutthaya was one of the places we had planned on visiting on our last trip to Thailand but never made it because of my knee surgery, so we were pretty excited at getting a second shot at it.  Getting from Bangkok back to Ayutthaya was one of the easier legs of travel we had…

We had been to Thailand once before in 2020, the ill-fated trip when I had my moped accident (don’t ask) and fractured my patella.  Oddly (and mostly thanks to Colleen), I still have fond memories of my recuperation after knee surgery at the Centara Grand Beach Resort in Krabi.  On that trip, we were scheduled…

For a number of reasons, we decided to finish our month-long tour of India in the city of Kolkata.  Some of these reasons included logistical considerations as Kolkata is the easternmost Indian city of any size with an international airport, and we were heading east to Thailand after India.  Certainly some of our reason was…

[Editor’s Note:  This is the second installment for the week of October 14th through the 20th, the week which Colleen and I traveled solo separately (or is it separately solo?).  Colleen’s adventures in Rishikesh were published a few days ago and this installment covers what I (Ritchard) was up to while Colleen was at Baby…