giving back.

growing up in a middle class American family i didn't realize how good i had it.

i always went to private schools and there were always people with more.

as a teenager it seemed that what we had was never enough.

#soclueless

as an adult i've become much more aware of the realities of life.

i suppose this happens to everyone when the bills must be paid out of your own bank account.

now having traveled to 39 countries, i've come to realize exactly how much i have and how much i am thankful for.

spending time in asia and north africa quickly opens your eyes to the circumstance of millions of people around the world.

as americans, we have enough.

more than enough.

while i know that there are many in the US in need, the need is truly much greater in other parts of the world.

in laos, three quarters of people earn less than $2 a day.

traveling in laos this summer, caitlin and i were privileged to meet an american man named michael sebastian. caitlin and i were shopping in a store and found him sitting on the floor reviewing english with a small group of workers from the shop. he gave up his life in america to serve the needs of the students of laos.

they need to learn english. so he teaches them.

they need a place to live. so he houses them.

they need someone to help guide them forward. so he counsels them.

michael asked if we wanted to come to his advanced english class that evening. we later called him to make arrangements to attend and he sent two students on motorbikes to pick us up and bring us to his home. (my first time on a bike!)

the evening class was full of boys, likely ages 15-25, who were all hoping to become proficient in english and better their lives. they asked us questions about where we were from and michael googled both new york and savannah to show them pictures. in a tv show one of them had heard of hell's kitchen and wanted to know if it was beautiful. (kind of an odd question!) they were impressed by the live oak trees of savannah. (questioning is that real?)

we were particularly taken with one student, her, 2nd row with his arms around the guys on either side of him, who michael has helped earn a scholarship to a united world college school in the netherlands. he had come home for the summer and was back in english class to share his story with the others. it didn't hurt that he had quite the charming personality and winning smile. this opportunity will change his life and without michael it wouldn't have been possible.

you can hear from the kids themselves in this video they've put together.

so with this in mind, i'd like to help michael continue to fund his program. his ability to help these students depends completely on donations from people like you and me.

i plan to donate and i hope you will too. our 90 minutes with michael and his students were the highlight of our month long asian adventure and it's not an experience you can find in a travel guide.

with each year that passes i continue to realize that buying more things doesn't provide happiness. but giving of ourselves, through both time and money, does.

i have enough.

more than enough.

now i'd like to try and better the lives of some of the truly less fortunate.

will you join me?

find more information at this Go Fund Me page i've set up.

you can also read about caitlin's take on our laos experience on her blog.

hoi an, vietnam

Small town cities usually make great travel stops.

There are less people, less traditional touristy things and a slower pace.

While Hoi An, Vietnam still has a pretty solid tourist gig happening, it's a nice place to take a few paces back from the crazy that is big city Asia.

We arrived in Hoi An after our cruise in the northern part of the country. We flew from Hanoi to DaNang and our amazing hotel sent a car for us. I would absolutely stay at the same hotel the next time. (It's just far enough out of the busier city center and not too far from the beach.)

We spent our first day wandering into town, looking around and poking in and out of tailoring shops. We borrowed the hotel's bikes and easily cruised into the main part of town. We planned our stay in Hoi An to have enough time to get some clothes made at some different shops, which was three nights and four full days.

We ended  up getting things made at two different shops: one very high end and one random one. I had some pictures with me of things I had in mind. I had an eye on a couple shops in advance, but, in the moment, we went with the places that made us feel the most comfortable.

The high end shop quickly looked at my pictures and knew what fabrics they would use and could answer my questions. So this seemed to be the right place. I had a wool coat, a crepe romper and a dress made. I paid $275 USD for all of it combined. Overall, I thought that was a pretty good price. We had several fittings here and the process took the whole length of our stay.

trying on my charcoal wool coat.

The lower end shop was able to turn our requests around in 24 hours. Of course, here, we picked from dresses and things she already had made as samples and picked the fabric we wanted. Then we were measured and told to return the following day. Each dress here ran about $20 USD, more or less.

the 'less' expensive shop

I must say, I love this romper.

It happened that our first night in Hoi An was my birthday. Seems that our hotel took note of this when making a copy of my passport and after dinner that night this is what we discovered:

39 and counting.

While in Hoi An we also took a bike ride out to the beach. The sand was super hot, but the water was quite refreshing!

don't worry, only one person offered to thread our leg hair while on the beach

Since I was quite the veteran motorbike rider after our stay in Laos, we planned a Vespa tour across the Hoi An countryside. It was so much fun. We made several stops, including one at the home of a woman who weaves mats and a coffee bean roasting house. This is a highly recommended option in Vietnam!

so much fun.

Vespas. #awesomeness

prisma app. super fun.
we walked across this bridge.
i hated it.

we got to weave with these ladies. 

We also met up with our Australian friends from the Halong Bay cruise for dinner one night.

aussie friends. we had a lot of fun with them.
shout out to Rowan and Alex! 

lots of lanterns for sale in hoi an.

And we took a photography tour. We didn't love it, if we're honest. However, we did shoot some interesting things and we did like photographing these faces up close and personal.

We ate here. It was amazing. And local. So you should eat here too. They'll teach you how to eat their meal. There is no menu. You get what they serve.

We also ate here, here, here, here, and here. We liked them all. The white rose appetizer at the last place...awesome. The food at Mango Rooms...yum! Really, we found it hard to go wrong in Hoi An.

Links for the hotel and tours we took are earlier in the post. I can't stress enough how much we loved our hotel, Hoi An Holiday Villas. Please stay there. And tell them we said hello.

elephants. and more elephants.

We arrived in Chiang Mai mid morning. Our hotel wasn't able to let us into the room so soon so we set out exploring.

Once again the heat was overpowering. We browsed several of the towns temples and found some lunch.

small temple near our hotel

found this dog in a box at the ENP office

love this.

And then I basically collapsed.

I had some combination of jet lag and heat exhaustion.

It was not pretty.

I couldn't get out of the bed.

Caitlin had to find dinner on her own and bring me gatorade and crackers.

I was praying for a recovery that allowed the next day to happen without issue.

Because it was our day with the ELEPHANTS!

We did a lot of research before booking this adventure. We read several articles about the abuse inflicted on elephants by different companies and while we wanted to spend time with elephants while in Thailand we didn't want to contribute our tourism dollars to a company that encouraged any harmful behaviors.

So we chose to spend our day at the Elephant Nature Park. We booked the Care for Elephants package, which means that we would be able to feed the elephants, bathe the elephants and walk through the jungle with them.

All of the elephants at ENP have been rescued from mistreatment in other places.

We spent our day with four female elephants. They clearly are conditioned to know how this works. When we showed up they wandered up to us because our arrival indicates feeding time. We were given bags of food to carry and if you have food the elephants will follow you.

One of the elephants we spent the day with is featured here.

Anything in your hands is fair game in the minds of the elephants.

So mind your cell phones!

We wandered around for a bit, feeding the elephants as we went. We stopped for lunch and left the herd for awhile.

After lunch, we slogged our way through deep mud to get in the river with the elephants.

One of the elephants walked into the river, laid down and took a huge dump.

I proceeded to wait til that floated downstream before going any further.

The elephants were never forced to do anything. They were, of course, bribed with fruit all day long.

While in the river, we tossed some buckets of water on the elephants and inadvertently, ourselves.

All the while praying we weren't simultaneously contracting some weird disease or bacteria from the not so attractive water.

After walking back to our point of origin we were able to go to the actual ENP main park and see the baby elephant that was recently born. So adorable!

Our day at ENP was awesome. It was amazing to be up close (real close!) to such giant creatures.

If you choose to visit Thailand, I hope you'll consider ENP as the place to give your tourist dollars. It costs a little more, but you'll be able to leave knowing that your dollars are actually going to help give Asian elephants a better life.