The Olson's Asian Adventure

Cambodia was hard to beat… But, we had faith in the Kangaroo Café to pull together a memorable trip through northern Vietnam.   Our planning started with a blank sheet of paper, a couple of ideas, and then closed with a google picture search and a few friends’ recommendations.   For us, Northern Vietnam was Ha Long Bay.   Do a quick google search and you will understand.   The problem was finding the right itinerary at the right price.   This was a big challenge.   Generally, I like starting with blank sheets of paper, but in this case it is very hard to find reliable information online.   Like any vacation spot, there are thousands of fraudulent “mom & pop” shops that promise the “best ever”.   Lucky for us one of Jacob’s soccer friends lived there previously and gave us a great contact. We left Siem Reap late and arrived in Hanoi around 11pm.   We couldn’t pre-book transportation because of the Lunar New Year and relied on a ...

Chinese new year is a treat.   The kids get 7 days off of school and work follows the same basic schedule.   It is a little weird because 2 of those days are on Saturday and Sunday, but it is still a nice block of work-cation.   Kind of… no matter what, work requires 2hrs every day to keep up with the world. This year we organized a trip to Cambodia and Vietnam; Siem Reap in Cambodia and Hanoi / Halong Bay in Vietnam.   Our great travel friends (Jason and Terri) joined us from the US for the adventure.   Since I was in India for work, Amanda, the kids, and JT met me in Thailand for the layover.   I nearly missed the flight since I had to immigrate rather than transfer, but it is too long of a boring story for here.   Getting into Cambodia was a breeze.   Amanda did all of the preregistration and so the airport wait time was 2hrs shorter.   Our AirBNB picked us up at the airport with three tuk-tuks and off we went.   Amanda and...

Generally speaking work travel seems much cooler to people on the outside-looking-in, than it actually is for the people doing it.  On the outside it seems fun to fly all over, see the world, eat at restaurants, and sleep in hotels… but, that’s because most people don’t do it much.  The inside-perspective of a heavy traveler just wishes they could be home to sleep in their own bed, with their own pillow, after eating dinner with their family.  The reality of work travel is it normally looks exactly the same every time; airport, hotel, work office, conference room, restaurant, hotel, sleep, office, conference room, restaurant, hotel, airport, repeat, repeat, repeat.   It is rare that you get to see anything about a city except for traffic or the occasional blurry picture from the side window of a moving car… That being said, this trip to India was an exception.  Getting to India was still hard; 3am 5hr flight on a budget airline, followed by a 2h...