photo credit: JasonDGreat

Thailand has a new prime minister and the country looks to be bouncing back from its relatively brief period of instability caused by mass protests and the blockage of Thai airports. The airports have reopened and things are returning to normal. We’re following the news closely as we prepare for our upcoming trip. Even if nobody closes down the islands and beaches we still may need to enter the country by plane so we’re hoping that there will be no further disruptions to the Thai way of life as well as our upcoming visit. Read more about the current situation here: Thai PM vows to restore stability – CNN.com.

Asia Steps looks bad in the Camino web browser

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We love animals and it’s always fun to read about new and exciting things in the animal world, especially when they happen in Vietnam and the rest of Southeast Asia!

Two articles recently appeared on CNN.com and both feature some cool creatures that were recently discovered.

Laotian Rat, thought to be extinct

You can read about rare monkeys found in Vietnam or you can find out about all of the newly discovered species found in the region of the Mekong!

A Day in Cholon

My friend, Thi Bay, came up from Cantho (Mekong Delta) to spend the weekend in Ho Chi Minh City. This seemed like the perfect opportunity to see of the tourist attractions of HCMC. Thi Bay’s friend, Elizabeth, joined us for the day and the three of us went around exploring the city.

After breakfast, we decided to drive out to Cholon (district 5) and visit the must sees of that area. Cholon is the bustling Chinese part of HCMC, it also happens to be the place where Kevin was born!

We started at the Quan Am Pagoda which features great carvings and statues made even more beautiful by the constant thick cloud of incense. After admiring the magic of the Pagoda, we made our way through crazy traffic to the big Cholon market. The market has everything one could ever want, well, almost everything. It is no problem getting dry fish, medicinal mushrooms or a “North Face” backpack, but when it comes to simple body lotion, that’s a different story. It turns out that in Vietnam, body lotions are mixed with some suspicious sounding skin whitening chemicals.

We gave up on the lotion search and sat down for a yummy Che!