Bangkok’s Sanam Rat park

After our visit to the Cambodian Embassy to submit Caleb’s Visa application we visited the Sanam Rat park in Bangkok, Thailand. It’s a large park with a lot to see including ponds and a small lake, fountains, a beautiful conference pavilion, botanical gardens, and water monitor lizards. Charlotte was – as aways – thrilled just…

Getting around Bangkok

By population, Bangkok is the 33th largest city in the world with around 10,890,660 people living in the metropolitan region as of 2019. To put this in perspective, the entire population of the country of Cambodia is 16.5 million. Bangkok has roughly five times the number of residents as Phnom Penh. It was interesting to…

Caleb Visa Run to Bangkok 2023

In August, Caleb’s US Passport was issued and he was officially acknowledged as a US citizen. However, technically, Caleb was in Cambodia illegally because he is a foreign national without a Cambodian visa. As is in the case in many countries, Cambodian visas can only be renewed – not issued – inside the country. So…

Flowers of Bangkok 2023

This week we had to make a ‘visa run’ to the Cambodian Embassy in Bangkok, Thailand to get Caleb’s visa. The bright side of having to wait for three days for the Embassy to issue the visa is that we had time to explore the city and visit a few of it’s many wonderful gardens…

Bua Tong Sticky Waterfalls

While we were in Thailand we traveled about an hour and a half out of Chiang Mai to visit the Bua Tong Sticky Waterfalls. When the MCC Nepal Reps first invited us to join them we had no idea what sticky waterfalls were… It turns out that they are waterfalls in the jungle that have…

Asia Leadership Team Meetings 2022

Last week, for the first time since 2019, the Mennonite Central Committee Asia Leadership Team was able to meet in person at the Regional Office in Chiang Mai, Thailand. We met with the International Program Directors from MCC US and MCC Canada, as well as MCC International’s new Security Officer, both sets of Area Directors,…

Flowers of Chiang Mai

Back in May, I shared some of my old photos of Flowers in Cambodia. While we were in Chiang Mai, Thailand last month I took a few photos of flowers there. I was still recovering from Dengue and didn’t get out as much as I’d hoped – but a few are better than none. Next…

Juniper Tree

Two weeks ago we stayed at Juniper Tree, a Christian retreat center in Chiang Mai, Thailand.  Shockingly green with grass and trees and wood colors after the red-dusted grey of Phnom Penh, the center contains multiple tree-houses, a dining hall, library, prayer room, meeting room and pool.  It’s easy to guess which of these the…