Traveling has taught us to embrace things that may seem ordinary and appreciate even the trivial things. Once we were back together in Thailand, we discussed the importance of focusing both on traveling and vacationing. After a hectic week, Chris was jet lagged and extremely exhausted. This is when we opened our eyes to the importance of travel vacation balance on our extensive journey. With this in mind, we did not do a crash course tour of the entire Phuket island in two days. Instead, we enjoyed relaxing beach front meals, hot yoga, and played mini golf at a dinosaur themed course. To balance with this day of leisure, we booked a 6 hour excursion to some islands north of Phuket including, James Bond Island. The boat tour included a highlight from our entire stay in Thailand, a canoe ride through a pitch black bat cave, truly incredible. With only a couple days left in Thailand, we planned to set off for the camp grounds in the National Parks outside of Bangkok. Unfortunately however, the hectic travel schedules and possibly some poor choice of food left Chris sick in bed. That said, Bangkok has become our destination for recovery and sleep.

Our next destination after Bangkok was Myanmar, known for its abundance of temples and pagodas. Visiting three of its largest cities, we saw thousands, starting our Burmese journey in Yangon, followed by Bagan and Mandalay. Bagan was breathtaking, and the definite highlight of our time in Myanmar. With the slower paced roads and excruciating heat, we decided against our planned bicycle tour and opted for a electric motorbike instead. This was the perfect way to travel through the thousands of temples and pagodas of Bagan. With a 5am wake-up, we crossed the street to the competing two Burmese family-run motorbike rental companies. We dawned our helmets and started down the road through the early morning air. Once we spotted our sunrise viewing temple we took a quick turn, parked our motorbike, ditched our sandals, and ran up the stairs. Once we had reached the top we saw the image we had hoped for and seen online and in travel books, pagodas piercing the low fog in all directions, hot air balloons floating amongst their tips, and the sun breaking the horizon. This sunrise was more than we could have hoped for to start our day in Bagan. The rest of the day brought unexpected memorable moments. As  had our lunch we were accompanied by four local boys asking us questions and asking to try our food. Before we left we felt inclined to buy all four some homemade ice cream from the restaurant which put a smile on theirs and our faces. After countless pagodas, soft dirt roads, steep hills, and u-turns our motorbike was put through its paces and died on us. Luckily we found a very nice local family that required no more explanation than for us to point at our bike and say battery. They called our company and had them bring us a spare. This along with the joy of vacationing when needed has shown us to be open to the unexpected, and learn from our experiences and enjoy the things we never thought we would be doing.