Klein Travel Blog

I think Chaing Mai was a destination we actually toyed with not going to. We just didn’t know a whole lot about it and it’s not near the coast where we tend to gravitate towards. However, I’d heard it was a must from both worldschool communities and travel vloggers. Bill found an Airbnb of every kid’s dream – and, although it was 30 minutes outside Chaing Mai, we decided we’d just plan a few excursions and enjoy the property the rest of the time. This place was decked out with a ping pong table, 2 pools, a sauna, an xbox, a claw machine, a piano, an arcade machine, a foosball table, a pool table, a dart board, a karaoke machine, a rock climbing wall, a gym and a movie theater!! And very oddly, pictures of Trump all over one of the rooms…that one was a little tough to understand. I’m pretty sure it was a Thai/Australian couple who owned the place. Ooooookay!

The first morning, my mom, Trevor and I ventured out for a cooking class. We cooked A LOT and loved it all. But our first obsession wasn’t even anything we cooked but the simple welcome appetizer…Miang Kham. Each recipe you look at will have a slight variation on the fillings, but it’s basically a lettuce wrap (with lettuce, kale or betal leaves) with an explosion of flavors that combine to create something magical…yet you’d never eat some of the ingredients by themselves and the others would certainly not be exciting on their own. Our version in class had shallots, toasted coconut, peanuts, large chunks of ginger, pieces of lime (rind and all) and chiles. Wrap it all up and dip it in the perfectly salty, sweet, sour, umami, spicy sauce…oh my yum!! This might be the thing I’m looking forward to recreating at home more than any of the other dishes we made in other cooking classes around the world!

Next up, the coffee (insert hands over heart, shoot me now, sounds of yearning as I say the word). The kids are fed right up with our daily coffees. Nothing has changed for us in that regard…Bill and I have always had an afternoon iced coffee in addition to our morning coffee – they just have to witness it every day. Coffee has been pretty standard until we got to Vietnam where there is a full-on culture surrounding it (more on that in the Hoi An post). Interestingly, the coffee culture in Thailand seemed to be specifically in Chaing Mai, so I was sad when we weren’t greeted with the same sensations in our remaining 20+ days in other parts of Thailand. Bill stuck to his standard order throughout (still delicious due to the quality of the beans), but here is a rundown of some of what I found to be out of this world:

1. Espresso tonic with or without lemon. Would you have ever imagined this combo?!
2. Espresso/fresh lime/brown sugar rim/craft soda. I will have to play around with different sodas when we get home because I’m not sure what it was exactly.
3. Lychee espresso – I don’t have much info on this one, but many of the drinks combine espresso with different variations of fruit. I don’t think this had dairy in it, but it was creamy, smooth and delicious.

Food and coffee were introduced to us on our first day. The next day we headed out to an elephant sanctuary where we were able to prepare food for the elephants, feed them and then play in the river with them a little bit. Unfortunately, Trevor wasn’t feeling well that day so my mom stayed home with him. We skipped the included lunch and went to the trendy part of Chaing Mai, Nimman. This is where you could see the sister city to Austin vibes with it's artsy, eclectic feel. We had a delicious lunch with a fancier version of the welcome appetizer – this one had dried shrimp and (I think) some green mango or papaya added in as well.

Day 3 included something I was looking forward to – a chat with the monks. We chatted with them for about 30 minutes. Many of them have become monks for the education. Some of them will remain monks, but it is also ok to just be ordained as a monk for a short time – in fact, every man in Thailand is expected to be ordained as a monk sometime in his life. They must wake before dawn, walk around daily for alms (where they collect food from the community) and fast after 12:00PM daily as just a few of the requirements in addition to their studies. The monks we met were all quite young and they were open, conversational and engaging. Our favorite takeaways…1) It’s easy to be a monk, it’s hard to be a good monk. 2) Let it happen. Let it go.

Other treats available through the hosts of the Airbnb – we added on a private chef a few nights due to our distance from town and enjoyed some amazing food. It was also our first experience with full time staff at the house from 8-5. It’s definitely nice having someone there to take care of you, but we weren’t totally sure how we felt about quite so much of it. The biggest thing we noticed was a big game of we turn all the air conditioners on, she turns the air conditioners off…all day. It gave us all a good laugh.

I think we had the right amount of time in Chiang Mai, but I’d probably recommend staying in town to get the full experience. It was fun to see the kids enjoy the house so much though!

Off to Phuket…

Lots of love,
Kimberly, Bill, Evan and Trevor

The Rock Star of Bangkok award goes to my mom! She had over 30 hours of travel to get to us and had a delayed flight, an almost missed flight and broken-down airport trams which resulted in her running through the Seattle airport at midnight (2:00am Austin time) up and down stairs with her luggage. Fortunately, she befriended the person next to her who she referred to as Councilman Ben. Of course she did! Thank you, Councilman Ben, for helping my sweet mom find her way to the flight and helping with her luggage! Turns out Ben was also flying through Taipei to Bangkok as he was on his way to Chaing Mai which is to become a sister city to Austin, and I can totally see why. More on that in the Chaing Mai post. I’ve since found out that Councilman Ben is Ben Leffler and is actually the Chief of Staff for City Council District 5. https://www.benleffler.com

When the Klein family has overnight flights, we are pretty crushed the next day…walking around like zombies, struggling to make it to bedtime. Not Nona! Knowing she has infinitely more energy than any of us, we booked a food tour a few hours after her arrival and proceeded to drag her through the streets Bangkok on a tuk tuk in the blazing heat for the next 5 hours – which was news to her upon her arrival. She, of course, was ready to go!

We started off and experienced a myriad of pleasures, insults and curiosities on our senses. From Michelin rated street food, to our first taste of durian to grilled silkworms to the birthplace of pad thai to smells you can’t begin to identify to darting through crazy traffic, it was a whirlwind introduction to Bangkok!

Video of some of our tasting adventures

With only 2 full days remaining there, we decided to get a guide so we didn’t waste time trying to figure out what to do or how to get there. The first day, all of us ventured out. I had a specific restaurant I wanted to go for lunch that I found from a travel vlogger I have followed through Southeast Asia (Travel for Phoebe) https://www.youtube.com/@travelforphoebe. Baan Ya Hom was a café/apothecary/massage studio. Once you take your shoes off and go inside, you enter a tranquil respite from the chaos of the Bangkok streets. It was so serene I could literally feel my breathing slow down, and it was one of the best meals we have had in all of Asia. I’m sure we did something before the restaurant, but it was our experience there that stands out in my memory. We finished off the day with a visit to an artist’s village along the river. How our driver made it through the narrow streets in our van was mind boggling. It was fun watching my mom’s reactions to all the close calls (like, squeezing through with centimeters of clearance from other cars, people or houses) …the kids are completely unphased by it at this point. We were offered another stop or two, but we normally pass on at least a few things suggested by our guides. While we appreciate they want to pack it in for us, there are only so many temples, museums, etc. one can handle. Besides, we were headed to Muay Thai for the evening and needed a little rest!

Muay Thai…wow! I’ve never been to a live fighting event. I can’t say I loved it, but it’s impossible not to be gripped by the energy of the crowd and find yourself rooting for your chosen fighter. Our ambassador Evan introduced himself to the 4 young guys in front of us, one of which happened to be from Austin! Being Bill’s mini-me, he spurred some bets between us and them - the excitement multiplied from then on!!

The second day, my mom and I got to head out on our own. It wasn’t as successful in terms of food or sites, but we got to be together. We all headed out for dinner at a mall/food court that was right next to the hotel, and I ordered multiple entrees and multiple desserts because I wanted to try everything.

We’re on the move tomorrow…off to Chaing Mai!

Lots of love,
Kimberly, Bill, Evan and Trevor

No, but we did anyway because the Vietnam government unapologetically kicked us out of the country before letting us go to our next destination…which was supposed to be Ho Chi Minh City.

Phu Quoc is a resort island, and you do not need a visa to visit if that’s the only location you’re going. We waited too late to apply for our visas and didn’t have them as we arrived into Phu Quoc. No problem, we thought. We’ll be here for a week and our visas will come through for mainland Vietnam in the time we are there. That they did. When we presented them at security on our way out, it was obvious within moments there was something the agent didn’t like about them. We stood there while he took pictures of our passports, took pictures of our visas, made phone calls, let 100 other people through – all while not saying a word to us. In comes another agent who spoke slightly more English to whom we said “We are going to HCMC and then we have 2 weeks in Hoi An.” As if this explanation was going to make it all better. Silly us. We will forever be able to say his exact response with his exact expression to each other and know exactly what each other is talking about. It was a complete deadpan “no.” No emotion, no explanation, just no. Ooohkay! We eventually figured out that because we entered before our visas were valid, we had to leave and come back. They didn’t care where we went, but we needed to leave. The agent was actually quite nice, but he was not going to wait for us to figure things out. He was walking us to one of two places…the ticket counter to leave right then or, at a minimum, the airline counter to cancel our flights. Afterall, we still had time allowed in Phu Quoc.

On top of this issue, Bill accidentally entered the dates wrong for my visa. While he and the boys simply had to leave and come back, I had to apply for an entirely new visa…during the lunar new year…when the government is shut down for a week. We decided to check into the JW in Phu Quoc thinking we’d have more luck fixing my visa by staying in the country and that a western hotel might have more services than our prior place. We booked 2 nights there to regroup.

The hotel started helping right away, but the first answer we received was that the earliest I could get my visa was going to be February 6th…which would have cut out 10 days of the remaining 18 we planned to spend in Vietnam. That would have been a very disappointing detour. Somehow, about 45 minutes later, the possibility of an emergency visa was presented via a contact with someone at the airport (who this person was or what capacity they had was unknown to us). I would need to pay $250 USD now to the person at the hotel (insert ‘this doesn’t seem super official’ feeling now) and another $25 USD when we arrived in Hoi An – we decided to ditch HCMC for now and head straight to Hoi An. I received a letter with my name and a bunch of other people’s names and passport numbers that were allowed to enter the country around the same time as me that was supposed to allow me to receive a visa on arrival when we got to Hoi An (insert ‘we’ll see if this actually works’ feeling here).

SO…with that in the works, we needed to pick a place to go. We settled on Kuala Lumpur as it was a direct flight and at least added another country to our list of places visited. Just to be sure we really had a good snafu story, we encountered a 3 hour ordeal trying to pay for the tickets. Due to my credit card being stolen in New Zealand and cancelled, we still didn’t have access to the new account number. I had a backup card with me, but the customer service was terrible. No matter how many times I called to ask them to approve the legitimate purchase, it got denied every time. It was only after we were about to lose our minds that Bill realized they took AmEx. We are so used to that not being accepted, we didn’t think to try.

We didn’t do much in Kuala Lumpur but piss off the kids by dragging them to a crowded temple on a religious holiday – resulting in a complete cluster f**k trying to order a grab (uber) back due to lack of cell coverage and huge crowds – and then waiting over an hour for a table at a restaurant Bill and I wanted to eat at. The consolations were the kids feeling right at home eating with their hands and treating ourselves to a stay at the St. Regis to make up for our troubles. We might not have had enough time to be justified in our opinion, but KL does not make our ‘must see’ list.

The Batu Caves

Indian food that was SO spicy even though we asked for no spice! Thank goodness the guy sitting next to us spoke English to help us order.

Would you like to finally know how our time in Phu Quoc was?? As I mentioned, Phu Quoc is a resort island, so we resort-ed it up and didn’t do much else. Our villa was gorgeous, spacious and beachfront. We did a lot of looking at our view because Trevor couldn’t go to the beach yet because of his injury. Caring for it took a bit longer since I was now having to boil water to keep it clean and remove adhered bandages as gently as I could – double, triple UGH!

Sunset view from our villa.

We made the best of things with resort activities like hat painting, ping pong, daily chocolate hour and massage. By the end of the week, Trevor felt good enough to get in the pool for the resort foam party. My busted mom heart was feeling a little better at the sight of him enjoying himself.

Trevor and I tried our hand at conical hat painting.

These kids love a party!!

Bill and Evan went scuba diving one day, and both of them said it was probably best I wasn’t there. Apparently, I would not have approved of much in terms of health or service standards. They had a great guide though and came home with forever stories.

We did all venture out one day to explore some local industry. We went to the pearl factory, the pepper factory and the silk factory. All were informative, and we stocked up on souvenirs at each stop.

Silk Farm

Pepper Farm

Here are a few pictures of us making the best of things at the JW...which was actually very nice!!

I think Bill needs some new glasses!

Posing with our dinner.

While we enjoyed our time in Phu Quoc, it also does not make our ‘must see’ list. We have a few stops on our itinerary that we needed to add in order to get closer to the sweet spot weather wise of future stops. Phu Quoc was one of those places, and our expectations were low. As such, we were satisfied. As Bill loves to say “satisfaction = experience – expectations”. My formula guy!

My sketchy letter did end up getting me into mainland Vietnam, and I still wonder how many of the other travelers with that same letter in hand looked at my name and wondered about my travels as I did with theirs.

Lots of love,
Kimberly, Bill, Evan and Trevor

Famous chili crab on our travel anniversary

With over 30 days since our flight into New Zealand, it felt like it had been forever since we’d been at an airport. We actually get excited for our long haul flights as they feel like an opportunity to relax and take in all the entertainment we want. They cause less stress than a short domestic flight at home…a drastic change in perception for us since starting full-time travel.

Up to this point we’d had zero trouble with all of our luggage making it as a carry-on and personal item. That luck seems to be changing through Asia. When you’re carrying everything you need for 10 months of travel, it makes you antsy to part ways with it. Even the kids feel like something is missing when bags are relinquished. We futilely tried to fight it the first few times, but we think we just have to accept it at this point. At least most of our flights are direct and have less chance for misplaced bags.

On to my point…

Our backpacks normally ride on top of our suitcases which is nice because they are heavy! After having to check our luggage for our flight from New Zealand to Singapore, they were on our backs. I don’t remember why Trevor was running onto the moving sidewalk (it was for no good reason), but he fell, and fell hard. The weight of his backpack made it even worse. I was about 20 ft behind him, and I could already tell his knee took a concerning hit. As I write this six weeks past the incident, his knee is still not fully healed. I got him to his feet with only a glance at his knee because he was needing mom eye contact to assure him he was ok…he thought it was bone he was seeing. Fortunately, a cart was passing by for us to jump on because we still had a way to go to our gate. By the time we stopped a minute or so later, his croc (I hate those things!!) was filled with blood. There were no first aid supplies at the airport store besides some small band-aids and we were told that if we called the airport medic we would miss our flight. The store attendant was so kind to give us supplies from their first aid kit. This is the point where I could see that the grates from the moving sidewalk mercilessly macerated his knee. While it didn’t reach the bone as he feared, it’s the deepest gash I’ve ever seen. I will never look at the grates of a moving sidewalk or escalator again without wincing. By the time I got him cleaned and bandaged as best I could, we hear the last boarding call announcement for our flight. Trevor, being the trooper he is in these situations, started to trot-limp along as no one in the Klein family wants to give up a business class, lie flat seat for an 11 hour flight! And….he fell AGAIN!! Oh.my.God! My insides feel viscerally gut-punched as he arrives at the gate with his bandage already soaked through with blood. We got him settled on the plane and felt fatigue settle in as the surge of adrenaline drained away.

Time to regroup…Trevor was counted out for pretty much everything in Singapore. At this point, I can’t even remember what he left the hotel for, but it wasn’t much. He couldn’t go out with his knee uncovered and it was quite painful to walk with it bandaged. Oh, I think we got him out for one hawker center street food outing. He genuinely wanted the rest of us to continue with our plans, so I did a mix of venturing out and staying home with him.

Our first outing was for a food tour, one of our favorite things to do in each city. Our first stop included the national dish of Singapore, Hainanese Chicken Rice, and Yee Sang. Yee Sang is a raw fish noodle salad served for the Lunar New Year. Not only is it bright (in color and taste) and fresh, it’s also fun! The higher you toss it, the better your luck in the coming year! This and our last stop at the Hawker Center were our favorite.

Yee Sang on the table

Good luck should be coming your way. We finally figured out how to post videos - haha!

Tea tasting

We were only in Singapore for 4 days, so we really didn’t do a whole lot else besides eat, take care of Trevor and get in our school work and exercise. Bill and Evan did venture out to see the light and water show at Marina Bay Sands. Even though we didn’t do much as tourists, we still feel like we got a good feel for the city. It is SPOTLESS and there are plants growing everywhere, giving an oasis feel to an urban backdrop. If only more cities prioritized this!!

A few other observations....

Singapore is VERY orderly. I was a rule breaker and stepped out of line to take this picture on the escalator.

Ummm...like father like son much?! I was actually taking a picture of other stands that our food tour guide recommended and didn't realize I captured this moment until I went to look back at it later.

OK, that's all for now.

Lots of love,
Kimberly, Bill, Evan and Trevor

So we arrived in Australia in mid-November for a 30 day stay and while we were excited to have family meeting us there for a trip to the Great Barrier Reef, we didn't really have any other specific things we were super eager to do. Maybe it was the fact that when I think of Australia I picture the outback and kangaroos and I couldn't visualize what else we'd be doing after seeing those for an hour. Little did we know how much we'd love it here.

We started our trip in Sydney where we had planned to stay in the city. In a true testament to the value of talking with other people, we had a couple sitting next to us when we were having dinner at a sidewalk restaurant in Rome back in early September and they were from Australia. When we said we were headed there in a couple of months they told us to look at staying in the eastern suburbs of Sydney and on that advice we decided to stay in Bondi Beach which is on the ocean but only 15-20 minutes outside of Sydney. Of course this wound up being one of our favorite stops on our entire trip. While we knocked out the typical tourist stuff during a day in Sydney, what we loved about Bondi was the amazing beach and coast line as well as how proximate all of the daily conveniences were to our place. We had the beach across the street, where Evan was able to do some surfing, plenty of restaurants and coffee places right on the block we were on. We even had a grocery store that was literally on the bottom floor of the building our AirBnB was in and a GREAT gym two doors down...who could ask for more for 10 days? Both Kimberly and I said if we had to choose a place from our trip to live, this was it.

Our 4 month anniversary photo in Bondi Beach

An added bonus was having Kimberly's parents make it down to Sydney for a couple of days before we all headed up to Port Douglas. All of us did the obligatory tours of the beaches in the area and of the Sydney waterfront together, including the Sydney Opera House, all of which were pretty cool and gave us some understanding of the history of the area.

We did a fun Trike tour of the beaches east of Sydney where we were staying

Sydney Waterfront bike tour

Bondi beach is a great surfing spot but it's hard work getting back out each time for the next wave

Once our time was up in Sydney, we flew up to Port Douglas for a few days in order to do a diving and snorkeling trip to the Great Barrier Reef. We were all so excited to be joined by our niece as well as Kimberly's sister and her husband (and their 10 month old baby :-0) who all made the trip out there from Dallas!

To make the most of the time there, we booked a "live-aboard" diving/snorkeling excursion where they ferry you out to a boat on the outer reef and you stay overnight on that boat to allow you to get two days of water activities in a couple of different locations. While as a group we had little to no diving experience before this (the extent of which was the two entry-level dives Evan and I did in the Maldives), almost everyone gave it a go on top of enjoying the amazing snorkeling opportunities.

The start to the diving experience was a little rough as the ride out to the reef had some pretty big swells to where you did not even want to stand up for fear of being thrown into a wall or some other people. Shortly after the start of the waves, literally half of the 40 or so people onboard were hanging over the side of the boat, either puking their brains out or on the verge of doing so. At this point, everyone was a bit concerned about spending 36 hours out on the reef, but fortunately once we were at the outer reef, things were a bit more calm and motion sickness meds kicked in!

All of that said, while we've all heard that the reef is dying (and you could definitely see some bleaching of the coral), the variety of coral and fish were still truly amazing, so the GBR did not disappoint!

All of us looking confident before the tumultuous ferry ride out to the reef

Everyone gearing up for the first time in the water.

Good form Kyle!

On our other day in Port Douglas we did a local rainforest and aboriginal culture tour as well as a local farm tour. Both were fun but the farm tour took the cake as our guide for that was basically a local Crocodile Dundee. He knew everything about the flora and fauna there and took us to a really cool watering hole and waterfall on the property. To show us the jumping spot, he proceeded to dive in to the water fully clothed and then do the rest of the tour with us, and drive us home, in his sopping wet clothes. He also showed us how green ants nest in trees and proceeded to stick his hands into the nest causing the ants to start biting him all over his hand and wrist as he stuck his hand toward us to display the act. As a final act, he turned the tables on the ants and he started eating them and telling us how delicious they were. Not surprisingly, none of us took him up on his offer for us to try them, however; we did end up buying some "green ant gin" (with actual green ants in it)

A member of a local indigenous tribe shows how they use natural pigments to create unique family markings. One thing I've loved along our journey is seeing how people everywhere have used their available resources so efficiently to meet basic survival needs and create unique cultures, many pieces of which carry on today.

Some pics of the super fun tour of Cassowary Farms in the Daintree Rainforest area

Finally, along with the Green Ant Gin, we also decided to give Australia's famous Vegemite sandwich spread a try despite the less than stellar reviews we had heard from those who have tried it. After a small amount on a piece of bread, the unanimous sentiment was that we would all rather starve to death than eat any more.

Our final stop in Australia was a vacation from our travels in Noosa Heads. This was a great little town on the Sunshine Coast north of Brisbane and while we didn't do many excursions from here, it was a fun place to relax and live locally for a couple of weeks with a great beach a few minutes from our house.

The one noteworthy excursion we did do before Kimberly's family left was an outing to the Australia Zoo which is run by Steve Irwin's family. While we have pretty much avoided the ubiquitous zoos and aquariums that are in every city on our journey, the Australia Zoo had a focus on local animals that we obviously never get to see in other places. I mean, who could come to Australia and not see a kangaroo or a koala bear?!?!

The Irwin family does a great job with the facility as the whole place is really well laid out and super clean and has excellent shows that were both informative and entertaining.

After Noosa Heads we definitely felt rested and ready to take on our 30 day RV trip in New Zealand, which Kimberly has already written about, and we definitely hope to someday make it back to the land-down-under!