Southeast Asia trip - Thanksgiving 2025

Having written all the posts about almost every stop we did over the Thanksgiving break, here is the itinerary and links to the individual posts that you can actually read in chronological order.

When I blog about the trip, we go start to finish which ends up confusing for folks who have to navigate through posts in reverse order. The latest blogs show up first! The videos have day1 part 1 etc.. which starts off on the first day of seeing places. The first photo below is a cover photo for this post.. If you click on the rest of the images you will get to the detailed blog posts about that stop!

Day 0 : Afternoon Flight SFO-> Seoul (literally run gate to gate) -> Ho Chih Minh city in VIetnam

Day 1: Close to midnight Day 0 (go to airport hotel, 4 hour break) come back to airport for 6AM flight to Hanoi (We could not get a direct to Hanoi.. that would have been better.. see if you can do that).

Reached Hanoi, put bags in car and start driving to Old Hanoi to sightsee.

1. The lake area and the temple with turtles in the middle of the lake in the old quarter

2. Temple of literature built for Confusious

3. drive by Ho Chi Minh memorial

4. One pillar Pagoda

5. drive by the railroad street

A quick lunch and drive over to Halong Bay and back (it is a 2 hour drive each way). Came back from Halong bay close to 7PM, checked into hotel, walked around old Quarter in Hanoi and have dinner..

Day 2: Check out of hotel, drive to Ninh Binh, See the Trang An caves and do the 3 hour boat ride, drive back almost 3 hours to Hanoi airport. Fly from Hanoi to Siem Reap in Cambodia to a birthday fruit cake!

Day 3: 10 stops .. non stop sight seeing from 7AM to 7PM, then dinner and back to hotel.

Boeng Mealea Temple, Reclining Buddha temple (Wat Preah Ang Thom), Thousand Linga River, Thousand Linga Waterfall, private lunch at Banteay Srea cliff, Banteay Srei temple, Ta Som Temple, Neak Poen Temple, watch sunset at Pre Rup temple, time at SiemReap river park and dinner..

Day 4: Start at 4:30 AM to see sunrise at Angkor Wat, Bayon Temple, Ta Prohm (tomb raider) temple, Banteay Kdei temple, Kravan temple, back to Angkor Wat to see the temple, a nap in the hotel and spend the evening along the Siem Reap river and city temples followed by dinner and a walk back to the hotel..

Day 5: start again at 4:30 AM to see sunrise from the hill facing Angkor Wat at the Phnom Bakeng temple, come back to the hotel, have a late breakfast , see two more temples(Bakong and Preah Ko temples) and go to airport.. fly from Siem Reap to Bangkok and Bangkok to Chiang Mai (3 hour layover in Bangkok!), reach Chiang Mai hotel at 8PM

Day 6: 7AM to 7PM sight seeing with a 2 hour drive each way. 6 stops.. The long neck tribe, Dailom elephant rescue sanctuary, Land of Angels park, Doi Suthep temple, Wat Phra Singh and end the day with dinner, massage at Cloud massage and a tuk tuk ride back to hotel

Day 7: 7AM to 7PM sight seeing with another 2 hour drive in a different direction each way from Chiang Mai. 6 stops with a lot of hiking. Wachiratan falls, Do Inthanon national park Pha Dok Seio trail, Ang Ka trail to highest point in Thailand, King and Queen pagodas and end the day with massage at Peak Spa and dinner and back to hotel

Day 8: Late breakfast and fly from Chiang Mai to Phuket. Reach hotel just in time for wedding celebration start..

Day 9 : Trip to James Bond Island in the morning and Wedding celebration in afternoon and evening

Day 10: Actual wedding in the morning, some time at the beach in afternoon, reception in the evening and fly to airport late evening.

Day 11: Phuket -> Seoul -> SFO

We were off for 11 days …

We went to attend a wedding and saw all these by taking off early, given the wedding was the week after thanksgiving. If you are going to this area, take two full weeks off.. try to visit Bangkok as well as a few other places in Vietnam which are worth visiting.. Take two days in Phuket to see other islands in the area.

We do hectic traveling when it is just me and San. As a team we have shared goals when it comes to sight seeing.. over the years we have settled for certain things we value while sightseeing.. waking up every day at 4AM and sightseeing till 8PM to come back to the hotel only to crash may not be for everyone..

A compilation of slow motion clips of San walking and spinning.. She does not know that I made this video. Hope it is a pleasant surprise for her..

Bon voyage!

The name is Pandu.. James Pandu..

The previous post in this series is here..

The first morning in Phuket, we decided to take a trip to James Bond Island. We were told that this is the only touristy place to visit outside of the resorts in that area. We had booked a long tail boat tour for 10 and 7 of us went on the trip. An energetic kid was our guide. He picked us up in a van from the hotel in the morning at 7:30 AM and we drove almost an hour to the dock. There we took a boat ride for almost another 45 minutes to go to the Island.

The island is small and you have four spots to see in total. Given only 4 to 5 boats can stop at the island, as soon as the boat docks, they give the guide a laminated card with the time for leaving. The time allotted for us was 45 minutes. So we had to do a rush rush job at every place, take group pictures, solo pictures, couple pictures and by the time our guide got us out of one spot to the next, he was so relieved.

He even had some plastic guns and fans as props for us to take pictures. Before we knew it, it was time to get back on the boat and then on the van to the hotel.

There is a muslim floating village on the way with nice views. There is also a mangrove forest for most of the route but there were no birds or critters we could see. Only exception was some hawks and kites which I barely managed to capture on camera from a moving boat! The boats themselves are interesting.. they have the engine high up and open with only the propeller going into the water from a long shaft.. They move it up and down for speed and right to left for navigation.

We also saw rock carvings which are thousands of years old in caves. Never realized we were so close to Andaman islands till we saw that the ferries were all Andaman!

Here are the photos..

more photos.. the roads in Phuket in this area were all lined with street lights that had elephants on them. Just beautiful!

A video highlights reel of the morning trip to Bond island..

We came back to the hotel and by the time we went from our rooms to the beach, we were an hour late.. and we missed some of the ceremony.. but were happy to jump in the pool with all our friends to have fun.

All the bond girls on our trip were happy and all smiles after this trip. That was good enough for all the Bonds..

Saying bye to Chiang Mai from an underrated hotel

The previous post in this series is here..

It was day 8 of our trip. We were finally going to wake up late or that was the plan. The breakfast folks came and knocked at 6:30 AM. Given we had gotten used to waking up very early the entire trip, I got up and decided to walk to the local 7-Eleven. San decided to take it easy.

After eating breakfast and having Chai we had time to spend till Joy and Goy were going to show up to take us to the airport. We put our luggage at the lobby and did a photoshoot for San. The hotel we stayed in was called Sunny V Hotel and how it gets only 3 stars is beyond me. It was fantastic and grand and the staff were super nice.

After taking pictures we took a photo with Joy and Goy. We defintely miss the guides and drivers the most after this trip. Genuinely nice folks. Would definitely recommend Joy to others for sightseeing in Chiang Mai.

Then we were off to the airport..

A video highlights reel..

We loved our time in Chiang Mai. The place and the people made an impression! Traveling the world may not be everyone’s cup of tea and not everyone is fortunate to do what we do. When we go places our perception of ourselves and others changes. We can see that people are people. Sincerely wish more people in the United States get to travel the world and change their worldview.

Our next stop was Phuket.. the highlight of the entire trip!