I’ve had the good fortune to have traveled some pretty amazing places in my life. But this trip to Southeast Asia – from northern Thailand to Laos and Cambodia – was the best yet. For so many reasons: elephant sanctuaries, slow boat cruises on the Mekong, cities of golden-tipped temples, Lao coffee, motorbike trips into brocade jungles, hidden waterfalls and bayou river islands and ancient temple ruins, learning the other side of a history I thought I knew, pepper farms and crab markets, museums of murder, an abandoned mountaintop fortress camouflaged in perpetual clouds, and post-apocalyptic ruins in a seaside town that had once been slated for bigger things. Here’s an overview of the best things I did in Southeast Asia.
