Welcome to The Wedding Travelers!

Wow, it was really strange just now to write our location as Edmonton, rather than exotic places like Singapore, Vietnam or India! But even though Edmonton is a little more tame than some of the places we saw in the last three months, I can't even begin to tell you how glad we are to be home. Our 40 hour journey home was long, arduous, and not totally problem free, but we made it here with all our bags intact, and our sanity more or less in place. We got a great sleep last night, and our bed felt like a huge fluffy cloud compared to the beds we've slept in for the past 3 months. And believe it or not we're feeling good this morning, not really jet-lagged, and have already gotten back to work! You might think we'd give ourselves time off to recoup, but it feels like we've been waiting to get home and get back into the swing of things, and we just couldn't spend a day sitting around doing nothing!

We're going to hook you up with a few videos we took over the past few days. Our cameras didn't really see the light of day after the wedding, so there aren't any photos. But a few neat little videos will be good for you!

First, from the Singapore Changi Airport. After 2 months in India, we felt like we were in some spotlessly clean futuristic utopia when we got to the airport in Singapore. Seriously, we just kept smiling the whole time we were there!

 And then a little video from our landing in Los Angeles. It was in the evening, so we were treated to some beautiful sunset colours.

And finally a video in two parts, since we ran out of memory card space, and I don't know how to splice them together. Here is Rob giving you a little tour of all the goodies we brought back!

 There you go! We've got a bunch of shopping to do here, for some food and some business stuff. But we'll be getting back to this blog soon to add a ton more photos from our trip, and an unbelievable amount of info still needs to go up! So thanks for all the well wishes for a safe trip, and we'll talk to you all soon!

P.S. In the video Rob mentioned my Shootsac, and I figured some people might be wondering what that is! Well, it's an absolutely fantastic little camera bag, perfect for people who, like me, change their lenses a lot when they are shooting. I really really really wished I had brought it along on our trip! I know I'll never be leaving it at home again, no matter where we are going! Anyway, if you're interested you need to check out the website, www.shootsac.com. We love it! 

Category: Adventures

Tags: Airplane, Changi Airport, Singapore, travel

Hello everyone!

We haven't posted for a while, and that's because we have been on the move, as usual. We left Krabi, Thailand and took another 12 hour bus ride (that was blessedly uneventful) back to Bangkok. The fates were smiling upon us, and at 5AM when we rolled into the Khao San Road, a kind taxi driver pointed us to a hotel with a room. A clean, nice, and comfortable room right on the Khao San. It was certainly a very different experience from our arrival in Thailand!

 A busy day was had after we woke up. We mailed things home, which was a very simple process (it is not always that way!). Then we treated ourselves to a bit of pampering. We each had a half hour foot massage, Rob got his head shaved, I had a half hour Thai massage, got my hair shampoo'd and cut, and my eyebrows waxed. Total cost for all of that: 790 Baht. A whopping $25.50 Canadian dollars.

 Seriously.

 If I could get an hour long massage for $6 back home I would certainly have one every day....everyone sigh with me now as we imagine that.....

Ok, moving on.

We fly from Bangkok into Kolkata (Calcutta), early the next morning. A lengthy wait for our bags to come out, a harrowing 2 hour taxi ride in which we both were certain we were going to die numerous times (note: we both were hit, and hit someone else, both times not hard at all, but I guess that is quite common here!), and finally we come to the "backpacker district" of Calcutta. I use quotations around "backpacker district" because really we see hardly any other travelers at all! The hotels were still mysteriously all booked up, and we finally found a seedy place complete with a cockroach in the bathroom (as I write this I hope that it is still trapped under the water glass that we utilized this morning).

It certainly has been an incredible shock arriving in India, and even a month of traveling South East Asia couldn't prepare us for it. The poverty is all around you, and it is very hard to comprehend. Even the street we're staying on looks like a movie set, and I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around the fact that it is not pretend, but shockingly real.

 But, the purpose of The Wedding Travelers is soon to be fulfilled, as we have already found a wedding to attend. It is in the North East, in a town called Jorhat, and we just finished booking some tickets to make our way there in a couple of days. We have no clue what to expect, but elephants are rumored, so we've excited.

And now we take our leave to go find something to eat. Although Calcutta has scared us and startled us, the food we have had is fantastic enough to make up for it all, and a good cup of chai in our bellies calms us right down.

 WIFI has been non-existant, thus the lack of photos, but we're going to do our best to figure something out. Until then, just use your imaginations :)

Rob & Lauren

Category: Adventures

Tags: Airplane, bangkok, calcutta, food, india, street life, travel

Well, well, well here we are! Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. Formerly known as Saigon. And honestly an insanely cool place to go. Like I mentioned before, neither of us really knew what to expect from Vietnam, but I’ve gotta say that I’m so glad we made our way here! Within moments of driving through the streets on our way to the hotel we got a sense of the charm and character of this place. The photos will really tell you more than I can with words, so lets get started!

Our airplane from Singapore to Vietnam.



A shot from the balcony in our hotel room of the typical street scene



Many of the women here actually wear the conical hats that you see in movies. It adds such a dimension of authenticity, it’s fantastic. They all ride around carrying whatever it is they sell. I believe this woman was selling strawberries.



The street that our hotel is on. Sure it looks crowded and crazy, but it’s so simple and real at the same time.



So when I ordered a coconut juice at a local café I definitely wasn’t expecting this! To be honest I wasn’t a huge fan, but it sure looked cool.



There are street side markets all over the place, and our hotel room is a short walk to Ben Thanh, one of the big ones. Here are some of the fruits they are selling. I really don’t know what they are! But they look interesting ☺



The Ben Thanh market caters not only to tourists, but also the locals to come here to buy their meat and produce. We were quite shocked to find that all of this seafood is actually still alive!



The market is crammed with hundreds of booths selling everything from shoes, to handbags, souvenirs, dried shrimp, coffee, tea…you name it! Most of the booths look like this, completely packed!


We’ve grabbed a couple meals at the market. This fried rice surely had some sort of addictive substance in it, because there was just no way to stop eating it.



And of course when in Vietnam you have to have a bowl of pho. It’s pretty much the staple here, and is eaten at any time of day. It’s a simple soup, with rice noodles, onions, and meat. But it’s just incredibly good, and we enjoy it immensely.



Here’s Rob getting right into it!



A shot from our seats where we were eating. This was all the meat for the dishes that they were preparing.


And a very typical street scene. The women carry so much on their shoulders, I can’t even believe it. And they always, always do it with a smile.



A shot from our walk home. The walls here all have the most incredible texture and character to them, Rob is loving getting shots of it all.



And this is what the roads look like. As you saw in the videos below, crossing the street is a bit of a gongshow. There are an insane number of scooters here, like they comprise 90% of the vehicles on the road. And from the outside the traffic looks like complete chaos. But somehow they manage to get by with out ever colliding. Honestly, there have been times when we were in a cab where we simply couldn’t believe that we would get through it all, but somehow the scooters magically part and you just sneak on through. It’s beyond impressive. If only Edmonton drivers were this good ;)



All the drivers on their scooters wear face masks because the pollution here is so bad. We literally have not seen the sun yet!



At all the intersections the power lines look like this. It’s beyond nuts! Our power was out yesterday, and I think they just routinely shut down different parts of the city. All the restaurants and shops had generators out on the sidewalk so that they could keep business going.



So as you can see this place is really incredible. There’s such a different feel to it than Singapore. Yes, here you are constantly berated with calls of “What you looking for, madame?” and “Let me help you, madame!”. I definitely get it worse since I’m so obviously white, and Rob’s just an enigma to everyone. I think people who have trouble with personal space might have a hard time here, as I’ve been gently grabbed on the shoulder quite a few times by over-eager shop keepers, but I’ve learned to just keep going, and stay chilled.

Same thing with the street crossing. It may have looked incredibly scary on the video, but after doing it once you really get the hang of it.

For any of you planning on visiting Ho Chi Minh City in the future, and are worried about the crossings, I’ll give you the scoop. All you need to do is understand how it works, and it’s easy as pie.

First, you check the road, and which way the traffic is flowing, and at what point it changes direction (for when you are crossing traffic going in both ways) so you know when to switch and start looking the other way. Do not step out if a bus is just about to come your way. They have the rule of the road, and don’t really stop for anyone. You stop for them.

Then you slowly step out into the road. Yes, there will be scooters careening at you from every which way. But the key to is to walk slowly. That way they know where you are going, so they can swerve around. Don’t start to run, that would pretty much be the worst thing you could do! Just walk nice and slow, small steps, and don’t be afraid to just stop and wait for cars or buses to go by.

It’s quite the experience, and I know things are similar in Dehli, so I’m glad we’ve earned our wings with street crossings!

So that’s the scoop so far. We’ll be posting again soon with something different, so stay tuned!

Lauren ☺

P.S. Just a couple of house-keeping things! We just wanted to let everyone know that they can feel free to post about us on their own blogs, and grab a few pictures (keeping the logo on of course!). We think it’s so awesome that people are spreading the word about what we’re doing! Just make sure you drop us the link so we can check it out! And HUGE thanks to all that have done so so far, we totally love you guys!

And also, sometimes when we’re working on pictures or surfing the net we’ll have our Skype open. You can feel free to add us and chat with us if you wish! Our username is “robnlauren” so say hi!

Category: Adventures

Tags: Airplane, food, Ho Chi Minh City, street life, Traffic, travel, vietnam

Hello everyone! We’re writing to you from hot hot Singapore. As you saw from the last post, we left a very cold and snowy climate. Here it’s about 30 degrees, with about 90 – 100 % humidity. It’s been a very huge change, that’s for sure! All of the locals are wearing jeans and some of them are even wearing long sleeved shirts. We’re dying of heat in our tank tops. But I think we’ll get used to it…hopefully! Luckily our hotel room has Air Con, so we’re able to adjust slowly.

Now to get to Singapore from Edmonton we did about 24 hours of flying time, between three flights. It was certainly a very long trip, but I guess one has to be grateful for that. If it was easy to get to this side of the world, everyone would be here, and it would become a tourist trap. At the moment it’s very strange to be such a hugely visible minority. White people are rare, that’s for sure! But it’s not too bad, we’re used to being some of the only white people at the weddings we shoot, so it’s not a huge shock.

I’ll share a few pictures we’ve taken so far with you. Here’s a shot of our plane that took us to Singapore…



Haha, that’d be terrifying!! No, this is the plane that took us from Edmonton to Calgary. Thankfully that was only a 50 minute flight, because this thing was loud and bumpy. The landing was definitely anything but smooth.

From Calgary we flew to LAX. Our flight was a bit late getting there, but we didn’t think it was such a big deal. As we stepped out into the airport we asked the airline representative where to go to connect to our flight to Singapore. As we were standing with her, another couple stepped up saying they were going to Singapore as well. The lady gave us the most ridiculous instructions (go straight, then go down one flight, follow the flow of traffic, and then go left). Um…..this airport is huge! Those directions certainly didn’t help us, but at the time we thought it must be pretty easy. Well, the other couple takes off at a sprint. We stood there, a bit confused. Did they think this was the amazing race? Our flight wasn’t leaving for an hour, we thought we were totally fine.

Coming from the Edmonton International Airport, where there were hardly any people at all, into LAX which was a zoo was crazy. We were walking through this huge place, and were thoroughly lost. We ended up having to ask about 3 more staff where on earth we were going. And I’ll tell you right now the directions weren’t so great from any of them. But we did finally make our way to the Singapore Airlines check-in. And there were NO other passengers there. Weird, thought us. Well the flight attendants who checked us in seemed to feel like the situation was pretty urgent, so they rushed us to the express lane for security. At this point we were certainly getting a bit worried, since this “express” lane moved about as slow as molasses on a winter day in Edmonton. We got through security, grabbed our ridiculously heavy camera bags, and checked out which gate we had to get to.

It just wouldn’t be traveling if it that gate wasn’t as far away as Siberia.

But as you may have guessed, we did make it to the gate just in time to queue for boarding and all was fine.

Take off. 4 movies, many naps, 3 crazy delicious meals, 1 refuel in Taipei, and finally we got to Singapore.

We’ve taken things pretty slow here so far, but today we’re planning on hitting up the zoo which should make for some really cool pictures! I’ll show you a few that we took so far. Nothing too intense, since we were letting ourselves slowly get into the groove, but I hope you guys enjoy them anyway!

A quick shot from the airport in Taipei, Taiwan. I loved the fact that there was a Beef Noodle stand. I love noodles... 

Rob strolling through the Taipei airport. Note the casual smile? That is because we weren't sprinting to try to catch our plane! He certainly did not look this relaxed in LAX. 

Don't you just love seeing how different things can be around the world? I got so excited to see this pop machine with tons of drinks I had never heard of!

A shopping tower here in Singapore, close to our hotel. We like to think it is "our" tower...Simpson Lim....Sim Lim... 

Last night we made our way to Orchard Road, which is the big shopping area in Singapore. If you've ever been to Paris, this place really reminded me of the Champs Elysee, but bigger.....This is a shot of one of the big malls. I think this one had a Tiffany's, a Cartier, a Bvlgari, a Hermes...and those were just the ones we recognized! 

And to round it all out here’s a nice little video to show you the crazy, opulent life of a world traveler. Try not to weep from jealousy, though I know it will be hard ;)

More later everyone!

Lauren

Category: Adventures

Tags: Airplane, orchard road, Singapore, travel