Follow the Journey

The conditions at the Mokken village were in stark contrast to the well-resourced surroundings of the ashram where we conduted our orientation. The Mokken people traditionally lived at sea on self-made fishing vessels, small boats that look like large canoes tents on top. In fact, the first Mokken sea vessels were carved out of solitary large trees akin to the construction of Native American dugouts. The Mokken traveled up and… Read More

@font-face { font-family: "Cambria"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }div.Section1 { page: Section1; } @font-face { font-family: "Cambria"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }div.Section1 { page: Section1; } We took an overnight bus to Ranong, departing from the primary Bangkok bus station, a fun multi-tiered maze of tasty eateries and shopping stands… Read More

Our group endured the brutal 15 hour plane ride with turbulence, a 3 hour layover in Hong Kong, followed by a 2 hour plane ride, then a 2 hour bus ride to gratefully arrive at the idyllic Wongsanit Ashram on the far outskirts of Bangkok. The Ashram has made for a perfect landing to Thailand: clean and spacious meditation halls provide prime space for our orientation meetings, while rain on… Read More

Team SE ASIA came together seamlessly, and will be embarking over the Pacific in only 2 short hours. Look for more from the group members themselves in a couple of days!… Read More

@font-face { font-family: "Cambria"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }div.Section1 { page: Section1; } Sawadeecap or Sawadeecah (for the females)! With less than a week remaining before we depart for our semester in Thailand, Laos, and Cambodia, we feel an overwhelming excitement to meet you and begin our adventure together! As we sit at the Carpe Diem Headquarters in Portland trying… Read More

After enjoying a semi-permanent home in Chiang Mai, the shorter ‘chapters’ of our journey over the last few weeks have made for a whirlwind of new sights, sounds, tastes, smells, and feels… one of which is the tightness of our backs from shifting loaded backpacks from songthaws to trains to taxis to boats to pickup trucks to get us from north to south Thailand.Out of Chaing Mai we first traveled… Read More

Hey everyone sorry for the lag time. We have spent around a month in the interesting city of Chiang Mai, Thailand. The five of us spend our time in different ways. -Brian has taken a Thai Massage course with Kuan Amanda. He has also taken some time to reflect on his different goals in life, such as his future coffee shop. -Amanda has done a variety of activities, the Thai… Read More

A group shot with “grandpa” and Mong at the boat races. After a good luck ceremony performed by villagers during the last night of our trek.Resting after a long day of hiking. On the trail Sunrise at Angkor Wat… Read More

Right outside Chiang mai on an Eco-farm we met Matt. Matt was a retired wall street stock brocker whom found buddhism, moved to Thailand, and was here to teach us about meditation and yoga. We had a rigorous meditation schedule starting at 7am with meditation a break/morning yoga and breakfest, meditation and buddhism lectures, then a lunch break, back to meditation until dinner and then a night yoga session. After… Read More

We made our way to Huay Xai, a border town on the Thailand/Laos border, so that we could enjoy the Gibbon Experience. Getting to Huay Xai was quite the adventure as it required taking a 14 hour bus ride. We all boarded the bus at 7pm and prepared ourselves for our travel into the night. The bus wasn’t very crowded which was quite nice as it allowed us to spread… Read More

We descended from the hills of Lao into our home base of Luang Prabang, a UNESCO World Heritage City, looking ahead to three days of relax and exploration before traveling onwards towards the Thai border. We had a good meal and rest in preparation for the next morning when we made our way to a set of brilliant clear blue waterfalls. Tessa and Amanda chose to pump their way to… Read More

The trek….Let us give you a break down each day of the 5 day trek and 2 day water rafting in Laung Prabang….. Day one,we got into several different moving vehicles and meet our guides Mong and Mr.Jim. What wonderful men they were and they treated us so well along the trip. One hour later finally making it to where we begin. Hiking through many river, rice fields, mud, climbing… Read More

Hey There everyone.SOO much has happened its difficult to recap it. Some highlights are as follows: Our group did a Tuk-Tuk ride for peace on International day of peace in Battam Bamg(No idea if that’s the correct spelling, seen many version for the name of this city). Lots of fun, we got some advice there from a Buddhist Monk. He guided us through mediation telling us the the importance of… Read More

Hey everyone,I would tell you where exactly we are but my role in the group does not involve pronouncing or spelling names correctly. What I will tell you is we are painting! Painting classrooms to be exact. We finished our two base coats of white paint in the three classrooms we’re working on and graduate to sky blue paint tomorrow. We’re painting classrooms for the street families compound where we… Read More

Hello everyone! The five of us are all well rested from 35 hours of airplane travel and ready to explore Siem Reap. Walking around the city is crazy with mopeds, bicycles and cars to watch out for. The people are so sweet and kind. The place we are staying at is Nilla Villa Guesthouse, and when walking and meeting the place all of us fell in love. We are all… Read More

I’ve just gotten off the phone with the leaders and it appears that our small group is all together and hanging out! They actually share the first leg of their flights with team India, so it should make for some good conversation during their long transit across the Pacific. For now, everyone seems to have arrived early and we are all set to go! Please stay tuned for blogs from… Read More

From a buzzing Carpe Diem HQ, we leaders Brian & Amanda excitedly and humbly post this first blog to launch our South East Asian adventure. In a week, we will fly off from San Francisco en route to Siem Reap, Cambodia where we will begin our team orientation. From there the adventure will unfold as it will, each day gauranteed to gift us with opportunities for growth and understanding both… Read More

Hey all,As our trip comes to a close, it’s time for the final blog. We find ourselves possibly stranded on Koh Tao, and as being stuck somewhere goes, it definitely could be worse. (More beautiful beaches and scuba?! No! Anything but that!) As most of you probably know, the situation in Bangkok prevents any possibility of leaving on our scheduled Bangkok- Hong Kong flight. As of now we don’t really… Read More

Hello one and all-Completed our student ran free travel which we spent exploring the vast complexities of Bangkok. It was a little hard getting used to the city life, which was far more hectic than Chiang Mia. Regardless the city was great. Spent one of the days doing a cooking course which varied with 10 courses and a trip to the market to know what we were using. And with… Read More

Welcome back faithful readers, hope all who read this are doing as well as Team Seasia. After our adventures in Chiang Mia, the troop set off for IWP, a women’s justice center located in Mae Rim. There we learned much about Buddhism, eachother, and our inner being; deep stuff. There was a tight schedule of meditation of various sorts throughout the day; from sitting mediation, to walking meditation, to yoga.… Read More