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!

A destination wedding

The previous post in this series is here..

The main reason for this entire trip during and after Thanksgiving was our friends son’s wedding.

Most of Cupertino descended in Phuket at the JW Marriott to celebrate.

The kids (they will always be kids to all the uncles and aunties) show a level of maturity that made us think “were we like this at that age?”

There was a sense of calm with the bridge and groom that was amazing to watch. There is a lot happening around them and they are actually tying to direct the groups to the right people, interact with everyone, check on people. At one point I told the groom “You should just not have to check on anything!” and he just gave his usual smile.

We have attended a few weddings in the recent years given the next generation in our extended family is all growing up. This was our first destination wedding outside of the US. So it made for an interesting experience. The other recent weddings we attended all had the boy and girl from different cultures within India.. Tamil-Telugu, Tamil-Gurarathi.. etc. but here both the kids were from the same community, but still there were subtle differences in their family traditions when it came to wedding ceremonies. Our local priest from Cupertino who also flew in to conduct the wedding did an outstanding job of juggling everything, explaining things to the audience and made the entire event memorable.

I was strictly told to keep my hands off cameras and leave it to the pros.. and there were 5 photographers running around in circles making it difficult for anyone else to get photos anyways.. Did capture this candid shot of the kids from the iPhone.. Sincerely wish they stay as happy the rest of their lives. They have all their Cupertino uncles and aunties watching them.. the next generation has a lot more challenges than us as we are definitely leaving the world in worse shape than we got it.. or so I feel.. but inspite of all our attempts to screw things up for them, they are in every way better than us. They have what it takes to navigate things. Saw it in their eyes and the way they handled things.. had happy tears watching them go around the fire… blessed them with all my heart!

There were people on boats from the sea taking pictures of the mandap as were tourists walking on the beach.. think they photobombed a lot of the pictures. They must not be used to seeing the groom show up in a decked up horse to the mandap for a baraat..

We had an amazing time.. got to sing songs during the wedding ceremony. We had practiced for a few weeks before the wedding! San got to dance with the other “aunties”.. (I will get flak for this sentence alone but it is what it is).. We got to dress differently for the different events..

There was a short gap between the wedding and reception and we finally spent some time as a group walking around the beach and taking pictures.

My friend gave a speech but sadly we had to leave mid way into the reception as our flight was late that night and it was a 90 minutes drive to the airport. We did catch the video later. He is still giving me crap for missing his epic speech. I had to get back to work Monday morning and literally dropped suitcases at home and went to work to take care of a few things. Phuket airport is not anywhere close to the other airports we visited on this trip.. It could seriously use some more disciplined people. The airport was dirty, there was no crowd management at the lines, no proper lanes, airport and restrooms were not clean.. Thankfully we had to spend only a couple of hours there. Our stop at Seoul aiport was much nicer. We enjoyed the three hour break there before flying back to SFO.

We said bye to everyone and Phuket to wrap up a fantastic 10 days in southeast Asia!

Will summarize all these stops in one blog post to share the entire trip itinerary.

Wedding vibes in Phuket

The previous post in this series is here..

Day 8 of our trip saw us say bye to Chiang Mai and go to Phuket.

Air Asia was interesting. The lines were long but moving along. When it was our turn we found the one checked bag was 4 kg overweight. The lady at the counter said we would have to pay 40 bucks anyways, so might as well adjust and check in the carry on bags for that price. So we checked everything. This was a direct flight and we were hoping that our bags show up with us when we get to Phuket.

We got picked up at the airport and had an almost 2 hour drive to the JW Marriott Khao Lak resort and spa.

After checking in we realized it was already time to join the Mehendi party.. so we cleaned up, took some pictures and walked to the beach where I was treated to smiling familiar beautiful faces. The whole gang was there and we were just so happy to be there! Accidentally ended up twinning with my buddy, the grooms dad! He keeps his social media profile at near zero levels.. but at least I get to post one photo! We were also so happy to see the bride and groom! These two kids made us so happy with the way they kept it cool for all of us!

There was a fire show and dinner and we called it a night when it got a little chilly. We had our first argument on the trip after 8 days when the smell of the mehendi shut down my nose and lungs and San refused to wash it off before coming to bed citing that the redness of the mehendi had a higher priority over my lungs.

One evening back with her friends and my lungs went down on the priority list.

Had to resort to a vicks inhaler to just breathe again and sleep. The next morning she was very happy with the end result and given she was smiling from ear to ear, I temporarily let go of the animal cruelty..

Many of my friends from Cupertino also told me to put my camera away and just enjoy the wedding.. so I took a few photos with my iPhone and that was it.

Here is a video highlight reel..

My screen time for this week is through the roof.. but it looks like I will finish writing about the Thanksgiving trip before Christmas and that is a good thing!