Outtakes from Southeast Asia

I’ve been sharing some of the stories of our trip to S.E. Asia. If you haven’t read them I hope you will. I’ve written about how sex trafficking is defined, and how the Exodus Road has started an alliance to coordinate the efforts of anti-trafficking teams across the globe. I’ve talked about how commonplace indentured servitude (slavery) is in the sex trade. I’ve talked about after care and how rescue doesn’t end after a raid, and how Exodus Road is addressing these problems. If you haven’t yet, I will hope will read about it. But today . . . today I’m sharing some of the lighter moments of the trip. As you can imagine, this trip was rather emotionally draining. But we did have some levity breaks in the midst of it. Getting around was an adventure in itself. We took the subway . . . We sat in an open-air taxi called a tuk-tuk . . . And the most exciting taxi option . . . we sat on the back of a motor scooter. Going to a new county, there is always some trepidation about the food. This was the buffet at our hotel: But we were spoiled with amazing food. Coconut water was readily available. I still maintain that stuff tastes like vomit. So much seafood. Foodie Jafa would have been in heaven. One of the things we had joked about before the trip was seeing an elephant. Heather has a thing for them And one day we were in a van that made a stop and lo and behold, a baby elephant was right around the corner! Funniest moment ever. On our last night in the city we stopped by a dance club . . . a nice little comic relief as we danced to 90’s hip-hop. The morning before we flew home we did a bit of sight-seeing. We visited a temple. We climbed the temple. My legs hurt thinking about it. That night Jamie and I had a red-eye flight that put us into Beijing at 6am in the morning, and our next flight wasn’t until 2pm. I did quite a bit of internet searching to see if we could see the Great Wall of China in that time. The jury was out . . . some said it couldn’t be done. But I’m here to tell you . . . it’s possible. We hired a driver, headed straight there, climbed a bit, snapped some photos, and got back to the airport just in time. Best layover ever. To learn more about what I was doing in SE Asia go here.