Four Fantastically Fun Family Vacations in Southeast Asia

Over the past nine years, my family and I have had some awesome adventures. For six of the years, we live in Cambodia and had ample opportunity to visit fun places in neighboring Southeast Asian countries. This hub is dedicated to some of the places I enjoyed the most.

The Sunway Pyramid Resort is two hotels attached to a waterpark and adjacent mall. The waterpark has all the normal waterpark attractions including a bunch of different slide configurations, kid friendly area and a wave pool where you can learn how to surf. In the mall they have all the major international department and specialty shops, a wide variety of restaurants and fast food chains, a movie theatre, archery range and ice skating rink.

My second favorite place in Southeast Asia is Juniper Tree in Chiang Mai, Thailand. Juniper Tree is a Christian Resort designed to be a quiet retreat for missionary families serving in South Asia. They have cousy, cabin rooms; three meals a day, and a community swimming pool. If you want to get out into the city, Chiang Mai has all the amenities of Bangkok but has less traffic and much less cosmopolitan entertainment. Just an hour out of town there is park where you can ride an ox cart, an elephant and take a raft down a lazy river. Juniper Tree has a sister site on the west shore of the Gulf of Thailand near the ancient town of Hua Hin.

In the 19th century, a French explorer was combing the jungle in upper Cambodia and came across one of the most amazing man-made sites he had ever seen. By 1975, these ancient ruins became the number one tourist site in Southeast Asia. Today Angkor Wat is considered to be one of the top 10 ancient man-made wonders of the world. Foreign visitation to the site was interrupted again by the dark reign of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge. Since end of the Cambodian civil war in 1998, Siem Riep, Cambodia, the place where the Angkor ruins reside, is developing into one of the best tourist sites in the world.

Ambassador City Resort in Jomtien, Thailand is an all-in-one vacation spot that has everything you would need to have a nice time away. On its grounds are the necessary amenities including a wading pool for the kids, a large pool for older patrons, and a gymnasium to play badminton. The vacation facility is adjacent to the Gulf of Thailand where you can sunbath or ride a banana boat. Shopping and movie theatres are only 10 minutes down the road.