James Green’s plan was simple and efficient.

“Me and my fiancée (Jaymi), we wanted to travel before we got married,” said Green, who joined the Stampeders in the off-season, “so we decided to kill two birds with one stone. So once we got married, we decided to go on a honeymoon excursion across southeast Asia.”

Travelling half a world away is already a major undertaking but the couple got even more than they bargained for.

They stayed way longer than they had expected — a little more than two months, as things turned out — and experienced everything from mountain hiking to impromptu soccer games with the locals to guided tours through waterfalls and into secret caves led by a Buddhist priest.

And, oh yeah, there was also the wildlife in Chiang Mai, located in the northern portion of Thailand.

“My favourite part of the whole trip was probably getting on the back of a 14-foot elephant and riding through the jungle,” said Green. “That and actually touching live tigers . . . without getting attacked.

“It was unbelievable,” he said of the overseas adventure. “I wouldn’t trade that experience for anything.”

Green, a University of Calgary alum, admits the trip wasn’t exactly meticulously planned.

“We were completely winging it,” he says. “We had a start date and an end date. The rest was just winging it.”

And southeast Asia was the part of the globe they put their finger on because . . .

“We just thought it would be a really cool place to visit,” he explains. “Both of us are big into kick-boxing so we thought it would be a cool place to check out some live kick-boxing. We wanted to see tigers up close and personal. We wanted to visit with locals who are less privileged than us and see how they live and just live as they live every day.”

Their first stop, albeit a brief one, was Bangkok.

“A crazy night,” says Green. “One Night in Bangkok, the song, doesn’t even do it justice. We decided that was too much like the city. It was kind of like visiting Toronto in Thailand. Different customs, of course, but still the big city.”

The mission was to get more of a National Geographic-like grasp on the country, so the next location on the itinerary was the Thai island of Phuket.

“It’s just magnificent,” he says. “We started to interact with locals and we stayed in a bungalow on the beach and we played soccer with these guys every day and just hung out. It was great.”

And it was just the beginning.

“We went island-hopping all over Thailand for about a month,” he says.

Then came Chiang Mai, site of numerous sanctuaries including one where the Greens had the chance to interact with tigers.

“My wife was the one who was really looking forward to it,” chuckles Green. “She was in there and she was gung ho and I was more, ‘These are tigers and they could lose it on us at any second and eat us.’ But that wasn’t the case. When the gate slammed behind us, we were pretty nervous. Then a big 1,200-lb. tiger comes up to you and starts licking you like a housecat. It was pretty amazing, actually.”

After that, it was over to Indonesia and the island of Bali. As was the case in Bangkok, the setting was too touristy for the Greens.

“We spent a day there and got the heck out of there,” he says.

They headed instead to the tiny Gili Islands.

“We made friends with a bunch of locals and actually helped them with their businesses,” says Green.

This involved aiding in the constructions of bar huts from which the locals would sell beer and food.

“We spent the most time there,” he says. “I think it was like 13 or 14 days.”

The duration of the stay, however, was not entirely because of the beautiful scenery and wonderful new friends made.

Bitten by mosquitos, the Greens contracted dengue fever and were bedridden for two days.

“That’s when we started thinking that maybe it’s time to go home,” he says with a laugh.

But then they met more locals, remembered why they fell in love with the place to begin with and chose to stay.

They then went to Canggu where they experienced a black-sand beach a reminder that discretion is the better part of valour.

“Canggu is known for its big-wave surfing,” Green explains. “But we wanted nothing to do with that. The guys were out there hitting 16-to-20-foot waves like it’s nothing.”

Then it was off to Ubud and more wildlife.

“Everything is in nature,” Green marvels. “There’s monkeys everywhere and wild tigers and lions and elephants all around. It’s like a crazy safari.”

In the midst of all this adventuring, Green was making a significant career change, namely signing with the Stamps as a free agent after two seasons with the Ottawa RedBlacks.

With a 13-hour time difference, contract negotiation proved interesting. So did the process of finalizing the deal.

“I had to go to a bar to get Wifi,” says Green. “I’m sitting there anxiously looking at the phone and awaiting the text.”

A home-stay owner the Greens had befriended allowed him to use his fax machine to send receive the contract and send it back after it had been signed.

“It was pretty cool being in the middle of the jungle and doing this deal,” says Green.

Eventually, it was time to come home. The couple left Canada in February and returned in April, fully committed to the idea of someday returning to southeast Asia.

“I want to start some sort of foundation where I go help people overseas, whether it be building houses or taking food over,” says Green. “Just helping in some way, going over to help people because it needs to be done. These people need it.”