Around the time I was born, American troops pulled out of Vietnam. After loosing a war that was never officially a war, our military came home heavy-hearted with images in their mind's eye that are too treacherous for many of them to talk about even today. The Vietnamese were left to fix their broken hearts, broken families, and broken country. "They're gonna hate us" was our thought as we prepared to enter Vietnam. Visions of waiters spitting in our pho, taxi drivers taking us the "long way" to our destination, and getting the evil eye from strangers on the street were all in our thoughts as we mentally prepared to enter Vietnam. We found all of these worries to be completely unfounded. The Vietnamese people were absolutely warm and welcoming in every place that we ... read more

Well folks, for reasons you will read below, we have no photos to go with this piece but thanks to some of our fellow bloggers (who are much more talented with the camera anyhow) you can still see this amazing city for yourselves. Click here for great Varanasi photos and then... Click here for more great shots! After leaving Kaza and realizing that the experience had changed our lives forever, we digested our two months in India as we headed south-east to Varanasi and then finally into Kolkata. We once again found ourselves traveling through Manali again- it is sort of a pit stop from the Himalayas into well...everything. We'd gotten ourselves pretty familiar with Manali after the weeks we'd spent there before venturing into the r... read more

"Super- Deluxe". This is the label that they have slapped onto our hotel room in Manali, India. Call it being spoiled, call it being American, but the term "Super Deluxe" conjured up in my mind something wonderful, something spacious, something unforgettable. Okay, one out of three aint bad- this place is at least unforgettable. A black pin-legged spider ran across my arm last night right before I had reached sleep. Spiders are my worst fear as I have had many close-to-death encounters with the creatures. I'm not sure if this spider posed a threat to my health, but it most certainly posed a threat to my sleeping habits. The toilet flushes on occasion and the water is a murky brown. There is a shower but it does not work. We resort to bathing with a bucket, ... read more

Istanbul, the capitol of Turkey. A city unique in that it straddles two continents; Asia and Europe. We arrived in Istanbul on a bus that entered a bus station big enough to be a city on its own. Our bus went through tunnels, garages, wound around corners and then lurched to a halt. How were we going to find our way out of the bus station, much less to our apartment? We immediately started asking people questions about how to get to the flat on the other side of this gigantic city. In Turkish form, everyone we asked met our inquiries with a warm smile and words of knowledge. We had to board a bus, make a transfer in the middle of the city, buy another bus ticket and then get off in front of ... read more

What We Know About Muslims What would you say if I had told you that we would be traveling to a country with a 95% Muslim population? The borders of this country are shared by Iran, Iraq, Syria, Georgia, and Azerbyjon. Would you have been nervous? Scared? Afraid that we would be victims of terrorism? Would you have advised us against going? The truth of the matter is that before coming into Turkey, I was unaware that so much of its population claimed to be Muslims. I have seen Muslim people before in some of my previous travels to India and Bali, however in both of these places Hinduism was the main religion with a few Muslims peppered throughout. Even though I had looked at a map before arriving, my focus was more on Turkey's ... read more