We arrived in Madrid not having a place to stay for the night, but we easily found a hostel and slept soundly with eight other French guests. We spent a good amount of time lounging about lazily in the many wonderful street cafes that make Madrid, and I would guess many other European cities, so great. We ate and drank and spent way too much money, but had a great time doing it. We did manage to get out and see a museum full of Picassos as well as a nice free tour of the city. We also watched a few [View Full Entry]

---

---

We were a little travel weary by the time we got to Egypt, and Cairo was the perfect place to sit an relax for a while. We checked into the Nubian Hostel downtown and chilled out pretty agressively for a couple of days. We sat at the sidewalk cafe positioned directly under our window, chowed down at the Egyptian fast food joint on the corner and milled around in surprisingly cool weather. A SNAFU meant that our pre-organized tour was no more, but no worries. Our hostel guys whipped up a tour for us in a matter of minutes that was [View Full Entry]

---

---

Before we entered India we, of course, had to exit Kathmandu. Both Chris and I were frisked and our bags searched 3 separate times--once at the entrance, once at the gates, and once in a special frisking tube just outside the airplane. Hurry up, wait. Hurry up, wait. One of the security staff upon seeing my 1 miao Chinese bill inside my purse declared "I like Chinese money." I smiled, nodded, and said something non-committal. He fingered my money and said it again a few times. "I like Chinese money. I like Chinese money." Clearly my bag search was not going [View Full Entry]

---

---

We left Kathmandu and headed for Pokhara, the jumping off point for Annapurna treks, via tourist bus. Tourist buses in Nepal are not the fancy, comfortable, air-conditioned luxury liners that they are in Taiwan. They're not even the intensely uncomfortable, new, air-conditioned budget mobiles of Japan. They are squeaking, shuddering, cramped, dusty affairs that hurtle along ill-maintained mountain roads passing and being passed with abandon. On the up side, they do only cost $6 for a 6 hour ride, and we got serenaded by some village boys who knew almost all the words to an unending folk song. We spent half [View Full Entry]

---

---

We headed to Nepal not really knowing what to expect. Neither one of us had been there before, and for some reason we had both decided against a guide book. We were quickly and efficiently relieved of our first small bill by a free, but not free, airport trolley service wheeling our bags along all of 30 meters or so. But a sign for Christopher and Alezander and the man who was to be our trekking guide greeted us outside the airport, and we proceeded, relieved, into the city. The drive from the airport was a noisy, fume-filled stop and go [View Full Entry]

---

---

If I had to choose one word to characterize our time at Koh Jum it would have to be--lounge. In our entire eight day stay we probably strayed no farther than 300 meters from our little bungalow. Bungalow-->food hut-->lounge hut-->beach-->food hut-->lounge hut-->food hut-->bungalow. Perfect. Koh Jum was exactly what we wanted. Good food. Decent beach. Warm water. Fun animals. No commitments. No worries. Plenty of time. So it rained--more time to read. So the tide was out--more tide pools and beach combing. Koh Jum is bursting with animal life. Monkeys chattered next to our bungalow. We coaxed hermit crabs out of [View Full Entry]

---

---

We headed to Krabi with two goals in mind. Diving and relaxation. Alex learned how to dive from a Hong Kong national named Klins at the Blue Juice dive shop in Krabi town. Krabi itself isn't a beach-covered paradise, it's more of a base of operations out of which you organize trips to beach-covered paradises, jungles and the likes. Klins was a patient teacher and in no time we were out in the water diving. Visibility wasn't great, but we did get to see quite a few neat things including a moray eel, a bunch of sea horses, lion fish, clown [View Full Entry]

---

---

Bangkok was a welcome respite from the chill of East Asia. We were eager to jump down to the beaches and sights of southern Thailand, so we crammed as much as we could see of Bangkok into two days. We spent a day on Bangkok's notorious tourist mecca, Kaosahn Road, where you can get just about anything a farang (foreigner) could want--except a t-shirt big enough for Chris. We helped ourselves to a small sampling of the many offers, picking up a (no doubt legal and totally above board) copy of Bossa and Roses, a CD of Bossa style Guns 'n [View Full Entry]

---

---

We left Xi'an and headed to Shanghai to ring in the new year. Shanghai is, no doubt, the lively, interesting, dynamic town it's cracked up to be, but Chris and I kind of missed it all. Shanghai is so dynamic that in order to find the hot spots, you have to check the local English language magazines which can only be found at hot spots. So we hit the waterfront instead to await a fireworks show that never happened. We were told that because of the terrible snow storms that crippled the country, official fireworks shows were canceled. Even the skyline [View Full Entry]

---

---

Xian was recovering from a snow storm when we arrived, and it showed. The streets were covered in ice and snow and mud and it was freezing cold. This ancient city is divided up into two halves; one side being very nice, new and well kept, and the other, is a dark, dirty, filthy pit of poverty... guess where we stayed. Our hotel was nice, but the area was horrible. We took our good friend Al's advice and got a car for the day. The man was very nice and we got a good deal. We first went to the terra [View Full Entry]

---

---