In a little under 3 weeks I will be leaving China and heading back to the States. To say I am excited would be a bit of an understatement. However, there are still many things that need to be done while I am still here. Leaving my school for example. Which in true China fashion must of course be slightly confusing and never go quite the way you expected or wanted it to. Last Friday morning while I was in Alice's office helping her for the millionth time go over some paper work for her daughter's school in America she tells [View Full Entry]

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. Tonight Tiffany, Kim, Mariam, Shai, and I decided to meet for dinner at a quaint little restaurant in Dongmen, called "Modern Toilet." True to its name it has a bathroom theme. You eat sitting on toilets and your table is a bathtub. The decor is all bathroom themed as well, complete with light fixtures shaped like urinals and spiraled poos. The food (China-fied Western-ish fair which wasn't horrible) is served in little toilets, sinks, bathtubs and urinals. It was pretty funny. The best dish had to be the chocolate soft-serve ice cream complete [View Full Entry]

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(Some of the exact times might not be entirely accurate as I did not write them down). We awoke bright and early to catch our bus from Cambodia into Thailand. Now, the poster at our hostel led us to believe that it would be an air conditioned bus that would take us from Siem Reap to Bangkok, passing through the border, in about 6 1/2 hours. Pretty much nothing about that statement turned out to be true, except that we eventually did make it to Bangkok Thailand. And so began the worst day of our trip. A car picked us up [View Full Entry]

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After three temple-packed days and our previous adventures in Malaysia, we were all starting to feel a little exhausted. (and Kim was feeling quite sick) As a result we spent a lot of our remaining time in Siem Reap relaxing, eating, and shopping. Tiffany and I did go to the museum in town, which was a little pricey, but quiet, air-conditioned, and very informative. I kind of wish we had gone there first, as it would have explained a lot of what we were looking at when we visited the temples. Tiffany took an excursion by herself to "the floating village," [View Full Entry]

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I would like to take a quick break from my vacation blogging to post this brief update about my favorite person in all of China...my Baby Stalker. His stalking has been top notch lately, with several great entrances. First, last Thursday as I was leaving for class he pulled out of his door on his little toy scooter and got in some quality staring. As I was coming home from class her ran out to see me and was attempting to put two barrettes in his non-existent hair. On Monday he ran out of his apartment riding a broom, and today [View Full Entry]

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Author's note: Before our trip I had heard of a phenomenon that was common among those who explore the temples of Siem Reap...that of being "Templed out." Now, the following entry (despite my efforts to make it not so) may have a touch of bitterness or annoyance. I blame some of this on the heat and a continued air of disappointment that seemed to encompass the day. With that in mind, read on if you'd like :0) We got up way too early in my opinion to meet Rak outside our hostel with enough time to make it to Angkor Wat [View Full Entry]

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After breakfast we once again met Rak outside our hostel and sped off in the tuk tuk towards the temples. Once again it was a rather exhausting day, and quite honestly I can not remember the names of all the temples we saw. Rak would pull up in front of another one, say the name, Tiffany would usually repeat it in an attempt to actually know what we were looking at, and then we would pile out of the tuk tuk, attempt to dodge the children selling things, and then explore the temple. This day also marked the beginning of Kim's [View Full Entry]

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Note from the author: This entry has some of my favorite photos taken the entire trip...enjoy :0) As such I think they tell most of the story for the day so this entry will be short. After a quick breakfast at the hostel (only 1 dollar and served by the friendliest man ever who clearly took pride in his breakfast buffet; we called him smiley) we met Rak outside and he took us to get our temple passes. Our first stop was Angkor Thom, a city complex of several temples and terraces. The biggest and coolest temple inside the gates is [View Full Entry]

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Rising bright and early once again, we had a quick breakfast and went downstairs to meet our driver. Now, we had hired a driver after hearing about other people's horrible experiences on the bus, but in retrospect I think we got ripped off a little bit. Oh, well...such is life. The drive up to the national park was a winding road up through the mountains, and even though we paid a lot I was happy to be in a van and not on a giant lurching bus. I was also happy that I had taken some motion sickness pills. Our first [View Full Entry]

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The first thing we noticed when we stepped off the plane in Kuala Lumpur was the heat and humidity. The temperature in Sabah had been warm, but far more bearable than the gross air that greeted us in the city. It took us longer than we thought it would to get from the airport to the hostel so we nixed our original plans to see the aquarium and decided to hit up the nearby air conditioned mall instead. (Which was probably a better idea, as Kim was starting to look a little green and was not feeling well at all.) We [View Full Entry]

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