Although we're back in New York now, I wanted to briefly write about our last stops of the trip - South Africa and Mozambique. After another stay in Bangkok, we were once again off to South Africa. This time we came from the other side of the world with a completely different view of things, figuratively and literally. We flew from Bangkok into Johannesburg and headed straight to Sandton for a few days. Sandton, a Johannesburg suburb, is the home of Nelson Mandela Square, Andy's favorite restaurant called The Butcher Shop, and The Wanderers Cricket Stadium. From Sandton, we picked [View Full Entry]

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Cambodia. Magic. Tragic. I think it's fair to say that this is the first country we've visited where we've eagerly awaited departure. This is not to say it wasn't without it's highlights, in fact we found some islands off its shores with beaches and solitude that rival any we've stumbled across anywhere on the this little spheroid we call home. It is also home to Angkor Wat and its surrounding temples, a collection of acheological wonders which can surely only be compared to the likes of Machu Picchu or the pyramids at Giza, crafted almost 1000 years ago with an intricacy [View Full Entry]

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Any preconceived notions we had of Vietnam derived from not much more than the last page of our extensive Chinese delivery menu (they'll make you anything from anywhere in Asia and deliver it before you hang the phone up), a plethora of Hollywood war flicks, and the names of 58,000 good men etched into a wall of black granite in Washington D.C. The word "Vietnam" brought to mind not a country, but a war. A war learned about in movie theatres and 10th grade history class. It's fair to say they didn't exactly teach us everything in high school, or maybe [View Full Entry]

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Hello again! You’ll find us now in Vietnam, but let’s catch you up on how we got here. Go get a glass of wine if you’re home, lock the office door if you’re at work, put your feet up and relax...we're going to be here a while. Better yet, print it out and take it to bed, I'll have you asleep in ten minutes :) After getting back from the Philippines we had a few days to kill in Bangkok before heading up to Chiang Mai in Northern Thailand for some trekking, relaxing, a little bit of culture and hopefully a [View Full Entry]

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So, there we were, sitting at a bar in Bangkok with one day left on our visa trying to decide whether to head east into Myanmar or west into Cambodia. Either choice was going to be a hassle involving a long bus ride on an awful road ending in a hectic border post and all the stress and general mayhem that ensues at such places. This all needed happen within 20 odd hours to avoid the dreaded "VISA OVERSTAY" stamp in our passports which, when going through immigration, is akin to having really bad credit when visiting loan office (although nowadays [View Full Entry]

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The land of the Thai. This was always going to be interesting. Every traveler comes here. Most leave saying "I wish I could have seen it twenty years ago." It's a testament to what traveling Thailand must have been like that so many still come in hopes of catching a glimpse of its former glory. No other country or region of the world can hold a candle to Thailand's backpacker legend. Here you could live practically for free on some of the world's most majestic real estate, amongst its friendliest people and tastiest food. It was the perfect storm of backpacking, [View Full Entry]

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After saying goodbye to the comforts of Singapore, it was time to reaquaint ourselves with the ole bus life again and begin our journey up peninsular Malaysia to Thailand, and beyond. Heading to the bus station has become a source of great excitement for us, I guess it doesn't take much these days. Generally, you'll get a hint as to what kind of bus you'll be traveling on by the price of the ticket, but experience has taught us thats it's all pretty much a crapshoot, or more accurately, we're experts at getting overcharged. So there we were, six in the [View Full Entry]

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Singapore, for us, was essentially a sandwich stuffed with Borneo. We spent two days there before Borneo and five days there afterwards. It definitely was not a symmetrical sandwhich, especially in terms of experience. The front end of that sandwich was plain white Wonderbread, the back end was a slice of sesame crusted marble rye infused with a compote of wild figs and dusted with the essence of a virgin bee's honey (I'm going for a good piece of bread here, but you get the point). Let me explain. Our first day in Singapore was spent as would be typical of [View Full Entry]

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So, another month gone by in South East Asia, time flies when you're having fun! Let's start with an unneccesarily controversial bang...South East Asia is Cinderella to Central America's Ugly Step Sisters. Yeah, that's completely unfair and way too harsh, as Central America had more of its fair share of gems and was a fantastic experience, but there's something here that sets it apart. It's hard to say just what, or what makes me want to compare the two. In our experience, both regions outwardly seem to have a similar level of development, both have their share of tourism, and your [View Full Entry]

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So here we are again, sitting in an internet cafe trying to figure out how to give an accurate description of the experiences of the last month. To be honest, it's getting difficult as the experiences are starting to far exceed my writing skills. Indonesia was a big unknown for the both of us, outside of the basic stuff you read in the papers or maybe, if you were a much better student than I, remember from a geography class along the way; we knew very little going in. Usually, this is good thing...why go if not to learn firsthand. On [View Full Entry]

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