I'm glad to know that marriage hasn't cured Steve of his random romantic notions. We had agreed not to exchange Christmas presents this year but he reneged on that when he surprised me with tickets to a Billy Joel concert on our last night in New Zealand. Billy Joel is my favorite musician, and poor Steve already had to sit through me cooing with the cluster of middle-aged women sitting around us at the DC show a couple of years ago. Our Auckland show seats were amazing, close enough for Steve to certainly be heard when he yelled, "Jersey!" in response [View Full Entry]

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Remember a few short months ago when I shamelessly boasted on about my hiking prowess? Yeah, I retract all of that. I am officially out of shape. Yesterday, Steve and I embarked on a 18.5 km hike through the Tongariro Alpine Crossing. We clearly have not mastered the kilometers-miles conversion if we thought that would be a fun way to spend the day. The hike started out pleasantly enough, passing through a huge crater between a few volcanoes. The sun was shining, the flat trail was clearly marked, and we were chipper and energetic. Until we encountered the "Devil's Staircase." This [View Full Entry]

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Sorry my last post was a little scatterbrained. I was trying to type too quickly after a few sleepless nights. Nez Zealand has been a huge culture shock after the past few months of hitting more difficult places. We expected it would be easy as we speak the language and the culture isn't terribly different (national obsession with macho tackle sport and love of beer) but we had no idea how incredibly easy this place would be. There are I-Site tourist info booths in every single town that are staffed with cheerful, knowledgeable staff; the streets are labelled so clearly it's [View Full Entry]

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After an all-but-relaxing Bali cruise (more on that when I'm at a less expensive terminal), we arrived in New Zealand on Thanksgiving Day. We actually managed to find the one restaurant in Christchurch that offered a special Thanksgiving turkey dinner. Unfortunately, it was the largest All Blacks rugby pub in the country, so the holiday ambiance was pretty weak! We rented a car and spent yesterday and today driving on harrowing, twisting roads on the South Island. I had always pictured New Zealand as a green flatland covered in merry sheep, so I was a bit shocked by the enormous volcanic [View Full Entry]

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I'm sorry we haven't posted in a bit. The evil internet gremlins gobbled my last couple of posts just as I was trying to save or post them, and I haven't had much opportunity to retype them. This is just a quickie to let everyone know that we're still alive. We've spent about a week in Bali and leave in a few minutes to start sailing around some of the more remote islands near here. Our friend Sue (the one we visited in Chiang Mai) joined us for the first five days of Bali, which was awesome. We rented a car [View Full Entry]

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First off, I am beyond elated to be able to call Barack Obama our President-elect! I'm a bit of a dork about politics so we hightailed it from the wonderful Laos countryside to an urban area in hopes of finding CNN or BBC coverage of the election returns. This was a great idea in theory, but we forgot that Socialist governments occasionally block certain television content...like American news. We arrived in Hanoi around 8pm last night and spent a solid hour running around trying to find an inexpensive hotel room with a television. While we failed miserably at that, we did [View Full Entry]

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About 2 weeks ago, in Nepal, I thought to myself "we have gotten almost no rain on this trip". And at that point, I was very much correct. Other than a few sprinkles on the Lares Trek and the hail at Cape Town, we essentially have been percipitation free, until now at least. It started in Cambodia, each afternoon around 2:00pm it rained. We got caught out riding our bikes in a down pour, but it was okay because there was nobody at Ankor Watt (quite the rarety). Then in Chiang Mai it rained every day we were there, again in [View Full Entry]

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The last time I was in Thailand, I tried tinting my eyelashes darker for the first time. I absolutely loved the results but the treatment itself was a bit unnerving. In short, while I was resting on the table with the possibly toxic dye on my eyes, the beautician climbed up on the table, sat on my hips, and proceeded to give me a rather aggressive frontal massage. I couldn't open my eyes to see what was going on, nor did I know enough Thai to ask. It was my first spa-type treatment, and I wasn't sure if that was a [View Full Entry]

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Confession: we're continuing our "Places Angelina Acquired Children" tour in Cambodia. Steve and I decided to rearrange our trip a bit because my friend Sue's work schedule didn't permit us to visit her in Thailand when we'd planned, so now we're visiting Angkor Wat. I absolutely love this country. Despite enduring some of the worst human rights hardships in recent history, the people here are constantly smiling and laughing. We've seen groups of women carrying enormous loads to market on their bikes, children walking hand in hand to school, enthusiastic tuk-tuk drivers pointing out every sight of possible interest - this [View Full Entry]

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After nearly two months of sleeping in tents and rooms in which I would never dare touch the bed directly, we splurged last night and booked a five star hotel in Bangkok for about $150. This would be a very nice room by any standards, but was particularly amazing after our recent rooms that rarely cost above $7/night. Less than a week ago, we were staying in a NR 150 room (about $2), and I was awakened by what I thought sounded like a rodent in our bags. Steve had just succeeded in calming me down and assuring me that there [View Full Entry]

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