Greetings -  While recovering from "Plague '09," we got a little behind on the blog, but here we are, reporting on our two week run through Xian, Beijing, and Shanghai. Transitioning from Yunnan province to China's big cities was a little rough.  We went from blue skies and gorgeous countryside to cold, imposing and gray cities.  But once we settled into our winter gear and our eyes adjusted to the smog and cityscapes, we found there was a lot to enjoy.    First, we hit Xian, pop. 3.25 million, formerly the terminus of the Silk Road, now the famed location of [View Full Entry]

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Greetings from China / Hic Incepit Pestis That's right, we've both been battling what feels like a plague/SARS hybrid-type bug for the past week, but we're finally feeling up to some blogging - so here's the rundown on our first ten days in the People's Republic. Since landslides have closed the main rail line linking Hanoi and southwestern China, we took a pass on an 18-hour bus ride and flew straight to southwest China's largest city -- Kunming, pop. 2.5 million. We headed out on the town after our uneventful arrival and were immediately struck by the tranquility of the city [View Full Entry]

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Greetings!  Here's the rundown on our time in Hanoi and Northern Vietnam, before we crossed the border into southwestern China late last week.   When we arrived in Hanoi, the city was immersed in Tet New Year preparations.  We spent most of our time in Old Town, where traffic in the already narrow, scooter-choked alleys was regularly brought to a standstill by Tet shoppers cruising the storefronts at a mall-shopper's pace and leaving their rides in the street while running in to buy presents (knee-high boots and rip-off "Ligos" were hot commodities) and buffalo-themed red and gold decora [View Full Entry]

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Greetings! Here's the lowdown from our nine days in central Vietnam. After finally convincing Jub we shouldn't fly to the southern beach resort of Phu Quoc Island based solely on reports he'd heard that all the dogs there have blue tongues, we caught a puddle jumper six hundred miles north to Hoi An. Once a thriving port city, Hoi An is now known for its cuisine, innumerable custom tailors and cobblers, and well preserved old-town architecture. This proved to be a winning combination, and we spent our first days in town strolling through centuries-old clan meeting halls and mansions, [View Full Entry]

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Greetings & happy year of the buffalo! We are holed up in Hanoi for a few days while Vietnam essentially shuts down for Tet New Years celebrations--seemed like a good time to blog about our week in Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) and the Mekong Delta. We arrived in Ho Chi Minh City via bus from Cambodia. The ride was uneventful except for (1) the pronounced change in scenery that occurred immediately upon crossing the border, as the fallow fields and bony cows of eastern Cambodia morphed into the emerald-green rice paddies and au jus-y heifers of western Vietnam; and (2) [View Full Entry]

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Greetings! We are steadily eating our way north through Vietnam, but wanted to update everyone on our year-end sojourn in Cambodia, which included two stops: Siem Reap--site of Angkor Wat--and Phnom Penh. Angkor Wat was truly breathtaking. Silly Jub didn't realize Angkor is way more than one temple--it's seventy-three, in fact, all built between 900 and 1200 A.D., and spread over an area the size of Los Angeles. During our three days in town, we took our time climbing in and around fourteen major sites. Our favorite was the Bayon, a three-tiered temple dedicated to Buddha--in contra [View Full Entry]

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Greetings! We made it to Vietnam via Cambodia on New Year's Day, after two weeks taking in the culture, temples, and small-town life of northwest Thailand. Still braised from the southern beaches, we arrived in the north's largest city, Chiang Mai, via train from Bangkok confident that the packs of sweater-clad dogs we encountered en route to our hotel were a good sign that cooler temperatures would prevail. Chiang Mai (pop. 150,000) is a university town and center for Buddhist learning, with over 350 temples crammed into its city center. We strolled around a half-dozen ornate, beauti [View Full Entry]

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Greetings & Happy Holidays! We've been in northern Thailand for a week now, pressed up against the border with Myanmar, following fifteen days basking (and, at times, boiling) in the sun on four beachy getaways off Thailand's south-west coast. At the outset, we'd like to note that the timing of this entry is a coincidence, weather-wise, and not a conscious effort to alienate friends and family. Our first stop in Thailand was Koh Bulon Leh (rhymes with Bollé). Getting there was certainly not half the fun, requiring a nine hour bus and mini-van ride from Malaysia to a pier where we [View Full Entry]

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Greetings! We are currently lapping up the sun and green curry in far removed, far southern Thailand, following a nine day trip through the bustling cities and bucolic highlands of peninsular Malaysia. First up: Kuala Lampur, whose reputation as a sprawling metropolis we confirmed early on, during the hour it took us to drive four miles from the bus station to our hotel. Once we arrived, however, it was easy to get our bearings because downtown KL is dominated by the massively spectacular 88 story Petronas Twin Towers. Lured like mosquitoes to Anna--more on that next blog--we spent t [View Full Entry]

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Greetings! Since Jub has been hard at work chronicling our adventure on Borneo, Animal-Planet style, he delegated to me the task of filling you in on our time in Kota Kinabalu and the past four days in Singapore. So, here we go .... Kota Kinabalu, aka "KK," sits on the South China Sea on the west coast of Borneo within the Malaysian state of Sabah. We used KK as a hub of sorts between the jungle and peninsular Malaysia. Most of our time there consisted of various administrative tasks (namely, washing the mud out of our jungle gear). We did, however, [View Full Entry]

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