We're safe, despite the crippling snow-sleet-storm that is blanketing the rest of China. After our arrival in Guilin, we stayed at a hotel that provided a barely working absurdly located heater. We then moved the next day to a fairly nice hotel with another abysmal in-room heater. Then, the power was cut off! SO we thought we could tough it out, but after it got dark, we were freezing! I was under 2 comforters, in all my clothes, with a huge coat on and still cold! We moved hotels yet again and that's just when Alex's head cold started kicking in. [View Full Entry]

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So, I can finally cross something off my "100 things to do before I die" list. That would be good old # 17, "Watch Sunrise over Angkor Wat". We hired a guide that came highly recommended , and I think it was worth every cent. Or thousands of cents. ( Brief note: imagine my surprise when the ATM in Phnom Penh spit out American dollars. I'm also glad I realized this before withdrawing an ungodly amount of money, thinking it was measured in Cambodian Riel! 4000 Riel= 1$) Our guide turned out to be a guy around our age named Kongkea. [View Full Entry]

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That’s right. The original-gangster queen-mother shogun-assassin of all intestinal parasites. Next time I hear some sucker complain, like “oh, my tummy hurts…” That’s when Alex is gonna be like… “You ever been in the shit, boy? I was in the shit. Back in ot-8. You could never know what that’s like.” So it turns out that that Vientiane banger had a little more bite than I bargained for. After almost two weeks of on-again/off-again intestinal distress, and after visits to medical clinics in two different countries, we finally got [View Full Entry]

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For starters, these are all some pics from Luang Prabang that never made it to the blog, because we lost track of them. Thankfully, we found them again, because there are some great shots here. On a similar note, for those of you who have already read the blog about the wild elephant tower at Ban Na, you might want to peek at that blog again, because we have added a dozen or so more pictures to that. The computers we were using recently were making it difficult to put pictures up, but now we’ve got a better situation going. Moving [View Full Entry]

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Not much to say that hasn’t been said before. The horror, the horror. The school turned prison camp in Phnom Penh, S-21, rivals any death camp of the Nazis. Each classroom-turned-torture chamber is left bare, with a bed frame and a gruesome photo enlarged on the wall. The victims of the torture look nothing like human bodies. In fact, the bodies are unrecognizable. The blood stains on the tile floor have been left behind, and the instruments of torture are housed in an open room, with paintings illustrating their use. I found out later that the paintings were done by a [View Full Entry]

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Excuse me, sir, but I am going to have to ask you to cease and desist, because it is currently Hammertime. And now I will proceed to break it down. The villagers of Ban Na, as recently as 4 years ago, might have known elephants only from zoos and photographs. In many of their cases, they might not have ever seen elephants at all. They are, after all, kind of isolated, and I don’t think many of them do a lot of traveling. They most definitely have no internet; they’ve barely got electricity! And - to cut that question off at [View Full Entry]

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Looks like I’ve kind of slacked off on my end of the blog-bargain for a few weeks, so maybe it’s time to let rip. First we gotta pick a starting point. Hop in the Delorean with me and we’ll back it up so it’s holiday season again. You know, bells are ringing… children singing… something-something Barry N. White. You pickin up what I’m puttin down? December 23, 2007: After Julie and I became Advanced - you heard right - Advanced Open Water Divers, with nine dives under our belts, including depths of 100 feet and dives in the pitch blackyness of [View Full Entry]

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It's been busy. Real busy. After our "whiz bang" trip to Koh Phagnan for the Full Moon Party, Alex and I had to hustle up through Thailand to make it up to Huay Xai in Laos for the Gibbon Experience. The Gibbon Experience is an incredible project run in the Bokeo Province of Laos , deep in the jungle. To sum it up.....you spend 3 days in the jungle, sleeping in treehouses 100 feet above the forrest and zipline to get in and out of the treehouses. Yes, ZIP LINE! You strap into a rock climbing harness and clip onto a [View Full Entry]

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Merry x-mas! A few pictures to tide you over. The underwater ones are from Koh Tao, and and the rest are from the Full Moon party. Sadly, yes, we attended it. And yes, we had an amazing time. More later, I promise! Also, imagining Dan's face getting kicked off even more fun when you're underwater as it sounds! (Obviously, that part of the blog is all Alex) We love and miss you. Julie & Alex [View Full Entry]

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It’s official. Alex and I are PADI Certified Open Water divers! After a few days of school and 4 supervised dives, we are now able to rent equipment and are deemed educated enough to scuba dive on our own. Although I was initially hesitant, I am so happy we did this! After arriving on Koh Tao last week, we spent some time checking out different shops, asking around and trying to figure out which shop to go with. We settled on Coral Grand Resort, mostly because we met the instructor, Jonas and he made a really good impression. And he promised [View Full Entry]

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