Mark Lewin
"Happiness that is genuinely satisfying is accompanied by the fullest exercise of our faculties and the fullest realization of the world in which we live."Lt Col Lewin
Travel Blog Posts
May 6th 2005
Please review my pictures and the captions. I had many personal thoughts during my time on Koh Phi Phi. They are written in a journal, but not published on this site. The experience is one that I will never forget. I sought happiness on this trip and found it in a variety of ways. From working with strangers who came to this island from all around the world for the same reason I had, to helping a local family enjoy their life in a way that it might have been before they lost everything. Perhaps I will publish these experiences in the future, but for now they will remain personal and leave you with a quote. "Happiness that is genuinely satisfying is accompanied by the fullest exercise of our faculties and the fullest realization of the ... read more
May 3rd 2005
I spent several days in Pattaya with my cousin John. It was a surreal place and one where you can find anything you want. It made Vegas look tame, but at the same time, it was a very friendly atmosphere. Perhaps that was created by the girls running from the bars and begging you to hang out with them. Unfortunately, it was loaded with tourists who were usually 50+ years old looking to spend their retirement money on one or many of the beautiful girls who could be the same age as their granddaughters. Perhaps just looking for some of that elusive thing called happiness. The clubs here varied greatly. What you found on one street, or Soi as it's called, could have been completely different from what was on the next street over. One could ... read more
May 1st 2005
The last I left off, I was at the border between Cambodia and Thailand. We were next to a bus depot that contained several large luxurious busses as well as some old, covered pickup trucks with long wooden benches lining each side. Nobody in the group knew whether our prayers would be answered with passage onto the newer bus or if we were going to spend the next 6 hours to Bangkok in the back of a pickup truck. I should mention here that what was advertised on the tickets bought in Cambodia was a big tour bus, not the minivan from hell or a covered pickup truck. Needless to say, when we were ushered into the back of the pickup truck our hopes for getting some sleep and having a relaxing trip into Bangkok quickly ... read more
April 30th 2005
Operation: Rolling Thunder Our story picks up with Col. Lewin (yes, he's been promoted) scaling the walls of temples built by ancient civilizations. He was close to completing his mission to terminate a colonel in the US Army. Col. Kurtz had been AWOL for some time and the Army couldn't afford him out there any longer. Lewin thought to himself, "How many people had I killed before? But this time it was an American and an officer. That wasn't supposed to make any difference to me, but it did. Shit... charging a man with murder in this place was like handing out speeding tickets in the Indy 500. I took the mission. What the hell else was I gonna do?" Finally, Lewin was able to find a photojournalist that spoke in riddles. He would lead Lewin ... read more
April 27th 2005
Operation Rosa Parks: From the land of a thousand ao dai, to the land of a thousand Buddhas. The last we heard of our hero, he was poised for another excruciatingly long trip up country. He had just spent a depressing day witnessing the crimes and horror imposed by a regime who brutally slaughtered 30% of the country's population in order to erase any existance of capitalism and bring communism to Cambodia under Pol Pot. Now he was ready to move on and see the wonders of ancient civilizations. However, there was a bit more uncertainty surrounding this next adventure as not only the mode of transportation would be in question, but also the conditions of the roads that would lead him there. In retrospect, this new adventure into the unknown would be luxurious compared to ... read more
April 25th 2005
"I was going to the worst place in the world and I didn't even know it yet. He was close. He was real close. I couldn't see him yet, but I could feel him. As if the boat were being sucked up the river and the water was flowing back into the jungle. Whatever was going to happen, it wasn't going to be the way they call it back in Nha Trang." Ok, I'm not losing my mind or heavy into opium at the time of this writing. I'm only reciting quotes from a movie. If you don't know this movie, I am sorrowful for you but will give you a hint...it's from Apocolypse Now. So, after taking 5 different boats and 3 different busses over two days, my journey up the Mekong River and crossing ... read more
April 13th 2005
Operation Flying Hmong A short afternoon in Hanoi was all that I had before I was off to experience my first Vietnamese train ride. This ride would be on the overnighter that would dump me just short of the Chinese border in a border town called Lao Cai, which lay 60km downhill from Sapa. The funny thing is, the distance from Hanoi to Lau Cai is almost 300km, which is just a few kilometers more than the distance from San Diego to Los Angeles. However, Amtrak gets me there in 3 hours while the Soviet Express, as I’ve termed this decrepit hunk of steel and iron, got me there in just under 13 hours! Fast is not an adjective one would ever attempt to use when describing this monstrosity. At the train station in Hanoi, a ... read more
April 7th 2005
Ha - "descending" Long - "dragon" Little did the Vietnamese know that in just two short days the name of their beloved jewel and soon to be biggest tourist attraction would be renamed. And so Operation Descending Stella begins... I awoke in a haze of darkness and unusual silence. The haze because of a night pushing my luck with Hanoi's famous, "bia hoi" (draft beer), the darkness because the two windows in my $6 per night room faced a building that was no more than 18 inches from my hotel, and the unusual silence because there were no high pitched motorbike horns blaring as they consistently do from 6am to 1am every day. After checking the time, 5:40am, I had a look outside to find an interesting variety of life. The first thing I noticed was ... read more
April 5th 2005
It's all coming back to me now.... Maybe it's the constant horn honking, maybe the lawlessness they exhibit behind the wheel or handlebars of their motorbikes, perhaps it was the feeling of being marked in the crosshairs of street vendors as their next meal ticket that has made me realize where I am today. Hanoi - April 5th, 2005 Landing in the belly of the red dragon (as I will refer to Hanoi, the capital city of Vietnam) from now on, was as smooth as can be. After a rather comfortable 17 hour flight from LAX to Hong Kong, playing video chess and watching some of the latest movies, I had another 1 hour flight into the dragon's belly before the start to my latest adventure. The taxi ride from the airport was about 40 minutes ... read more
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