This morning I grabbed breakfast at a roadside stand and decided to try their 'french toast'. I was more interested in discovering the Lao version of french toast rather than actually wanting french toast. For 10,000 kip ($1.15), the lady served me a heaping pile of real french toast, baguette soaked in egg, cooked in butter. It was good, but I was disappointed there wasn't some Lao twist to french toast. I read in my guidebook about caves around Vang Vieng, so I decided to go check one out. I packed my headlamp, and expected to show up and have a [View Full Entry]

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This morning I grabbed breakfast at the "Mulberry Organic Cafe". The breakfast menu clearly catered to westerners, but the reason I went was to try their mulberry shake and mulberry pancakes. Mulberry items are quite popular in this region of the world (or at least for the tourists) because the bushes are grown to feed the silkworms. Both the shake and the pancake were excellent. I then met up with Adam, my climbing guide, and the 'other guy' whom he said was of the same climbing level of me. Well, 'the guy' was a chunky dutch girl who was on her [View Full Entry]

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This morning I dined on fresh pastries around town, and then headed off to the local bus station to grab a bus to Vang Vieng. When I got to the bus station, I was approached by a man who asked where I was going. I told him that I was headed to Vang Vieng, but that I was alright finding the bus on my own, and didn't need his help. He helped me anyways, and it's a good thing he was there because I would have had some difficulty finding the bus. I expected him to ask for a tip, but [View Full Entry]

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I spent the majority of this morning in Vientiane checking out all of the boutique-y shops selling beautiful silk weavings and the patisseries serving Lao coffee and fresh croissants. Wonderful. In the early afternoon I explored the main market. There were several stands with jewelers making items out of gold right before your eyes. Very cool. I watched them melt down chunks of gold and pour them into moulds, and set stones in rings. None of the pieces were very attractive though, at least in my opinion. What was so fascinating was how primitive the jewelry-making tools were. My school has [View Full Entry]

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Well today was a very 'Merritt' day of traveling. Ryan and I got breakfast at a little cafe that employs underprivileged children and trains them for the hospitality industry. I have been trying very hard to eat just Vietnamese food while in Vietnam, but I'm starting to realize that it's much more enjoyable to eat what you WANT. This cafe was also a bakery, so I ordered a carrot muffin. They couldn't heat it up because the electricity had gone out. What? I don't know if it was just that area of the city, or if it was the entire city, [View Full Entry]

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We left the sex motel early the next morning with the hope of having a solid day in Saigon. As we approached the city the traffic picked up a LOT, and I was ready to return my bike. However, about 20 kilometers outside of the city Ryan blew his back tire, again. Luckily we were stopped at a stoplight, and he felt the air coming out of his tire....or else that could have been bad news. Again, there was a motorbike repair shop only 50 meters away, only this time they took 5 minutes to replace the tube. They charged Ryan [View Full Entry]

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This morning (or should I say last night?) I awoke at 4:00 am to the sound of somebody chopping. The host's wife was already awake (it was still pitch dark) chopping vegetables. Wow that's early. I went back to sleep, and Ryan and I woke up at 6:30, ready to get back on the road. Our host tried to convince us to at least join him for coffee, but we knew if we didn't right then we wouldn't ever get away, so we headed off. He charged us 200,000 dong for the tire replacement (about $13), and we tipped him 100,000 [View Full Entry]

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Well, this morning we explored the town of Dalat. Ryan really liked it. I thought it was cute...but wasn't blown away by the place. It is by far the cleanest town we have been in, and that's because it's a resort town. This is where all of the Vietnamese honeymooners come - 800,000 Vietnamese tourists a year. There is a beautiful lake with swan pedal boats, and some nice restaurants on the waterfront. Other than that though, I didn't find it that wonderful. Maybe I would see it differently if I were there with a girl, but there just didn't seem [View Full Entry]

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This morning we awoke to find our bikes where we had left them the previous night. Phew! As we hopped on our bikes to leave, a younger guy working at the motel laughed and said to us "no girl?". I guess no one spends the whole night at a sex motel without a girl. We stopped at a roadside stand for a breakfast of Pho, and then headed off toward Cat Tien National Park. The national park is on the way to Dalat, and home to one of the rarest rhinos in the world (only 7 left!), so we decided to [View Full Entry]

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This morning Ryan and I bummed around the city some more, and then I dragged him off to 'the best Pho house in Saigon' - one of the 1,000 places to see before you die. Notice a theme? Well, we didn't realize the pho house was so far away, and the taxi ride ended up costing a whopping $4 to get there. The Pho was good...I guess. I don't think I'm a huge fan of pho. I like bold flavors, and the flavors of pho are very light and subtle. They served us large bowls of broth and noodles with a [View Full Entry]

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