Unemployed. Winter. Gas money, a car and a collection of friends and family all within a day’s drive of each other. Could it be any more perfect? Feb 3 Pulled out at 9 AM. Noah drove the first leg up I-75 so he could get used to using the GPS, which quite frankly, is a wonderful toy. Navigation units are like e-mail. You could get through your entire life without one and not know the difference until you’ve had a dose after which you’ll never be able to get the monkey off your back. We exited the Interstate at Achula just [View Full Entry]

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We’ve been back home for three months. When I started this Blog I committed myself to finishing every chapter. Inevitably on these trips the last two weeks are a mental frenzy of preparing ourselves for the slog back and the mountain of unread mail that will be waiting. This particular fortnight was made even busier by the arrival of Jan and Neil who would be spending the last two weeks with us. I started this entry a month ago and then abandoned it. I left the laptop on my desk as a nagging reminder of my duties to myself if not [View Full Entry]

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We left chilly Luang Probang via another mini-bus at 9 AM. Before we departed the guesthouse night guard (All guesthouses in SE Asia have night guards. These are men that work second jobs consisting of sleeping in the lobby all night in a mosquito net covered sleeping bag. Ostensibly they are supposed to let you in and out of the guesthouse after normal business hours. In reality you will already be provided with a key to the front door and you couldn’t wake the guy if you wanted to. He wanted us to pay our room bill, which we had already [View Full Entry]

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Luang Prabang is located about 200 kilometers North of Vang Vieng. Luang (hereafter referred to simply as LP) is the number one tourist destination in Laos. It’s an easy stopover for upper end tour groups given its international airport. Its Mekong River dock provides the city with a steady stream of backpackers arriving from Thailand via the infamous two-day slow boat. LP was declared a historic preservation zone by UNESCO in 1995 and was the seat of the Laotian royal family until 1977 when the newly self-installed Communist government banished the Royals to a dank cave in Houa Phan Province where [View Full Entry]

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We spent the night in Nong Khai at the Sawadee Guesthouse. A room with TV and A/C ran 400 Baht. We talked with a Brit who was motorcycling his way from Britain to Indonesia. Nice guy who told us that the strangest place he had been through was Afghanistan. We couldn't imagine anyone doing that area of the world solo but then again he was a big guy. The next morning we took a Tuk Tuk to the Thailand Laos Friendship Bridge. The bridge was financed by Australia and completed in 1994. The Tuk cost us 80 Baht. We shared it [View Full Entry]

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Day four at the '2001 Room For Rent and Dressmaker Hotel' and the fourth quintet of Thais to enter the room next to ours in as many days pulled up stakes early this morning. The rooms are small with a margin of less than a foot around the double beds in which to walk so I marveled at their nocturnal contortionism. Last night’s occupants had some monster electronic night light at work which pulsed in blues and reds. Through their thin curtains I got the impression that a traffic cop with police car was inside, working up an accident report. Taking [View Full Entry]

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We flew back to Saigon on Christmas morning. Our hotel hostess had my regular breakfast fare of banana pancakes ready before we left by taxi. We had arranged the cab with our hotel the day before. Most hotels offer taxi service as part of the package. The taxi usually is a regular car driven by the close relative of the hotel owner. They are usually timely and a bit cheaper than the commercial rate. At the Hue hotel we breezed through check-in and grabbed a coffee at a café across the parking lot from the airport. Coffee consisted of a shot [View Full Entry]

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My cousin was killed in Vietnam. He was 21 years old when he died in the early morning hours of July 14th, 1970 at a place called Hill 805. His name was Paul Guimond. Paul was four years older than I. He was the son of my Dad’s sister Jerry. I didn’t know him very well. He was one of the ‘older’ kids I played with at the annual summer gatherings my Aunt Kay threw at her big place in a Chicago suburb. I remember that there was a cornfield behind her yard that we utilized for games of hide and [View Full Entry]

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The bus we took to Hue is what is known as a VIP Sleeper Bus. It’s a double-decker with fully reclining seats equipped with little woolen blankets and airline sized pillows. We caught the bus outside of Hoa’s place on the main northbound road. The driver made us take our shoes off before we boarded. Inside it felt like you had walked in on a teen slumber party. This particular bus had begun its journey in Nha Trang and was probably full when it left. The air was heavy with seratonin laced sleep breath. A quintet of French backpackers had turned [View Full Entry]

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After a solid eight days in Saigon we decided that it was time to make our way north. We booked an overnight train to Nha Trang, one of Vietnam’s premier beach resorts. Our train left at 11 PM. We reserved a soft sleeper with the hotel’s travel agent. The difference between a ‘soft’ and a ‘hard’ sleeper is that there are only 4 berths in a soft sleeper versus 6 in the hard. In addition the soft has a thicker mattress hence the use of the term ‘soft’. We arrived at the train station at 10 PM. Our taxi had a [View Full Entry]

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