I write from our new bedroom. The sun is beginning to go down, and the evening rays are spilling onto the bed. The light is just above the mists and clouds that are rolling slowly toward me from the base of the mountains that make our view so special. The banana leaves just on the other side of our property are blowing gently in the breeze, and the birds, crickets, and frogs are singing their evening song. Everything is so green, and particularly fresh looking due to the heavy monsoon rain that passed through just before classes got out and we [View Full Entry]

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Our last installment comes after our return to the States, but it is of a land well worth sharing about. Many people don’t even know where Bhutan is, or that it even exists. It is a small country, about the size of Switzerland, surrounded by eastern India on three sides and China on the northern border. It is a newly democratic society, who, given the opportunity to elect anybody to govern the country, elected their already ruling king because they love and respect him so much. Bhutan’s government does not measure Gross Domestic Product like so many other countries; rather they [View Full Entry]

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Get ready for a long one folks...we've been to 3 countries since I last wrote, but I promise I tried to keep it as interesting and concise as possible! There are no pictures this time as they take FOREVER to load, but I promise at the end of all of this, I will make one entire entry pictures for you. Anyway, read on. Cambodia: A country where unbelievable tragedy has occured in the far too recent past. Upon arrival in Phnom Penh, Ryder and I had felt completely overwhelmed by the end of our Vietnam trip and it took us 24 [View Full Entry]

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Vietnam: cutthroat and beautiful. The land of motorcycle accidents, cone hats, infamous pho, rip offs, and incredible scenery. Traveling from our remote Laos border crossing, we passed through the simple pristine villages, with squat thatched homes surrounded by emerald rice paddies. Mountains loomed and the cloudy skies only emphasized the dramatic landscape. We hurtled (and there is no other word for the bus experience in Vietnam) down mountain roads, toward Hanoi and we could tell immediately that we were no longer in the gentle country of Laos. First of all, Vietnam's population is dr [View Full Entry]

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Hey There! Well, it's been a while. Since my last entry, Ryder and I ventured down the Mekong and through parts of Northern Laos and have now landed in Vietnam. It's a bit crazier here than Laos, and since we've only just arrived a couple of days ago, I will be giving stories from here at another time. For now I'll focus on Laos... The float down the Mekong was beautiful,despite being uncomfortable. We were on an old, traditional, wooden boat (with a motor of course) and they just threw in some hard wooden benches for passengers to sit on during [View Full Entry]

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Hello Again! We figured you all needed a break from our stories, so we took a writing hiatus during our time here in Chiang Mai. For those of you who don't know, Chiang Mai is in the north of Thailand and is the second biggest city in the country. Ryder's mom has been living here for the past year and so we decided to come up for a 15 day visit. We had an uneventful overnight train ride from Bangkok up here. Though we had a couple of hours to kill in Bangkok and it happened to be the Chinese New [View Full Entry]

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Greetings from Thailand! Let's see a quick summation of our last few days in India before flying to the Land of Smiles...We had a great time at the teachings of His Holiness the Dalai Lama. He did commentary on a well known text from the 8th century. There were a few people who were staying at our guesthouse who were also attending the teachings; we were quite the eclectic group! There was Tanya from Canada, Alice from Holland, Mose (pronounced Mosh, short for Moses) from Israel, Alister from England, and Ryder and I. Every morning we squished into a rickshaw (for [View Full Entry]

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Alrighty, we're back up and seeing if we can get some photos to load. If you don't already know this, you can actually click on the photo and it will get bigger (I think then too, you can just look at all the photos and their captions like a photo album at that point). But before that, here are some random facts you should know about India: 1. The hundreds of roaming cows and braham bulls in the city streets always have the right of way. 2. The equal-in-number of goats, are cutest when somebody has put a ratty sweater on [View Full Entry]

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Hello again one and all! I write today from Varanasi, after having spent a few days in Bodhgaya. As I see everything going on around me and I contemplate what to include in this blog, I realize more and more that it is impossible to include it all and/or make it cohesive all the time. So this entry may be a bit scattered, but will hopefully encompass the feeling and experience that is India. We were supposed to leave Delhi on a train at about 7 pm, our train actually left around midnight after a very long delay in arriving to [View Full Entry]

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Hello One and All from Delhi, India! This is Naomi writing you with first impressions of India, which are hard to express. It is fascinating, devastatingly poor, dirty, crowded, and beautiful. Ryder and I got into Delhi around 7 at night, completely jet-lagged and worn out from about 35 hours of travel. Luckily Adrian, Ryder's brother, and his friend Rohit were at the airport to pick us up. Haggling with a rickshaw driver was happily averted, and Rohit and Adrian delivered us to Majnu-ka-Tilla, also known as the Tibetan Colony. It's here that the Tibetan refugees arrive from their home [View Full Entry]

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