Finally home in NYC and settling in to classes. Student life is hectic, but good. Steph found a great job in the Fine Jewelery buying office at Macy’s. Really can’t complain about anything. In case any of you are interested in seeing the complete set of pictures from our Pan-Asian adventure, you can visit online at http://picasaweb.google.com/redmocha. There are nearly 3,000 pictures available, so pace yourself. If you don’t have the fortitude (or interest) to sit through the entire spread, then we’d suggest you jus [View Full Entry]

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After a whirlwind trip spanning two months and eight countries, our journey is finally coming to an end. Fortunately, the past week on the beach in Bali has been a perfect way to finish. We'll be arriving at our new student-housing home in NYC around mid-day today (8/13) after spending about 25 hours in the air -- since we'll gain a full day due to the International Date Line changeover. We'll officially have travelled around the world. Sweet! Naturally, things will be pretty hectic with school starting in a week and Steph looking for a new job, but we're hoping to [View Full Entry]

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Five nights in Bangkok. The world was our oyster. The bars were temples, but the pearls weren't free. We found a God in every golden cloister, although we often couldn't tell whether the God was a 'he' or 'she'.... (Apologies to Murry Head for mucking up the lyrics to 'One Night in Bangkok') This blog is going to be infinitely short. We had a great time in Bangkok and on our trek among the hill tribes around Chiang Mai, but there's fun to be had in Bali so we hope that the following pictures will make up for our lack of [View Full Entry]

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Sadly, our time in China is coming to an end. The past three weeks have been an amazing blend of urban/rural Chinese life and from what we've seen and heard from others, China wouldn't be a bad place to live. At the very least, we've got a list of cities to visit the next time we're in the area. A Different Type of Government The last posting seemed to come across a bit too-harshly on the China's political system and the rapid urbanization of it's cities. After seeing clean, world-class cities built from nothing in less than a decade, it seemed [View Full Entry]

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Ah.... China. If we hadn't read over and over again about the horrors that the colonial period and the early years of communist rule had wrought on China's historical artifacts, we might have thought that some of the amazing treasures we've been seeing over the past couple of weeks were actually somewhat "original". Unfortunately, though, centuries of wars, edicts from emperors and (most destructively) Mao's Cultural Revolution sent much of China's cultural history into the garbage bin. To make up for it, it seems that the entire country is now dead-set on reconstructing anything that remains [View Full Entry]

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We've finally arrived in Beijing after a Trans-Siberian train journey spanning 5,936 miles, fifteen distinct ecosystems, eight nights, four segments, three countries and two excruciating customs/visa checkpoints. Although we missed the fireworks in the states, we did spend the 4th of July with an American family that has been visiting Mongolia for the past three weeks. We can't fault their choice of location. Mongolia is a ger-and place to visit, but we'll get to that later.... Trans-Siberian Observations The Trans-Siberian began in Moscow as a super-comfortable, air-condit [View Full Entry]

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Moscow The first two legs of our journey have been fantastic. To prepare you for a longish entry, we've assembled some key Russian words to help you if you're ever in Moscow. Try to sound out the proper pronunciation for each of the following words using the link we sent in the previous post: Russian spelling: (1) Роял (2) Стоп (3) интернет English pronunciation (1) Royale. T [View Full Entry]

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Although the sights, sounds and smells in St. Petersburg have been fantastic, we've found the most pleasure in the mundane transliterations of Russian words/signs. For example, take a look at the word 'pectopah'. In Russian, this is pronounced almost exactly as it is in English as 'restauran', since the 'p' is pronounced as an 'r', the 'c' is pronounced as an 's', and the 'h' is an 'n'. It's just spelled differently. In St. Petersburg, every corner has a pectopah and there is beer-selling bap on every corner (bap=bar, since the 'p' is an 'r'), so we've had great fun mangling [View Full Entry]

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Welcome. If you're here, it probably means that we've said goodbye to you in person. Months from now, you will be missed. But not just yet. Right now we're too excited to sleep. As you probably know, Stephanie and Del are headed on a full round-the-world adventure over the next two-plus months spanning three continents and five countries: San Francisco (USA) - St. Petersburg/Moscow/Irkutsk (Russia) - Ulan Baatar (Mongolia) - Beijing/Xi'an/Shanghai/Guilin (China) - Bangkok/Chiang Mai (Thailand) - Bali (Indonesia) and then back to our new home in New York City, USA.[img=http://www.stephandel [View Full Entry]

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