Welcome to Lao, where noone cares if you buy their postcards, rent their room, or ride in their tuk-tuk. If you don't find yourself relaxed in Lao then, I might believe you might never. Because this is the land where the beer is local and good, where the sunsets fall perfectly over the peaceful Mekong, where the person selling only wants a fair price and where the person buying only wants the real price, where the locals think the tourists are uninteresting (which we are) and where after several weeks of traveling, Lao was excactly where we needed to be. [View Full Entry]

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Monks that is. Luang Prabang has everything. Temples, Temples on mountains with beautiful sunsets, monks in orange robes, rivers, rivers with beautiful sunsets, waterfalls, monks singing, good food, plenty of bakeries, monks praying, night markets, night markets with tough sellers aged 12, monks in the morning, monks in the evening, monks in the summertime, beautiful rolling hills, the only thing that was missing was more days to spend there. We had already planned for 2 days in Luang Prabang and with the luck of finding an overnight sleeper bus upto china we were able to extend our time anoth [View Full Entry]

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I might have been at my limit had we traveled any longer. I was pretty certain that my clothes had become so stiff with dust and dirt that they would mold to my body and I, in fact, would not be able to take them off, and that my teeth were begining to rot like the 5 year old who shared with us the back of his mother's pick-up truck. I became convinced that my next meals would consist only of the Ritz cheesy crackers that Jaime had stowed away in her purse before the journey began. I was pretty sure [View Full Entry]

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Wikipedia said Viva meant long live, so I thought that was appropriate to summarize our last days in Vietnam. I think both Jaime, Eli, and I were all wishing that we had more time, more days, and more money to saturate vietnam with. But that wasn't to be so, and we had to wisk our way through the last cities like bandits. From Hoi An, the tailor capital of the world, to Hue, the old capital, we had finally achieved the art of not being duped or overcharged or overwhelmed by the number of people who would willingly take our money. [View Full Entry]

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Everything is better, and colder and more terrifying, and more technical and darker, but more colorful, and more interesting, and bascially everything that Sebastian said it would be. Nha Trang, on the coast of Vietnam was where Jaime and I scheduled our Open Water Scuba Diving training. And to not keep you in suspense, we passed, we are both certified and can scuba dive, with guides, just about anywhere in the world. It was four days of being back at school, there were quizes, and textbooks, and tests, and many skills that we had to master before we could walk out [View Full Entry]

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more pictures from vietnam, which is increasingly becoming one of my fav. countries. [View Full Entry]

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Pictures from Eli's camera. More to come once I make room for space on my flash drive. He takes about as many, maybe more, pictures as me.....so there are alot to weed through. [View Full Entry]

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Hanging out in Da Lat, in the South Central Highlands of Vietnam, I have become enchanted with Vietnam. The people are overwhelmingly caring, the town swirls itself up and down along cobblestown streets in and out of the hillside, the coffee is better than starbucks but at a third of the price and the city is what we were looking for in Vietnam. The first day we arrived we were wondering around inquiring about various day trips (eventually I choose a refreshing bikeride through the mountains). After we had collected some research on our options; bike to this beach or that [View Full Entry]

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Having spent four days in Vietnam, meeting up with other teachers from our program in Saigon, we were nicely settling into life in Vietnam. We made our way north on another cramped bus that didn't fit anyone's legs, except maybe all the Asian's. We landed in Da Lat, a town set high up in the mountains of Vietnam, a sort of artist community/college town and a great base for adventure trips. Having spent too many hours either eating icecream, riding in tiny tiny buses, or at street vendors, I was desparate for some physical activity. So the first chance I got [View Full Entry]

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Welcome to the most capitlistic place on the earth. Upon arriving in vietnam, from sleepy friendly, and wonderfully easy Cambodia, Vietnam was a slap in the face that I can still feel. We calculated that out of all of our experiences with the Vietnemese people, 75% were resulting in conflict. Cambodia was full of laid-back, chill english speaking sweathearts. We had a street vendor women who accidently gave us an extra dollar back in Siem Reap. After we figured it out, we could tell that they too realized it , but were not going to say anything. We gave it back [View Full Entry]

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