Hi everyone! I made it to the capital of Lao PDR now, Vientiane. This place is very relaxing for a capital city! The pace of life is very slow, there is never any such thing as a traffic jam. People are friendly, the city is very small so you can walk to wherever you want to go. A very quant French Colonial Gem! There is one thing I notice here there are many police officers, at every corner, who like to pull over foreigners! I rented a motorbike with a Japanese guy and twice we are pulled over for minor infractions [View Full Entry]

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Good morning all! I am now in what is called Ho Chi Minh City, formerly known as Saigon. (Both are still used today) When we arrived, we took the airport bus which only cost 3,000 Dong! And the traffic was a bit of a shocker! There are motorbikes everywhere! And people just go where they wish to go, not many traffic lights. It is a system that just works. Some person told me that in HCM City there are 8 million people with 5 million motor bikes! The horn on the bus also makes really weird honk. If the driver presses [View Full Entry]

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Hi everyone from Bangkok! What a nice change in plans to be here instead of the Philippines. The Philippines had predicted thundershowers for the week we planned to go, and we were having trouble booking tickets, plus it was apparently typhoon season, so we decided to skip that and go to Macau and Bangkok instead before Vietnam. Macau was very interesting with the fusion between Portugese influence and Chinese influence. It made for great architecture and history! Not to mention all the casino's were nice, with an indoors Venice at the Venetian! In Bangkok we have had a chance to meet [View Full Entry]

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Hi everyone! It's been quite a while since I last posted. I was going to wait until I could upload some pictures as well because I haven't had a USB card reader / fast internet for a while, but it looks like this will have to wait even a little longer. The internet at this cafe is not very fast. We're in Hong Kong right now and the weather is typical what we've had every day it seems, rain! The city is still really amazing however, you really get the sense that this is a world city with so many ethnics [View Full Entry]

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Arrived in Shanghai from Zhengzhou on the sleeper train. This time the train ride was much more pleasant. I had a middle bunk instead of top and the air conditioning unit was on the entire trip! This time it was not as loud either and there was an Indian gentleman who spoke English to talk to. We arrived in Shanghai very early and lucky the hostel had early checkin. We came from Zhengzhou which was a really pretty place and very interesting. For our entire time there we did not encounter any other tourists (read white people) and no one spoke [View Full Entry]

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The past couple days have been a whirlwind! I went from Hiroshima to Nagasaki. The weather wasn't great here but I met the same guy in Hiroshima and we toured around. The next morning it was raining and we went to an Onsen (a traditional Japanese bath) on an island nearby but there were not many people there. I wanted to go to the baseball game in Fukuoka when I got back there, but I didn't realize it was a Saturday and they played the game at 1pm! I'll have to come back to Japan to watch a baseball game at [View Full Entry]

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So far now I have made it to the Hiroshima city, it is amazing to see the destruction that the A-Bomb has created and how the city has rebuilt and dedicated to peace now! I don't have much time so quickly, I put some pictures up on http://www.flickr.com/mikebos84, but didn't have time to put captions before the internet time ran out. It will run out again soon so take care! [View Full Entry]

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So the trip is off to a good start. The airplane sat on the tarmac in Ottawa for 1.5 hours while the crew sorted out a "baggage problem." Unfortunately, this caused me to miss the connection in Detriot to Tokyo, and there were no other flights on other airlines that would get me there today. So my best option was to take the free hotel and dinner. All drinks on the flight as a result were gratis! which was the good part of the flight. I thought I would make the most of my night in Detroit but the Pistons, Red [View Full Entry]

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Hi everyone, here is my first post in my travel blog of my trip to Asia/Europe 2008. I hope to post items here as I go along as well as some pictures. I'm not sure how much access I will have to internet so it might not be regular but it should keep people up to date on how things are going! [View Full Entry]

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