Happy birthday! Love, brian ... read more

Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes. -Oscar Wilde I was gonna go with "Tobias, you blowhard." But I wanted to sound more elite. At long last I've returned to the travelog. There has been much travelling since I last wrote but I'll start where I left off. After leaving chiang Mai, I went down to Lampang to visit a college buddy of mine who has a job as a teacher. I spent about three days with him and met his students and all that which was pretty interesting. His class is kind of a joke, the kids learn a few phrases of english such as what's your name and how are you but that's about it. But that's not to say he isn't working hard it's just the kids take the class with ... read more

Oh man, I think I cooked myself. - Kramer, in "The Butter Shave" What have I been doing? That's a good question. Nothing. I'm on the last book I brought and have been working on an incredibly golden tan. I've also been hiking around this little island of Ko Tao. This place is the kinda place you imagine when you're in a bad spot and close your eyes and think of a fantasy island. My bungalow is about 20 feet from the shore. It is the bare minimum, just a bed and a fan. The breeze from the ocean takes care of the rest of the ventilation. I eat twice a day at the restaurant near by, mostly phad thai (noodles) and steamed rice with prawn in a nice curry sauce. It is immensely gratifying after ... read more

This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning. -Winston Churchill At long last I've returned to Hanoi, not happily might I add. The past few days in Sapa and its surrounding villages have been unmatched in my days. I've come to find I love train rides but despise depots, at least in Vietnam. Aboard our locomotive in coach nineteen we meet some truly wonderful people, an Indian brother and sister from France who were visiting some relatives in Vietnam. We talked for over two hours about anything ranging from family to travel to literature, even a brief yak on the conditions of football (soccer) in the global scale. The man let me in on the secret of couch surfing, a global ... read more

I remember how my great-uncle Jerry would sit on the porch and whittle all day long. Once he whittled me a toy boat out of a larger toy boat I had. It was almost as good as the first one, except now it had bumpy whittle marks all over it. And no paint, because he had whittled off the paint. -Jack Handy, SNL Welcome back to the travelog everybody. Haven't done anything too interesting in the past day. Professor Pack and I met up with one of his Vietnamese buddies from a summer ago named Duch (at least that's how it sounds). We hung out in the hotel that he works in for an hour or so waiting for him to get off work. Work for him though is simply hanging out in the hotel lobby ... read more