Happy birthday! Love, brian [View Full Entry]

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Hokay so I just got back to Hanoi and I've tired of looking up quoted that aptly fit the theme of my entry so we'll just get right into it. I'm afraid I won't have the time to climb fansipan because I dawdled too long elsewhere but youknow maybe it's for the best. I technically have time but if something freak occasions such as a delayed train or a shattered tibia I would miss my flight home. And lord knows I don't want that. I can't recall when I last wrote and it's a tad time consuming navigating via the itouch [View Full Entry]

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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 [View Full Entry]

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I think fish is nice, but then I think that rain is wet, so who am I to judge? -Douglas Adams It's been awhile, hasn't it? Well I've been busy since the last post, too many bus rides. I rode two overnight busses from Koh Tao to Chiang Mai with a night stay in Bangkok. I stayed a night in Chiang Mai before meeting the prof. in Chiang Rai to do some trekking. We did a two day one night excursion into the jungles of Northern Thailand. The first day was nice and dry and the hiking wonderful as there was [View Full Entry]

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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 [View Full Entry]

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Babies don't need a vacation but I still see them at the beach. I'll go over to them and say, 'What are you doing here, you've never worked a day in your life!'. -Stephen Wright Back to the real world. I've been putting off this post becaus 1) internet is more expensive down here in the islands of Thailand and 2) I'm on an island in Thailand...why would I spend time in an internet cafe? Anyhow, I'm on Koh Phagnan right now and well be traveling to Ko Tao (hopefully) tomorrow. The island I'm currently residing on hosts the full moon [View Full Entry]

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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 [View Full Entry]

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I would rather wake up in the middle of nowhere than in any city on earth. -Steve McQueen I've returned from my super awesome adventure in Ha Long Bay and Cat Ba island and let me tell you, it is quite a shift from the hustle and bustle of Hanoi. Once we got out on the bay the comparative silence was golden. Aside from the synth karaoke music playing downstairs, there were but a few places I'd rather be. The water these days isn't quite as clear as many of the pictures proclaim but it couldn't have been much worse than [View Full Entry]

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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 [View Full Entry]

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Houses are meant to live in and not to look on -Francis Bacon I must apologize for the lack of posts recently. After I left the hotel it has been a jumbled mess of action and I hadn't found time to locate an internet cafe until now, 10:00 a.m. on Friday. My professor got here two days ago and we hopped a taxi over to our new home. The new place is right near another lake, Ho Truc Bach which is quite larger. Also, it was either this lake or the one right next to it that John McCain found himself [View Full Entry]

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