Six weeks in Southeast Asia.....

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Que pasa amigos...

For those of you who I may not have kept in the best of touch with (which unfortunately is a lot of you), I am currently backpacking through Southeastern Asia for the next 6 weeks with Brian Mayfield, or Lunchbox as most like to call him - 5 meals and 20 beers a day and you will understand the nickname, haha. So here begins my journey through Asia.....

After days of moving/packing/cleaning/drinking and definitely not sleeping in Steamboat, we flew from Denver to Minneapolis to Tokyo on Wednesday the 18th, and after being completely robbed of a Wednesday night (we flew over the North Pole where the sun clearly never sets), landed in a Tokyo sunset on Thursday evening an hour late and with 22 minutes to catch our next flight..... Surprisingly enough, we made the flight, as did our luggage - something that would never in a million years happen back in the States. Airports over here are soooooo much more efficient. So after who knows how many Tylenol PMs and days/hours of traveling, we finally made it to Singapore around 2am Friday morning.

I had always heard that Singapore is regarded as some what of a "utopia" in Southeast Asia, and let me tell you, it definitely is... minus the sweltering heat and humidity due to its location 3 degrees from the equator. But the city itself is a class act. Because of insanely harsh penalties imposed by Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore's first Prime Minister, it is amongst the cleanest, safest and most economically strong cities in the world. I was quite impressed. You never see trash laying around, people are very friendly and I'm not sure what the crime rate is, but I'm guessing it's close to non-existent. While there, we wandered around Chinatown, the riverfront, Little India and Orchard Road (super chic shopping/business district) in a state of jet-lagged/heat induced delerium. But the best part of all was the Singapore Zoo - by far the coolest zoo I've ever been too, and I am willing to bet one of the coolest in the world. I mean, they even have polar bears - in fact, the zoo is home to the first polar bear ever to be born in a tropical climate. Very cool. Definitely visit Singapore if you get the chance - the one downfall however is that it is a pretty expensive destination considering that most of Southeast Asia is very cheap.

After Singapore, we took a long train ride up through Malaysia and are currently in Kuala Lumpur (the capital). The train was bumpy and long, but took us through some gorgeous Malaysian rainforests where royal palms were never-ending. Despite the pristine beaty, we were unfortunately witness to some of the deforestation that is quickly killing the world and making Southeast Asia much warmer than it needs to be. No bueno. Upon arriving in KL, we found our way to this pretty chill hostel in Chinatown, the Red Dragon. Best part about the hostel so far is the cold shower - although, I do have to say that I've never actually taken a cold shower and wished that it were about 20 degrees colder - seriously, this heat is unreal, or maybe just way to real at that. Although I haven't seen much of the city, I can tell it's going to be a lot of fun - it brings back memories of the market insanity I encountered in Morocco a few years ago - never a dull moment. Tonight we ate the best Chinese food I've ever had for about 5 bucks at this place on the street, full of locals. So that's about all I have for now. I'll get back to you with some hopefully crazy stories in a few days since everything has been pretty chill up until now. Hasta luego.

Erin

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Comments

[Lara]

WOW
Holy Crap Erin, I am so jealous. You hafta do a photo album when you get back!

[tom]

It's still snowing here
Sounds pretty hot- i guess that's expected in a concrete jungle 3 degrees from the equator. Yeager and I took a nice long hike up mad creek trail monday and got rained and snowed on the whole four hours- made for an interesting fungal experience neither of us had had before.