By the Way....

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Welcome back to my travelblog/page of rambling. You might be wondering... why are you here right now? Well, I have been admittedly lax in keeping everyone up to date on what's exactly it is I'm doing right now, so I figured an update was in order.

I'm currently sitting with Rachel in Hong Kong International Airport, in transit to Singapore (they offer free WiFi here... why can't any American airports abstain from charging $8 for an hour of interent?).

This upcoming fall semester, I'll be studying abroad again, this time in Hangzhou, China, a city very close to Shanghai. I decided that since I enjoy traveling so much, I was going to spend some time exploring Southeast Asia before my semester actually starts on Sept. 1. And since I know my sister has been dying to leave the US for quite a while now, I offered to take her along on my travels for some time.

So here's a basic outline of the plan.

We're flying into Singapore, where we'll spend 3 days.

On Aug. 1 we fly to Ho Chi Minh City (better known as Saigon), Vietnam, where we'll be for a couple days. Then we'll head to Phu Quoc Island off of Vietnam for a little tropical paradise. After that it's back to Saigon where we'll begin a couple days of exploring the Mekong Delta in Southern Vietnam.

After a few days, or whenever we decide we need something new, we'll cross the border into Cambodia. We're a little undecided as to exactly what we'll do in Cambodia, but I know we'll be in Phnom Penh (the capital) for a while and then definitely, definitely, definitely will hit up the temples of Angkor. After seeing what many people say is the greatest remaining man-made wonder, Rachel will fly home to start school back in Iowa.

I'll still have about 2 weeks left to explore the region on my own. As of right now, I have absolutely no idea what I'll do until I head to China for school. I'm pretty excited though.

So that's about as detailed as I can get on my extremely limited battery life. In the future I'll probably let Rachel write every once in a while if the mood strikes her.

Real quick, two thoughts about our trip so far:

- The woman sitting by Rachel on the plane was the type of person that causes me emotional distress to see traveling... I think she represents all that is wrong and evil in the western world, and she's demonstrating that to Asia right now. Ugh. Condescending to the extreme, self-absorbed, inconsiderate, she told us all about how much fun we would have seeing all these funny crazy countries, and how despite what we may have heard we didn't have to worry because they were really such nice people. She told us all about how they loved her all because of her blonde hair and pretty much worshiped the air she breathed. But....(lowering her voice to a whisper, supposedly so that they couldn't hear her).... we had to watch out what we ate... they might be feeding us dog. Thankfully, she recently had her wisdom teeth removed and didn't talk much once the plane took off.

- Also... the flight from Chicago to Hong Kong was 16 hours. That's reeeeeaaaaaaally long.

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Comments

[Leah]

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Josh, Glad to read your Blog. You and Rachel seem to be having lots of fun! Your observation are trully classic. I really laughed at your observation of the global citizen you describe at the end of the blog. Enjoy the trip!