Blogs from Asia - page 14611

It's been an interesting past five months. I've learned to like myself more... I've learned to like dentistry! Cockroaches and Rats don't scare me anymore. Don't get me wrong, I am not going to jump at the chance to sleep with one in my bed, but I don't jump as high. I have learned to communicate without speaking... and understand someone even though their words are foreign to me. As a 'nguoi nuoc noi' (foreign person) who stands out because of her curly hair, I've even learned to love the people who look at me strangely, and smile back.. because I'm to terms with the fact that I'm as curious looking to them as their beliefs and customs are to me. If I can gawk and stare, they can gawk and stare. Sound fair to you? ... read more

Last Sunday, Eve and I ventured out of Fukushima to the Pacific coast for a little relaxation on the beach. We made the 90 minutes trip via train to a small town called Shinchi, Northeast of Fukushima. According the the "helpful" Fukushima prefecture (province) information website, we were informed that SHinchi had a tourist beach for bathing, with restaurants, shops, and boat rentals. What it failed ot mention was exactly how to get ther eonce we had arrived in SHinchi. As the train pulled up to the Shinchi station, we were basically in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by rice paddies and mountains. Using our best reasoning, we walked along the road until we came to the direction that the water seemed to be in- ie. when we looked east, there weren't any mountains, so therefore, ... read more

Sorry no pictures this time. I guess I was too busy or simply forgot to bring my camera, and you'll find this blog to be basically a list of the things we did during these days. Not too exciting, but possibly interesting to those of you enjoy hearing lots of simple details. On Sunday, we tried to get out for a short while to give the kids some exercise outside of the house. We took the subway (first time for the kids), and walked a short while until we gave up and took a taxi the rest of the way to the park (I'll have to get the name from my sister-in-law). Devinn is a heck of a guy when it comes to walking places. When I say this, I mean he is not the easiest ... read more

Hello Everybody, Roy here! Natalie's 'fingers of fire' have been given the day off from typing so in place my plodding digits are here to get a bit of exercise and bring to you all the latest instalment of 'Roy and Natalie's Holiday Diary'. We left Mui Ne (about a week ago) with heavy hearts as up until then it was by far the nicest beach resort we have visited since starting our trip. The beaches there are spotless and the hawkers are few and far between. Just before we left however, on the last day before our bus North we hired a couple of motos and visited some of the local sights. Mui Ne is home to vast red sand dunes- some real monsters. We went to see the ones closest to our hotel and ... read more

Im just at Singapore airport waiting for my connecting flight to Amsterdam. My flight was good, was sitting next to an asian couple. Food was nice, except for a few agonising hours before dinner i was deliberating over whether to get the chicken with potatos and cream herb sauce or red thai beef curry with rice. Both had equal appeal to me, and i tried to spy on the people sitting behind me to see what the food looked like. Eventually I asked the hostess to suprise me and i got the beef curry. I was looking forward to the potatos though. Thats ok... more flights to come... We all got ice blocks and the asian man and I had a laugh when we went to take a bite and our lips stuck to the ice... ... read more