48 hours of real travelin’.  40 minutes on the back of a truck.  We get the boat, see the fans and cushy mattresses and think it looks sweet.  We then find out we are sentenced down below, to sleeping on grass mats, sans fan, 4 foot overhead clearance.  Trying to sleep was a waste of time so I sat up on the bow half the night watching the stars, small rocky islands and bright lights of the squid fishing fleet.  We arrived at the docks of Surat Thani in the morning, and were gently-form fittingly packed into tuk-tuks which drove us thru town to a tourist office.  From there we were picked up by a minivan and driven a few hours to the Malaysian boarder.  We crossed the boarder, loaded onto a bus, and road the next day through Malaysia to Singapore (the bus was actually very nice, air conditioned, and we watched I Am Legend dubbed in Malaysian(It was better).  We arrived in Singapore as the bars closed, and fought for an expensive taxi to the airport.  Our 150 dollar flight somehow turned to 300 each, and another 12 hours of sleeping in the airport. We thought we were in sheitesville, BUT THEN WE DISCOVERED SINGAPORE AIRPORT!

• free computers and internet at every turn.
• two free 24 hour movie theaters
• free swimming pool (also 24 hour)
• TV lounges with tons of channels
• free coffee
• free arcades and on-line game rooms
• free, free, free!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Airport empolyees actually greeted us and asked how they could improve the airport. The only thing I could think of was free beer and Mexican food.  The 12 hours melted away, and we caught our flight to Indonesia. 

We got into Bali late, haggled the taxi drivers for a bit less then an hour, and finally got a decent price for the 16 km trip to Sanur.  Getting in late is a gamble, it means either a buyers or renters market.  That night went to the renters, and we paid dearly for our mold crusted walls.  We found much happier confines the next day at Julia 2, and began the final lap of our travels.  Indonesia proved the perfect choice…

Again, we were tavilin’

D and B

after an all night bus ride and an hour and a half on a boat, we finally made it to koh tao.  koh tao is an island about 70km off the eastern coast of thailand in the gulf.  we were turned on to koh tao over all the other islands after my good pal jason visited it last november and came back raving.  like i said in my previous post, we owe jason a huge ‘thank you’ for scouting out this location prior to going.  southern thailand is full of so many different islands on both the east and west coast so it’s easy to get bad information.  trust me when i say that koh tao could never be a let down (unless of course you’re looking to get drunk at the full moon party, fall down, and hurt yourself.  then you should stay far away and leave koh tao alone).  on our boat ride to the island drew and i saw a bunch of flying fish.  this was my first time seeing them and definitely wasn’t the last. 

like every other place we’ve visited, we spent no time getting right down to it, figuring out what’s good and where to go.  we knew we wanted to stay on the side of the island that jason suggested so we headed there and immediately found a dive resort that we thought suited us.  This was the first time too, that the cold shower only guesthouses were more of a benefit then not…  It was HOT… 

Up until this point i didn’t think there was a chance in hell that i’d go scuba diving with drew because i’m so scared of the ocean, however on the ride to koh tao something changed in me and i grew some guts. 

we spent the next four days, 8 to 9 hours a day getting our open water scuba diving certification from the Buddha View Dive Resort in Chalok Baan Kao Bay.  there were two other people in our class, brian and esmee.  brian is from england and esmee from ireland and they had been friends since birth so naturally they acted more like brother and sister than anything.  our dive master was a guy named Jesper (pronounced Yespa) from Denmark.  he had bright red hair, blue eyes, and a very dry, clever sense of humor.  we loved him!  our first day centered around the classroom and the swimming pool, while our 2nd, 3rd, and 4th days were in the ocean.  oh! i forgot to mention, drew was certified years ago in Belize but apparently his training was pretty crappy and he didn’t feel he knew what he should, so he did it again.  he also had a different certification, while the one we got in koh tao is a PADI certification which is now the most widely recognized and some say best!  scuba diving is so much more complicated than i ever would’ve imagined.  it’s not hard, there’s just a lot to it.  with a little bit of practice though and some repitition you get it pretty quick. 

esmee and brian have a good friend named mick (a true old salty brit) that’s living in koh tao becoming a dive master.  he buddied up on our course to get some more dives under his belt and watch jesper as an instructor.  mick is renting out this crazy mountain bungalow for the duration of his stay.  when i say ‘renting out a bungalow’ i mean, he is renting the whole place and managing it with his ladyfriend.  the view is absolutely spectactular from there! the place looks like a giant treefort that lover looks mountains and ocean.  doesn’t get much better than that! 

after we were officially open water divers we spent the rest of our time cruising the island on our motorbike.  every evening we set up shop at this bar that sits right on the beach.  it’s got a deck with bean bags and low tables, a bar, and a killer buffet so we’d go and relax there.  the bar is actually associated with buddha view so we managed to see a lot of familiar faces there, which is always comforting as well.  just thinking about that buffet, i really miss the potatoes smothered in cheese and sour creme they had. oh man…

one of our last days there we managed to rent some snorkel gear and go to shark bay.  a few days before we went to this bar that overlooks shark bay and from the bar you can sit there and actually see the sharks swimming around.  they don’t come in close to shore but the whole bay is so shallow they’re still in only knee deep water.  this freaked me out.  again though, i wanted to be brave and try snorkeling there.  we got into the water, swam out a bit, and i immediately freaked out.  i stood up and told drew i couldn’t do it and started walking back to shore practically in tears.  had i not gone to that bar to actually see the sharks, i think i would’ve gone in but once i knew they were there and in really shallow waters, i spazzed.  drew did the snorkel by himself (sorry!) and i laid on shore waiting for him.  he came back and said that he was scared too but held it in because he knew i was far worse than him.  he was swimming around and hadn’t seen anything when a shark came bolting past (4 or 5 feet) him from behind!!  i know had i been in the water my heart would’ve stopped at that very moment.  he kept going though and eventually had five reef sharks swimming around with him!  the sharks are black fin reef sharks that wouldn’t harm anyone but those beedy eyes and sleek bodies are enough to keep me out of those waters.

after 10 luxurious days on koh tao we decided it was time to move on and head south to bali.  it was a bit of a struggle getting us to figure out how we were going to get there because at this point we’d started to give up a little and slow down.  we were fighting ourselves to get all the logistics squared away because our brains were so tired of doing the math.  i gotta say though, we had faith that bali would be far worth the energy…

This is what we heard from almost every traveller we’d met (except for two german girls we met in vietnam who said they loved bangkok!).  we fully expected to arrive there, stay one night, and move on.  our bus from vientiane, laos arrived in bangkok at 5 a.m., which easily could’ve been mistaken for 11 p.m. because of how full the streets and cafes were with people still awake from the previous night.  i gotta say, i haven’t ever seen that much activity in NYC at that time of day.  i’d give bangkok the title ‘the city that never sleeps’ in a heart beat. 

we decided to stay in a neighborhood just east of famous koh san road.  it seems as if everyone thought it was a good idea to stay there because one guesthouse after the other was sold out.  sold out. ugh.  at 5 a.m. the last thing you want to hear is ’sold out’.  we finally found a guesthouse for way too much money but with a/c and took it.  the great thing about it though was that we checked in around 5:30 a.m. on saturday morning and didn’t have to check out until noon on sunday making it seem as if we got two nights instead of just one.  we slept until noon on saturday and woke up to the hottest place we’d been yet.  we spent the day feeling alittle off kilter from the crazy night bus ride, eating traditional thai food, and getting a feel for the city and our neighborhood.  since it was pretty unanimous that bangkok sucked we didn’t do any previous investigating as far as what to see and do there so we felt as if we were starting from scratch.  the one thing we did know about bangkok though was that if you see a hot woman, the chances are she’s a man.  we were intrigued by this and knew we wanted to explore the part of town that’s full of cheap street vendors and the infamous ’naughty shows’. 

the street vendors had nothing but junk and the ’shows’ were less than savory.  just walking around you could peek into the venues where girls were dressed in bikinis standing on a stage where they looked like zombies.  none of the girls we saw employed to perform did anything but stand there and their tricks were anything but that.  if anything it was really sad because we didn’t see a single girl that didn’t have stretch marks draped across her belly from having babies.  we wouldn’t suggest anyone even bothers with this part of bangkok.

we must say though, the rest of bangkok was absolutely stunning.  all of the rumors we’d heard about tuk tuk drivers being pushy, the streets being dirty, and the city being a quick stop over were so wrong.  drew made friends with a tuk tuk driver named Jai, who quickly became our tour guide for the town.  one night he took us on a night ride through the city and even got us snuck into one of the temples through the back door after paying off the security guards. it was incredible! we had the whole place to ourselves and they let us roam and take as many photos as we wanted!  the temples in bangkok were second only to angkor wat.  the bright yellows and golds and the immense size of the temples amidst the vast city was so impressive!  our secret night time tour was one of the best things we could’ve hoped for!  on our way back Jai bought drew a beer and gave me some thai balm for bug bites; a very sweet gesture!  the following day we went on another half day tour with him where he showed us even more of the city.  he could’ve kept going but at this point in our trip we weren’t as enthusiastic about temples as we might’ve been two months ago.  however, it was a lovely day and we owe it all to our great guide!

we tried to see some muay thai boxing and were all pumped to hang with the locals and watch it all go down.  we got to the box office only to find ticket prices a lot more expensive than we ever would’ve thought.  it was $30 for the very back and $60 for ring side.  now, i don’t know if it’s always this pricey because we heard it was a big fight that night.  if i were to go back to bangkok on a smaller trip i’d surely try to hit up some muay thai boxing again.  the thing is, we knew from bangkok we were going south to the islands to scuba dive which is another expensive venture and unfortunately had to pick and choose.  that’s the deal though on a three month excursion!

we owe jason a big ‘thanks’ for leading us south to koh tao!

we thought our bus ride from vang vieng to luang prabang would be a cinch. it was a short 4 to 5 hour ride up through the mountains that we hadn’t heard any bad things about, besides if we could do a 24 hour bus ride through Vietnam we could get through anything. this bus ride turned out to be the most treacherous thing i’ve had to endure on this long journey. the first hour or so was fine but after that i started feeling nauseous. i thought i was a huge baby for feeling so sick but the turns in the road were sharp and so close together my stomach just wasn’t taking it. all of a sudden, as i’m feeling like i’m going to vomit, i hear a girl (poor lil 14 year old french girl) a few rows ahead of us throw up. awesome. it was then i realized the whole bus was feeling the same way i was. so, for the next few hours all we heard was the crinkling of barf bags and the sound of puke. thankfully i had a stuffy nose so i couldn’t smell it but drew certainly could. by the time we reached luang prabang the bus was empty of barf bags and everyone was hunched over and green. i don’t know how but drew with his iron stomach managed to escape the sickness and even though i felt sick i never actually did vomit. i would never suggest that ride to anyone. ever. ever.

we got to luang prabang though and found it to be a nice little town with one main street packed with shops, cafes, and restaurants. it was more upscale than vang vieng which made it a bit pricier but nice nonetheless. we spent no time finding out about tours and things to do in town. everyone had told us we must go see the waterfall right outside of town so we booked that trip for the very next day.

years ago drew had taken me to my very first waterfall, snoqualmie falls, outside seattle, and i loved it! this time around was even better because we got to climb to the top and then go swimming on one of the three tiers. the water was so clean, clear, and warm! no one had been swimming when we got to the second tier and we were a little unsure of if we could or not but we couldn’t resist. there was a group of Japanese tourists right behind us and they loved it so we all jumped in together! there were many hi-fives going around that day!

on our trip we met a guy named ben from London and a girl named stacy from canada. ben was a really cool guy who actually worked in British television and stacy had been living in phnom penh for the last year working on the Truth and Reconciliation trials (the trials for the victims of the Khmer rouge. it’s the first time they’ve EVER been given a voice and are able to tell their stories. pretty damn impressive). we wound up going out to dinner with them later that night! in between the waterfall and dinner though drew and i climbed to the top of the hill in the center of luang prabang. at the top was a Buddhist temple with neat ‘days of the week’ buddha’s and a great lookout. we hit it right at sunset, which was perfect. in the morning you can go up there for sunrise and right before see the monk procession down the street. we tried to wake up for that but opted for sunset instead.

anyway, dinner was rad! we got the laos bbq which was a mixture between chinese hot pot and korean bbq. in the center of our table was a grill and on top of the grill they put this huge pot that has a bump in the middle. what happens is, on this bump you place your meat and tofu and all of the juices from that drips down into the mote surrounding the edge of the pot. this is where you put water and veggies. the heat brings the water to a boil, the juices from the meat drip down, and the veggies cook down in the boiling water to create this magnificent soup! i think out of all the bbqs and hot pots we tried, this was by far the tastiest!

since the beginning of the trip all i wanted to do was ride an elephant. our plan was to head into northern Thailand from luang prabang via the Mekong river, see some temples, and it would be there that i would get to ride some elephants. thankfully after talking to stacy she persuaded me into riding elephants in laos instead of thailand. apparently it’s much more touristy in thailand and she said she saw a few places there that didn’t treat the animals very nice. so, we opted to stay in luang prabang an extra day and book an elephant trek. it had to be the perfect one though where we could bathe the elephants as well though. after a lot of looking around we finally found one! it was the best!!!!! there was one too many people on our trek so they asked drew to ride actually on the elephant while the rest of us sat in wooden benches. i wanted so badly to ride on the neck of the elephant but got too scared when the time came so drew did it instead. the trek lasted about an hour through the jungle and we ended at the edge of a river. it was this river where we got to climb on the backs of the elephant, get in the water with them, and scrub ‘em down! i LOVED it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! the elephants were so fun splashing around with us! my guy even took a dump in the water and we watched it float past us. y’all know how big elephant poop is!!! it was the best!

the night market in luang prabang was pretty epic as well. they mostly had hand sewn pillow cases and duvet covers. they were beautiful though and in all different colors and designs. they also had some really neat artwork. it was definitely the best night market we went to on this trip!

since we did my elephant trek in laos we didn’t really find too many reasons to head into northern thailand. we were also really anxious to get to bangkok and even further down to the beach. by this point we were a little tired of mountains and temples and were ready to hit the sand. so, we opted to take the bus back down south. one might think i was crazy for wanting to take the puke bus back but thankfully my doctor gave me some sleeping pills for those long, hard journeys. it was a 9 hour ride back down to Vientiane where we would catch the bus to bangkok but we decided to break it up with one more night in vang vieng on the way down. it was nice having one more day there in that town. we really became attached to it over the few days we’d spent there.

what we had heard about Laos up until this point was that it was an absolute paradise. we were told the people were much nicer, everyone was friendly, the sun was always shining, and we were less inclined to get ripped off. so when we got to vientiane, laos we had really, really high hopes! we flew to vientiane from siem reap, cambodia and immediately headed into town to look for a tourist agency so we could catch a bus to vang vieng, laos. apparently vientiane isn’t the most fun spot to hang and with less than three months and a budget you can’t really screw around. we found a travel agency, which claims to be the only one around which we later found out was a huge lie, and they said they had a mini van going to vang vieng in 2 hours so we say ‘great!’ pay them and wait. 2 hours pass and a taxi then awaits for us at the tourist agency to take us to the bus station. we head to the bus station only to find the crappiest bus jam packed with boxes and bags of rice and all kinds of other junk and no air conditioning which was promised. we were ripped off. our options then were to go back to the tourist agency and demand our money back, miss the bus, and pay lots of money to spend the night in vientaine (not only is it no fun, it’s also expensive) OR take the bus since everyone said it was the ‘last’ bus of the day. after drew calms me down we get on the bus and set out for vang vieng. oh! there was a guy on our bus with an automatic weapon which we later found out was for our protection. 5+ years ago there used to be rebels in the hills between vientiane, vang vieng, and even more north luang prabang and they would attack buses and rob them. the laos police started putting an armed guy on all buses and set up shop in the woods surrounding the streets. there hasn’t been any problems in the last five years but they keep the guys on the buses for safety.

we arrived late at night so we did what lonely planet said and walked to the river to find a guesthouse. the only good thing about arriving in a town late at night is you can argue the price down quite abit because the chances of them selling the room at all is very slim. we wound up getting a great corner room with multiple fans and tons of windows for pretty darn cheap. when we woke up in morning we opened our door to beautiful karst mountains, lush green trees, and a fantastic river that we couldnt’ see in the dark. this place is certainly somethin’ else!

drew and i like to pick our ’spots’. by this i mean we cruise around, try out a bunch of local bars, and then pick which one suits us best to return to night after night. we stumbled upon a bar called ‘alake bar’ as soon as we got to vang vieng, where we met two boys who became our buds. we forgot the one boy’s name almost immediately (oops) he is 15 years old, and the other, who we spoke with more, was a 19 year old named Psone (pronounced pawn but he didn’t mind being called phone and actually kinda liked it!). anyway, it was at this bar that drew and i sat every evening to watch the sunset over the mountains while laying in hammocks drinking special, yummy cocktails. psone taught me how to speak in his language while i taught him mine. while we were there the whole country of laos was celebrating ‘women’s day’ which is a big to-do there. the whole day consists of the men doing what the women normally do (cook, clean, etc.) that night the 15 year old boy approached me and asked if drew and i would come to dinner. the two owners of the bar, who we never formally met and spoke no english, had made a traditional laos dinner and they wanted us to join them. now, most people know i’m a vegetarian but there were a few dishes i couldn’t pass up because 1) when in rome… and 2) i felt like i would be rude if i didn’t and i wasn’t sure they would understand so i ate some river snails that they had plucked right outta the river and some incredibly spicy fish, you guessed it, right from the river as well. drew seemed to enjoy it a little more than i did but i can’t say it was all that bad…

the main attraction in vang vieng is tubing down the river. kids line up down the street all day waiting to get their tube, dry bag, and hop in the tuk tuk to take them 4km north so they can tube back. drew and i were totally clueless as to what was in store for us. we get dropped off and start tubing only to find it all looks like one big mtv beach party. every few meters there were bars blaring jay-z, serving all kinds of drinks and selling chips, and 9 times outta 10 the bar had a crazy huge zip line you could climb up to, swing down, and jump into the river… it was pretty awesome! we kinda appreciated the fact that most of these things were ‘do at your own risk’. if you’re an idiot, you pay a consequence, if not you have a wonderful time tubing and enjoying yourself like drew and i did. by the time we reached the last bar it was something like 2 hours later and we were bored of tubing so we climbed outta the river and walked down the road until a tuk tuk doing rounds found us and brought us back. i gotta say, i was too scared to climb up to the zip line but fearless drew did it and had a great time!

on our third day in vang vieng we rented mountains bikes and road 7km to a cave and crystal clear lagoon where we went swimming. the bike ride was rough on me because i thought my bike kinda sucked and i had never done mountain biking before so i wasn’t really used to all the rocks and such but the lagoon was sooooo relaxing and nice. that was my first time seeing such clear blue water in nature. there were fun, much smaller, rope swings that we played on and we saw fish all around us. after the 7 km ride in the heat, to jump into the water was so incredibly refreshing.

vang vieng is the first time we really felt relaxed on this trip. all of the places we visited up until laos were full of temples and museums that we wanted to see but now we were able to swim, play cards, lay on hammocks, and take it all in. fortunately for us, most of the people our age who come to vang vieng spend their time on the main drag watching back to back to back episodes of ‘Friends’. i say ‘fortunately for us’ because it meant the bar on the river was empty and anyone who came down to join us was someone we knew we’d wanna talk to. what an amazing place!

Check out our pics of Laos!!

i can honestly say now, looking back on most of our trip sitting here in the Singapore airport, that the most spectacular thing i saw was Angkor Wat.  i thought i pretty much knew what it was before traveling to Siem Reap, Cambodia but boy was i wrong.  it was bigger, brighter, more fantastic than i could’ve ever imagined!  i can safely say it blew both of our mind’s!

we took a 6 hour bus ride to siem reap from phnom penh where we were greeted again by a mob of tuk tuk drivers.  we found a nice guy for a great price and he kindly took us around to a few guesthouses where we eventually found one that not only suited our needs but was within our price range.  guesthouses in siem reap were far more expensive than i ever would’ve imagine.  the deal is though, the town wouldn’t exist if angkor wat wasn’t there.  it’s strictly a tourist town with many spas & resorts, restaurants, and shops.  since we liked our tuk tuk driver so much we decided to hire him for the following day to give us a one day glimpse into the world of angkor wat.  a one day pass is $20 and it goes up from there.  due to time and money constraints we opted for only one day initially feeling pretty bad about it because how many other times were we going to get to siem reap?  however, after one long arduous day we decided one suited us pretty darn well. 

angkor wat is about 6 km north of siem reap.  we left our guesthouse around 10 a.m. and got there soon after… just before the crazy midday heat set in! neither one of us realized just how much land area the wat’s covered or how complex they are.  the first one we visited had gigantic trees growing in, over, and around it, the second was a giant pyramid that had been struck by lightening at the top, the next had a 1,000 different faces and heads on it, and from there it just kept getting more and more beautiful with crazy stories attached to them.  the last one of the day for us was angkor wat.  as lame as it may sound, it totally knocked us off our feet as we approached.  it’s the largest religious structure on earth and my god is it beautiful!  i’ve seen castles and fortresses and cathedrals and all kinds of buildings that are magnificent but the only thing i can maybe compare this to, mind you i’ve yet to go, are the pyramids in egypt or machu pechu in peru.  we’re talking about a lost city that had 1,000,000 inhabits at a time when london was a mere 50,000 people.  we’re talkin’ pyramids that date back thousands of years!!! this is crazy shit (sorry, mom!)  it was so remarkable!  not to lessen it any but a few of the wats were featured in Tomb Raider (starring angelina jolie) if anyone remembers.  there are so many they seem to go on forever!  i think we managed to cover 6 or 7 of them before we were exhausted from hiking around and the sweltering heat.  siem reap is by far and away a place i would HIGHLY suggest to anyone and everyone.  as far as temples and other tourist attractions on this trip we have yet to see anything better. 

we were in and out of siem reap pretty darn quick.  the following day we headed to the airport where we flew to vientiane, laos.  for anyone thinking about doing this i would highly suggest it, however there’s a $25 departure fee in the airport which pissed us both off.  c’est la vie…

 on to the most bombed country in the world! 

p.s. i must add that the market in siem reap is killer with lots of neat gifts as well as shoes, tshirts, fish, and other once living creatures!

our bus ride to cambodia came close to being an absolute catastrophe when the border guy couldn’t find my passport for about an hour.  no matter how hard you want to hold onto your passport and stay near it, it’s always needed for something out of your sight and if you protest, you risk being left behind and having to fend for yourself.  i must say though, they came through in the end after sifting through all the hundreds of other passports and came up with mine!!!

the land is cambodia is completely flat and extremely dry.  there were parts of it which reminded me of the national geographic african safaris i’ve seen on t.v.  the houses are on stilts and surprisingly very beautiful.  they were very colorful with really neat wood shutters and doors.  as with all countries we’ve been through, even the crappiest shacks have televisions and satellite dishes on them.  phnom penh, to my surprise, was full of hummers and mercedes and very expensive automobiles.  we found out later there’s actually quite a bit of money in the city.  an average home there cost around $300,000!

when we arrived in phnom penh we were mobbed by tuk tuk drivers, which we had been warned about.  drew and i decided it would be best to walk to the lake where we planned on staying (great advice Missy!).  it wasn’t a long walk but it was certainly a hot one.  that was the first time i remember fully sweating through my shirt and leaving a huge sweat stain on my back pack.  the lake side had been recommended to us over the river side by a few people.  one would never ever guess a gigantic lake would be smack in the middle of such a big city.  the interesting thing is, it’s completely surrounded by buildings all the way up to the river’s edge so unless you’re sitting on the deck of said buildings you’d never know it even existed.  in laos we met a girl who had been living in phnom penh for a year doing legal work and she said most people who live in the city don’t even know it’s there.  she also told us the lake had been sold and it’ll soon be filled in and built upon.  so sad.  the road we stayed on was nothing more than an alley tucked off the main streets.  we made our home there at a guesthouse called ‘happy guesthouse’ which certainly lived up to its name.  i gotta say, cambodia was the first country we spent time in where we honestly felt like we were somewhere new and exciting.  all of the previous countries had such a western flare to them. here, for the first time, our eyes were opened up to something so completely different. 

the main two tourist attractions in phnom penh certainly aren’t happy ones but nevertheless should not be missed.  you see, back in the mid to late 70s the khmer rouge took over and their goal was to establish a plebeian society.  in order to attain their goal, pol pot decided to kill all the monks, intellectuals, people who wore glasses,  basically anyone who seemed or looked ’smart’ or who he thought could potentially cause an uprising.  now, how does one get rid of so many people?  you guessed it… genocide! 

we hired a tuk tuk driver for the day who first took us to The Killing Fields.  at the entrance is a monument which houses 8,000 skulls which were found at the killing fields.  along with skulls were clothes that had been dug up.  as you walk the fields the mass graves that were found are marked, a long with a tree where children were beat and areas where they housed chemicals that were meant to kill and/or hide the smell of the rotting bodies.  i’ve never been to any of the concentration camps in europe but i imagine them to be similar.  the difference is, no one was kept at the killing fields.  they were simply brought there to die.   interestingly enough,  there’s now a fence that borders the killing fields and on the other side is a school where we heard children laughing and playing the whole time we were there.  what a contrast…

tuol sleng genocide museum also called the s-21 museum is where the people were kept and tortured before being killed.  the s-21 museum used to be a school before pol pot closed it down and took it over.  it’s three rectangular 4 story buildings all facing a courtyard.  there are still remnants there of pol pot’s regime such as rusting beds and medical equipment used to torture.  the second building you enter on the ground floor is completely covered in photos of all those who stayed in the facility as well as some pretty horrifying pictures of those tortured and killed.  twice a day they show an hour long film with people who had been there and those who had lost loved ones.   i think sometimes it’s easier to watch films like this when the events that took place were years and years before.  i guess the more time that passes it’s easier to distance yourself from the events.  it’s quite hard to do this when these atrocities were happening in my sister’s lifetime or even moreso in drew’s lifetime and i know it’s happening now, today in places like Burma, it’s just… i dunno…

afterwards we went back to our guesthouse to sit on the deck and digest all that we’d seen.  in the lake there are a few small boys who paddle boats up to your guesthouse and ask if you want a boat ride for $1.  i decided it’d be a fun thing to do so we had some really yummy special smoothies and hopped in the boat with a sweet 12 year old boy named Rambo.  Rambo paddled us around and told us about the watercrest growing in the water that they pick and eat (oh man, the water was so filthy and full of trash. i totally saw a maxi pad tangled up in the watercrest!!! and there were rats!!!!!) and how he goes to school for 3 hours a day for free and then paddles the boat for money.  he was mesmerized by the sparks of construction on the city’s first high rise.  he was really sweet!  as were all the people we met in cambodia… it was quite a contrast from china and vietnam.  it was so much more relaxed and the people weren’t trying to always get something out of you… at least not the people we met.  in poor countries there’s always somewhat of an agenda when the native people see westerners coming their way but so long as you’re pleasant, smile, and say ‘thank you’ both parties generally come out on top.

 oh and the most important thing of all.  MONKEYS!!!! Like real life, not in cages, cold chillin like squirrels!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 wat? wat? are you a light bulb?

 Check out our pics of Cambodia!

we opted for the cheapest way to saigon, or as the people in northern vietnam like to call it ‘ho chi minh city’. this bus ride was only the beginning of a series of long, painful rides that was to come. thankfully though, this was the longest ride we had to take. now, i don’t know ifi’d tell someone to go this route but i’m happy we did for one reason only. we passed through this small beach town about 6 hours south of nha trang and 6 hours north east of saigon (Mui Ne). it was one of the most beautiful beach towns i’ve seen so far and would recommend anyone stop there.

we got to saigon around 7 p.m. and found ourselves in a race to find a guesthouse that was relatively inexpensive and not fully booked. it was pretty intense because we were having to run into a guesthouse, check it out, and then run to the next one to compare and by the time we ran into the next one, there was a good chance the last one was booked full and we lost out! there were a lot of guesthouses but ten times as many people it seemed! the streets insaigon were swarming with restaurants and bars of all kinds. it had a more western feel to it, i think largely due to the wider, straight streets.hanoi’s streets were very small and curved all over the place. we took no time securing our spot on a cu chi tunnel tour for the very next day, anxious to get started and move on tocambodia.

now, i didn’t know anything about the cu chi people or the tunnels they dug and lived in for 20+ years until i arrived in saigon. these tunnels are just another testament to the strong will of the vietnamese people. i couldn’t bare to go in them because they were too small; i can’t IMAGINE living your everyday life in one! our tour guide was a rad, young vietnamese guy who was probably our favorite tour guide of this whole trip. he was so informative and pleasant and optimistic. he told us how the people in the south still have a democratic mindset while the people in the north are very communist. he pointed out that thevietnam war was 30+ years ago but for them the remnants of the war were still very visible because they’re a poor country and don’t have the money or resources to rebuild as quickly as others. he pointed out tanks and bombs insaigon that were left there after the war. he said they were ‘parked’ there and never moved. interesting.

the cu chi tunnels are a series of tunnels northeast of saigon that the cu chi people dug and lived in for years and years. there were levels of tunnels and different rooms such as the kitchen, the bathroom, the bedroom, much like we have above ground. there were different exits and entry ways and a tunnel that lead to the mekong river. they had strategic ways of losing enemies in the tunnels, lots of booby traps within them, and in-case the enemy (americans) tried to smoke, bomb, or flood them out they had made doors and flood-ways and all kinds of tricks in order to escape. the persistence of these people is indescribable!!! there’s a portion of the real tunnels that thevietnamese people carved out a bit to make bigger for western people to fit through, because otherwise they wouldn’t. i couldn’t go in there becausei’m insanely claustrophobic but drew managed to work his way all the way through after most gave up, and came out dirty and sweaty. just sitting here thinking back to those tunnels i start to feel likei’m suffocating.

after the cu chi tunnels we headed to the war remnants museum which had a fascinating yet sad photography display from the vietnam war. all of the photos were taken by photographers, who died during the war, from all over the world. i found a lot of them to be french photographers but it certainly wasn’t limited to just them. they had bios of all the photographers and captions under all of their pictures of what was going on and in some cases which were their last photos ever taken. it was really emotional and so heartbreaking. another portion of the war museum was a whole section devoted to landmines and land mine victims. it didn’t begin and end withvietnam, it included victims of land mines even today from laos to cambodia to all over parts of africa. i learned a lot more about land mines when i went to laos because they’re still so plentiful there. land mines are certainly something i never knew too much about before this trip as well. i guess what i didn’t know is just how many were dropped and how many people to this day suffer from them. the numbers are so much larger than i could have ever imagined. thesaigon war remnants museum had less american propaganda than the one in hanoi (no surprise there). it had big american tanks, bombs, and aircraft just like the one in hanoi did too. the dead photographer section made this one tops for me. if i only went and paid to see that i would’ve left feeling like i got my money’s worth for sure.  Another cool thing about the museum is that a huge part of the photo installation was on loan from KY, USA.  Very cool indeed, and a testament to hatch-burying.

the rest of saigon was errands we had to run such as mailing home the large amount of clothing we had made in hoi an. that city is more beautiful at night than i would’ve imagined after seeing it in daylight, however i never got the feeling like i was somewhere insanely different.cambodia though, that place surprised the heck out of us… In the best of ways!

 check out our photos of Vietnam!

and GO M’s, Go Phills!!!!!!

so, after a very comfortable overnight train ride, we made it to Da Nang safely.  From there, we took a minibus to a small town called Hoi An.  Now, we had heard from a few people that Hoi An is all about clothes but i don’t think we really grasped just how rad it was going to be.  to be honest, i didn’t think, prior to going, that i was going to even get anything. once there though, we spared no time trying to find the perfect tailor. 

let me back up by saying, Hoi An is one of the only towns spared by bombing during the war.  all of the buildings are a beautiful pale yellow color and the streets are made of compact dirt.  there’s really only two main streets that run through the town with a few small side streets and an open market.  it’s no surprise, the food here was absolutely incredible as well. 

ok, back to shopping…  so, drew and i are cruising through town trying to find the right tailor.  what ya gotta do is, walk around, kinda figure out in your head what you want, and then go ask each shop how much it would be for them to make.  while in the shop, you generally get a good or bad feeling about the place (keep in mind, every other shop is a tailor so there’s quite a few to check out).  so, we’re making our rounds and as we’re doing so we also decide to scope prices from travel agencies for train or bus tickets from Hoi An to Saigon.  as we turn a corner, we see a travel agency and a dude sitting at the counter talking to the agent.  drew does a double take and almost immediately notices it’s a friend of his from back home named Jed.  Jed received a grant through the University of Washington to travel the world.  pretty rad, huh?  Anyway, Jed had already spent a few days in Hoi An so he gave us the lowdown as far as tailors to see and places to eat and drink.  we wound up going with the tailor he suggested, Mr. Xe, and making plans for drinks later that night.

Mr. Xe is a tiny Vietnamese man who always wore white pants and was outrageously gay.  we fell for him pretty quickly!  drew got an amazing chocolate brown pin stripe suit and a fabulous chocolate brown toggle coat while i got an emerald green satin dress!  custom made clothes? yes puhlease!

 the next day we hitched a ride to Da Nang with Jed who was on his way to the train station.  we said our ‘goodbyes’ to him at the American military base and headed for the hole in the wall to get a better glimpse at the place our father’s spent some serious time.  as we were walking up to the hole i noticed three vietnamese men watching us from behind.  as we neared the hangers inside i saw the men behind us had stopped and were now just staring.  i turned to tell drew and as he turned to face me, from behind drew came a guy running towards us yelling with an AK-47!  i said, “drew! behind you!” then turned and ran as fast as i could to get out of there.  on my race back to the street i looked back and saw drew standing there with his hands in the air while the guy cocked the gun and pointed it at him.  i left drew behind!  i took a peak behind the wall and saw drew walking calmly towards me and knew that it was cool.  still though, the guy with the gun followed us out of there and watched us walk away.  i’m sure it was pretty funny for the three guys who stopped to stare at the dumb tourists naively walking onto private property…  someone later told us that apparently that American military base has the highest concentration of Agent Orange in the entire country.  could it be they were just trying to keep us safe?

from there we walked down china beach for about an hour or so. the weather wasn’t so great so we decided to call it quits.  our woes continued when we tried to hail a taxi back to Hoi An (a mere 30km south).  ALL of the taxis wanted to charge us an insane amount of money to take us home.  we eventually found our way to the train station where we sat for two hours waiting to find a taxi to Hoi An that was reasonable. 

the next day we collected our clothes and prepared to leave on a 24 hour bus ride to Saigon.  At least we had a sleeper bus for the night portion of the ride.  the awesomest part was when just a few hours before our bus was to depart drew got really sick and was puking his brains out.  drew being the brave soul that he is though sucked it up and we took off on time. 

i thought 24 hours on a bus was bad until i got to Laos and took a meager 5 hour bus ride, but that story is saved for later…

First off, the French influence in southeast asia is everywhere!  Russia, France, America, China they’ve all played their part in Vietnam but I think the French left the greatest influence.  Baguettes.  Dear, sweet, yummy, baguettes.  They’re everywhere! The bread all over Vietnam was so delicious and oh so cheap!  The best part were the street food carts where you could get great baguette sandwiches with cheese, veggies, all kinds of meat, and sauces for next to nothing.  Drew’s favorite baguette was the spicy lamb kebab.   This is also the first place we noticed many different kinds of ethnic restaurants with the people of that ethnicity actually making and serving the food.  Hanoi definitely held a vast array of people from all over the world.  This is also the first time we ate Indian food that blew us away.  The guy that owned the Indian joint liked us so much he gave us free dessert, something I’ll never turn down. 

The architecture all over Vietnam had a french flare to it.  That is, the buildings still standing after the war.  Bright yellows and french blues with black and white trim on all the buildings really brought the city to life!  Not to mention, the sheer amount of motor scooters!!!  At first we were intimidated by the amount of scooters and were so uneasy trying to cross the street because hundreds come at you at all once, but we soon realized that it’s actually quite easy.  All you have to do is walk slowly and look at the oncoming scooters and they’ll all manage to swerve around you.  Pretty soon we were stepping off curbs like it was nothin’!  Speaking of which, the streets in Hanoi are all pretty narrow with lots of cafes, ice cream parlours, boutique shops, art galleries, and travel agencies.  While I can’t say I dug the shopping here as much as other places, I also can’t say I looked very hard.  They did have a lot of neat bamboo bowls, vases, and serving trays that Drew and I now wish we purchased. 

We did manage to go see Ho Chi Minh though!  For a guy that’s been dead for a long time, he was lookin’ pretty good.  I don’t even want to know how they perserve the dude.  Yuck.  In the same day we went to the War Remnants Museum.  There was a lot of American propaganda in there from the Vietnam War.  It’s not so surprising since Hanoi is in the north.  Interestingly enough, the entire museum had captions in vietnamese, english, french, and I think chinese.  However, the Vietnam War photos only had captions in Vietnamese so we couldn’t read them.  I’m positive this was done on purpose.  From there we hit the Hanoi Hilton, famouse for keeping American pilots downed during the war.  Made even more famous by a certain Senator from Arizona.  They still have his flight suit on display. We also searched high and low for the right Ha Long Bay tour for us.  They range in price from $35 to $100 or so for one night, two days.  The tour consists of sleeping on the boat, all meals included (no drinks though), sea kayaking, transportation (3 hours there, 3 back on a bus), and a tour through one of Ha Long bay’s ‘most spectacular caves’.  This is definitely the biggest tourist attraction outside of Hanoi because when we got there, there were tons and tons of boats (called ‘Junk’), and even more people lined up waiting to fill the junk.  Everyone was herded like cattle onto their designated boat and while we all left the port at the same time our boats played ‘bumper boat’ and crashed into one another, on purpose mind you.  The saying “you get what you pay for” definitely sums up our Ha Long Bay experience.  We decided to opt for one of the cheaper tours because, at the time, we didn’t understand how crappy it would be.  After all, all of the tours offered the same stuff.  We thought we found a deal!  To sum it up, the mountains weren’t as nice as Yangshuo, the food was terrible, and the service on board was even worse.  The sea kayaking was probably our favorite part.  It was my first time on a kayak, which was no problem, but as most people know I’m scared of the ocean so the entire time I’m convinced Jaws is going to see our tiny boat and come racing to the top of the water, flip us over, and drag our bodies out to see.  I think I sucked it up pretty well though because we managed to kayak around one or two mountains before it was time to head back to the boat. Remember that ’most spectacular cave’ I mentioned? It was fake.  Fake. Fake. Fake.  The whole thing looked like it was sprayed down with concrete, it was spotlessly clean, and there was no moisture.  Cheesey colorful lights were also put up to make it feel more like a disney attraction.  I don’t know, I think if you go to Yangshuo, there’s no real reason to do Ha Long Bay because the mountains and all the beauty is so much  more intimate in Yangshuo.  If Ha Long Bay interests you, pay the money and get the good service. 

Do you like clothes?  I sure do.  So does Hoi An, next post…

Love Teamblew

 Check out our Vietnam photos!