Even More Photos!

Trying out some betel nut in Yangon, Myanmar

At Shwedagon Pagoda in Yangon with our new friend Arakan

Locals shepherding cattle near Inle Lake, Myanmar

Artsy photo in Mandalay

Tibetan fried bread-so good!

Taking shelter from the torrential rain at Shwedagon with Arakan

Local market in Kalaw in Shan State

View of Mandalay Hill and its many stupas

Just one of the 4400 temples and stupas around Bagan, Myanmar

Mike in the Bangkok airport after staying up all night before he flew back to the U.S.

Sunrise view of Kanchenjunga, highest mountain in India and 3rd highest in the world (28,169 ft)

Pigeons flying around the courtyard of the Jama Masjid in Delhi, the largest mosque in India

People surfing in the English Garden, Munich

It does exist! (and its pretty tasty too)

Monastery at Andechs outside of Munich

The End... Or is it?

So begins the final blog post about our journey (I actually may end up posting some more photos, so it may be the next to last). I ended up spending about a week in Delhi but unfortunately wasn’t able to take full advantage of my time there as I had just about run out of money. I was able to do some exploring around the older part of the city and visited the Red Fort and the Jama Masjid, the largest mosque in India, in Old Delhi which was actually fairly interesting and much more vibrant than the commercial districts of New Delhi where I was staying. I find it kind of ironic that some of the most revered and visited sites in India, such as the Taj Mahal, Red Fort, Agra Fort, etc. were constructed by the Muslim Mughal rulers of India and yet today many (not all) Indians pride themselves on the country being a Hindu nation. One of my favorite quotes from the trip came when I was in my hotel’s lobby and the receptionist was trying to help out an Australian girl who had been swindled by some tour agency. Trying to give a helpful suggestion, he said, “This is India. Don’t believe anyone. Not even me.” What good advice that is. On my last day in Delhi I was able to meet up with my friend Kenny (who is teaching English with the Peace Corps in Kazakhstan and who Mike and I had visited there about 2 ½ months earlier) for lunch. One of his traveling companions had a friend whose father is a doctor and lives in Delhi and he took everyone out for an incredibly tasty Indian meal at a “Coffee House” (more like a really nice restaurant) that he patronizes on a daily basis. He was extremely friendly and we had a nice conversation with him and a friend over some delicious naan and Indian wine. I then said goodbye to Kenny and his pals and headed to the Delhi airport, which turned out to be one of the less nice airports I have slept in, mainly because the authorities do not even let you enter the airport until 3 hours before your flight due to security concerns.

Following a forced signing up for the Qatar Airways frequent flier program (seriously, they held my boarding pass hostage until I completely filled out the form) and a quick layover in Doha I finally arrived in Munich and met up with my little brother Tyson who is studying abroad there for the year. The airport is actually pretty far outside Munich proper so we had to take a 45 minute train into the city through the Bavarian countryside. We picked out a good selection of tasty German beers at the supermarket and had a fun night hanging out in the “City of Students” where he lives after grabbing some food at an American restaurant called Dillinger Chicago Grill for a friend’s 21st birthday (I ordered some German food that really reminded me of the pig legs I ate at La Piojera in Santiago, but which turned out to be pretty good) Tyson showed me around the old city center which had a bunch of cool buildings and Italians playing the accordion, as well as some Germans surfing on this river running through the city in the cold autumn air. One day we took the regional train to the city of Salzburg just over the border in Austria. It’s a very picturesque town, complete with a castle on a hilltop with an awesome view of the Alps and of course, a cathedral (for what Bavarian town is complete without one?). We enjoyed a nice day walking around town and taking photos (Tyson took like 400, I think I finally found someone who takes more pictures than I do) After a long a futile search for some cheap schnitzel I settled for a tasty döner kebap (there are millions of Turks in Germany so I had the opportunity to practice some of my Turkish and even made a few friends in the döner shops) and we headed home.

I joined Tyson’s program for a delicious Thanksgiving potluck dinner (we made brownies) with all of the students and professors. Since everyone is supposed to only speak German with each other and just about the only thing I knew how to say was “Bratwurst”, I just sat back and enjoyed the meal, getting a little tipsy off the provided beer and wine and ending up talking to one of the German instructors and this guy who was on a Fullbright teaching English in Austria who had done the program a couple of years before. The next day I took a two-hour bike ride along the Isar River to try to work off some of the turkey and beer from the holiday. It was really fun to bike through the leafless trees and under assorted bridges, passing many an older German couple who glared at me for disturbing their peaceful walk through the woods. On the last day of my visit in Munich we took a train with a couple of Tyson’s friends from his program out to a small town called Herrshing a little way outside the city next to a beautiful lake. We got some Italian pizza at a lakeside restaurant and after wandering around the shore for a bit we headed out to find a nearby hilltop monastery. The road started out in town but soon took us through some Blair Witch-type woods and up over a ridge. The monastery itself was beautiful and ornate, but we soon became distracted by the massive beer hall next door (apparently the monks have a long tradition of brewing beer). I picked up a mass (1 liter) of the delicious brew and we ended up walking back to Herrshing as the sun went down to catch the train back to Munich. Saying farewell to the city the next day, I grabbed a giant cinnamon-nut pastry thing to sustain me for the multiple train rides up to Frankfurt to catch my flight and parted ways with my brother after a short visit to the famous Christmas market in Nurnberg. I had to take several trains to get to Frankfurt and was questioned by the police for the third time in the country (damn racial profiling, they never questioned anyone else in the train cars). I slept overnight in the Frankfurt airport (possibly the best so far, complete with comfy reclined chairs and footrests) and then headed off to New York and back to the Western Hemisphere.

The Bowers were nice enough to host me for the week in the city in their beautiful home in Brooklyn. New York was a lot of fun and I got to see some Stanford friends (Bern, Dan, and Becca) while I was there as well as explore the city and see some of the famous landmarks. I also enjoyed some greasy American food for the first time in a long time (you gotta love burgers and pizza). One day I went up to Greenwich to see Dan’s hometown and his awesome dog, Cracker, then headed back to the city just in time to lose some money in poker to Bern’s friend. The last night of the entire trip was spent enjoying dinner and some drinks in Manhattan and then taking the subway at 4am to the airport to catch my 7am flight. I slept pretty much all the way back to Reno and got back to my house almost 120 days after leaving for Beijing in August. What a trip it’s been; I’m sad that the adventure is over but it is nice to be back in the country and see everyone again. I’m planning to stay in Tahoe for about a month for the holidays and then head out east to try my luck finding a job in Washington DC. I hope to see those of you out here in the west before I leave, and I’ll be seeing the rest of you in the east very soon!

To the Top of the World

Alright everyone, this will probably be my last blog post from Asia as I head to Germany in a few days to visit my brother and then head back to the good 'ol USA.

My last couple of days in Kolkata were largely spent resting and trying to get healthy, but I was able to make it out and see the Victoria Memorial, a colossal U.S. Capital-like building constructed by the British to honor the queen. It was pretty impressive and the grounds were filled with statues of assorted British imperialists. I also walked around the Maidan, a giant open field nearby where the locals hang out and play cricket. Kolkata has a pretty bad reputation of being completely poverty-stricken, and although it does have a lot of problems with this (it's the city where Mother Teresa set up the home for the dying) and sometimes the poverty was VERY hard to take in, I really enjoyed my time there.

I soon took an overnight bus from Kolkata to the city of Siliguri near the mountains in which not one but two random Indians ended up sleeping in the same berth as me. It was a bit tight but not too bad of a ride. In the mountain areas people generally use jeeps instead of buses to get around because the roads are extremely steep/curvy and usually in pretty bad shape, so I caught one up to the town of Darjeeling and got settled in at a small hotel on the ridge with a nice view of Kangchenjunga, the third highest mountain in the world and the highest in India! I spent most of my time in Darjeeling exploring the narrow streets of the town, drinking tons of tea, and simply admiring the mountain views. I visited the Himalayan Mountaineering Institute where Tenzing Norgay (the man who first summited Everest with Edmund Hillary) taught courses and was cremated, which had a really interesting museum about the various attempts to climb the mountain. I also went through the attached zoo, one of the better zoos in Asia because it only contains animals from the area and they are well cared for and in large enclosures. A couple of days after I arrived people all over the city started putting up green, white, and yellow flags and painting the word "Gorkhaland" on all the shopfronts and doorways. Apparently the people in Darjeeling and the surrounding mountain region, which is currently a part of the state of West Bengal, want to separate and create their own state within India so they can keep more of their own revenue and have greater autonomy from the Communist government in Kolkata, who they see as unfairly distributing tax revenues and not paying attention to the needs of the people living in the mountains. Anyway, after I finally got over my cold I decided to go trekking in the Himalayan foothills for five days, and after a solid breakfast of baked goods and dropping off my bag it was off to the mountains.

The first day of the trek I ended up with a group of American students doing research in southern India and this French couple, all who were only staying for one night but I was glad to have some company for at least a little while anyway. Soon we found ourselves walking up a steep jeep-trail through the clouds and by the time we made it to Tumling, the small village where we stayed that first night, we were above them and got an incredible view of Kangchenjunga. That first day I also asked my friendly guide, Amir, if there were any tigers wandering about in the mountains to worry about:

"So Amir, are there tigers roaming around up here that eat people?" I asked jokingly.
"No, no tigers. At night comes the leopard" Amir said matter-of-factly.
"Ah I see, do the leopards eat people?" I asked still jokingly.
"Yes, sometimes eat people." And then he turned away and went on up the mountain, leaving me dumbfounded at the sudden seriousness of the situation and considering the possibility of being eaten by a leopard.

For all that we didn't end up seeing any leopards (I was never seriously concerned), but we were lucky enough to see some monkeys and hear an adult barking deer, which makes an indescribable noise like nothing I've heard before that freaked me out. We got up for a beautiful sunrise over Kangchenjunga and then my guide and I parted ways with the Americans and French couple and set out further up into the mountains. We stayed two nights at viewpoints called Sandakphu and Phalut, which had ridiculously awesome views of Everest, Kangchenjunga, and tons of other mountains in the Himalayan range. They were also freezing cold. Even inside the trekkers' huts without the wind it was below freezing. I was only saved by my warm sleeping bag, sitting by the cooking fire, and cup after cup of delicious tea I got at every village. The food was generally made up of the standard combination of rice and dhal and veggies, but for breakfast I always had some incredible Tibetan bread with Bhutanese Druk jam, which is pretty similar to Native American frybread back in the 'States. On the fourth day of the trek we went straight down the mountain to the border with the Indian state of Sikkim and stayed in a quaint little village next to a river called Sirikhola. I bought my guide and I a couple of thongbas (also known as millet beer, basically you pour hot water over fermented berries and it makes a tasty alcoholic drink) and we had an interesting conversation about Indian politics and the widespread corruption in the government before bedtime. The next morning we headed out and caught a jeep back to Darjeeling.

I had one final night to enjoy the tea and atmosphere of Darjeeling before catching a 6am jeep down to the railway station and getting on a train bound for Delhi. Booking a train ticket ended up being fairly difficult but I was eventually able to get a ticket for a "special train" that ended up being exactly like the hard-sleeper class in China but with tons of free food and tea included and for a much cheaper price. On the train I met a Londoner who just started his 3 month trip in India and we had a good conversation about cricket and gun control. On the way across the country our train went through the state of Bihar, which has a reputation of being lawless and full of bandits so at every station a group of soldiers with rifles came aboard and walked through the train, making sure there was no trouble.

I finally arrived in Delhi yesterday afternoon without any trouble and found a cheap place to stay for the next few days until my flight leaves. I am pretty excited to do some exploring of the city and enjoy eating some incredible Indian food before I head out and leave Asia for good. It will be sad to part with this beautiful continent and its great people, but I know that I will return someday.

The Land of the White Elephant

And by that I mean Myanmar. Or Burma as our government would like to call it. Incidentally, Thailand also claims this title but as I liked Thailand MUCH less than Myanmar and they have killed off all of the white elephants in their country already, I think Myanmar deserves it (although the country definitely has tons of other issues, including environmental degradation).

Mike and I arrived in the Yangon airport in the early afternoon following a pleasant flight from Bangkok's gigantic duty-free shop/airport (our first flight since we arrived in Beijing more than two months ago!) We quickly headed to a cheap hotel and then went on an expedition to change some money into Myanmar kyats. Myanmar has 0 ATMs, and thus we had to carry all of the money we would need for the next ten days in US dollar format over from Thailand. Most people accept dollars, but as it is often a better deal to pay for things in kyats we decided to change some. The exchange rate at the airport was about 450 to the dollar, but on the black market (read: random people on the street) the rate is anywhere from 1000 to 1150 kyats to the dollar. So we changed some money and continued on our way.

Soon after we started exploring the area nearby our guesthouse a friendly man came up to us inside a temple and began to speak with us. He was learning English in Yangon and after he took us around the temple he proceeded to take us all around the city for the next day and a half, just for the sake of cultural exchange and so he could practice some English while showing us his home. It was one of the best experiences I think both of us have had so far on our trip, and we learned so much about Buddhism in Myanmar and the different areas of the city I probably can't remember it all. We also saw two white elephants that the government had locked up in the "Royal Gardens", one of the reasons for the title of this post. When our friend finally left us a man called out to us from a nearby streetcorner. He said his name was Mr. Toe and that the streetcorner was his office, and after talking to us for a little while he decided to call his friend, a trekking guide in our next destination, to meet us at the bus stop. He vanished soon afterwards, and I could not find him in the area the next day, so we caught our lengthy bus to Kalaw and strapped in for the ride.

Upon our arrival in Kalaw at 4am, just as Mr. Toe had promised we were greeted by the mysterious "Jimmy" on the roadside. He took us to a cheap place to sleep for a few hours and we worked out the details of our trek to Inle Lake, which we soon began in earnest along with a friendly Colombian guy. Our path took us through the town's colorful market, around a military installation along some railroad tracks, and up and over a small mountain (where our "knowledgeable local guide" had to ask several people for directions. After tromping through the mud we eventually got to a small village where we met our "cooking man" as Jimmy called him (I remember getting his actual name at some point but can't quite recall it now). That night we stayed in the home of an extremely friendly and somewhat eccentric local man. Pretty much as soon as we arrived he brought us to a neighbor's house who was busy brewing up some of the local rice whisky and quickly decided to offer us a bottle. And another bottle. And another. And the next morning all I could remember was receiving a big bag of mandarins and hanging out in the local store, playing cards by candlelight. The next day we trekked around a large agricultural area and we felt like Frodo and Sam when they're leaving the Shire in Fellowship. We stayed in a monastery in the foothills the second night and woke up at 5am with the monk and novices chanting in the hall. We made the last stretch to the lake rather quickly and got on a longtail boat to take us back to town, after a couple of interesting detours, one involving cats (I'll let Mike upload the video for you Jason). We said goodbye to our guide and Colombian friend as we caught another bus up to the city of Mandalay.

After a short breakdown lasting a little over an hour, our bus got to Mandalay around 5am (overnight buses in Myanmar aren't very convenient) and we managed to find an open guesthouse to pass out in. We decided to do our part in not giving more money to the government and drove around to the back entrances of historic sites and showing up after hours when the ticket-checkers had gone home for the day. It was a relaxing day overall and we were able to see quite a lot in a short time. The next day we decided to travel around the city with a very interesting trishaw driver we had met the previous evening. He spoke English with a British accent and had very interesting and saddening stories to tell about his experiences with the government and the recent protests led by monks in 2007 (I will let Mike tell his story in fuller detail, I was sitting in the back and unfortunately didn't catch everything he had to say). At Mandalay Hill we climbed up the long series of stairways filled with Buddha images and other religious works to the summit, which had incredible views over the surrounding plain, and ran into our Colombian friend again on the way back down. We also visited a couple more temples before our bus, but the real highlight was spending time with our trishaw driver, who took us to eat a true local meal and told us a lot about his life and the situation in the country in general.

We arrived in the small town of Nyaung Oo in the Bagan plain around midnight and quickly fell asleep. The next day we rented bicycles and cycled around all day, exploring some of the 4400 ancient temples (though many had been badly renovated by the military government) spread throughout the plain. The sheer number of these stupas and temples was astounding, and many of the individual ones could have been major tourist attractions in themselves. Although there were a good number of hawkers about, the majority were very friendly even when we made it clear we weren't going to buy anything, and we even played a game of football with some of them in front of one of the temples. Deciding to avoid the tourist-filled temple that everyone heads to for the sunset, we found a nice one with a clear view in the middle of Old Bagan that served just right. The next day I biked around to some other areas and met more great people, this country seems to be filled with them.

On the way back to Yangon we had another breakdown for a couple of hours near sunset and were passport-checked for only the second time the entire trip by the authorities (WTF? I was checked WAY more times in Thailand, which has a much less oppressive government than that of Myanmar) We chilled for a while at a tea shop at the bus station in Yangon before going straight to the airport for our 3pm flight since Mike had run completely out of money at that point. Although Yangon and Bangkok are similar in size in terms of population, their respective airports could not be more different. The Yangon airport is small, has about 9 flights per day and suffers from frequent power-outages (at least on the day we were there)

In Bangkok Mike and I decided to see some elephants and crocodiles (I'll let him tell the story as I'm running out of time) and then had one last, big night out on the town before we parted ways. We stayed up all night and barely made our shuttle bus to the airport, but it was a good time. It will not be as great to continue the journey without him.

Right now I'm pretty much chillin' in Kolkata's equivalent of Khao San Road in Bangkok (though it's filled with many more locals and many less tourists) trying to get over a cold before I head up into the Himalayas tomorrow night. From there the road may lead through Nepal or back through northern India to Delhi. I will update the blog again when I get back from trekking around in the mountains. It seems I will be back in the 'States in less than a month, so if all goes according to plan (ie, I don't get trapped on a freezing mountain somewhere) I will be seeing some of you very soon!

Sabaidee!

Hello from Thailand!

Mike and I are currently in the northern city of Chiang Mai, getting some things taken care of and preparing for our upcoming journey to Myanmar. Mike is currently motorbiking off in the jungle somewhere but I decided to stay in town for the day and get a better feel for the place (honestly I was a little nervous about driving a motorbike around a relatively large and traffic-filled city) Ok where did I leave off:

Since my friend Andrea hadn't yet been to the museums focusing on the Khmer Rouge period of "Democratic Kampuchia" we decided to visit those places on Sunday. We got a tuk-tuk for the day (a tuk-tuk is kind of like a 3-wheeled open-air taxi) and set off for Tuol Sleng. What used to be the main school in Phnom Penh the Khmer Rouge (communist revolutionaries led by Saloth Sar, aka Pol Pot) turned into the largest prison/torture center in the country. It is now a museum detailing the grusome methods used by the regime and filled with photographs of all of the people once held at the prison. When the Khmer Rouge took control of the country they set about removing urban populations to the countryside and finding and executing intellectuals and anyone who spoke a foreign language or even who wore glasses, as they were not "pure" enough to contibute to the new society. We also went to an area known as the Killing Fields about 20km from central Phnom Penh. We were greeted by a large white stupa comepletely filled with the skulls of those people killed and buried in mass graves at the site, a truly sobering and horrifying experience. Apparently the regime executed up to 300 people per day there, and sometimes had to keep prisoners overnight to execute the next day because there wasn't enough daylight to kill them all. Mass graves fill the area, and one sign even warns visitors "Don't walk through the mass graves!" I think about 2 million of Cambodia's 8 million people were killed or died from problems associated by the regime, a ridiculous proportion of the population. We got some ice cream to cheer us up a bit after the genocide musueums at this random ice cream lounge with a long and wordy poem on the wall devoted to the treat (some British guy claimed the style was called "purple prose", is this a real thing Adhaar?)

The next day we caught the mid-morning bus for Siem Reap, the town that serves as the base for exploring Cambodia's and possibly all of Southeast Asia's most famous monument, the temples of Angkor. A tuk-tuk driver named Bannak took us to our guesthouse and convinced us to take us around the temples the next day (apparently he is both the craziest and fastest tuk-tuk driver in Siem Reap) We woke up pretty early and tuk-tukked out to the temple area. Angkor is indeed a pretty touristy place, but the temples are truly incredible and well worth it to visit. We went counter-clockwise around the complex (opposite the direction most tour groups take) and visited a good number of temples, my favorites being a jungle temple that stretches for a whole kilometer, the Bayon temple covered in faces, and Angkor Wat itself, which is covered in intricate carvings detailing Buddhist and Hindu stories as well as just being a giant religious monument surrounded by a huge moat set in the jungle. We only had one day to explore but one could easily spend a good week looking at each and every temple. At the end of the day we both agreed that Bannak was indeed the fastest tuk-tukker in Siem Reap, though not sure it he was the craziest. We had a beer with him afterward at the guesthouse and discussed Cambodian politics; Bannak didn't have very nice things to say about the current government under Hun Sen)

Mike decided to stay in Bangkok for a few days while I ventured on into Laos (it seems like EVERYONE else in the world calls the country Lao, the Laotians themselves call it the Lao People's Democratic Republic). After an overnight bus to the border and an extra 50 baht charge for "stamping my passport" (meaning a little extra monies for the border guards) I made it to country number six. Some motorcycle drivers outside the border station told me there was no bus to Pakse and wanted to charge me about ten bucks to take me there, but I walked 50 meters ahead and found a bus to Pakse for about a dollar. I was trying to get to an island called Don Khong, one of nearly 4,000 islands in the Mekong River in southern Laos near the Cambodian border. Missing the first and only daily bus, I soon found myself riding on the back of a pick-up truck packed full of Laotians and all of our belongings. It was a little cramped but enjoyable, especially when we stopped in some random town and all of the townspeople ran up to sell us various animal organs roasted on a stick. We took the ferry across to the island, and after checking in to a guesthouse and walking around town for 15 minutes or so I realized there was absolutely nothing to do here but relax. I met a few other travelers and had a BeerLao (really good stuff!) with this German guy named Moritz who apparently travels for three months out of every year. He told me about a morning market that was supposed to be going on from 6-8am every day so I woke up early and ventured out to find it but never did. Everyone in the town I asked said it existed and I also walked to the other side of the island and back (greeted along the way with tons of children yelling "Sabaidee!" or "Falang!" which mean "Hello!" and "Foreigner!" respectively) but otherwise I mainly hung out in the hammock by the river and relaxed. It was a really nice couple of days and talking with the Laotian family that ran my guesthouse was great, but I soon became restless and decided to move on. I took a bus back up to Pakse where there was also nothing to do and then it was off to Vientiane.

I took an overnight bus up to Vientiane (the capital of Laos, population only about 250,000) and met back up with Mike. It was really interesting to be in a national capital with so few people living there, and walking around the charming little place we discerned a good amount of French colonial influence, definitely more so than in Phnom Penh or many places in Vietnam. We visited the national museum and went through a large exposition about the "U.S. imperialists and their puppets" commiting atrocities in Laos and the Pathet Lao communist resistance movement to liberate the country and bring about a socialist utopia (similar to the museum in Saigon, and I'm sure much of it was true though it did conviently leave out any atrocities commited by the communists).

Next we took another overnight bus (my first back-to-back overnight busrides of the trip!) direct to Luang Prabang, a very Buddhist city in the mountainous north of the country filled with wats (temples) and orange-robed monks walking about. It is a really peaceful little town, we visited some wats and took a couple boats across the river. We also met an interesting fellow named Mo from New Orleans, who was convinced the three sources of all wealth in the world are oil, gold, and some other random thing I can't remember. We got a great vegetarian buffet at the night market in town for about 65 cents and bought a couple of T-shirts to support the local economy before calling it a night.

Our next and sadly final stop in very possibly my favorite country on the trip so far was Vang Vieng. We heard about this town and its famed "tubing" from just about every other backpacker we met who had been to Laos so we decided to check it out. Our first day we rented bikes and cycled around the beautiful limestone cliffs and countryside near the town to a gigantic cave about 6 kilometers away. We decided to explore it on our own with Mike's flashlight and soon found it to be the largest cave we have yet visited. It was rather wet and slippery in some places (we found a giant hole that probably went down to the center of the earth with a skull and crossbones warning sign drawn next to it). We decided to disregard the travel doctor's advice and jumped directly into a beautiful turquiose lagoon right outside the cave, complete with rope swing and random Laotians swimming around looking for crabs (or something to that effect) After we decided to drink some of the lao lao (Lao rice whisky) that we bought in Vientiane, which turned out to be very strong.

Now on to the tubing. As one backpacker we met described it, "It's like a cross between a sweet backpacker hangout place and Miami beach during spring break." We soon discovered the truth of his statement as we got out of our tuk-tuk and some frat-like guy started pouring liquor down all of the girls throats. Anyway, tubing essentially involves floating down the Nam Ha river for 4km in an inner tube, stopping at any or all of the countless riverside bars along the way and getting completely wasted and jumping off 30 foot tall rope swings (At one bar we asked if there were any specials and the bartender brought out a menu for mushroom shakes and other assorted "happy drinks"). As Mike and I were a bit tired from the night before and not really feeling the whole party scence, we skipped the first line of bars and went directly to a sweet place I was told about with a giant white-tile slide and really fun ropeswing that was a bit more relaxed. After a couple of (mostly uninjurious and incredibly fun) slides and swings we moved on to a very quiet and relaxed place with a great view of the limestone cliffs, where we met a really nice couple from Switzerland and talked to them for awhile. We finally left the bar as it was getting dark and floated down the incredibly beautiful last 2km of the river as the sun was setting, greeted by children at the end. I definitely understand what our backpacker friend was saying and definitely liked Vang Vieng a lot more than I originally thought I would.

The next day we moved on to Thailand, and after a grueling day and night riding buses made it to Chiang Mai yesterday. Chiang Mai is a little bit like Luang Prabang except it is much larger and thus a little less relaxed. Its a nice enough city though, and I definitely like it better than Bangkok. It is also filed with wats and monks but has the very Thai addition of tons of "lady bars" spread throughout, as Mike and I discovered last night trying to find a real bar. It is also famous for its gigantic night market where you can pretty much buy anything you can imagine.

That's about it for now, I'm not sure what the status of internet access and international communication is in Myanmar, so it could be a little while until our next update. We fly out on Monday and have ten days to explore the country and then fly back to Bangkok (you are unable to enter and leave the country via land, with a couple small exceptions) I hope the new school year has started well for those of you taking classes and the best of luck to everyone else in all of your endeavors. See you next time!

More Photos

In front of the Champa temple ruins in My Son, Central Vietnam

Creepy kangaroo in one of the rooms at the Dalat Crazy House

Easy Riding throough the countryside around Dalat

Mike going into the secret entrance to the Cu Chi tunnels, near Saigon

Life in the Mekong Delta

Mike enjoying some "bia tuoi" or fresh beer, in the delta (it cost about 60 cents for 1.25 liters!)

Going up the Mekong into Cambodia

Local transport in Phnom Penh

Crispy fried tarantulas in Phnom Penh

Stupa filled with skulls of the victims of the Khmer Rouge at the Killing Fields near Phnom Penh

In front of the Bayon temple in Angkor

Angkor Wat

Golden stupa in Vientiane, Laos

View of Luang Prabang, Laos

Reclining Buddha in a cave near Vang Vieng

That's Cambodia Captain

Well we've made it to Cambodia alive after a long but awesome boat trip up the river from the town of Chau Doc in the Mekong Delta. Randomly one of my friends from the language program I did in Turkey is here in Phnom Penh working for USAID and she was nice enough to let us stay with her for a few nights. We have one more day in the capital and then its off to the town of Siem Reap and the temple complex of Angkor. We should get some really good photos from there and I'll put some more up when I get the chance (my camera got fixed, yay! and even with a two month warranty at a little shop in Hanoi) Here's whats been happening since our last update:

Instead of taking us directly to the town of Hoi An our open bus instead took us to the city of Hue, the old imperial capital during the colonial period. Since we had five hours until the next bus we decided to explore a little bit, and ran into one of the students of a Buddhist monk whose book Mike had read! He and his friend took us around the citadel of the city and told us a lot about his experience with Buddhism and the American War (what the Vietnamese call the Vietnam War) We poked around in the ruins of the royal palace which had been bombed out quite a bit during the war. We finally got to Hoi An and got up at 4:30am for the sunrise tour of the Cham ruins in the jungle at My Son, kind of a miniature version of Angkor. Since it was hella early no one else was there at we got to explore the beautiful place on our own. I also got a suit tailored (the town's specialty) and some shoes made for when our trip eventually ends and I have to face the prospect of job interviews, which is depressing to think about right now.

Next we took another open bus to the town of Dalat in the central highlands, which turned out to be a mix between a Swiss village and the city of Valparaiso in Chile. It was hella cold and rainy pretty much the whole time but it was a great experience anyway. We visited the town Crazy House (yes it was officially called the Crazy House) which had really strange architecture and was filled with giraffe statues and other assorted animals with glowing red eyes. We also took a ride with the "Easy Riders", basically a motorcycle gang based in Dalat that take travelers around on their bikes to nearby villages and waterfalls and such. We met a monk in a pagoda who loves soccer.

Our last stop in Vietnam was Ho Chi Minh City, which everyone still calls Saigon except in an official business. We spent a few days exploring the city and Mike got his ATM card swallowed by a machine (which thankfully he got back the next day) Interestingly there are tons of old white guys with young Vietnamese women in the city (and in Dalat too actually now that I think about it). At the War Remnants Museun (used to be called the Museum of American War Crimes) there were a few exhibits set up displaying the horrifying aftereffects of spraying the Agent Orange defoliant all over the country as well as other wartime atrocities. It was really hard to see. We also visited the Cu Chi tunnels area where many Vietcong lived and transported supplies from the Ho Chi Minh trail to Saigon during the war.

We took a tour around the Mekong Delta that ended up on a boat going up the river into Cambodia (Apocalypse Now anyone?) and have been enjoying the incredible friendliness of the Khmer people. Tonight we tried a Cambodian specialty, fried tarantula, which actually isn't too bad. There are a lot of expats here and we are still getting used to the new language and culture but I really like the country so far. Anyway, I'm sure Mike will add some more details later but I just wanted to give everyone a basic idea of whats been going on in the past week. After Angkor we head through Thailand to get to Laos and then make our way back to Bangkok by the 19th to catch our flight to Yangon. We've just about hit the halfway point in our journey, and have many more adventures to come.