I visited this beautiful waterfall in Laos...and also went swimming!

No, I'm not a millionaire...the currency in Lao is in hundreds of thousands of kip. This is about $100 worth of money...it makes one feel rich.

Here's a cool spider that I saw in Laos.

Here's me, a monk, and some sort of grasshopper.

Cute Laos kids who first tried to sell us bracelets, but ended up being happier having us take pictures of them and then showing them the pics!

Who has the longer tongue???

Okay, that's enough pictures for now. I'm currently in Phuket, Thailand spending my days on the beach. This weekend I plan on starting a 3 day diving course so I can explore the ocean around Phuket, which is one of the top 10 dive spots in the world...I'm pretty excited.

In Hue...on my way to Saigon for Thanksgiving!

I've been having difficulty putting pictures on this blog because of the long loading time, but I figured a text post is better than nothing.

I'm currently in the city of Hue, which is on the Southern side of the Demiliterized Zone from the Vietnam war. This city is one of the areas that got bombed the most because of it's close proximity to the war zone.

The highlight of this city is a beautiful citadel which has a moat and elephant rides...in my opinion this city is a bit boring. I'm flying today to Saigon and then tomorrow morning to Cambodia to see Angkor Wat. I'm pretty excited to get back to Thailand and do some diving, fishing, snorkeling, and swimming. Right now I can feel the sweat dripping down my back from the heat and the only relief is a second-rate fan...yuck.

The people so far have been really nice, including both backpackers and locals. I just ran into two 20 year old Finnish girls who were on my boat ride in Halong Bay, and they told me that they went trekking with a group of people after I left. The funny (or awful) thing is that this included two old men and two hookers!!! How many people can say they went trekking with hookers???

I'll try to get some more photos up asap, as I have some good ones.

Northern Thailand and slow boats

So it's been a while since my last post. No excuses, except for the fact that I was hanging out with a large group of people, and I only had free time for massages...

After my trip to Bangkok I headed up to Chiang Mai about a week ago. This is a treasured city for the Thais which has the remnants city walls and a moat that still surrounds the old part of the city. You can see a night shot of the walls and the moat below...and also me.

After Chiang Mai I tried to book a plane ticket to Luang Prabang, Laos, but all the tickets were booked. Therefore I opted for a two-day trip involving a bus to the border crossing,

and then a slow boat down the Mekong River. This was definitely an interesting experience that I'm glad I did once, but never want to do again. The boat was crowded, dirty, and loud. Plus, sitting for 6 hours on a boat is not my idea of a fun time.

But the funny thing is that it was one of the best experiences of the trip. I made friends with a Swiss couple and a Dutch couple on the boat, and we all traveled together up until yesterday. If I had just flown there I probably never would have met them. And the scenery from the boat was stunning. We saw small villages, boats, water buffalo, goats, and an elephant (possibly...I didn't see it).

And now I'm in Hanoi with my good friend: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/17/AR2006111700224.html

New post coming soon...It's been a long week!

Temples and such

So while in Bangkok I visited a couple of amazing temples. The first one was Wat Phra Kaew ("wat" means temple), which is in the same vicinity as the Grand Palace grounds, seen to the left.

This area is considered the Vatican City of Thai Buddhism. It's a place where many Thais make pilgrimages to in order to view the Buddhas, take massage courses, and for spiritual reasons as well.

I'll be honest with you...as I was walking around a lot of it looked very similar, but it was all beautiful...like the stereotypical images you see on tv...but much more impressive in person. Here are some more pictures of the Palace area.











































Directly above you can see a people praying and offering gifts the Buddha. They were bringing food out, burning incense...very interesting stuff. It's hard to know what exactly is going on...but this is my best guess.


Inside Wat Phra Kaew is the Emerald Buddha. It sits above a shrine in the mail chapel, and is actually made of jasper. It has a rich history of being moved all around Thailand and even Laos seized it, but it was later recaptured by the Thais. We weren't allowed to take pictures of it, but I tried snapping a shot...the buddha is up top.


Here is a better stock photo:

When entering this temple everyone had to remove their shoes and as the sign says, you cannot point your feet at the Buddha. This is considered very disrespectful as the Thais consider feet to very dirty. It is also very bad to step over someone who is sitting down or to put your feet up on a chair.

Another interesting taboo is head touching. The Thai friends I've made think it is very funny that I let them touch my head.

Okay, I'm getting a little blogged-out, but here's the coolest thing I saw when visiting these temples. Wat Pho has a giant,golden Buddha that is 46m long and 15m high. It's called the Reclinging Buddha and represents the passing of the Buddha into final nirvana.

Here are it's feet!

BIG BUDDHA!!!

Arriving in Bangkok and my room

First off I thought you might like to see my living quarters. Here's a picture of the road I amstaying on (got this one off the Internet 'cause I forgot to go outside and take one.

When I first arrived here after about 24 hours of traveling, my plane arrived at 1 am (late). I took a cab to Khao San Rd. and checked into my cheap hostel, which cost about $8/night.

My room is sparse and consists of a bed, no top sheet, a toilet/shower (cold water) and an air conditioner...which is a life saver because it's so hot.

Here is my room:
It's pretty much all I need...a bed, a place to hang my backpack, and enough space to unpack my my stuff.






Next is the bathroom.




As you can see the toilet is directly beneath the shower faucet, so that when I take a shower everything gets wet. I've been closing the toilet during my showers, but maybe they keep them open to recycle water...I really have no idea when it comes to this stuff, although I've started brushing my teeth while showering since I don't have an official sink. What I have is in the next picture.





This is the up close and personal view of my toilet/"toilet paper"/faucet. On the right is my faucet where I sometimes brush my teeth. To the left of that is the "toilet paper". You see, instead of using paper they sort of spray themselves like a bidet, or if there isn't a spray they just dip their left hand in water and wipe...
The toilet is actually nice. I was told I'd only have holes to squat in. If you look closely there seems to be a present in their from a previous guest, or a stain...I'm not doing any detective work to find out.


So that's my living quarters so far. I'm running out of Internet time, but I"ll write about my first few days here the next time I get.

I'm traveling north to Chiang Mai tomorrow...more pictures to come!

3 nights in Bangkok

For those of you who checked my blog over the past few days I apologize for the "In B" post. I started to post, but realized I was too tired to do a sufficient job. It's 3 am here, and I'm about to go to bed, but I thought I would put up a quick post to assure people that I'm alive. Tomorrow I will take pictures and post them with up-to-date accounts of my travels.

But for all of your visual people, here is a picture of me right before I left my apartment...enjoy.

Korean Airport

Made it to S. Korea so far. Some of you were wondering whether my flight path would go across the Atlantic or the Pacific. Well, after we took off the pilot mentioned something about passing over Niagra Falls, so I figured then we weren't going to be heading the Atlantic route. The plane flew up from DC to Canada, over a very icy area near Siberia, down through Russia, through China, and into Seoul. Looking down from the plane and seeing sheets of solid ice for miles was like nothing I've ever seen before. There were cracks in the ice and the terrain reminded me of something out of Frankenstein where the doctor is sleding around in the middle of nowhere (some of you know what I'm talking about, right?). Here's what it looked like on the left.

It was also kind of disconcerting when I looked at the real-time flight map and saw our plane flying close to Pyongyang. No, Kim Jong Il as not outside greeting me as we landed, though he did give me a shout out in this shot I took as he was driving away.

All in all the food on the plane was good. I opted to have the beef for dinner as when I asked the flight attendent what the other dish was I still had no clue what she was talking about...I played it safe this time.

Also I watched a Korean documentary on how formented food is good for your and can help you lose weight. I think I'd be skinny too if someone cut off a slice of 5-year-old raw pigs leg and handed it to me.

That's all for now. I still have a 5 hour flight to Bangkok and then it's on to finding a place to sleep for the night.

Last post from the US

Today I finished up all my last minute packing. I got all my stuff into this bag. It's packed to the brim, so I'm sure I'll have to get rid of some stuff once I get there. Plus it doesn't help that I have two roles of toilet paper packed (the soft kind) because I heard that a lot of places don't provide you with any.

Angela also buzzed my hair today. It's probably the shortest it's ever been, but at least I won't have to worry about styling my hair while I'm abroad, or washing it for that matter.

Also, I'm going to try and carry it on...we'll see how that goes. I really don't want to wait in line at midnight to pick up my bag. Plus it could get lost during my layover in Seoul.

Anyway, I'm waking up early tomorrow to catch my noon plane. I'll be arriving in Bangkok 24 hours later. It's okay, though, because when I went to JMU I took a Greyhound from Harrisonburg to Maine that lasted 23 hours...and I get free drinks on the plane!

See you all in Southeast Asia.

Safety and planning

Taking the advice of Mikey, my mom, my brother, and others, I registered at the US embassies in Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, and Laos. They have a convenient website where you can do it before you leave https://travelregistration.state.gov/ibrs/ . It's a lot easier than contacting them once you arrive.

I also got some good advice on places to go from Maria and Jack, who've both lived in Thailand during their time in the Peace Corps. I'll be posting a tentative itinerary later this week.

Questions

So I've started receiving the questions:

1. Why Asia?
2. How did you get time off from work?
3. What are you going to do over there?
4. Are you nervous?
5. Is it safe?
6. Do you have a third nipple?

Answers:

1. I picked Asia because I've never been there and I enjoy being in complete culture shock. I've already traveled through Western and Eastern Europe a bit, so I thought I would expand my horizons and do something exotic.
2. I work for myself...I gave myself a vacation.
3. I'll be visiting temples, meeting other backpackers, tasting weird food, taking pictures, reading, writing, arithmetic (okay, maybe not that)...and going to the beach!
4. Yes, I'm slightly anxious as I've never been to an Asian country before.
5. I've spoken to a bunch of people who've done the same thing (it's become about as cliche as backpacking through Europe) and they assure me that I have nothing to worry about. I just need to use common sense.
6. No third nipple...yet.

So, please, if you have any more questions please post them in the comments and I'm happy to answer them.

I thought a map would be nice

This map is here in case I get lost...

Bought my tickets!!!

I finally solidified the trip and bought the tickets.

Here's my itinerary:

Korean Air Lines 94
Depart: 12:30pm Washington, DC (IAD)
Arrive: 5:10pm Seoul, Korea (ICN)
14hr 40min | 6947 miles

Change planes. Time between flights: 3hr 10min

Korean Air Lines 653
Depart: 8:20pm Seoul, Korea (ICN)
Arrive: 12:05am Bangkok, Thailand (BKK)
5hr 45min | 2281 miles

The roundtrip ticket cost me $1,122.99. I'm very happy with this deal, but I'm sure I'm going to be very tired when I arrive in Bangkok at midnight. Since it will be my first night in Bangkok, and as I'll be arriving so late, I will arrange a hotel room close to the airport beforehand. Other than that I'll just arrive in my new city and find a place to stay. The guidebooks I'll be using have a lot of suggestions and ratings for different hostels, so I think I'll be alright.

Anyway, tickets bought!!!

Planning my trip to Southeast Asia

So Matt and I were discussing a way of keeping everyone informed of where I was in Asia and we came up with the idea of a blog. I'll be updating it with observations, experiences, people I've met, etc. I'll try to update it as often as possible, but I have no idea how frequently I'll have access to Internet cafes.

The way I see it is that you all can ask questions while I'm travelling. Mom will want to know if I've made any friends. Dad will want to know about the golf courses. My guy friends will want to know how good looking the girls are. My girl friends will tell me to stay away from the girls. Matt will want to know how they go to the bathroom without a toilet (I've heard it's just a hole in the ground). I'll be moderating your comments, so don't worry if it doesn't show up on the site immediately...I'll get to it!