Home Again.

I've made it back home! I wish I could tell you I had nothing to do but to sit around and be lazy, but I have lots of wedding prep for a friend to take care of, and no time to sit around to do nothing! But I think it's better this way, because if I had nothing to do I would wish I was back in Asia more than I do already.  I think I was ready to come home, but there's always a part of me that will always want to be somewhere abroad.  I loved waking up with something new to do everyday, some new food to try in every city, or new people to meet in every hostel. I ate more Pho and Pad Thai than I thought was humanely possible, and even more ice cream! haha.

The people in every country I visited were absolutely wonderful! So nice, so considerate, and so welcoming! (Well minus a few people in Vietnam..i.e. Mafia cabbie). It's amazing to see how resilient the human spirit can really be, especially after learning so much about the history in all the countries I visited.

I most certainly did not get enough of S.E. Asia and CANNOT wait to go back!! I've already got another trip out there planned, but since school will be limiting all of my vacation time now, I think I will have to stick to shorter trips close by until I get more time.  So, my next set of trips will be taking place in Latin America.  In the meantime, I'll read up on all the things that peaked my curiosity in Asia, and then I can start getting back into my Spanish. haha.

Thanks to everyone who kept up with reading this blog! It was great to keep you all updated on all of my adventures! I hope you found them to be as entertaining as I did! I'm happy to be home for a bit to spend some time with my family before I head back to NYC for school. It's almost as exotic a locale as Asia was, so if anyone will be visiting, please let me know! I've made a wonderful new group of friends from all over, but mostly Canada and England, and would love to have even more visitors!  In the meantime, the fishbowl blog will be retired again I guess. I hope it's not too long before I get to revive it though!! :)

Saigon to Some, Ho Chi Minh City to Others

Saigon is a city full of scooters and insane traffic patterns! It's easily the largest and most populated city of Vietnam, and it's capital, so it was no surprise when we arrived to the city we hit about an hour's worth of traffic because of heavy rain that had the streets flooded with water that came up to your knees. The downpour that we arrived in made us decide to hop into the first taxi we could find, which was maybe not the best idea but it seemed right at the time. haha. We knew we were going to try to stay at a hostel that was only about a 5 minute walk from the bus stop, so when our cabbie told us it would take about 10 min we got suspicious. He ended up driving us in a huge circle and his meter was rigged to jump up at an exponential rate! It was insane! After 10 minutes of driving our fare was $200,000 VND which was outrageous! We found our hostel and the lady there basically told me it should have been around $50,000VND so I knew we had been scammed for sure.  We refused to pay him the actual fare that he was trying to charge us and while we were in the street getting our bags he just kept yelling at us and swearing at us. A Vietnamese man walked by and I asked him if he understood English, which thankfully he did, and I explained what had happened to us.  I told him to tell the guy we knew he had tried to trick us and we wouldn't pay. The local guy told us we should have only been charged at most $20,000 VND, but that he couldn't really do anything because we had gotten into a "mafia" cab. Umm mafia? Really? That didn't sound very good to us, and the word mafia fit this guy's description once he started trying to close the trunk of the minivan on my head while I was getting our bags out, and when he did one of those "I'm watching you" finger movements to me before getting into his cab and driving off (we only paid him $50,000). Yikes. We had a hit put out on us from the mafia after only being in Saigon for 10 minutes. Great way to kick off our stay I think?

We spent our first day in the city visiting historic museums, one of which was the War Remnants Museum, formerly known as the Museum of American War Crimes. I think you can tell what this museum was like.  It was very one-sided account of how the Vietnam War played out, but it didn't change the fact that everything they were displaying that Americans had done during the war was true. It was the most depressing museum I'd ever been to, and after taking a few pictures on the first floor which was pretty neutral, I couldn't even bring myself to take my camera out because the pictures on display were so graphic and horrific. Words like napalm and agent orange are burned into my mind--I can't believe we used things like that against people, so many of which were just innocent civilians. The aftereffects of those chemicals are still very much apparent when walking through the streets of Saigon.  It was terrible. There's so much about the history of this war that I need to learn. I feel like it was never introduced to us in any other way except that it was a time when the draft was reinstated. But the actual politics behind it are still so unclear to me. New goal: Learn about the Vietnam War, and our military presence in the Korean War as well as in Cambodia and Laos. The United States really screwed up out here it seems, and it's really no wonder why so many other countries have problems with Americans. It seems as if throughout my travels the history of all the countries I've visited has been marred by some sort of American presence. It's a shame. 

The next day we drove out to a town called Cu Chi to see the underground tunnels the Viet Cong built during the war. There was a very one-sided movie that was played at the beginning of the tour where the US forces were labeled the "American devils," but after that it was pretty much just a tour of all the ways the Viet Cong went about killing the US Forces out in the jungles of Vietnam. The traps they laid out were so gruesome and grisly. Ew. Bamboo spears that would stab them if they stepped onto the wrong place in the ground--not an easy way to go.  The tunnels were insane! So tiny--I can see why the Vietnamese are so small. They moved so quickly through those tunnels, and they had about 200km of underground tunnels in just this one town alone! The tunnels led to meeting rooms, a kitchen, there was even an underground clinic and areas to make shoes, weapons and clothing. Very extensive.  And the coolest part of the day was that I got to shoot an AK-47!! I paid $3 to shoot two bullets at a pile of dirt. haha. I could have shot a machine gun or bigger guns, but I was okay with just the AK-47.  The first gun I shoot in my life and it's one used all around the world in war. Craziness. I was not very graceful either. haha. I jumped 10 ft after I shot my first shot because I had no idea what to expect. haha. It was pretty obvious that I had no experience with guns whatsoever.  

I spent my last day just relaxing and walking around the city doing some last minute shopping and such. Attempted to get a mani/pedi, but no one actually seems to know how to do one of those in Vietnam.  One of the girls working on me actually ended up cutting me, and I noticed her putting little bits of tissue on my toe. I was like, "Umm, am I bleeding?"  Her response: "A little yes. I'm sorry." Umm...ok? Definitely not the best job in the world, but for $5 I shouldn't complain I guess. 

I can't believe my trip is over!! The past six weeks have flown by so quickly!! It seems like yesterday I was first arriving into Bangkok, and now I have 30 hours of travel time to look forward to. Ugh. I need more time!  My next trip out here will have to be South Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia and the Philippines.  Too many things left to do, and so many that I want to do twice! Fingers crossed it won't be 5 years until I can travel again. :)

Hopefully I get some safe and on-time flights. :)  

Nha Trang: Beach Parties & Beach Brawls

Ohhh Nha Trang...what an interesting adventure you turned out to be.

As always, my story starts with my bus journey. They never fail to disappoint out here, do they? Once again, our bus was late. This time, we arrived to our pick up point at 5:15pm but our bus didn't arrive until almost 7pm. In between bus rides we had heard about how horrendous this journey was meant to be since it was supposed to be so long (about 13 hrs) and since there was likely to be a very stinky bathroom because of this.  And since we were Western that meant that the seats in the back of the bus near the bathrooms were for us.  Neil, Eden and I came up with a great plan to ensure safety away from the back of the bus. So while Neil was in charge of getting our bags onto the bottom of the bus, Eden and I were to get on the bus first and just grab the best seats possible to us. We got on, and luckily there was no toilet--so no stink--and we got some prime seats right by the tv screen. We thought we were starting out this trip with the right foot forward. Wrong as always...haha. We heard the worst news first: there were cardboard boxes full of dead fish in the cargo area of the bus and they were leaking stinky fish juices. Ew. Best part: The Western people's luggage was to be loaded in that section, not the Vietnamese luggage. Awesome. While we were digesting that information and thinking of all the horrible ways our bags and clothes would smell after stewing in the 90+ degree heat with the dead fish (which were NOT on ice), the driver came and closed the tv screen, so we realized long trip, no bus, and stinky fish were in store for us. Sweet. I didn't really think things could get worse, but obviously they could.  We actually drove out of our way and headed north for a good 30 or 40 minutes in order to unload the fish at some bus station.  Our bags were taken off the bus with the fish and then reloaded back onto whatever fish juice was left that wasn't wiped away by the makeshift mop that they used to clean some of it up. We also proceeded to pick up plenty of Vietnamese people who payed way less than we did to get on the bus, and were given priority for all of the seats in the front of the bus and on the bottom bunks.  Some guys from the back tried to move to the bottom bunks and they got yelled at by the Vietnamese workers until they moved back to their crappy seats. Apparently they threaten to remove your luggage if you don't move. They don't mess around when it comes to saving the best seats for their own.

So after a long stop, we finally started heading down the coast.  The next problem was that try as I might to fall asleep, the bus driver was completely over aggressive with his horn, and he pretty much had it pressed down for the next 3 hours. It was so hard to fall asleep with all the noise he was making--it was like he was trying to make a song or something. On top of that, we pretty much stopped every hour to pick up more passengers even though the bus was full.  The bus can legally seat 40 people.  By the time we stopped picking up passengers we had 53 in the bus, including the driver! The extra 12 people slept in the aisles between the seats. So now I'm in an overcrowded bus, my bag is likely soaked in fish juice, and to top it all off, only the Vietnamese passengers are given a blanket and free bottle of water. Now things just seem ridiculous.  How can that possibly seem ok?  Ugh. So annoying. I managed to get a blanket from the guy which was nice, but ended up being wholly unnecessary because at about 2am the air conditioning cut out.  Actually, a funny smell started to come from the vents and the bus driver thought he would just turn the AC off while we were all sleeping and we wouldn't even notice. We noticed. It was as if someone had a massive blow horn in the bus--all of the Westerners woke up like clockwork as soon as the AC had been off long enough because the temperature of the bus sky rocketed.  We drove for an hour with people from the back of the bus yelling up to the front for the driver to put the AC back on.  The Vietnamese people weren't too happy with us, but no one cared since we were all sweating like pigs.  The only thing they could do was open the emergency exit latch on the roof of the bus to let some air in. After about an hour of no AC and random pullovers to find a mechanic, the bus started to make some ridiculous alert sound, which was probably telling the driver that we needed to fix something asap. It went on for a good 30 minutes before the driver finally pulled off the road in the middle of nowhere. It was 3am.

There were 2 other buses that had broken down that were there as well, so we were third in line to be fixed. The driver and his helpers turned the bus off and just left us all in there without any explanation.  Pretty soon we were all sweating buckets. Finally, my friends and I couldn't stand it anymore so we climbed through the emergency exit on the roof of the bus to go sit outside on top of the bus. It was probably one of the most amazing feelings in the world to put my head out into the air from the bus.  It was at least 10 degrees cooler outside than it was in the bus.  We sat out there until 5:30am, by which time almost 10 people from the bus were sitting with us enjoying the cool air.  We figured it would be a good idea to try to sleep while the bus wasn't moving considering our driver's obsession with the horn, but it was still way too hot in the bus--my back was covered in sweat within 5 minutes of laying down in my seat.  Plus, people were going in and out of the bus to start walking around the town since the sun had come up, so every time someone passed my seat, they managed to touch me somehow because they were trying to avoid stepping on the person sleeping the aisle next to my seat. Every time I would start to doze off, someone would brush against me and I'd wake right up because I had no idea who was touching me. I might have slept 20 minutes before I gave up and just waited outside with everyone at a nearby cafe. We didn't get the bus fixed until 8:30am..what a nightmare. We were supposed to reach Nha Trang by 6:30am, but ended up getting in around 12:30 or 1pm. But we did reach there eventually!! And, our bags didn't smell like fish so we were a lot happier. haha.


Nha Trang is a really sweet beach spot in Vietnam.  There were plenty of tourists there to vacation, both Vietnamese and foreign. We spent our days lounging on some chairs by a pool and the beach, and went out at night to the bars, all of which had a "Happy Hour" which lasted from 4pm-midnight. Our first night out was the most interesting to say the least. My Canadian friends are a bit rowdier than I am, and after several drinks decided it would be fun to go swimming in the ocean. I opted out and just continued to talk to some English people we had just befriended on the beach.  At some point one of the girl's camera and money were stolen from her bag even though someone was supposed to be watching it.  This is where the trouble started.  They thought maybe this group of about 10 Vietnamese men knew where her camera and money were--and by that I mean they were blatantly accusing these locals of stealing the camera. I kept my distance from the altercation, but at some point one of the Vietnamese guys pushed one of the girls getting involved in the fight. So now her boyfriend was getting all worked up, and it was looking uglier and uglier as I stood by and watched.  And then one of the Vietnamese guys got a plank of wood and another got an oar. So now my Canadian friends were surrounded by this group of armed Vietnamese, and instead of walking away, they got even angrier that they were being threatened. Ay yi yi. One of the Vietnamese dudes got fed up enough with the yelling and pulled out a knife. Now it was serious, and I wasn't too thrilled to be watching this because once again, my friends were just more outraged than scared, and they continued to yell at the Vietnamese and accuse them of stealing the camera. Ugh. The English guys I was talking to suggested someone should go over there and pull the Canadians away since the weapons were coming out, and obviously I was the person who had to go. So I had to walk over there and step between the knife and my yelling friends and pull them away.  Not cool. We managed to walk away from the situation unscathed, but yikes. I was definitely not excited about getting involved in that fight. I'm just glad no one got hurt.  :)

The next day and night were much more relaxed to say the least.  We wanted to rest up for our final bus ride down to Saigon which would be happening the next morning. Hopefully it goes better than the one down to Nha Trang!

And last, but not least: HAPPY BIRTHDAY NINA!! Sorry I didn't get to call--that bus breakdown really screwed my plans! haha. Hope it was amazing!!

Hoi An: Where All of Your Fashion Dreams Come True!!

Holy cow Hoi An!  A tailor's curse and best fortunes in one place all wrapped around the obsession Westerners have with tailor-made clothing. Did I mention we could get ANYTHING tailored to us? ANYTHING. Coats of any kind, pants, jeans, shoes, dresses, 3-piece suits, shirts, shorts....ANYTHING. It was madness!! But, before I get into all of the craziness that is Hoi An tailoring, my bus ride down must be told considering it almost never happened.

We started our morning in Hue ready to leave since there had been so little to see. So Neil, Eden and I were all ready to go when the bus didn't arrive on time at 8:30am. No worries--nothing in Asia ever runs on time.. The bus finally did arrive at about 9:15am, and when 11 of us crossed the street to get on, for some reason the driver only let on 3 girls who all had different bus tickets than the rest of us. We stood around trying to figure out what was going on, while the hostel workers tried to figure out how to get us on the bus by talking to the driver, but he wouldn't let the rest of us on. The best part about this was that the bus was only half full anyway. The group of us could have easily fit on the bus with seats to spare. Whatever.  The moment the Vietnamese hostel worker stepped inside to figure something out, the bus driver drove off leaving 8 of us standing on the side of the road with all of our stuff wondering if we were going to leave Hue at all. After sending a scooter to track down the bus, it came back but this time it was completely full. Only 5 seats were open now and since there were 8 of us we decided to do an 'all or none' stance on who got on the bus. I wasn't actually a fan of that plan since we were already spots #3-5 on line for the bus, so technically the seats should have been ours anyway.  And, I didn't know any of the girls behind me in line, and I didn't owe them anything.  It sounds mean, I know.  But when the driver kept insisting only 5 get on and the rest of us wait until 1:30pm for the next bus, my friends and I remained adamant about everyone getting on while the 3 girls on line behind us totally started to throw their bags on the bus to get on. Umm, really? Here we are trying to help each other out, and you girls want to snake our seats on the bus?? NO BUENO. In the end, all 8 of us got onto the bus, but Neil, Eden and I were forced to share 2 seats between the 3 of us in the back of the bus for the first 5 1/2 hours of the trip. By the time we moved up to normal seats, we only had about 30 minutes in them when we reached Hoi An. Lesson learned though: DO NOT try to be nice to fellow backpackers. They are cut throat and will definitely steal your seat if given the opportunity.

Right, so after settling in, we set off to explore Hoi An.  We went to our first tailor shop, recommended by our hotel, and we looked back. haha. The moment we arrived we were greeted with water bottles and massive books containing clips and pictures and magazine cut outs of clothes from EVERYWHERE.  It was like walking into a dream.  All we had to do was point and say that one and it was like magic! haha. No, I mean it wasn't really THAT simple--it was actually incredibly overwhelming! To have literally a million choices in front of you, not just in terms of style, but then to select color and materials and trim colors and buttons...holy cow was all I could think!

We spent 3 days in Hoi An between 2 tailor shops which were making our clothes for us. Neil had two 3-piece suits made and some dress shirts for less than $300! I got a winter coat made for myself and some dresses for Nina, and Eden got a coat and a really cute skirt she designed made along with dress pants and a blazer. I wish I could have had more made, but really, it was way too much. The cost was cheap, but we spent our days and nights just wandering through the town in the heat in between going to the 2 stores for our fittings for our clothes.  There is a sweat shop somewhere underground in that town. There has to be.  I ordered 4 custom dresses to be made and they were all ready for my first fitting within 5 hours of my measurements being taken. Neil ordered a 3 piece suit at almost 10pm at night and it was entirely finished by 9am the next day! And this is the low season! I can't imagine how crazy busy this place must be during high season. And the amount of money these shop owners must make is incredible! Man, I definitely need to go back to this place. I need to take a completely empty suitcase though. haha. If I had had space in my backpack to fit more I definitely would have; but I think the lack of space was good for my wallet. I definitely spent more than was necessary.

Next stop for me is the beach!! FINALLY.  I haven't seen a real beach this entire trip! Can't wait!

Hue is Way Boring

Hue (pronounced Hway as one syllable) is not so exciting. I'm not exactly sure why I decided to come here actually. haha. The bus ride down was as comfortable as it could be I guess, but definitely NOT like the sleeper buses in South America. The buses are 3 rows of two small beds set up like bunk beds. My friends Eden and Neil, and I were lucky to find 3 close to each other so we could chat. Once we saw the bus, we knew it was going to be a pretty long 14 hrs, and after doing the Halong Bay booze cruise, we were in desparate need of sleep since we were going straight from the bus back to the hostel on to another bus.  We were told the bus would pick us up at 5:30pm so when I finished showering and repacking my bag and it was 5:15pm, I figured I wouldn't have time for dinner, and I would just have to bank on the bus stopping for food like our hostel people said it would around 8 or 9pm at the latest since our lunch on the boat was at like 10:30 or 11am.  Well we did stop around 8 or 9pm, but it was NOT for dinner and there was no food.  Not cool. I was starving at this point but pretty much had to suck it up bc there was nothing I could do about it. I KNEW once I saw all the locals get on the bus with loads of food that I was going to be in trouble. The bus didn't end up stopping for dinner until 1:30AM. Umm. I got my butt up and ate though, and I had some of the best Pho Ga (Chicken Pho) EVER. So good out of a dingy little food place that seemed as sketch as ever. And so begins my Pho tour of Vietnam.  haha. I had Pad Thai everyday I spent in Thailand, and now I will sample Pho at every place I visit in Vietnam. I can't wait!

After arriving to Hue and dumping our stuff the next morning, we just wandered throughout the city taking in the sights and sounds of the market and the city itself.  We only planned on staying one night so we didn't do anything crazy since our next bus was at 8:30am the next day. We wandered through the Citadel, which was like a giant town for the Chinese emperors in the 1800s when Vietnam was under Chinese control.   Another set of cool buildings to see built when all people had were elephants to help them build collasol structures. The weirdest thing though was that there was a tennis court in the middle of this place. Like a brand new tennis court. The site wasn't as well kept as it could have been, but it was still a cool place to see I guess.

Next stop is Hoi An--CLOTHES CENTRAL!! Everyone goes here to have clothes made from scratch just for you! I can't wait!!! haha. It will be a nightmare for my credit card (aka my parents) but we'll see how well I can come out of this town without putting a massive dent in the rest of the money I have for my trip, which is rapidly coming to an end!! Ahh! How is my time up so quickly?? I don't even remember starting this trip, it seems so long ago! And now I'm down to my last 10 days, and no time to finish all the places I wanted to see!  I'm already planning my return though! :)

And last but not least,
HAPPY BIRTHDAY DAD!!! Hope you have the best day!! We'll have LOTS of cake/snicker's/ice cream when I come home!! :)

Hanoi and Halong Bay! Mountains Out of Nowhere!

Good Morning Vietnam!!

I heard that's a movie--I just see it on shirts for sale everywhere here. Didn't spend much time at all on Hanoi. Missed the mosoleum to see Ho Chi Minh, which was really disappointing, but it was because I was booked to go to Halong Bay, a candidate to be one of the 7 Wonders of the World. Definitely worthy of the title. This place was AMAZING!! There are limestone mountains that just come out of nowhere from the Bay. Such a beautiful site!!

I took a 4 hour bus ride to the Bay with a tour of about 60 people from my hostel. It's a pretty well known tour that keeps things fun at night, but great during the day. We ended up parking our 3 boats in the middle of  the bay so we could take a swim, and then we got to go kayaking around the bay to a cave where we walked around the the pitch black until we came upon a lagoon to swim in. Kayaking was so hard! My arms were like jello, and  I was horrible at steering us! We ended up crashing into several rocks and a ship in the bay before we got the hang of the kayak, and even then, my arms are too short, so I kept hitting my fingers btwn the oar and the boat. Ouch.

The next day we went to a private island where we'd be spending the night in little huts with no AC and holey mosquito nets. haha. It was fun though. We had this little beach to ourselves, there was volleyball, more kayaking, and we had the option of going tubing via a speed boat, wake boarding, or rock climbing. I decided to give wake boarding a try since I've never done it and it was so COOL! I got up on my first try!! I don't even know how that happened!!  I did fall plenty, but I managed to get up 4 or 5 times out of my 7 or so attempts which was great! There was one guy on our turn that didn't get up at all, so I was really glad that I at least got up since I was the only person who was a first timer. My tan is pretty ridiculous right now, so I might have to start easing up on the beach before I get home. haha...or not.

We got back to the hostel, and I became good friends with a Canadian couple on my trip, so I'm heading south with them for the rest of my trip I think. On a bus at 5:30pm so we can get to the next place in Vietnam called Hue. The bus should be interesting since it's a sleeper bus, but hopefully it's kind of like the buses I rode in South America.  It's a 14 hour ride, so I really hope that's the case!!

Full Moon Madness for my 25th Birthday!!

Full Moon Party (def) 

   -noun
1. Crazy rave on the beach which occurs once a month during the full moon on the island of Ko Phangan, Thailand
2. An excuse to drink far too much in the form of beach buckets
3. Art show in the form of body paint, neon clothing, black lights, and fire
4. My 25th Birthday Party!!!

How to begin to describe the madness that is the Full Moon? Well for one, I have been hearing about this party since I went traveling to South America last year. It was legendary. Everywhere I went there, people were either coming from S.E. Asia to S. America and talking about it, or people had tickets over to Asia after S. America and it was on the top of their list of places to visit! I figured, I have to check this thing out in my lifetime. A party cannot be THAT amazing and not be seen in my lifetime. haha.

After 38 hrs of travel from Siem Reap on a combination of buses and ferries, I arrived to the island with the intention of meeting up with my first good friend of my trip--my Canadian friend, Giang (in my elephant pics).  That was the intention. I arrived to the beach bungalow she booked us into to discover she wasn't there yet, and that I was the ONLY person staying at this place. Not exactly the way I imagined started my trip to the island, esp. after I saw the room we'd be staying in, but I figured once Giang got there we could leave and we could figure out another place to stay. I showered, I ate, I lounged on a pretty unattractive beach for hours, and still no Giang. Now I was starting to get worried. I did NOT want to stay at this place but without Giang there, I couldn't leave bc I had no idea when she was showing up. There was no internet at this place, and it was a 15 min walk down a road without any lights. In the end, I ended up making the walk to try to find some other guys we had traveled with a while bc I knew what hostel they were staying in, but I was unsucessful in my attempt at finding them, got chased by some dogs, and ended up trying to get into bed at 9:30pm. I say try because there was a spider as big as my hand on the wall next to my bed, a lizard inside my toilet, and after getting over those 2 things, there was some sort of animal on the ceiling of my bungalow that started to make noises once the light went off. OMG. I spent the night sweating away under the covers praying that nothing would touch me or try to eat me or something. haha.

The next day, I made it to the internet to discover a msg from Giang saying she'd be arriving later that day. As soon as she got there, we booked it out of that bungalow (after some arguing with the owner) and we went to stay with a big group of friends she had made on the last island she had been on for 2 wks. They were all really great, but I was really hoping they would become friends of mine in 2 days so they could celebrate my bday with me, and I wouldn't have to feel lonely. haha. Spent the next couple of days getting amazing Thai massages for $8, and spent the nights just going out and getting warmed up for the actual Full Moon.  Two of my friends from tubing in Laos were also on the island so it was so great to hang out with them and see them!

The night before full moon was my actual birthday at midnight and it was great! The people I was with bought me a rotee (the GREATEST dessert ever!) with banana, nutella, and peanut butter. Then they surprised me with a cake from 7-11 when we stopped off for some snacks for them.  And THEN they bought me a sandwich from a chicken stand on the street called Mr. K's Chicken. OMG SO GOOD! haha. I ate all that in about 30 min though, so I had to be careful after that.

The beach party that night was just a warm up to the real thing though. On the actual night, we all got dressed in our new neon clothes and started the night off with a body painting session.  We finally headed down the beach around midnight and it was crazy!! During the low season (which is now) there are about 10,000 on the beach for this party! I can't imagine what this would be like during the high season. You pretty much just walk the entire length of the beach and go from bar to bar and there are so many DJs and different kinds of music playing at each bar. It's insane. Not to mention the fire limbo, the fire jumproping, and the fire  slide. I wasn't stupid enough to attempt any of those (the slide actually caught fire and got shut down before anyone did do it), but I heard so many horror stories the next day of unsuccessful attempts at each and the burns that came with them. Yikes. I actually ended up getting lost with one of the guys in my group because the crowd was so big. We spent a good part of the night just wandering down the beach seeing if we could find anyone and checking out all the bars. I ended up seeing all of the people I had planned to meet up with at this party from my travels without even trying! It was so lucky! I still can't believe that I managed to see these people in a crowd of 10,000. It was birthday luck I think. :)

Ended up finding everyone at our planned meeting spot for the sunrise at 6:30am. The beach was still jam packed at that hour, and people were still being ridiculous. I saw one guy spill his entire bucket over another guy's head from the top of a stool.  The guy kicked the stool in retaliation and the guy on top went flying. It was pretty funny, esp. at 7am. Had some breakfast afterward with the people who managed to stay out all night, and attempted to go to bed after that, but was the ONLY person basically awake on the entire island with the exception of the locals. All I could do was lay in the bed and pray that the people I was with would wake up because I was so awake. Haha. Didn't happen--birthday luck ran out.

All in all--amazing way to celebrate my 25th with 9,999 other souls on the beach!! I would have loved to have my Laos friends around because we were much closer, but I had a couple with me and the people I was with were great, too, so things worked out! Definitely worth rearranging my trip for!

Now, I'm heading back on a boat to hop on a bus to get me back to Bangkok at 1:30am so I can sit at the airport until my flight to Hanoi, Vietnam at 6:45am. Can't wait. :)

Siem Reap: Angkor What?

I grabbed a morning bus from PP to Siem Reap thinking it would be a pretty boring 8 hour bus ride. I've been wrong a lot lately. haha.  For starters, after watching Kung Fu Panda from my assigned very front seat on the bus, our driver put in a dvd that had 4 movies on it that were basically an ode to Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio. All of the movies had one or both of them. Obviously he picked Titanic for us to watch. Not my first choice, but fine--at least it's 3 hours long and will make the time go by faster. He mentioned how much he loved the movie during one of our stops. haha. When he wasn't telling me about how much he liked the movie, he was in control of the movie, while driving. So when our dvd started getting stuck, he didn't leave it to his helper guy to fix it, nope. He just started looking at the screen (straight above him) instead of looking at the road while he fumbled with the remote. Awesome. We played chicken with plenty of cars on a road that was only meant to fit one car.  When he wasn't trying to fix the movie, and he got bored of driving, the driver killed flies btwn his hands by clapping them to death above, below, and to the side of the steering wheel. Really?? Most ridiculous part of the ride?? [Yes, even more ridiculous than that]  Two women and small child about 6 yo getting on the bus with about 2.5 hrs left of our ride. The little girl had an IV bag attached to her wrist that was hanging off of a STICK. What the heck!? Omg it was terrible. And there were no seats bc in Cambodia even though a bus is full, we still pick up locals along the way to wherever it is that we're going, and they sit in the aisles or on the front stairs of the bus, which is to say, they sat by me. It was not sitting well with me watching these 3 squatting and sitting in the front of bus at my feet, esp. this poor little girl who was obviously ill.  So I ended up giving up my seat to them so she could sit on someone's lap who was at least comfortable on a seat. I figured it was only about 1.5 hrs left to Siem Reap anyway and my butt was hurting. The lady would not let me stand though, so she made me sit with her and the little girl, plus the other guy in the seat next to mine the rest of the way. It was way more uncomfortable than standing, but whatever. I'm glad I did something about it--I was shocked when NO ONE else on the bus stood up for them.  Not nice at all. And I would have thought about it for way too long afterward if I didn't give my seat up.

The hostel I went to was great, but I was put into a "mixed" dorm with 5 extremely stinky guys. OMG. The entire room just had this sweaty boy smell to it, so as soon as I walked in, I knew I was going to be the only girl staying in there. Besides the foul odor coming from the pile of things next to my bed that belonged to my bunk mate, the boys were so much fun and so nice! The welcomed me into room 302 with welcome arms and we had a great time together while I was there.

I went to see the sunrise at Ankgor Wat the next morning at 4:30am with two Canadians I met at the hostel the night before. It was a tiring morning, but the sunrise was really pretty when it finally happened at 6:10am.  We spent the next 8 hours walking through 10 different temples at the site which were all so amazing! It's so crazy to think that people could build things so large and magnificent without electricity and machinery!! And it was sweet that Angkor Wat, which is the biggest and most bad ass of all the temples, is the only Hindu temple! It was massive and unfortunately, I got too camera happy with the sunrise and pics of the temple and my camera died as we were leaving to see our 2nd temple of the day. Ugh! Of all the rotten luck!! I tried having my friends take pics of me at each temple I went to by just turning the camera on and off really quickly, but only one or two pics came out. Boo. I'll have to grab the pics off my friend's fb I guess. I did get to go see the temple that was featured in Tomb Raider.  The trees there are SO COOL!!! They just grow out of the temples it seems like!! Man I really wish I had my camera!! Ugh. I spent the rest of the day just hanging out at the hostel and just relaxing after a super hot and sweaty day walking through the temples.

I'm making my way back to Thailand via land to head south to an island called Koh Phangan to celebrate my birthday next! Seems a little ridiculous to rearrange my entire trip for this place, but to be on that island for my 25th birthday will be epic! :)

Phnom Penh = Educational but Depressing

Okay, it's been ages! My bad! I have been everywhere in just the last few weeks, so I will do my best to sum everything up!

As the title might hint, Phnom Penh was not anywhere near the top of my list of places visited. I last left off saying I was spending the night in the Laos capital of Vientiane. WORST NIGHT EVER!! I got into bed thinking I would be getting a beautiful 8 hrs of sleep after all the chaos that was Vang Vien, and I so far from right it was not even funny. I pulled my pillow away and saw a mosquito fly away, and I thought, "Not a good sign, but it's only one mosquito." WRONG WRONG WRONG!! I was in bed for maybe 10 minutes before I felt two bumps in a row on  my arm and it itched. I sprinted to the bathroom thinking it was bed bugs (bc I am ultra paranoid about that--no thanks to my friend Jess for that one!), but was actually relieved that it was just a couple of mosquito bites. I threw some cream on them and tried sleeping the other way. No luck. Within 15 minutes not only are both of my arms itching, but now my feet are, too! OMG! Then my face started itching and it just got to be way too much. I spent the entire night sweating away under a blanket and sheet with pants and a t-shirt on, constantly putting anti-histamine cream and 95% deet on my ever increasing number of bites while the girl I was rooming with slept super soundly in her tiny shorts and tank top (without a sheet, I might add) snoring and passing gas. I "woke up" and counted 80 bites--some of which were on my eye lid so that was now swollen. Like I said: WORST NIGHT EVER! What a horrendous way to end my amazing high point of fun in Laos. :(

Arrived to my hostel in scorching hot Phnom Penh only to realize that there was almost no one staying at my hostel.  I tried to make friends with this semi-American guy, but it didn't really work out and I ended up spending most of my day just wandering about the city on my own. I have never seen as many Range Rovers, Lexuses, and Mercedes as I saw in that city--not even in NYC. For real. It's insane how crazy the gap is between the wealthy and the poor here. I spent my afternoon at a high school that was converted into a the famous S-21 Prison, where far too many people were tortured or killed during the Khmer reign in Cambodia in the late 1970s. It was awful to walk through because the pictures in all the rooms were so graphic. It was literally like walking through another concentration camp in Germany. 

I spent the next morning at the Killing Fields, which is where they took prisoners from S-21 to be executed and buried in mass graves.  It was eerie to walk around a place where so many people had been killed so brutally. There were still remants of clothing and bone coming up out of the ground where graves hadn't been uncovered yet along the walking path. There was even this beautiful tree that was apparently used to kill children with. I won't get into the details of how that worked though--too ridiculous. There were pictures, left over bits of clothing, bones of the dead, stains on the walls of the cells--absolutely devastating. It's so crazy to  imagine this mass murder occurring so close to our lifetime. I mean, I know it is happening so much in other parts of the world as I write this, but to be around the remanants of it was really unsettling.

I did see other parts of Phnom Penh during my 2 day stint there with some other people I met from my hostel, but the really important part of seeing this city was to really try to learn about the history of Cambodia. I had NO IDEA about any of this before I even went there. So even though I had a miserable time here because of the depressing nature of why I came, I am really glad I did because I'm really interested in reading up on the history of the Khmer regime and how everything that came to happen was actually allowed to happen by the world community. (I read somewhere that the UN actually gave the regime a seat? What the heck??)  I'm on the lookout for a book called First They Killed My Father. It's a true story about what a girl went through during this time. If anyone has it, give me a shout!

Next stop, Siam Reap!

Vang Vien = SPRING BREAK!!!

OMG. Vang Vien. I can't believe I almost skipped this place bc some people died! This town is in the middle of nowhere, and it has the Mekong River running next to it. Best thing that could have ever happened. It put this town on the map! Vang Vien is 3 streets filled with guesthouses that play re-runs of Friends and Family Guy all day for backpackers who show up to go tubing down the river. To put it simply, you go tubing down a river that is lined with about 15 bars along either side of the river. The bar people throw out ropes, bottles attached to ropes, and tubes to reel you in and you just go down the river making however many bar stops you feel like.  What an AMAZING concept!! :)

It was raining like crazy on our day to go tubing which was pretty unsettling since the current would be a lot stronger.  I decided to share a tube with a friend, Cheryl, and we figured we'd switch back and forth on who swam in the river and who actually sat in the tube. I never once sat in that tube.  I swam the whole way down the river and just guided Cheryl to whatever bar we all decided to stop at.  They gave out free shots at every bar, and at some point there was spray painting on our bodies. We only got through 3 bars along the river before we broke the cardinal rule: Do not go into the water when it is dark out.

It was like Titanic in that river. A bunch of us floating and swimming down the river in the pitch black of night, and the water becoming so shallow at some points that the rocks were just cutting up our legs and butts.  Plus, not a single one of us was sober. What a bad idea. We got out of the water eventually and hobbled our way to a tuk-tuk to get back home so we could shower and go out again. Absolutely ridiculous. A spring breaker's paradise to say the least, and I was so sad to leave this morning while all my friends got to stay behind and do it all over again.

I am now in Vientiane, the capital of Laos. It's a pretty lame capital, but I haven't heard anything amazing about from anyone. I needed to come here so I could catch a flight tomorrow morning to Phenom Phen, Cambodia.  No pictures to post from tubing, although that's probably better. People did have cameras though, so it's going to be interesting once those get posted. haha.

Hope you're all doing well and enjoying the summer sun! xx

In Luang Prabang Call Me Tamaal.

Luang Prabang! What a random city in Laos. It is really pretty--lots of French colonialism influence in the building architecture and stuff. Great market where people do not hassle you and harass you to buy things and REALLY spicy street food!

Once we got to Luang Prabang pier I had to find my hostel and I was now leading 5 more people to it.  Would have been no problem except for the fact that there were no directions what so ever to this place and all I had to go off of was a mental picture of the map with no labeled street signs. Not that my hostel had a street name for me to go off of. All I knew was that we had to walk up a few blocks and to the right. Great. This will take no time. Also didn't help that none of the locals had the slightest clue of any of the streets we actually were on. And there was no English being spoken to even try that path. We did make it eventually, and it was a fabulous hostel pick that I made. :) Huge comfy beds with super clean showers and toilets. Sweet. I was sad I only booked in two nights.

We went to grab dinner, and even though I wanted street food, I knew if I saw everyone else eating I would get major food envy so I decided to go halfsies with the crazy Canadian on a veggie pizza. I figured one day of eating Western food wasn't going to kill me. Little did I know that the pizza was only the beginning. haha. After a quick stroll through the night market we went to one of the 2 bars in the city to have some drinks. I was all for having a quiet night, but somehow the majority of the people I was out of with were quite keen to have more drinks so we had to decide between going out to the club or bowling because those were the only two options for more drinking. We decided to go out to the discotheque.  I guess that was reasonable since the bars close at 11pm. haha.  The Laos nightclub we went to was plenty of fun, although whenever the Laos music came on it wasn't as great. The dance floor was huge, but there were these massive barrels all over and we figured it was to prevent boys and girls from actually dancing with each other.  Having the barrels to dance around helped to prevent that I guess. It was still a pretty early night though, since the club closes at 1am.

We spent the next day at this beautiful waterfall park just outside of the city. It had all of these pools that we could stop off and swim in while we walked along a trail, and the water was this really pretty blue color. There was even a big pool where you could swing off a rope swing or jump off a cliff. I figured I would never be able to carry my body mass far enough over the water to use the rope swing, so I opted for the cliff jump. I thought it would be the easier of the two since all you had to do was jump.  Well I got over to the cliff, which was maybe 15-20ft high, and ended up holding up the entire line for 5 minutes before I could jump. It was so embarrassing! haha. I just got so nervous once I was actually at the edge! I kept trying to jump but my body wouldn't move.. It was like trying to tell me I was being stupid for flinging my body off a cliff. Point well taken body. The line was about 7 people long and no one would go in front of me, and I finally had to just go off a countdown (the 3rd countdown since I missed the first two..haha).  By then a massive crowd of people was watching from the water's edge. Awesome. haha. I ended up going up to do again after the first time. haha. It was easier the second time around but still not completely easy. There were even some sun bears at this park that were being taken care of. Really cute little things.

Since we went to the discotheque our first night out, it was only natural for us to decide to go bowling.  And the best part about bowling was that it was open the latest out of everything in town--we could be out until 3am bowling. I am so bad at bowling. Obviously I lost our game miserably. I think I might have scored 47 points. The worst part about bowling? I was hungry by 2am and decided to buy some Lays chips. I asked for the ones that were supposed to be "Extra BBQ" only to get BBQ squid flavor chips. Ughhhh. Really? Wasn't it enough to have maybe eaten pork testicles (which btw, could have just been balls of meat that were pork)?  Worst chips EVER. But I still made myself eat them while trying to share with everyone since I was so hungry. I just grabbed some gum afterward to make the fish breath go away. Ew.  The reason my name is Tamaal in Luang Prabang is because I was re-named by some Israeli guy who came up to me at the bowling alley because he thought I was from Israel.  I had literally just spent the afternoon telling a Jewish girl from London that I had met that I was somehow confused by people to be Israeli and she had the hardest time believing me.  She had spent the last 20 min talking to these guys trying to make them believe that she was Jewish and they came up to me and thought I was Israeli.  It was funny until the guy got down on one knee and asked me to marry him.  After I told him that couldn't work since he wouldn't have Jewish kids, he was like that's fine, we can move to London together and I can just come live with you! And I was like umm buddy...I'm American. Then he decided to rename me with an Israeli name, so I am now Tamaal. It means some sort of sweet fruit. So awkward. My friends gave me a pretty hard time about that one.

There are so many great people I met off the Slow Boat trip that we are getting our own minibus to take us to Vang Vieng, where we're going to go tubing! It is supposed to be a pretty rough car ride though, so hopefully it goes well!

The Slow Boat is SLOW.

Hey everyone!! It's been awhile since I've been able to jump on the internet! Thanks for all the emails and comments though! Glad you guys are enjoying all my pictures/blog! I'm having as much fun as I look like I'm having, believe me!! :)

So I left Chiang Mai to make an 8hr bus ride in the middle of the night to a place called Chiang Khong so I could catch a boat down the river to my first stop in Laos! Would have been great if I could have slept at all during the bumpy and super twisty road. A girl fell out of her seat while sleeping bc it got to be so rough! haha. We arrived to Chiang Khong just after 4am for our 3hr nap before breakfast, and of course I was one of 2 people left without a room.  The owner was a crazy Thai who loved singing everything he said and he took me and a Canadian girl down the road to another hotel he owned. He was really excited when I said I was from America, and proceeded to sing "America" over and over again until we got to our room. After breakfast (soggy eggs and toast) we headed over to the border for Laos.

Once we got onto our slow boat, I ended up meeting a bunch of really nice people from Scotland, and it was just nice to hang out while the river drifted by and get to know each other. Unfortunately for me, I once again did NOT sit next to my future husband. I sat instead next to a REALLY NICE guy from Ireland who had the WORST b.o. I have ever smelled. Ewwww. I had to pull my deodorant out and make an offhand comment about how I didn't want to smell so he would get the hint. It was the nicest way I could think of saying anything! Not that it helped! Ugh. I just had to wait until the boat started moving and pray that the breeze coming into the boat would never go away. haha. Basically I was surrounded by people from Scotland and Ireland though, and I was yet again the only American. Oh well. I ended up meeting a Canadian girl who said she started college in D.C. only to have to leave for Canada again because she hated America and all of our materialistic ways, our poverty, and the fact that anybody can't go to college bc it's so expensive. Umm...remember I'm American?? And remember how Canada and America and every other Western country is EXACTLY alike!? We are not the ONLY people who splurge on expensive handbags! Ugh..what an idiot.

We stopped over in a small town on the river after our first day out on the boat in a town called Pak Beng. A whole lot of nothing to do there, but I did have samosas for dinner. I love seeing how many random places I can find Indian people. One of the restaurant owners tried telling me where he was from in India--I had to pretend like I knew. haha. I'm a terrible Indian sometimes.

Second day on the boat was a complete 180.  On the first day we were all really chatty and super pumped to meet each other. On the second day we were over that new friend thing. haha. It was a nice 8 hour boat ride in silence until we reached Luang Prabang, the jewel of Southeast Asia apparently.

Chiang Mai: Land of Elephants!

Took what was supposed to be a 14 hr train ride up to Chiang Mai which is the 2nd largest city in Thailand and is a student city. ! It ended up taking 16 hrs for some reason, but I'm not surprised. I was really amazed when we left on time, but I should have known better. haha. Asia does NOT function on time schedules. The ride up was not the best I've ever had, and I think I'm a bit more sick because of it, but oh well.

Giang and I are staying in a hostel that is about $3/night. It's not as amazing as my last one, but for $3, I'm not complaining. We did some amazing things while staying here in Chiang Mai including going to some great night markets which were massive. We went to the Saturday night market for 3 hours sampling the food and doing some shopping. I tried new food like mangoes over sticky rice with coconut, rotee which is like fried dough with things inside, some sort of Thai jello---no bugs or anything gross this time! :) Success. haha. The Sunday night market was even bigger than the Saturday night one! I don't know how people go to these things every weekend. It's like sensory overload being here. The sights, the sounds, the smells, the textures--it all comes at you from every direction. It can be pretty overwhelming. It's pretty amazing to see though. There has to be hundreds of people strolling through each turn of the market.

We spent one day at a place called the Elephant Nature Park. It's an elephant sanctuary about 90 min outside the city for rescued elephants.  It was so much fun! We got to bathe the elephants in the river and feed them tons of food. They eat so much!! It was one of the best days I've had so far, but so sad too. The stories behind why each elephant was at the park were so sad. Some used to be used for logging and work, others were forced to work in the city for money, and a few were bought from the hilltop tribe people who are just terribly cruel to elephants. It was so annoying and upsetting. We watched a video on how wild elephants become "domesticated" and it was the most brutal thing I've ever seen. I hate people sometimes. They torture elephants that are as young as 3 or 4 years old with sleep deprivation, hunger, thirst, and they hit it and beat it for days to break their spirits and make them submissive. And some cooky shaaman things he just needs to sprinkle some water on the elephant with some incense to break it's spirit but the beating doesn't hurt to aide the process. WHAT THE HECK!? Ughh so enraging!! And then you walk all over the streets of Thailand and if you're not looking at a Buddha statue you see an elephant! They pray to elephants and then they go and treat them so poorly! It's so frustrating to watch, esp. because the Asian elephant is becoming endangered. And once these elephants become domesticated, they're no longer considered wild and they have the same rights as any other livestock animal--NONE. It was so just heartbreaking to listen to all the horrific things these poor elephants had to go through, and how they take care of each other in the sanctuary now. It cost a lot more to go to that particular park, but it's 100% nonprofit, so I didn't mind. It was so worth it.

Giang left the next day to go back to the south islands in Thailand, and I went on a day trek. I met some really sweet British girls who were my age which was amazing. haha. I think everyone I've met so far as been 18-22, which is fine since no one really talks about age, but it was nice to see I'm not the only person in my mid-20s traveling. Everyone else is just graduated from high school or college on gap years. Ahh how I wish we had gap years in America. haha. Anyways. so we drove out about 90 min to where we first went on an elephant ride. It was not fun to do that since I had gone to the elephant park the day before. It's like a catch 22 with these work elephants. Without the tourism industry they would have no work and would basically be abandoned or killed.  But bc of the tourism industry, more elephants are domesticated or treated poorly by mahouts (elephant trainers). SO ANNOYING. It was a 30 min ride of me feeling guilty the whole way. Besides it was really uncomfortable and pretty sketchy.  Then we had some lunch from the base of where we would start our hike up to this waterfall. It was a nice hike and the waterfall was amazing! Hard to swim near since the water pressure was so strong, but really refreshing after hiking an hour. Afterwards, we went white water rafting down the river we were near and then we got onto bamboo rafts and floated the rest of the way to where we were picked up. The rafting could have been way better..it wasn't even a level 1. haha. I didn't expect Thailand to have any awesome rafting, but I do wish it had been more fun!  I got separated from my friends and had to raft with these 3 french people who were not fun at all, and the rapids were so short that we spent most of the time just floating down the river. We would have been better off in tubes. Oh well. It was still a really fun day, and I met some great people. :)

I had a bus ticket booked to Veng Vien, Laos for tonight, but my new friends managed to email me to tell me that the tubing was shut down in the city because 4 people had died this month. Yikes! Tubing down the river there is the only reason to go, so after hearing this, I am re-routed to go straight to another city called Luang Prabang. I'll be driving to the border tonight, and then once I cross, I'll take a slow boat down the river for 2 days until I get to the city. I'm hoping by the time I get there, the tubing in Veng Vien will be open and I can head there to do it. It sounds risky, but the reason why people die doing this is because they're drunk and stoned at the same time and end up drowning when their tubes flip. I'm obviously more responsible than that. I guess we'll see what happens when I get there though.

Hope Laos is as amazing as everyone is saying!! And I hope I don't get eaten alive by mosquitos on this boat ride. I finished my book so I tried going to 4 different book shops to exchange my book and no one would buy it off of me! Why? Because they didn't know the author. Hmm, I'm not sure when the Thai-speaking book shop ladies learned how to read in English, but it was so annoying when they turned away my book bc the author wasn't someone famous! And besides, my book was a NYTimes International Best Seller and it won a book prize, and the author has written 4 other international best sellers! Wtf? But noooooo, no one's going to buy it off me. Now I'm stuck with a book I've read and nothing to do on the boat ride for 2 days. I think I'll have to suck it up and buy a book at one of these shops. Lameeee.

Anyways, I'll let you guys know how the boat ride goes anyway. :)

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MOM!!! Hope you have a great day and I miss you!!

Bangkok Part II

So last I left you guys, I had just made a friend.  Now I have lots of friends! haha. There are a crazy amount of Canadians traveling through Asia, and so far I feel like the only people I've met are from Canada or the UK. So basically, there's been a mass exodus of all the 18-24 year olds from those countries. A bunch that I befriended will be living in or close to NYC though, so I've got visitors lined up!

I spent the rest of my time in Bangkok hanging out with these new friends. We watched The Hangover II when it came out which was fun to see in Bangkok since it was filmed there. I can't wait to get to the beaches that look like the one from the movie! Before the movie started we had to stand up because they play the Thai national anthem.  A little weird, but whatever. I met my first weird backpacker as well. Another Canadian who was a physics major and is going to be working for Google really really close to my neighborhood. I had to pretend I didn't live near there. haha. He was kind of like Allan from the Hangover, except not funny. Oh well..there's always going to be a few right?

I rode on the back of a motorcycle taxi, too! Lots of fun weaving through Bangkok traffic, except my abnormally small head obviously didn't fit in the helmet he gave me. I had to hold on to the helmet the entire time bc whenever he gunned it or braked the thing would fall right off. Definitely not the safest thing, but it was way faster than a tuk-tuk or taxi. And way cheaper.  I managed to take some video while I was riding but am having a hard time uploading it.  Looks like it won't be seen for a while since I've spent the last hour trying and wasting my money. boo. 

I opted not to go to what is called a Ping Pong show that night.  To explain it briefly, people go and watch girls shoot/pull things out of their private parts. Examples include ping pong balls, long string with razor blades, fish, darts...I think you guys get the point. I'll be honest, I was going to go watch it since it's one of those things to do in Bangkok. But the guy at the door was charging way more than seeing that is worth, so my friend Giang and I turned around. The guys we went with stayed though, and like every other person I've met, they are hoping to erase the entire 2 hrs of mental images that have been seared into their memories. I think I made the right decision. haha. 

Since my first horrible food experience things have really turned around for the better. I've had pad thai everyday since that day, and it's been wonderful.  Pad thai for less than $2.  I need to live here. :D SOOOO GOOD! Everything here is SO CHEAP. I can't get over it. A liter of water is just 10 cents, a 30 min thai massage is $2, clothes I've bought are maybe $3-5. And this is less if you bargain the price down. I feel bad doing it sometimes, especially when it's an old lady trying to sell me something, but everyone is out to get you here. It has to be done. By the time I get to the end of my trip I will be an expert haggler, and then I'll come home to the US and I'll have to head to Chinatown because where else can I go? haha.

I went to the floating markets with a new friend, Chris one morning. The night before a group of us basically decided that we wanted to get there when the locals did which is at 5am. By the end of our night, we decided we could get there when the tourists came which was at 7am, but it still required at 5:30am wakeup. Only Chris and I got ourselves up to go, and we managed to get on a tour to go. A definite plus since it was 90km out of the city and we had no idea if we could get a good price for a taxi to take us out there and back. We arrived to the market thinking it would be floating alone on a river and we'd need boats to see everything and that there'd be food and snakes and craziness! Not the case. haha. Obviously. We took a boat around to various stalls but it was pretty much a waste of money to do that. Oh well. It was still cool to see. Another massive market to add to the list. I think I'll be going to quite a few of those. 

I'm heading up north to Chiang Mai via train with Giang! Pretty excited since there's elephants and hiking!

Thailand aka Sweatland

Welcome to Thailand!! Ahh I can't believe I'm here! The 24+ hr trip was so long! I knew that once I got on the plane I would NOT be meeting my future husband, and that I'd get stuck next to someone too big for the seat or something like that. I was right. I got an old Japanese man with horrendous breath! Really, just so bad. It was a long 14 hrs of breathing..haha. Watching way too many movies and tried to sleep, but having two screaming children nearby didn't help.  Arrived to Tokyo and thought I would be walking into the coolest, most hi-tech airport EVER...it wasn't. The Thailand airport was way cooler, as I had plenty of time to look at it since the "safe and save" airport express shuttle I paid to take was going to be another 30 min.  It finally came and we were all seated on the bus, but the ticket lady and the driver spent the next 25 min flirting...so we didn't leave until 11pm. Definitely didn't sit well with me since I was going to have to find my hostel in the dark.  Got off the bus and had NO CLUE where I was supposed to go! It could have been a disaster except the Thai people are so nice! I had 4 different people help me out and I eventually got to my super clean and wonderfully ACed hostel. There was so much AC that I was actually cold most of the night.

I slept for about 5 hours before I got up to start my day.  Intended on going to the US Embassy bc my passport is out of pages, and I actually ended up meeting a guy who is in the bunk next to mine who also needed to go to the UK Embassy, which was conveniently down the street from ours. Sweet! I have a friend! We tried to walk to a water boat to beat the traffic and ended up meeting this really nice guy who was a school teacher who set us up into a tuk-tuk to go there. The first tuk-tuk didn't work out after a while, but we met another teacher on the street who got us another tuk-tuk and told us it was a Buddhist holiday so neither of our embassies were even open. Good to know.  We spent the rest of our day getting driven around to a bunch of places by our really nice driver for only $10 baht! $1 dollar is about 28B, so obviously that was an awesome bargain.  Love Buddha for giving us these holidays where drivers don't charge anything. 

First thai food experience: HORRIBLE!! After our first temple, my new friend Pete and I decided to eat at a nearby outside food place. Sounds fine right? I decide on a picture that has noodles and broth..figured it was safe.  As I'm attempting to eat with both of my hands because I need my right hand for the chopsticks and the left for the spoon thing, I notice this round meat thing and was like, "Pete, what do you think this is?"  He's all like I don't know mate, and I'm like oh well it tastes weird but whatever. I continue to eat my food until I offer Pete some to try and he's like, "you're eating pig balls." OMGGGGGGGGGGG. I wanted to die!! He knew the whole time and thought it was so funny not to tell me. EWWWW!! I told him no one would ever let me live this down. He was like, how could you NOT tell? How am I supposed to know what pig testicles look like?? UGHHH. I still can't get over it. I ate 2...my grandmother would be so horrified. I am not even a fan of pork..how did I end up eating the worst part?? ahh. so gross.

So the rest of the day consisted of jokes about my food taste while we walked all around the city seeing the rest of the sites. We hit up the Chinatown here in Bangkok.  INSANE! NYC has nothing on this place.  There were stalls selling guns and knives, toys, steering wheels, cell phone covers, you name it! Every other stall was dirty magazines or movies. We got lost for a couple hours there just meandering through and finally made our way towards the Grand Palace. Not sure I saw the Palace..just ended up in the temple next to it.

My feet kill. Have not walked around this much in ages, and obviously I don't run anymore. The heat and humidity here are absolutely unbearable!! I'm sweating myself away again like I did in Brazil. It's gross. And of course, I've already gotten plenty of mosquito bites. I'm not sure how they found my legs in the middle of day during peak sun time--shouldn't they be sleeping or something?!

Anyways, everyone can stop worrying! It's not so crazy here. It's like India, but better. The people are the same amount of nice and friendly and full of smiles for foreigners, but it is cleaner here, with less homeless people that I've seen and a lot less begging.  Now, if the Thai people could get over their obsession with pork, things would be fantastic.

Will probably go out tonight with a bunch of ppl from the hostel, so I'm on my way to making lots of friends for a day! Moving north in couple of days...will keep you posted! Not sure what I'll be doing tomorrow since I saw all the sites in one day. Oops. Oh well!

Hope you're all doing well!!


p.s. will put up pictures later today or tomorrow!