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!

So Nice I had to do it Twice

Sooo...here I go again? Yikes! I'm all packed and ready to start my Asian adventure!! I'm completely nervous though.  When I went to South America I felt so prepared--that's probably because I ate, slept, and breathed South America for 3 months before even going.  This time there's almost no preparation! I packed everything I could think of today, and my [dirty] yellow backpack is stuffed and heavy once again! I can't believe I'll be lugging that thing around for the next 6 weeks. It's already heavy. :(

I know where I'm headed once I get to Bangkok, I can only hope I get there in one piece! It'll be a late arrival, and I'm planning on taking an airport shuttle and then following directions. I hope the signs are in english!!  Ever since school ended things have been non-stop, so hopefully I can get some good rest during my 16 hr flight to Tokyo..and if I can't, I have some NyQuil to help me out. And then, it'll be non-stop on the go for the rest of the trip, with some r&r at the beaches, of course. :)

I've heard only wonderful things about this region, so I'm excited to finally get there.  I hope I can keep up with this blog the same way I did last time. If I don't though, don't be too mad! I'll try to post pictures up to facebook as well.

Happy summer everyone and wish me luck!!

peace, love, and on-time flights!
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