GoBlue

Wisconsin Family
Fall Creek, United States
After a nostalgic, almost teary-eyed, departure from AA, we are on the road! We first traveled through Chicago for a night at Jocelyn's uncle's place and then headed up to WI to see my family. Although the transition out of AA is hard, as soon as I crossed the WI border and saw a sign for Beefaroo and then one for Naughty but Nice adult bookstore, I realized that everything would be OK...ahhhh, it's good to be home.
written by  GoBlue on May 10, 2007 from Fall Creek, United States
from the travel blog: Carl's Circuit

East Cost Tour 2007
Quincy, United States
Hello, family and friends! Thanks for checking out the blog. Our goal is to make this into our living travel journal, so you can keep up with us as we explore Southeast Asia and Australia. Be sure to check out everyone's versions of the events!
With that said, here's my report on the past couple days, which I feel I could describe with a concert-like t-shirt saying "J-Mac East Coast 2007" on the back. It would look like this:
Naperville, IL - May 8
Brooklyn, NY - May 9-10
Jersey City, NJ - May 11
Cape Cod, MA - May 12-13
Quincy, MA - May 14
US Air 6461 - May 15
It's been a fun, whirlwind tour of the Eastern Seaboard. On Wednesday and Thursday, Alison Leff and I hit the streets of Brooklyn, scoping out potential digs there and enjoying an outdoor meal at Pacifico with Ross '05 grads Kate Mescal and Raquel Almeida. The original mission was to narrow down our target neighborhood list, but we only succeeded in finding more parts of B-town we liked. (Thanks again to Kate and Stella for letting us crash!)
I also had a great time with Steve Small in Jersey City, enjoying dinner in Hamilton Park and viewing the Manhattan skyline view from the roofdeck of his new condo. Steve even treated me to "Jersey City's best coffee." Who knew such world-class coffee could be found in the Jers?
Friday began with a visit to TEAM Academy Charter School in Newark, where I saw CFO Steve double as "lunch line lady." We then left for Cape Cod, which turned out to be an 8-hour long odyssey but undeniably one of the most fun car trips I've ever had. Our "guess how old the next town is" game kept us entertained for a solid hour along MA Rte 3A, even if Steve did win the last Combo. (I hadn't had so much fun on a road trip since New Orleans Minivan 2004!)
When we arrived in East Orleans, the party for Brian Levy and Maggie Sullivan was in full swing. We celebrated Bachelor Brian and Bachelorette Maggie all weekend long, clad in personalized party t-shirts. Field Day, spearheaded by Maggie, saw the Sullivan side (Irish - "Maggie go bragh!") battle the Levy side (Jewish - "Shalom and Mazel Tov!") in such intense competitions as bocce ball, relay race, obstacle course, and lawn bowling. In the end, Team Levy won by a nose, but there was more time for competition in the afternoon with a double-elimination beer die tournament. I'm certainly disappointed to miss the June 9th wedding of this fantastic couple, although our Ross crew will be amply represented.
Vivian is heels over head for Field Day
Now Vivian and I are back in Quincy, making final preparations for our flight to Hong Kong on Tuesday morning. How many pairs of socks do you need for a 6-week trip, anyway?!? Wish us packing luck...
The competition was fierce but friendly
Everyone wound up with grass stains ... just like being a kid again
written by  GoBlue on May 13, 2007 from Quincy, United States
from the travel blog: J-Mac's Junket

Final Preparations...
Quincy, United States
Just wrapped up a fun weekend in Cape Cod celebrating the upcoming wedding of our friends Brian and Maggie. Carl, Joc, and I were greeted upon arrival by a full cooler of beverages and an array of grilled food items - yum! Split into Team Brian (my team) and Team Maggie, we started off the weekend with rounds of "flip cup." Despite our two years of b-school training that should have put all of us in prime form, Team Brian fell repeatedly to the "bad guys." Not ones to despair, Team Brian pulled it together for Saturday's Field day of elementary school yore. We battled out grueling matches of lawn bowling, bocce, obstacle course, etc. on a sunny and beautiful day. Team Brian narrowly won the day by taking three events to Team Maggie's two events. After a great meal of Cape Cod's "best fried clams", we mixed up the sides and duked it out in a beer die tournament. Although Maggie and I were quickly eliminated...we had issues catching the die :(...Joc stuck it out to be a member of the "great hands" duo to win it all...and by "all" I mean two great looking lobster goblets. Good times!
As I write from my Dad's place in Quincy, MA, Carl and Joc are are about one hour in on their 20 hour flight to Sydney. Jennie and I are making final preparations as we're leaving first thing in the morning for Hong Kong on Tuesday (15th), before meeting up with Carl and Joc, and our other friends Dave and Maddy in Melbourne in another week or so. 'Til then...wheeeee!
written by  GoBlue on May 13, 2007 from Quincy, United States
from the travel blog: Viv's Voyage(s)

On our way!
Los Angeles, United States
After a fantastic weekend celebrating the upcoming Levy/Sullivan union, we are now on the way to Sydney! Although slightly tired, we are still basking in the memories of an excellent 48 hours spent reuniting with already-missed business school friends and getting to know other cool people in Brian and Maggie's lives. Field day games were a blast (Go Jews!), my partner Carolyn and I won the beer die tournament, and it was an all-in-all grand time. All the best to the bride and groom!!!!
Next stop: Sydney!
written by  GoBlue on May 13, 2007 from Los Angeles, United States
from the travel blog: Joc's Journeys

T-Minus 10 hours...
Boston, United States
After a full day of errands and sightseeing, Vivian and I are hitting the sack. Our bags are packed and ready for our 9:55 am flight to Chicago and the ensuing flight to Hong Kong.
Our day began with the exciting task of spraying Permethrin mosquito repellent all over the outfits we plan to wear when we'll be at most risk of bites. Easier said than done -- this stuff is nasty. Apparently if it touched our skin, we were to "immediately rinse area thoroughly and call poison control." Eew. (Note from the picture that I made Vivian do the honors!) Nonetheless, when they dried, our clothes seemed as odorless as promised.
Next we took the T into Cambridge to do some shopping around Harvard Square (complete with a yummy pizza lunch at Pinochio's).
We then bussed over to the South End to do some more trip planning from Viv's brother Bill and sister-in-law Jung's place. Finally, we walked up to downtown through Back Bay, enjoying the sights as we crossed the Boston Common before heading back to Quincy.
For dinner, I was spoiled by another delicious meal cooked by Vivian's dad -- the last one I'll get for a few days, unless something drastic has happened in the world of airline cuisine. Wish us good travel luck, and I'll post again when we reach Hong Kong!
Swan Boats in Boston Common
written by  GoBlue on May 14, 2007 from Boston, United States
from the travel blog: J-Mac's Junket

T-Minus 4 Hours
Quincy, United States
Despite being packed up and ready to go, Jennie and I are in a holding pattern for another couple of hours this morning. I received a phone call from United at 4:30am letting me know that our flight out of Chicago is delayed for 4.5 hours this afternoon (things that make you go "hmmmmm...") and that they've moved our Boston to Chicago flight back to noon. Good times. I think I'll go take a powernap now...
written by  GoBlue on May 15, 2007 from Quincy, United States
from the travel blog: Viv's Voyage(s)

Sydney!!!
Sydney, Australia
Sydney is awesome - what a start to the trip! We successfully made it here on Tuesday morning (after 32 hours of travel!), catching up with my family at their hotel by 10am. We spent the day catching up with each other while jaunting out to the Blue Mountains, a national park north of the city. Beautiful forest walks and frequent meals worked relatively well staving off the jetlag, and Chris' water polo game was a fine end to the day.
Yesterday we took a walk through the Botanical Gardens - gorgeous, but also with some pretty spectacular flora and fauna, including trees with hundreds of fruit bats in them and giant spiders. We also wandered along the Harborfront to the opera house - officially one of my favorite buildings.
Family left for the airport around noon, and Carl and I indulged in a nice workout at the hotel facilities, then left the paradise of the Intercontinental and settled into backpacker mode, schlepping across the city to our hostel, which is ... not the Intercontinental. Shared bathroom, double bed with a single bed adjacent (literally, one full sleeping space - weird) and then about a foot of walk space on two sides with a little sink in the corner. An adjustment; however, we can stay here for 1 week for the same price as 1 night at the intercontinental - tradeoffs...
Last night we had dinner with my brother and his friends in China Town - good fun, ok food. The Irish pub afterwards did us all in though, and we're a little sluggish today. Agenda for the next few days: surfing, Manly beach national park, another trip to the Blue Mountains, wine country tour and more city wanderings.
written by  GoBlue on May 16, 2007 from Sydney, Australia
from the travel blog: Joc's Journeys

A flight that was long and our first day in Hong Kong
Hong Kong (historical), Hong Kong
Viv and I are crossing our fingers that good travel karma will last throughout the rest of our trip. We got off to a bit of a rocky start, when our United flight from Boston to Chicago was cancelled (mechanical), leading to a sprint to the American terminal to catch their flight and undergo the joy of "special security screening." When we got to ORD, we had to re-claim our bags at American, schlep across to the United terminal, and re-check-in (3rd time of the day, if anyone's counting) for our Hong Kong flight.
A wee bit of whining to United customer service got us some free food vouchers, which we put to good use as we waited out the remaining hours of the 5.5 hour delay (mechanical) of our flight to Hong Kong. We had a final brief moment of frustration when, on the runway, the pilot announced that we would have to return to the gate and get rid of some cargo since we had "accidentally and illegally exceeded our load capacity." Luckily, this turned out to be a "miscommunication," or at least a not-very-funny joke, and finally... we were off!
14:45, 3 meals, 4 movies, and two flight attendants named "Dieter" and "Stryker" later, we landed in the most modern and gleaming airport I'd ever seen. Awaiting us were Vivian's Aunt, Uncle Chris, and cousin Edward, who graciously treated us to dinner at the airport. We then left in Uncle Chris' space-age BMW, which reminds drivers with a gentle "ding" when one exceeds the speed limit and uses infrared technology to sense when the car's bumpers are nearing a collision. Pretty sweet technology!
Words that describe Hong Kong: vertical, efficient, cosmopolitan, muggy. I'm amazed by the population density -- the skyline is dotted with high rise after high rise, and there seems to be no other housing option. Viv's Uncle Chris, Aunt Peon and their children Haley (4) and Jolie (2) live on the 54th floor with a stunning view. I've enjoyed watching Viv catch up with her family, especially her Grandma (who seems to be busting Viv's chops quite a bit), and I have already learned one important word in Cantonese: "Bao" means full, and comes in extremely handy when you are being offered food every hour!
This afternoon, Viv and I took the tram up to Victoria Peak. Traveling up a mountain at a 45 degree angle gives you a pretty interesting perspective on the city! We took in the views, wandered through the lovely Hong Kong park, and then spent the rest of the afternoon shopping. After checking out the price tags, I'm getting good at dividing large numbers by 7 (a good approximation of the exchange rate).
Will try to post some pictures soon!
written by  GoBlue on May 17, 2007 from Hong Kong (historical), Hong Kong
from the travel blog: J-Mac's Junket

Happily rubbing my belly...
Hong Kong (historical), Hong Kong
Wrapped up yet another great dinner in Hong Kong with my family. Jennie was quite the trooper and endured a full five days with my constantly eating and constantly feeding family. Can't say I didn't give her ample warning that our time in the city would be spent planning around meals! She quickly learned to say "bow," which means "full," as different family members wanted to keep piling food on her plate. :)
After days of shopping (ask Jennie about her new winter coat...yes, Hong Kong is in the tropics...), some time up in Victoria Peak - highest point in Hong Kong - via a tram dating back to 1888, a 25 minute cable car ride to visit the largest Buddha structure in the world, a trip to the Hong Kong Disneyland, and did I mention lots of good eating (?), I dropped J-Mac off at the airport train this afternoon and off to Bangkok she went. I'm sure she'll have a lot more to say about her time here in Hong Kong when she gets back online...yup, another case of viv-laziness. ;)
I'm off to Melbourne tomorrow afternoon on a red-eye through Singapore and will be catching up with Carl, Joc, Dave, and Maddy. I bet they'll be really excited when I burst into their rooms at 7am and start jumping on their beds... J-Mac will join us in about T-4 days.
Some pictures...
Riding the cablecar
Big Buddha
Big Buddha in all his glory
Dieties around Buddha
J-Mac bathing Buddha...
Trying on some space suits in Tomorrowland
Visiting Cinderella
Rainy day in Disneyland - ponchos to the rescue
written by  GoBlue on May 20, 2007 from Hong Kong (historical), Hong Kong
from the travel blog: Viv's Voyage(s)

Happy Birthday to Me! ;)
Bali, Indonesia
Holy cow, it’s been a long time since I’ve “blogged”! At last…
First, Happy Birthday to me! ;) Yes, today (the 31st) I turn the big 3-0. While I found that yesterday I was not all that enthusiastic about it being my “last day as a twenty-something”, today I am fine – no more aches and pains than usual, and although I temporarily forgot my login password, I think it’s more the heat than senility.
Updates since my last blog:
Carl and I part II in Sydney after Mom, Dad and Theo left: Maddy, Dave, and Dave’s luggage finally arrived all in one piece, and we enjoyed some more walking around Sydney, visited the zoo, and had a few fun dinners (including homemade fajitas one night). We also hit Manly Beach, a famous one, and rightfully so. There I discovered that despite being a fairly proficient body surfer, I have no surfing talent whatsoever.
We also went on a wine tour (thanks to Chris for organizing). I think this was covered in Carl’s blog – “highlights” included our destroyed fan belt adventures (leading to driving back in the dark), some good wine tasting, and (the winner) koala and kangaroo feeding and petting. (See http://youtube.com/watch?v=CQdC4vWIxDw for a particularly entertaining clip of Matt and the roos). That was a great day. I would have liked to have had more time in Sydney (and with Chris, specifically – fun catching up with the bro). Melbourne was calling though, so we moved on…
Melbourne was fantastic, though as with Sydney, I wish we had another few days – or even a week, in this case. The climbing was fantastic, but unfortunately we only got three days of it. We stayed at the Emu Holiday Park, which was quite something in and of itself (see below), ate extremely well (fajitas, Indian curry, pasta parts I and II), and in general had a great time. Highlights of the Melbourne trip include:
Driving on the left: Quite an experience. In my opinion, definitely made easier by the fact that the steering wheel is on the right (so the whole experience is backwards), but required some verbal self-coaching (“left left left left”) at first.
Climbing: Awesome. The first day was at the Grampians, and despite arriving to find 3 groups of ~50 kids each on our target climbs, we had a great day, getting all 5 of us (Jennie had not yet arrived) up “Waxman”, a great beginner climb. We then found another nice area with another “easy” one and a ~5.8/9. The next day we returned earlier, but still didn’t beat the kids so settled on a third “instructional area” that turned out to be great – I did my first trad lead in about 5 years and quite enjoyed it.
We picked up Jennie that afternoon and the following day went to Arapiles for a multi-pitch climb. “Connifer Crack” ended up being quite a bit harder than we’d anticipated (great job Jennie for getting through that rather stout “warm-up” climb after a year off of climbing!). As expected with any 6-person multi-pitch effort, we had some adventures including a rope-stuck-on-a-tree toss, one particularly difficult crux, and no obvious rappel rings. However, we got through it and in the end I really enjoyed myself. We had one short rappel on our improvised down-climb that was particularly fun – kind of like spelunking.
That was all the climbing we did, and I have to say I have the itch – can’t wait for Thailand and Vietnam!
Kangaroo Tales: Turns out to most Australians, kangaroos are like deer in the US: prevalent pests that make driving at night treacherous. They are, however, amazing animals!
Our first exposure to them happened our first night at Emu Holiday Park. Carl and I went back with Vicki, one of our hosts, to check on some linens. In the course of the walk from our cottage to the house, she told us more about her rescue efforts (they are a refuge for all local animals, except snakes (Vicki doesn’t like snakes)). She generally tries to raise orphaned roos in twos and threes so they have friends and are properly socialized, and right now she has two: Peg and Logan. Peg and Logan were the best ever! Vicki brought them out in their pillow case sacks (where they sleep and in general hang out) and we got to hold them. So cute, alert, energetic, shy…in general, captivating.
Other points of note:
• Logan is a “bag boy” – ever so much more comfortable in his pillow case sack than out of it. We approached them one morning and he and Peg saw us, freaked a bit, and started leaping giant half-circles around the group. Vicki then opened a pillowcase and called Logan, and he tumbled in head-first in a summersault at full tilt. Very funny.
• Peg was orphaned in a car accident (like them all as far as I can tell) in which her mother was killed and her right front paw was broken. She needed surgery to put some wires into it, a surgery that was quoted at up to $1600. Vicki splinted the foot as a temporary fix, then called around to try to get someone to do it for cheaper. She finally found a place on the other side of Melbourne that would do it for free, so she packed Peg into the car for the 6-hour drive there. X-rays showed, however, that Peg’s foot had mended well under Vicki’s split, so no surgery was needed – go Vicki! Peg was still pretty stressed by the trip, however, and got sick. She and Logan are now both on antibiotics, though, and doing quite well. Vicki says that all told it takes ~$400 to raise an orphaned roo until it is ready for release.
• Vicki and Alan have been doing their rescue efforts for 9 years and have never turned away an orphaned roo. (That’s what they mostly have, though they also get wallabies, emus, wombats, etc.). They have thus raised many roos, many of which come back to help with the next batch. For example, Cal and Jack, who were released a few months ago, come back about once a week and take Peg and Logan out for the night, then bring them back in the morning. When one of their roos gets pregnant for the first time, the female comes back to show their "parents", knocking on the front door with her front paws, and then when Vicki or Alan opens the door opening her pouch to show them.
• Male roos watch the little ones too, though the joey of one of their graduates was recently left with a young buck longer than the buck cared for, so he knocked on the front door with the little one in tow, and when Vicki opened it he took off and left the little one with her. Males, incidentally, can stand well over 6 feet when they’re full grown – huge!
• In the roo hierarchy, wallabies are way uncool, with the swamp wallaby being the lowest of the low; many other roos and wallabies won’t even acknowledge a swampie. Why are they so disrespected? “They fart (“faht”) a lot”, per Vicki.
• Roos are incredible animals. According to Vicki (some of these facts are so amazing that I would probably double-check them, but here they are nonetheless): the females mate once, but carry up to three embryos at one time. Male and female embryos must be kept at different temperatures in the body, and through this process the mom knows the sex of her embryos and can choose which one to have when (usually they have one at a time, but that's not a rule). The roo is the size of a jellybean when it’s born, at which point it climbs into the mom’s pouch.
The roo theme in general was a highlight of Melbourne. There were, however, some darker sides to it. The first night we had a near miss – I was driving, the road was through a national forest and very windy, and it was dusk/dark. I slowed down to about 20kph and we were all working to spot them (all told there were more than 15 sitings). One little guy nearly did it though, jumping about 3 feet in front of the passenger side bumper with no warning. Fortunately, I was “covering the brake” like we learned in drivering school and although everyone got quite a fright, no one was hurt. A few days later, however, as Carl was doing 20kph, a tour bus zoomed by us going 4 times that speed, and before its tail lights were out of site I spotted one on the side, looking strange at first, and then obviously hit a few seconds later. We make brief eye contact, and then as a group decided that we didn’t have enough information on diseases and aggressiveness to investigate in person, so we went straight to Alan and gave a report. He came back 45 minutes later with small good news: no joeys involved. However, the young male was dead when he arrived. Spread the word: Australia Adventure Tours is bad!!!!
The Great Ocean Road: Although Carl deemed it in the end a “good ocean road”, it was pretty spectacular (and I think with sun instead of rain would have been “great”). One of the highlights was thunder cave (Pop, I think you would have really liked the "whomp" noise of the water).
We saw some great sites and found a nice hotel where we enjoyed a night of relaxing, wine and cards. Highlights from the sites include:
Travel Stresses: Turns out Jet Star has a weight limit of 20 kgs per person (not per bag). Upon our first check-in, Carl and I were 27kg over, subject to an additional $100 charge each time we flew! Fortunately, perhaps because of the genuine shock on our faces or because the Chapmans had just checked in 15kgs each, we were able to put a lot more weight in our carry-ons and escaped the first charge. On our way to Bali, knowing that this would be an potential issue, we split up the weight more amongst the group. At first weighing, we were 8kgs over, but we asked the woman to redo it zeroing out for the plastic bins that they put all backpacks in. She politely asserted that it wouldn’t make a difference, but it did actually remove 6kgs, and with me carrying one of my clothes bags on, we made it through. Unfortunately, however, 5 minutes later my $50 awesome leatherman and our first aid kit scissors were confiscated in security – oversights from transferring into our carry-ons weight that would otherwise have been checked. I am still mourning the loss of my knife, but am trying to get over it.
Bali: So now we are here in Bali, an obviously southeast Asia country in the sense that our backpacker area is jam packed with hawkers of various cheap wares, tons of good food, tons of sketchy food, and relentless sun. The beachfront in our area is as long as I have ever seen, and later today I look forward to finishing my book (My Sister’s Keeper, which I started about 24 hours ago – amazing read), going in the ocean and getting a massage! Happy birthday indeed…
Tomorrow we fly to Yogyakarta (a town on another island that is rumored to have incredible temples). We return Saturday night for another day and a half of beach lounging, and then it's on to Bankok and then Chaing Mai. I can tell that this trip is going to go very quickly!!!
written by  GoBlue on May 31, 2007 from Bali, Indonesia
from the travel blog: Joc's Journeys

Back from Yogya!
Yogyakarta, Indonesia
Quick entry to let you all know that we are back from our 1-day jaunt to Yogyakarta ('Jogja' to the locals) after 2 amazing temples, 1 great art excursion, and enough C0 emissions to make us even more worried about the world's future!
Yogya was a great contrast to Bali: very few other tourists, no beach, great temples and an active volcano overlooking the city. Pictures to come, but the temples were stunning and our guide Eddie did a great job leading us through both the ruins and the spiritual, religious, philosophical and scientific underpinnings of Hinduism and Buddhism. We got up at 4:15 this morning to catch a sunrise-ish (turns out our information was false and we had to wait an extra 40 minutes until it was open) view of one of the temples. Several wanderings later and we are back in Kuta (Bali) with 1.5 more days ahead of us.
Tomorrow is either going to be a cultural tour or a day of beach, surfing, good eating and massages. Hmmm....
written by  GoBlue on June 2, 2007 from Yogyakarta, Indonesia

From HKG to BKK with mk
Bangkok, Thailand
Hello all! Apologies for the brief lapse in blogging. Where to begin?
Hopefully you read Viv's account of the rest of our Hong Kong adventures. I can't thank the Chan family enough for their gracious hospitality. I ate, and ate, and ate. (See picture of our Saturday night feast!) And, I got to ride Space Mountain at Disneyland Hong Kong. It doesn't get much better than that.
Next stop: Bangkok, where I am now tearing up the town with Mike. We've seen incredible temples (Wat Phra Kaew, Wat Po, and Wat Arun) as well as the Grand Palace.
Wat Phra Kaew is full of gilded, golden figures
The Reclining Buddha at Wat Po, where "calmness brings happiness"
We've eaten multiple helpings of mango with sticky rice and have sampled delicious curries. We've ridden in a tuk-tuk, a longtail boat, a municipal ferry, and some taxis that rival NYC (apparently lanes and markings for directions of travel are merely suggestive here). We relaxed with a Thai massage, multiple dips in the hotel swimming pool, and a few Singha beers.
With temps soaring in the 90s, we loved our rooftop pool at the Rambuttri Village Inn near Khao San Road!
One highlight of our time here was a surprise discovery that classmate Kurt Dorschel's itinerary overlapped with ours, so we met up with Kurt for "One Night in Bangkok" (sorry, couldn't resist). Better yet, we met and dined at Bed, a swanky Bangkok restaurant and club where patrons actually sit in beds to eat and drink. Accordingly, I've posted the picture of myself in bed with Mike and Kurt.
Jennie, Mike, and Kurt in bed at Bed (a Bangkok nightspot for dinner and drinks)
(Let the snarky comments begin!)
We have one more day tomorrow of sightseeing, market shopping, and street-food eating tomorrow -- and though fried bugs are a delicacy here, I doubt we'll be that adventurous.
This lovely young girl was enjoying an after-school snack of some sort of fried bug or worm
On Thursday we'll part ways at the Bangkok airport, and then it's time to head to Australia for my Reunion with Carl, Joc, Viv, Maddy, and Dave!
The manyth in a series of umpteen photos of Jennie and Viv trying to masquerade their way through SE Asia
More to come... :)
written by  GoBlue on May 22, 2007 from Bangkok, Thailand

Time Down Under
Melbourne, Australia
About 6 more hours to go in Australia before Carl, Joc, and I head off to Bali, Indonesia, and Dave, Maddy, and Jennie make their way to Koh Samui. It's been a fantastic week plus exploring Melbourne and spending a solid 6 days in the Grampians National Park and Mt. Arapiles doing some rock climbing and hiking. We had a really nice log cabin (pre-fab for all you Professor Ahuja "Sierra Log Homes" kids ;)) where we enjoyed warm wood fires, delicious home cooked meals, and super comfortable beds (right Maddy?!).
Perhaps the best part about the cabin was that it was located on a kangaroo sanctuary, despite being called the Emu Holiday Park... We got up close and personal with some joeys and slightly older 'roos. Will post pictures soon. The crew hopped onto the Great Ocean Road from the Grampians yesterday morning and have just been roadtripping away and doing some sightseeing. Off to do more of it... :)
At the top of the multipitch
Joc all suited up
Dave and Maddy
Hiking to a lookout point
Along the Great Ocean Road
A night of cards in Apollo Bay
written by  GoBlue on May 28, 2007 from Melbourne, Australia

G'Night from Down Under
Melbourne, Australia
... and just like that, I'm in another hemisphere. I arrived in Melbourne, Australia this evening after an 8-hour flight from Bangkok.
Both Mike and I had early flights leaving from Suvarnabhumi International Airport, so we did what any self-respecting backpacker would do when faced with a 4 am departure to the airport: we stayed up all night. You would think we'd be pros at this after 2 years at business school, but I admit to fighting the yawns starting around 10 pm.
Luckily, we had lots to do to keep us occupied in the wee hours of the morning. Our hotel pool didn't close until 11 pm; there was a special showing of the AC Milan vs Liverpool finals from Athens, which we watched for a while; and when our bags were packed, there was nothing left to do except play a mean game of travel scrabble until it was time to get the taxi.
Now I'm hanging in Melbourne just for overnight until I catch the national train/coach line out to the Grampians region tomorrow morning. From the Claremont Guest House in South Yarra, it should be an easy subway ride back to the main train station. Although I didn't arrive until 9:30 pm, I did venture out to Chapel Street to grab a late dinner at one of the many cafes. Chapel Street is full of great looking clothing shops and boutiques, so it's probably better for my budget that everything was already closed!
I'm still marveling at the miracles of modern travel. Last night, I was in Bangkok, shopping at the Patpong Soi 2 Night Market and looking for Pad Thai street eats in 90+ degree temperatures. Now, I'm in another capital (Melbourne is the capital of Victoria, I'm told), but here, people speak my language and it's about 40 degrees cooler. I've found friendliness and welcome both places, though... I guess that's what makes travel so fun.
Stay tuned for more adventures of the campervan variety! I can't wait for my dramatic Hollywood reunion with the rest of the Michigan crew. Here's hoping there's an RV waiting for me when I hop off the V/Line national coach on some random street in Halls Gap, Victoria tomorrow. Cross your fingers. :)
written by  GoBlue on May 24, 2007 from Melbourne, Australia

Jews vs. Irish
Orleans, United States
After a great weekend in the Cape at the Levy-Sullivan bachelor/ette party, I'm going to go out on a limb and say that Brian and Maggie would actually make a great couple. There is pretty much only one thing I would bet Brian is incapable of, but Maggie presses ham well enough for both of them, so I think they really do make a perfect couple. In all seriousness, thank you guys for the invite to the Jew versus Irish Battle royale—it was a fantastic time. I wish you two the best!
written by  GoBlue on May 13, 2007 from Orleans, United States
from the travel blog: Carl's Circuit

"I got bit by a monkey" and other adventures
Bangkok, Thailand
The monkey adventure was in Ubud, on Bali. But I am getting ahead of myself...
We arrived last night in Bankok after another great location where upon departure we wished we had a few more days. The retrospective summary on Bali was that it was beautiful, though also in the stage of development where motorcycles are everywhere and the exhaust is a little overwhelming. Although the hawkers accosted us about every three steps, we each developed several different techniques for managing these situations, and all in all the trip was great.
After returning from Yogya, we did end up opting for the cultural excursion. First stop was some Balinese dancing, which was more of a theatrical performance set to incessant cultural music. Then we hit the monkey forest. While we had been expecting to need to search for the monkeys, it turns out they were everywhere! I continue to have camera difficulties, so Viv has most of the pictures, but in short there were 1-foot tall monkeys everywhere, and they were not at all phased by our presence. In fact, several were interested in grabbing whatever you were holding (in my case, my map, which I was loath to part with given that 1) I needed it and 2) I thought the little guy would probably eat it, and I didn't think that would be good for him). So the story unfolded as follows: I tugged back a bit, which was fun, and then when he grabbed my arm with his hand, I paused to marvel at how cool and smooth his skin was - reverie interrupted when he then munched down on my knuckles, holding on as I then lifted my hand (and thus him) off the ground slightly. He didn't break the skin though (I didn't pull away too quickly hoping that he would just release, and he did). So that was that adventure - fun in retrospect, but quite unexpected. The rest of the day involved touring some crafts markets, no biting there, and a Thai massage. Very nice.
Monday morning Carl and I rented surf boards and hit the beach. The first break of waves was 2-3 feet, the second 1.5-2 feet, the latter being on the larger side of a good step for us as beginners. We hacked around ourselves for a while while Viv watched from the beach and struck up a conversation with a fellow who eventually gave us a 30-minute lesson, which turned out to be quite helpful in that he corrected my board stance (too far back) and then pushed us into the waves so we had a few opportunites to ride waves without worrying about the challenge of catching them. We were pretty successful in the end, and it was quite a blast!
Today we did "Bangkok in one day": the Grand Palance, and three notable Wats.
Incredible. We spent the most time at the Grand Palace, learning from our guide about the architecture and meaning behind the various buildings. It's a mass of glass and gold plating that's astounding. The reclining Buddha was our second stop, also amazing, and then we enjoyed some adventures in pollution crossing the river and returning to our hotel. Next stop: another massage.
One PS on the birthday, by the way, for those of you who were tracking my 3-year long back handspring goal. Although the initial aspirations had been to "train" for the 3 years leading up to my birthday, I actually never got to try anything much more than a bridge. Nonetheless, I decided to give it a go, with Carl's experienced spotting at my side. The results were effective, though not pretty and involved my head to a certain extent. Thus while according to Carl, I technically did it, it wasn't videotape-worthy. (For some reason my left arm was coming down in a weird way that caused it to buckle (without pain) whenever I hit, so I kept bopping my head slightly on that side). In terms of the original goal of proving to myself that just because I am 30 doesn't mean I am decrepit, I succeeded quite well this way - with no training, I almost did it well! Nonetheless, I am extending the goal period indefinitely at this point, until I can do them well and easily on my own. Fun times...
written by  GoBlue on June 5, 2007 from Bangkok, Thailand

Oh boy it's warm!! REALLY warm!
Bali, Indonesia
Always knew I preferred cold to heat...must say that I was perfectly peachy in our 40-60's temps in Australia. Here in Bali, I'm trying not to melt; turns out I need to become one with the sweatier me. Especially hard as I try and dodge them fiesty mosquitos...Good times. :)
I won't write too much since Carl and Joc have been furiously typing away for the past couple of hours while I took care of a few other things (yes, MERP, anything for you!). I'm enjoying my time here and transitioning nicely to SE Asia after my time in Australia. Being back in this region reminds me of how much fun it is to get lost exploring the winding roads of the town (while avoiding the motorcycles racing around you of course!). It's been also great to catch up with my friend Migs and his wife Saori. Migs dates back to my undergrad days and has been working out of the World Bank's Jakarta office for the last few years. It's been fun catching up and having a quasi-expert of the area around - and great timing since he's headed back to the DC headquarters in a few months.
Anyhoo, have fun checking out pictures up until this point - thanks to Joc for loading up multiple cameras' worth! And a big Happy Birthday to Joc too! Carl, Joc, and I are off to the beach. Life is tough for us right now...
Poppies Cottages
"can we please take a picture with you??"
Hanging out in a cafe in Bali
Happy birthday Joc!
written by  GoBlue on May 31, 2007 from Bali, Indonesia

Elephants, Cliff Jumping and Rock Climbing - oh my!
Chiang Mai, Thailand
We've made it north to Chiang Mai now and are continuing to have a blast! We arrived Monday afternoon in time for some logistics and a settle-in evening. Carl and I got some great information from a local climbing company about a nearby crag called Crazy Horse Buttress. Tuesday, Carl, Viv and I headed out there to scout the climbing and had a fantastic day! We hitched a ride with two local guides and their one Finnish beginner. There were only two other people other than our group the entire day, there were no biting insects, the wall stayed shaded almost the whole day, and the climbing was fantastic. My forearms are pretty fried out from it, but it was a blast. Today the seven of us joined up for a mini trek that began with an elephant ride, involved brief tours of hill tribe villages, a 30-minute stay at the base of a gorgeous waterfall, and a 1-hour bamboo rafting jaunt the passed by a great cliff jumping spot. (Hopefully we are all parasite free after swimming in the river!). It was a great day...
Tomorrow we start our cooking class - exciting!
Hope to do more reflecting soon but need to switch over to Skype to deal with BankOne's inconveniences. Hope everyone is doing well!
written by  GoBlue on June 8, 2007 from Chiang Mai, Thailand

Cooking in Chiang Mai
Chiang Mai, Thailand
We've all just finished two days staying at a boutique resort just outside the city (Jasmine Rice Village) and taking cooking classes (Chiang Mai Cookery School) - it's been relaxing and A LOT of fun. Learning to cook with lots of chillies (the joys of having half the class coughing from the chillies' smoke! =) ), the difference between coconut cream and coconut milk and when to you use what, all the different spices, etc. - just awesome! Granted, having "prep fairies" who hand you everything from the meats to the spices that you need in the correct amounts and already cut up makes things easier. I guess I now know how the chefs on the cooking channel do it? ;)
Our main lesson yesterday was an introduction to the basic Thai ingredients (basil - 3 types, galanga, coconut milk, chillies, palm sugar, etc.) in a classroom setting before we struck out on our own at individual "wok" stations to prepare 6 dishes over the course of the day. Today's lesson was all about curry...and just how many types are out there! Everyone learned how to make red curry from scratch using dried spices and fresh herbs using a mortar and pestle. Once that was done, we all cooked our own chicken red curry - YUM!! We then went on to make 5 additional dishes. Did I mention that we eat everything that we cook? Talk about needing to rub my belly... =)
Ready, set, cook!
Who's going to be the next iron chef?
Back in the classroom!
Eating the fruits of our labor
written by  GoBlue on June 10, 2007 from Chiang Mai, Thailand

Cooking School Graduation
Chiang Mai, Thailand
Back in Chiang Mai now after a few days at the cooking school - fantastic! I really like Thai food, and the school we chose was a great find (Vivian's friend had been there two years ago). The fellow who started the place (Sampon) is a renown cook around here, and he recently opened a resort nearby where we stayed. The school started around 11am (picked us up in the city the first day) and we cooked 5 dishes throughout the day. Each one was first demonstrated for us in an air conditioned classroom, and then we went to our own wok station and prepared and cooked the ingredients. Then we ate! (5 dishes, 4 different eating sessions - by the end I thought I was going to explode! The food was fantastic though, and I think I can replicate the recipes competently).
Joc and Carl prior to starting Thai cooking lessons
The resort was a great find too - it opened 3 weeks ago and wasn't quite fully complete. We were the biggest group to stay there yet, so Sompon was there the whole time to make sure it went well. He's a funny guy - doesn't smile much until he teases slightly, and then he breaks into a huge grin. I think he liked us, and we certainly were treated like royalty. He has a pool that we spent a lot of time in, the rooms were great, and when we finally were hungry (the second day I disciplined myself better and didn't nearly die of gluttony), he cooked us an amazing meal that included several local flavors we hadn't had yet. It was truly fantastic.
Carl, Jennie and I did 2 days of it and then came back into the city for today and hired a driver to go back to the climbing area, where we enjoyed five hours of great climbing. I led a 5.10b/c cleanly (my hardest lead ever, which is pretty cool given we haven't been climbing. The power of visualization).
The Chapmans left today to fly back to the states. We'll miss them - they were a great addition to the trip! We did pick up Ben Johnson again (friend we'd last seen in Indonesia) and Aaron Verstraete (who will be doing the Bain habitat trip with me). Jennie and Christie go to Laos tomorrow, and Ben, Aaron, Viv, Carl and I are planning to rent a car and do another climbing day as well as a Wat (temple) around here. I'm looking forward to it.
Then Wednesday morning we head for Hanoi for the next country! We decided to skip Laos to be moving a little less frequently, though now we're thinking of trekking in Sapa (Northwest Vietnam, and I stop that had not previously been on the itinerary). Since we didn't end up trekking here (the minitrek didn't count) I think it would be fun to add. Then to Halong Bay, which I have been looking forward to revisiting ever since I left there 6 years ago. Very exciting.
Now, off to feast!
Hope everyone's doing well ...
written by  GoBlue on June 11, 2007 from Chiang Mai, Thailand

Men at Work were right...
Sydney, Australia
This place is awesome! Although it is so expensive in Sydney that my three month trip is now only two weeks, it is totally worth it. After a few days here, we’ve been to the Blue Mountains with Jocelyn's family (going again this weekend), hung out downtown by the opera house and botanical gardens and spent time in Coogee and Maroubra Beach. Last night we went to Chinatown for dinner and then went to an Irish pub for drinks. Apparently, “a land down under, where beer does flow and men chunder“ are not just a bunch of clever lyrics. They are all true—I can attest to it (although this implies I am a man, but we can debate that later).
Off to some Thai food in Coogee . . . more to come . . .
written by  GoBlue on May 17, 2007 from Sydney, Australia
from the travel blog: Carl's Circuit

Reunited!
Halls Gap, Australia
For all you loyal readers who were waiting on pins and needles, I've reunited with Maddy, Joc, Vivian, Carl, and Dave in the beautiful Grampians region in Victoria.
Maybe it was just me waiting on pins and needles, after I got off the 4th leg of my 4-hour train/bus trip this morning in a random town in Australia, hoping that I'd find my friends. (As soon as I can, I'll post the picture of the "V/line National Coach" that I rode in from Stawell to Halls Gap. It was actually more like a Vanagon from 1984, not a coach bus.)
I traveled in style with this V/Line (state transit system) "Coach" bus from Stawell to Halls Gap, Victoria
Anyway, it didn't take long for them to drive up (on the left side of the road) and honk the horn. We are now a fully party of 6!
Two quick notes: the campervan idea has been abandoned for a variety of logistical challenges, but we are riding in style in a Toyota minivan. Plus, lodging is at the Emu Palace cabin, where there is a real kitchen. Anyone who knows Dave Chapman's cooking will realize that this is a major score.
Secondly, I saw my first kangaroo today. They are fun to watch jumping around!
Over the weekend, we'll stay out here in the park for some more hiking and climbing. On Monday and Tuesday, we'll drive portions of the Great Ocean Road. And thus, the great adventure continues...
written by  GoBlue on May 25, 2007 from Halls Gap, Australia

Rubbing bellies and hugging rocks
5 pounds heavier and with loads of Thai cooking knowledge packed into my head, I successfully wrapped up 3 days of cooking classes. Can't wait to try out some recipes when I get home! Ben and I opted for 3 days with Aaron joining us on days 2 and 3. The rest of the crew opted to give their stomachs a break after two days and explore a bit more of the city. I really enjoyed the cooking classes, particularly day 3 when class started in a local market. Ben, Aaron, and I walked around with one of the school's teachers and were explained the different produce and products being sold. It was really cool to see the market set up, locals shopping for food, and the mounds and mounds of expertly stacked fruits. Most impressive were the rambutans; currently in season and stacked to Aaron's height.
It's rambutan season!
A trip to the local market
I followed up cooking school with another day of climbing with Carl, Joc, and new to the rock Ben and Aaron. We rented a car and found our way back to where I'd spent my first full day in Chiang Mai climbing and where Carl, Joc, and Jennie had spent the prior day when Aaron, Ben, and I were cooking up a storm. It was great fun all around. My extra pounds from eating non stop for three days luckily didn't hold me back too much. ;) Big thanks to Carl and Joc for continuing to mentor me on the ways of the rock. Joc taught me the basics of lead climbing and talked me through my first lead climb ever. Whee!
After a brief stop at a delicious local restaurant (and by restaurant I think it was the back of someone's house) that Carl, Joc, and I had been introduced to by our guides the first time out to the rock, we went back to Crazy Horse and kept climbing. We didn't let the ominous black cloud that then let forth intense rain hold us back. Well, ok, it trapped us under a bamboo hut for a while. We climbed a route under a rock archway where both Joc and I were barked at from a hole that we wanted to use for a hold by something...a bat? an insanely large insect? Let's just say I didn't hold on long enough to find out. I made it about 2/3 of the way up before I could go no further. Literally hugging a large piece of rock, trying to move laterally right and having nothing below me, and feeling no hand holds or foot holds (sigh), I conceded to the rock. I got to enjoy a few moments of swinging around and pushing off the rock before Carl finally lowered me all the way down. Good times. :)
Ben and Aaron taking a breather
Carl using one of his "moves"
Viv belaying Ben
Climbing the Arch

Honk honk!!
Sa Pa, Vietnam
If there's one thing I've noticed since arriving in Vietnam, it's that people like honking! The honk filled cacophony of Hanoi, Sapa, and even the trail through the different villages due to motorbikes has been amazing...and trying on the head.
Carl, Joc, Ben, Aaron, and I wrapped up our 3 day trek in Sapa and are heading back to Hanoi tonight on an overnight to meet with Jennie and Katie in the morning at which point we hop on another bus to get us out to Halong Bay. I'm excited to exit the city and hopefully get some calm on the bay.
More to come. (The good thing about being beaten to the punch on blogging Sapa and Hanoi is that Carl and Joc have just about covered everything I would - and specifically the "happy water" (aka rice wine) consumption that then led to duck preservation (Joc) or chasing (Aaron/Carl). Happy reading... :)) Some illustrations to help.
Day 1 and not too far in
Heading away from Sa Pa
Homestay 1: Dinner
Working in the rice paddies
Home on the rice paddy
Trekking hard
written by  GoBlue on June 17, 2007 from Sa Pa, Vietnam

The Cost of Ignorance
Hanoi, Vietnam
So far, the running tally on the cost of ignorance (defined as the amount of additional money we've spent because we didn't know better) is somewhere around $75. The first major incident was a few weeks ago in Bali, when a taxi driver accepted 3 thousand-rupiah notes from Carl, who thought they were hundred dollar notes. Too bad. The second occurred today, and was far more conniving.
We departed Chiang Mai today and flew to Bangkok, spending part of our 3-hour layover researching places to stay in Hanoi. We arrived in Vietnam armed with a phone number for our selected hotel. After a bit of wandering we found a public telephone that didn't require a special credit card and placed the call, aided by a kind gentlemen (hint 1: "kind gentleman") who helped us dial. Carl made the reservation, during which time the kind gent showed us a card for a guest house of a friend of his in the same area of town we were targeting. We took the card, thanked him, and told him we were heading to the first hotel but that if the rooms weren't good, we would check out his friend's place. Hint 2: the woman behind him made eye contact with Viv and mumbled "no good" and made a face. At that time, we didn't know whether that meant the place, the man, or the deal.
We exited the airport, heading for the Airport Taxis that the Kind Gent instructed us to take (advice that seemed verified by the other Farange's (foreigners) filing into other taxis in front of us). 30 ridiculous minutes later (driving in Vietnam appears to be one constant horn-honking fest; immediate headache), we arrived at what appeared to be the backpacker strip. At an intersection, to my recollection, suddenly the taxi driver gestured to the side, as a fellow stepped up to Carl's front seat window to tell him that while we were there, the hotel was full. All three of us were confused: the hotel he was pointing at didn't say Golden Lotus, but the driver seemed to corroborate that we were there. The man was telling us not to worry, there was another hotel owned by the same company that was just around the corner and they had room. Carl asked again where the Golden Lotus was, the man pointed again at something that didn't look like the Golden Lotus, then opened my door and asked if he could get in with us. I said no, there's no room! (There wasn't, really, and the request seemed too weird). So he then said, "ok, I meet you there" and closed the door.
We exchanged another "what's going on" as the taxi took off again, and minutes later pulled up at another hotel. As we got out of the car, our bags were being whisked inside, leaving us to catch up. They offered to show us the room; Viv and Carl went up while I watched the bags and tried to figure out where we were on the map. They returned from upstairs with a shrug, confirming that at least it was clean and seemed relatively secure. So, we booked.
At some point we mentioned we had other friends coming into the city, and the folks at the Star hotel were excited to get them lined up to. We hedged, and they then said "here's our card - you show them?". (Sinister music). It was the same card the guy at the airport had showed us of his friend's place. Duped.
Our best guess is that the "kind gentleman" from the airport called a friend of his and told him that there were three of us headed to the Golden Lotus. Said friend then intercepted our cab (somehow before we reached the Golden Lotus - either the cab driver was in on it (seemed unlikely as he was making disapproving noises when he drove us from the first to the second hotel) or we were close, and they spotted us (we do stand out)). So then we got rerouted, and hustled along enough that we never got to catch up because we were too preoccupied watching ourselves and our stuff.
Knowing that somehow we'd gotten nailed, we then went to the Golden Lotus on foot, confirmed that they were not booked and in fact had our reservation and were waiting for us. Taking a lesson my dad taught Carl a few years back, we decided to consider the $20 we had paid to the Star hotel "F@%^ You Money", checked out 30 minutes after we had checked in, and went straight to the Golden Lotus hotel, where we were greeting with sympathy and even some anger towards fellow countrymen and feel we are being treated well. Chalk it up once more as the costs of ignorance; annoying/upsetting, but in this case pretty painless in exchange for toughening us up a bit. Welcome to Vietnam!
We just booked our next two adventures, and I am very excited. We're getting the heck out of this noisy, busy city and head tomorrow night by overnight train to Sapa, in northwest Vietnam. We'll do a 25km trek over two days, staying with hill tribes both nights, and then returning to Hanoi also by overnight train. We'll turn right around that morning and head out to Halong Bay for a 3-day excursion there. I have been to both places, found them breathtakingly gorgeous and a lot of fun - looking forward to continued adventures!
written by  GoBlue on June 13, 2007 from Hanoi, Vietnam

The Brit's Mistake
Sydney, Australia
This post has nothing to do with PM Blair . . . I can't believe the Brit's sent their convicts to Australia hundreds of years ago and stayed on their miserably rainy, cold and small island. I'm pretty sure they made the biggest mistake of their empire's existance by not keeping their convicts in England to mess with the French and transferring their entire civilization to Australia. But what do I know?
Suffice to say, this place continues to be awesome. The Chapmans arrived on Friday to a spot of bad weather in the morning. It was upper 50s and rainy for a few hours, but has otherwise been in the low- to mid-70s and sunny. Regardless, we used that day to walk around The Rocks, Circular Quay, Sydney's Opera House and the Royal Botanical Gardens. It is a very vibrant part of the city filled with both modern beauty and history. One of the highlights is the Botanical Gardens, filled with Cockatoos, Fruit Bats, Spiders and amazing plants (for more pictures, etc: http://www.rbgsyd.nsw.gov.au/royal_botanic_gardens). Friday night we then went to a great Italian restaurant in Durlinghurst. I know I am getting old now that I am spending my days sightseeing in lieu of going out at night . . .
Anyway, Saturday was yet another great day. We traveled from Circular Quay by ferry to Taronga Zoo for a few hour tour. It is one of the nicer zoos I have visited, especially interesting because of their emphasis on Australian wildlife. We then went to Bondi Beach, which reminded me a lot of life in Southern California. One of the highlights of the day was the 1.5hr walk along the cliffs and beaches from Bondi to Coogee. It was amazingly beautiful. We finished Saturday night by making dinner with Chris in his flat in Coogee.
Yesterday we spent the day on a Wine/Reptile Park tour north of Sydney. The day was off to an interesting start when three of the four belts on the bus's engine burned up. Our driver, Robert, thought everything was OK so long as he drove without any headlights or other "extraneous" power drains (he was telling this proud fact as we were driving into Sydney well after sunset, using other vehicle's lights to guide us. Its great to travel in other countries . . .).
Anyway, the wine tour was great, but probably the best part of the day was stopping at the Reptile Park, believe it or not. We got to pet a Kuala Bear and Kangaroos. The Kangaroos were awesome. We even were lucky enough to see one of the Kangaroos buck back onto its strong tail, grab a goose's head with its front paws and kick its back legs into the goose's body during a squabble over some food. They look pretty powerful and not to be messed with, which is exactly what Chris' friend Matt thought while attempting to play patty-cake with one of them later (http://youtube.com/watch?v=CQdC4vWIxDw).
We finished last night with another great dinner in Darling Harbour, and then we headed to bed earlier in preparation for a big day today. We are traveling to Manly Beach for some hiking, beach time and surfing followed by the airport so we can make our flight to Melbourne. Until the next update . . .
written by  GoBlue on May 20, 2007 from Sydney, Australia

A Little Serendipity
Melbourne, Australia
It's 10:00 pm Melbourne time, and I'm hanging out at the airport with Dave and Maddy -- having just sneakily gotten myself on their flight back up to Thailand.
Once I discovered the Chapmans (or the Chapanese, as Carl has taken to calling Dave and Maddy) were headed for Koh Samui on the same flight that I was planning on taking two days later, I decided to try my luck at getting on their flight tonight instead. I was practicing my "damsel in distress" schtick all evening ("you mean my flight is actually on Thursday?? Oh no!!"), so even though the ticket agent originally told us that there was "no way" I would be able to fly standby, my plaintive look changed his mind. One quick phone call, and abracadabra: I now have a boarding pass and a seat next to Mrs. Chapman. (Mom, Dad, Chrissy, and anyone else who actually cares about my exact whereabouts: this means I'm now on TG980 on May 29 instead of May 31.)
This early departure is by no means intended to imply that Australia (and Victoria, specifically) is no less than spectacular. It's been a great time since I met up with the crew. We've had terrific weather, amazing wildlife spottings, cozy cabin accommodations, tasty meals, and lots of games of cards. However, now that Melbourne is socked with rain, I decided to forgo my last two days of solo city-exploring in favor of more beach time. Koh Samui, here we come!
A few more notes on the past couple days:
-- After making it halfway through our two-pitched rock climb at Mt. Arapalies on Saturday, I decided that I was officially retiring from rock climbing. It was a beautiful day, but the climb was more difficult than any of us anticipated, and it was not a very good warm-up for me. (After all, my muscles are rusty after 2 years of b-school non-use.) However, despite yelling "I HATE THIS!!!" several times on the way up the second pitch, I (eventually) made it to the top and enjoyed the great views. Three cheers once again to Jocelyn and Carl for leading us safely through a long, technical climb: by the time all six of us made it up and then down together, it had turned into an 8-hour adventure on the mountain. Afterwards, my knees looked exactly like they did after climbing at Red Rocks last Spring Break... purple. Ouch.
-- Sunday was more of a relaxed day, with an amazing hike to the Pinnacle lookout at Grampians National Park. We even managed to see McKenzie Falls before dusk. The highlight of the day was our visit with Peg and Logan, the young joeys being raised by our innkeeper. The couple that ran the cabins/campsites where we stayed are very involved with Wildlife Victoria, which rescues animals.
Viv and Cal the Kangaroo (18 months old) - fast friends
In Peg and Logan's cases, both of their Mama Kangaroos were hit by cars when they were babies. Wildlife Victoria finds homes for these orphan kangaroos so that they will be brought up safely and then re-integrated into the wild. After holding Peg and Logan in their pseudo-pouches (pillowcases), I can see why this kind of volunteer work becomes addictive!
Christi kayaking
Now I know how high corn grows...
-- Monday we set out for the Great Ocean Road
The gang at the Grotto along the Great Ocean Road
The 12 Apostles along the Great Ocean Road
, and despite cloudy skies for most of the day, we were rewarded with a spectacular late-afternoon burst of sunshine and a rainbow. (I tell you this now so that you will believe me when I post the pictures. No, it is not a postcard.)
No, this really isn't a postcard. It's an EXCELLENT Ocean Road.
We found a great place to stay for the night in Apollo Bay, and celebrated our day of sightseeing with a big meal at the local pub and a rowdy game of asshole.
That's about all for now. I'm looking forward to lazing about on the beach for a few days before heading to Siem Reap on Saturday to see the temples at Angkor Wat. This weekend is the full moon, so there will be celebrations galore out on the islands of Koh Samui and Koh Pangan. I promise to post pictures next time I get to a computer that will let me!
written by  GoBlue on May 29, 2007 from Melbourne, Australia

Fun Blog Game!
Bangkok, Thailand
Here's a fun game: if you are reading this, and would like to receive a postcard in the mail from an exotic destination, please post a comment with your address (or send me an email). In return, I'll send you a postcard. Fun, huh?
(Can you tell I forgot my address book, and that I'm looking for something to do on my current layover before reaching Samui?)
written by  GoBlue on May 29, 2007 from Bangkok, Thailand

Melbourne Madness
After a sad farewell to Sydney, we made our way to Melbourne. All I can say about the trip is don't go out of your way to fly JetStar. Yeah, they are a "discount" airline, but the amount you pay upfront covers very little. We found out when we got to the airport with our normally allotted two bags that we are allowed only 20 kilos each person. With all our climbing gear, Joc and I were approximately 27 kilos over the limit (at $7/kilo, totaling $189 AUS). Luckily we were able to shift some weight to our awesome friends (thanks Maddy & Dave), so we didn't end up paying anything. But this philosophy of paying for everything extra permeated the trip. At one point I thought I would have to pay extra to turn on the air-vent or light above my seat . . .Whatever. I'm over it.
Melbourne is an interesting city. I think two activities largely capture the scene: sports and shopping. The city is chocked full of sports arenas and shopping centers. I thought it was a great city, well worth visiting and appealing in its own ways, but not as inviting as Sydney (it was also 10 - 15 degrees colder than Sydney; 55 vs. 70). Overall, glad to have been there.
A few highlights of our short 1.5 days in Melbourne revolve around food. The first night we went to a great old church (or civic buliding--couldn't really tell) that was transformed into an Irish pub--great setting for a few drinks. The second night we were aggressively courted by a number of restaurant managers to dine in their establishments. We finally settled on a restaraunt that gave us 3 bottles of wine and an appetizer for free, and a song and dance about this woman's mother being the cook in the kitchen who makes fantastic lasagna (we found out later this wasn't even remotely true--still, the wine and app were good!).
Overall, great time in Melbourne!

This time, I almost got bit by a bat...I think
Yes, the animal adventures continue. This time, I think I was almost bitten, and I think it was a bat. Here's how it goes...
Carl and I returned to the Crazy Horse Buttress crag for the third time in our Chiang Mai stays, this time again with Viv and with newcomers Aaron and Ben. We rented a car, successfully navigated our way out there, and had a great morning of climbing. Viv did her first lead ever (and did it quite well, I may add. Yay Viv!), and Aaron and Ben both learned quickly on both the belay and climbing side.
We went to lunch at the local spot (delicious, once again), and when we returned to the crag decided we were too full to climb right away, so we did some exploring. While searching for a local troupe of monkeys, we happened upon our first cool discovery: a monk hill camp, complete with monk hard at work (we left him undisturbed) (we never found the monkeys unfortunately).
Next we explored Aircon cave: a giant cavern that according to the book rises 80m above the floor! (It was very dark, difficult to verify the height). Then we returned to the wall, did one quick warm-up climb prior to the next chosen adventure: a new route up the inside of a big archway. As I descended from the warm-up, however, we noticed incredibly black storm clouds rolling in. At first glance, it seemed like we would likely get rain within the hour; 2 minutes later, it was clear it was going to be much faster than that; 5 minutes later we were huddled inside the archway marveling at the galeforce winds that were suddenly whipping through the area; 5 minutes later we were in a torrential downpour. Crazy!
We dashed back to one of the bamboo huts to see if it was going to blow through. Other than watching in awe the force of the sudden storm, the excitement there was when a giant (5-6 inches long) toad hopped up beside me. We named him Solomon (arbitrarily), and after a dramatic initial entrance, he just watched us.
The rain was relentless for about 20 minutes and then started to let up. Carl and I went to check out the archway and found it dry! So, we proceeded with the plan. Carl led the climb quite competently considering we had no route map and the light was weak with lingering storm effects. Aaron went next and for a first-ish day climbing did an awesome job. Viv then followed, and also did a great job, making it through the first 2 cruxes of the climb. In doing so, however, she had the first "bat" encounter: about 12 feet off the ground, suddenly snatched her hand back with a yelp (not falling, she would like me to note), saying that "something's in there!" We chuckled and encouraged her to forge on without using that pocket.
My turn next. I got to the same pocket, and, knowing there was someone at home, but knowing I needed the hold, I inserted just the first two "pads" (to the first knuckle) of two fingers into the pocket. Despite my care, I was immediately barked at (BAKKAW!!!!), loudly enough that everyone below heard loud and clear. Our best guess is a bat, though we never saw it. It was certainly a noise I have never heard before, with a meaning all too clear. (Footnote: I recognize that it wasn't as close to a bite as the monkey bite was, but the repeated close encounters beg for a tad of hyperbole). In the fading light, I finished the climb, which was "way cool". Aaron took pictures - hope to upload those soon.
Such great adventures! Chiang Mai has been a definite highlight so far....

Hanging in Ha Long Bay
Ha Long, Vietnam
Upon returning to Hanoi from Sapa on the overnight bus, Joc, Carl, Aaron, Ben, and I met up with Jennie and Katie..ok, more like busted into their hotel room at 7am demanding to use their shower...we were dirty, and I mean 30km of trekking sweat and dirt + deet + sunscreen + no shower for 3 days type dirty. can't really blame us right??
Cleaned up, we all hopped on an 8:30am bus to Ha Long Bay (a 3 hour ride from Hanoi) where we jumped on a junk boat. (We bid farewell to Ben who had to take a shorter tour so that he could get back in time to catch his flights out of the country that would ultimately land him in Israel. Miss you BJ!) We spent the next couple of days puttering around on the water taking swimming breaks, hiking through the largest cave in the bay (a little cheesy giving the colorful lighting on the walls), kayaking in and out of lagoons (beautiful scenery and great to be active), and plain lounging about on deck - boy was the sun powerful! Night one was spent on the boat - luckily no one got seasick! - and night two was spent on Cat Ba island, one of the larger islands found in the bay. I thought we'd left behind all the people wanting to sell us things at the ferry; I was wrong. People with row boats full of goods were constantly approaching our boat. Pretty amazing.
our hidden beach where we enjoyed a post-kayak swim
Inside the "Amazing Cave." It's a cave...really!
Carl and Joc at home in their kayak
I shared a kayak with Simon from Australia, who was practically an engine. We were flying!
One of many gigantic, seafood-based feasts out on Halong Bay
wheeee!!!
carl's kokopelli dive
"here i go!"
Halong Bay sunset, night one
Not the only ones visiting the "Amazing Cave"!
Even on water, the selling doesn't end
Our boat, like most other tourist "junk" boats, was ornamented with dragon heads
Celebrating our last night in Ha Noi at the Green Tangerine ... yum!
written by  GoBlue on June 22, 2007 from Ha Long, Vietnam

Haute Couture
Nha Trang, Vietnam
It turns out that getting things tailor-made takes a decent amount of time. Essentially, it ended up being the main activity for us in Hoi An. A quick process synopsis...
Katie and Viv surrounded by fabric
Phase 1: Design Doodling
Step 1 - You sift through giant catalogs searching for a style/clothes.
Step 2 - Sales person scribbles/doodles down the design that you've picked out.
Step 3 - You stare at the reams and reams of fabric surrounding you (slight honey glazing of the eyes occurs) and pick what you want your clothes to be made out of. (This was a lot harder than I thought it would be. I don't think I'm very good at grabbing a swath of fabric and confidently seeing the final product...)
Step 4 - Sales person spins you around while she takes measurements and shouts them to an assistant taking notes. (At the first tailor I was admonished for wearing a sports bra to get fitted. Apparently that's a no-no. Something about my chest being "flattened" and not as "lifted" as it would be in the made clothes had I been wearing a "real" bra. Right...well, I learned my lesson.)
Step 5 - You wave good bye and promise to return in a mere 24 hours.
One of Joc's many measurements
A necessary step in Carl's search for the perfect Western shirt
Phase 2: Fitting and Alterations
Step 1 - You try on your clothes piece by piece and get scrutinized. The sales folk break out chalk to mark you up as well as needle and thread to sew the item to fit as it's hanging on you.
Step 2 - Return a couple of hours later to repeat Step 1.
Step 3 - Return several hours later to repeat Step 1.
Step 4 - Return the next day to repreat Step 1.
Step 5 - You run out of time and hope the final alterations were the "final" alterations.
Aaron is Bain-ready in his new dress shirt
Viv and Jocelyn selecting buttons
I had a great experience (emphasis on "experience") with the tailoring. We ended up at 2 different tailoring shops (Bi Bi Silk and Be Be Designs..."same, same but different" as they like to say in these parts) and I had success at both. Bi Bi was about 1/3 cheaper than Be Be, but the service of the latter was better. Ultimately I walked away with a few summer dresses, a few pairs of pants, a couple of skirts, and a bathing suit. Carl was the most restrained, picking up only a western style short sleeved shirt. The rest of the crew collectively picked up a number of suits, dress shirts, dress pants, dresses, etc. I'd be lying if I said there weren't any misses. Katie, for example, ended up with a formal dress that looks like a maternity dress that I bet she'd be happy to pass along. Any takers?
Besides the tailoring, Carl, Joc, Jennie, and I used our collective bargaining power to amass some plates. Yes, you read that right, plates, and yeah, they're not light. While the price was mostly right, Carl, Joc, and I learned that the price to mail them home was definitely not right. A bit of a stomach punch one might say. Here's hoping the boxes make it home in one piece...emphasis on the *one* piece.
Carl, Joc, Jennie, and I rented some motorbikes and sneaked in a couple hours at the Hoi An beach - between fittings of course. With a sunset for a background, the beach was full of locals relaxing; it was really nice to see. Small "restaurant" stands with plastic seating were all along the beach; each one of multiple families enjoying their evening and dinner together. While we did not eat on the beach, we did enjoy a nice orange fanta (my favorite!) before heading back to town to meet up with Katie and Aaron for dinner.
Enjoying our motorbikes
Orange Fanta...YUM!
We've since made it to Nha Trang - Vietnam's premier beach town - met up with Brendan and Allison, and hung out at the beach today. They're unfortunately leaving us tonight on an overnight bus to Hoi An. It's been great to catch up and exchange beta regardless! We're planning another beach day tomorrow and mostly likely heading to Dalat the day after. We lose Jennie tomorrow evening for good as she makes her way home. Sad. And then there were three...
written by  GoBlue on June 26, 2007 from Nha Trang, Vietnam

Into the Jungle!
Sa Pa, Vietnam
T minus two hours to departure for our Sapa trek. After a sweltering overnight train ride during which we all got very little sleep, we arrived safely in Lao Cai (on the Chinese border) and then took a one-hour bus to Sapa. The countryside here is absolutely gorgeous, and I am looking forward to hitting the trails! Will check back in in a few days....
written by  GoBlue on June 14, 2007 from Sa Pa, Vietnam

Grampians Rock
Horsham, Australia
Although we were hoping to rent an RV from Melbourne and drive to the Grampians and Arapiles, we opted for a minivan and cabin option instead. Turned out to be an awesome choice. Driving on the left side of the road was a bit of challenge, sometimes providing group excitement with occasional "left side, LEFT SIDE" type chants coming from the back of the van.
We safely made our way to the Grampians National park and decided to stay at the EMU holiday park, another great choice. The proprietors rescue baby kangaroos, so we were able to hold a few, pet them, etc.
As we left, two roos that we met the previous day jumped up to bid us farwell. I ended up walking them back "home" so we woudn't hit them on the way out. It was amazing to see them bounding behind me and actually following me. It was pretty fantastic.
Also fantastic were the vistas and rock climbing.
As far as climbing. One word. Awesome. Our crew was also a bunch of troopers, making it a lot of fun to be out on some new rock. Viv and Jen, relative beginners, hadn't been outside climbing since last Spring break. Dave had never climbed before and Maddy hadn't climbed since high school. Still, these guys rocked. Yep, rocked. We even did a multipitch climb of ~250 feet at Mt Arapiles (I can see why it is adored by Aussie climbers). It turned out to be harder than we expected, but everyone rallied and we made it through with no incidences. I think I could even go so far as to assert that everyone had a good time.
In short, awesome time outstide the city, and once again it felt like too short of a visit. I definitely hope to make it back.
written by  GoBlue on May 25, 2007 from Horsham, Australia

Oh, Koh!
Ko Phangan, Thailand
Just wanted to post a few quick photos from the last day and a half on Koh Phangan:
written by  GoBlue on May 31, 2007 from Ko Phangan, Thailand

Exciting News from a World Away
Ko Samui, Thailand
Besides seeing a (for me) completely unchartered part of the world and traveling with the great friends I've made in business school, my trip has been an important time to regain some mental energy and think long and hard about the next series of life changes that lie ahead. As Maddy and I lounged by the pool the other day, post-lunch and pre-massage, we talked about the hectic pace of the past two years and our thoughts on what's next. We concluded that change has been constant over the past two years, and that's not going to change for a while yet.
That's why the timing was so ironic that just a day later, I received notice of my new assignment within American Express. While I knew I was returning to American Express Interactive, otherwise known as AXPi, I had no guarantee as to which manager-level position I'd find myself in come August 6. It all depended upon staffing needs at the time, and while I knew my VP would do his best to place me in a position that matched my marketing interests, I also recognized the possibility that I'd be needed in a role that was more technical and/or project management-oriented. This, along with all the other unknowns of life, contributed to me feeling rather emotionless about starting work. I wasn't unexcited, but I wasn't jumping out of my skin, either.
I am now officially brimming with excitement, and here's why: I will be working in a role that is perfectly matched for my skill and interest areas, and I'll be reporting to my dream manager -- a person who was a true mentor last summer and was absolutely my first choice.
Here are the details of my new gig:
MANAGER, EMERGING CHANNELS
The Manager, Emerging Channels will join American Express Interactive to
maximize the value of emerging technologies such as text messaging (SMS) and
Really Simple Syndication (RSS). This individual owns these channels and is
responsible for developing and implementing a strategy for new marketing and
servicing opportunities. Working closely with business and technology
partners, s/he will assesses business needs, customer appetite and the
competitive landscape. S/he will then continue to implement new text message
and RSS programs, analyze results and revise the strategy accordingly.
Key areas of focus are developing concepts for new campaigns with our business
partners, managing key vendor relationships and developing a long-term strategy
for emerging channels.
Qualifications:
The successful candidate for this role must be a strategic thinker who can
interpret customer and competitive data and develop a clear direction for the
emerging channels. Must be able to synthesize technology with the American
Express business model. Relationship skills are critical as this person will
work across business units and manage multiple vendors.
Key skills: relationship building, project management, analytical and
communications skills, experience with developing and delivering effective
presentations. Must be able to independently manage work in a fast-paced,
dynamic environment. MBA preferred.
Presenting Sponsor of Jennie's Great Southeast Asian and Australian Adventure
written by  GoBlue on June 2, 2007 from Ko Samui, Thailand

The Good Plus Ocean Road
Apollo Bay, Australia
I actually think the Great Ocean Road was pretty fantastic, but jokingly give it a Good plus nonetheless. Amazing, amazing vistas to be experienced with slight nausea if not driving the car. It was a pretty amazing way to end the first Australian experience. Just check it out . . .
written by  GoBlue on May 28, 2007 from Apollo Bay, Australia

Sa Pa Trekking Adventures
Sa Pa, Vietnam
We are back from our 2-day trek into the hill tribe areas around Sa Pa, and it was great! We had very good weather until this morning (when it rained), and the scenery was gorgeous.
I think it was the same route I did years ago when I was here, but it was remarkable how much things have changed. Sa Pa itself is much busier, most notably in the motor bike and car traffic, all of which comes with almost perpetual honking and a good bit of exhaust. Given that tourism seems to be the main economic force here, I think it's extremely unfortunate that this has happened to the city because it really negatively affects the experience. I would expect it to permeate the guidebooks soon. The hill tribe sales forces are also quite aggressive, to the point of harrassment. I might actually be interested in shopping their wares, but I am afraid of what might happen if I show the slightest interest.
Our guide this time was "Pit", and she was a funny girl (19?). She was very light on the educational aspect of the trip, and didn't keep pace with us one of the days, but was relatively pleasant. We were speculating that her general apathy, however, was indicative of the increased tourism in the area. I asked her at one point if she had been the guide for our friends a week earlier (Matt, Neda, Tanuka and Jeff coincidentally used the same company), and she shrugged and said she doesn't remember names - too many people come through. Mai, my guide from 2000, was much better! Nevertheless, she didn't get us lost.
To the highlights, though: the scenery is still fantastic. I am so impressed that they have turned such rugged countryside into productive farmland! The first day was supposedly ~15km long but only took us 3ish hours; the same with the second. There were many other people on the trail the first day, but fewer the second (much more desirable).
I also had the opportunity to work in a paddy - great fun, exclusively because when my back got too tired I could stop. What hard work! I went with Pit and the mother of the household in which we were staying - about a 5 minute walk from the house to a 10-tiered steppe. I learned that the paddies are cut out of the mountain by hand. Each ends up being about 5-6 feet wide and 30-100 feet long. Somehow they flood them, and then water buffalo are used to dredge the inside of the paddy so it's relatively level and well tilled.
The first stage of the process involves spreading rice seeds by hand across the top. The rice then grows in like thick grass. Once it's relatively tall and green, but before it produces rice, it's then pulled by hand and relocated to new paddies with a good bit of space in between each stalk, apparently so it grows better and can be more easily harvested. The replant is the part of the process that I participated in.
On the way to the paddy, we passed some men working on the edge of one of the paddies, and they pulled out of the ground what looked like a 1-foot snake. I asked Pit if it was a snake, and she said no. "Are you sure?" "Yes, it's not a snake." "What is it?" "I don't know the word for it in English." "I do: snake!" We then bantered a little more about maybe it was a leech or a lizard; I maintain snake, she maintained it wasn't a problem, so I put it out of my mind.
We walked around to the far side and then descended along some pretty steep grass, left our sandals on the side, and then stepped into the paddy. The mud was extremely soft, slightly warm, and up to my upper calves/knees. She gave me a bunch of the rice and we got to work. Turns out I'm not a bad rice planter! I required some guidance (my natural instinct was to plant the rice too far apart). She also taught me how to lead with my fingers so that the rice roots are better planted and so the stalks stand up straight. I got the hang of it, though I was very slow - I was planting about 2 feet to her 4.
We did 1 paddy, and then stepped up to the next. The transitions were tricky though, because the boundaries between the paddies are about 8 inches wide and still fairly soft mud. I hopped up relatively readily, but keeping my balance wasn't easy, particularly when part of the wall collapsed. There goes the white girl, into the other paddy, already planted! Fortunately, they were laughing at me as I scrambled out and tried to fix the rice for them. Then I had an incident in which I started to tip again, but instead of stepping into the paddy, reached across the other side with both hands, successfully not falling, but then catching myself in the bridge position with no obvious next move. (I somehow tipped myself up and got out of that one). I think part of my challenge was that I outweigh most of them, plus am obviously not used to flying around on these tiny muddy tracks.
We planted two more half-paddies. Other animal highlights included a large bulbous spider (I kept my cool), and a tangerine size ball of frogs eggs (if I understand the translation correctly). It was quite an experience.
I did the first paddy without too much trouble, then when we turned to the second, decided I could hang if they could. Also managed the third, despite a cramping back. But then I finally had to admit that these tiny women were far stronger than I (I could barely stand up straight), and declined my next batch of rice.
They seemed relatively pleased with my stamina though, and I felt good about contributing a bit. (Though I also felt a good bit of pressure knowing that this was their food we were growing! (All subsitence farming)). Unfortunately there are no pictures of the event - my broken camera was too much for Pit to manage, so I just have the memories. I was given a tradiational hat to wear, though, for those of you trying to picture it!
The rest of the evening was equally eventful, mostly because of the 13 (small) shots of rice wine they "offered" us. Led to some good times, including Aaron renting a duck to chase, then buying it for $10USD, then deciding not to chase it after we learned that it would be eaten the next morning if we did (I had declared myself on the duck's side and was prepared to run active interference). The family (who was leading the drinking) also had a fun toy: a badminton-sized racquet with electric strings that would zap mosquitos when you swung it at them. All in all it was a good time, though the next morning I was feeling a bit sub-par.
(Side note: there have been far fewer mosquitos on the trip than I anticipated. Since we've started, I've gotten about 8 bites, 5 of which were on one of the climbing days in Chiang Mai. So far in Vietnam, 0!)
The next day we walked for another few hours and ended up at a waterfall. The fall itself was relatively short - 12 feet maybe? But the current was quite strong, and initially very cold. We got in, swam closer to the waterfall to get a look at how crazy the kayaking landing would have been (giant rock that you would have nosed right into), and then scouted an area for some cliff jumping. Carl displayed his usual routine of back flips, and I did my usual routine of pencil jumps. Good times. Last night was far more mellow as we all categorically refused the offers of more rice wine.
Today we woke up to clouds and the prospect of a steep climb back up the same trail we had come in on. We opted for the motorbike option instead, which then turned into quite an adventure when the clouds broke into rain. In general, we were going slowly enough that a fall would only have meant mud and a few bruises (we were all riding behind local drivers). Nevertheless, it was quite exciting. One "highlight": we stopped for no apparent reason, then asked Pit what the matter was. "They are building the road" (accompanied by a poof gesture with her hands). "They're dynamiting?!" we clarified incredulously. A minute later: BOOM! from up ahead, as limestone flew into the air in some not so small chunks. We waited for a few more blasts and then continued on our merry way. Note that the communication system between the guy stopping us and the dynamiters was a series of whistles. As I said, quite the adventure. We had originally planned to rent bikes when we returned to Sa Pa and then explore Pit's village, but given the weather we opted out of that in favor of a long internet session!
Next stop: Halong Bay. Fingers crossed for some more good weather - this is a place I have been looking forward to revisiting...
written by  GoBlue on June 17, 2007 from Sa Pa, Vietnam

You know you're dirty when...??
Da Lat, Vietnam
...a kitten climbs on top of your shoulders and starts grooming your ponytail? Against doctor's orders - "under no circumstances - no matter how cute they are, whether they're dogs, cats, horses, cows, whatever - do not, I repeat, do not, pet them" - I gave in to holding and petting a kitten today. It was in cafe at the Long Bian mountains vista, so clearly a domestic kitten...ok, I'll stop justifying... Anyhoo, after spending some time sitting in my lap and rubbing its head under my hand for some petting, it hopped onto my shoulder and started grooming my ponytail. The irony is that I'm a lot cleaner today (showered, cool temps so no sweating, clean clothes thanks to a recent laundry run, etc.) than other points on this journey.
The real scoop is that Carl, Joc, and I arrived in Da Lat via a 6 hour bus from Nha Trang yesterday afternoon. Da Lat is lauded as a bohemian town set in the mountains and also serves as Vietnam's #1 honeymoon destination; there are far more domestic than foreign tourists. So far I've found this place to be a fairly sleepy town that seems more natural and "Vietnamese." People don't seem to care that 3 foreigners are meandering around in that no one is rushing up to us trying to sell us things or practice they're English. Well, I guess there are the Easy Riders (English speaking tour guides on bikes) who keep trying to convince us to use their tour services...
Weather-wise, Da Lat is a real treat from the rest of Southeast Asia; temps are in the mid to upper 60's. I've been wearing my fleece that I'd long forgotten in my bag. Glad there's a reason I'd been carrying it around all this time (after Australia that is).
View from Longbian
The rainy season that's currently enveloped the region makes rock climbing an impossibility, though we're signed up for some mountain biking for tomorrow. We went to the driving range at the local golf course - a really nice and *expensive* course - last night. Ater we paid for our balls, the woman at the counter called us a caddy and a golf cart and off we were across the course to the range (the caddy hung on for dear life at the back of the cart as Carl hurled us around corners and raced up and down the roads :)). As we continued hitting, about four other course staff appeared. Talk about pressure (for me since I only recently consistently even make contact with the ball!) as they just stood and watched. I wondered what they were doing. Turns out the course doesn't have a machine to pick up balls; they were there to gather all the balls we hit! I felt a lot better having topped several balls such that they were only 25 feet away. ;)
"get under the ball...get under the ball..."
"did i ever tell you guys how awesome i am at golf...??"
"how cool is this??"
written by  GoBlue on June 28, 2007 from Da Lat, Vietnam

Let's Dancing Till We Drop
Denpasar, Indonesia
Bali is quite an experience so far. Amazingly hot (well, not as hot as humid, but it feels pretty hot . . . especially coming from 15 degree Melbourne--that's Celcius). I have been surprised by the combination of a developing country mixed with Western influence. It is apparent that the tourism industry has impacted surroundings here, and I'm not yet sure it is for the better. In fact, since the bombings took place, there is an obvious market excess that seems to be taking its toll on the locals.
All this aside, it has been enjoyable so far. Our first night in town we went out to eat at 12:30am after arriving, discovering that Kuta really doesn't sleep. We ate an odd restaurant that was pretty dead but for the heavy bass club music pounding inside (there was no one in there either, despite the "dancing till we drop" invitation on the sign outside).
Last night we grabbed dinner with one of Vivian's friends who lives in Jakarta now. We also met up with a handful of other Ross folks, including Ben, Kevin, Tiphanie, Irena and Nathalie--good times. We are actually looking to repeat tonight by grabbing dinner and drinks to harken in Jocelyn's 30th birthday. More to come on this, but for now, Happy Birthday, Joc!!!
written by  GoBlue on May 30, 2007 from Denpasar, Indonesia

Angkor Wat and all things Khmer
Siemreab, Cambodia
first glimpse of Angkor Wat at sunrise
I'm a week overdue on this report from my trip to Cambodia. True, it's because I've been doing many exciting things since then, but I also think it's because I needed some time to digest the sights, sounds, and smells of Angkor Wat and Siem Reap. In no particular order, these impressions are of:
Leaving before sunrise to see monolithic temples bathed in the first light of day ... enigmatic faces carved into hundreds-of-years-old rock ... age-old Hindu and Buddhist stories ... the persistent chorus of sellers asking for "just one dollar" ... a monsoon-like downpour ... cows in rice paddies ... aromatic Khmer curries ... the sounds of toads, birds, and insects in the jungle at night ... school children commuting by twos and threes on adult bicycles that dwarfed their young bodies ... motorbikes and tuk-tuks going every which way (including straight into other motorbikes -- yes, I witnessed a nasty collision) ... the back of my trusty tuk-tuk driver ... clouds of dirt and dust that I tried not to inhale for kilometers on end ... motorbikes carrying wooden cages full of squirming piglets (or just a giant boar lying awkardly on its back) ... that same pig, except decapitated with flies buzzing around, for sale at the market ... screaming naked children asking me to give them my ice cream as I sat in town waiting out the rain.
Angkor Wat upper terrace at sunrise
I flew into Siem Reap in Northern Cambodia on Saturday evening (June 2) at dusk. It was by far the most peculiar landing I've ever had... not because the Bangkok Airways flight wasn't smooth (it was smooth, and I even got a meal on a 35 minute flight - amazing), but instead it was because I had no idea when we were going to hit the ground. Given the darkness, I couldn't distinguish between night sky and solid ground; it finally occurred to me that I was landing in the least electrified place I'd ever traveled. There were just no lights to be seen. While the airport was new and modern, I would come to find on my two day visit that little else was.
A kind gentleman from the Palm Village Resort whisked me and my backpack away, and we set off for the hotel which was slightly outside of town. He was very apologetic when we turned off the main airport road onto a bumpy dirt road... and onto another ... and another... and they just got bumpier. Our conversation was interesting, though. He acknowledged that times have been very hard in Cambodia, but there's a lot of optimism for the future, and that "maybe the next time I visit these roads will be paved!"
I really was struck by just how underdeveloped Cambodia was. According to my guidebook, the area around Angkor Wat was well-developed for tourism, so I guess I assumed I wouldn't see much of 'authentic' Cambodia except for the temples. In actuality, I saw a lot of rural life, which was clearly a struggle. Traveling from my hotel to town or the temples (since I was staying in a rural area in between the two), as well as riding north of town to Banteay Srei and south of town toward Tonle Sap, I saw people working in the fields and living in primitive bamboo housing... in short, a pretty tough life.
Bayon temple in Angkor Thom
faces of the Bayon
On my first afternoon, I was sitting at the Blue Pumpkin Cafe in Siem Reap for a brief respite in the comfortable realm of a European-style cafe, eating Lemon-Kaffir Lime sorbet (yum) and wearing my Chicago Cubs baseball hat. By chance, an American man noticed my baseball affiliation and struck up a conversation -- turns out he is from Crystal Lake, IL and is living in Cambodia as a missionary. He commented that the country's predicament is clear when traveling overland from Thailand: apparently, all the trucks coming in are full, but all the trucks going out are empty since Cambodia has little to export.
sausages and hogs (ok, not exactly Harleys, but you get the idea)
The market scene outside all the major temples was another striking experience. I was prepared to be approached constantly, but the sales pitch here was 10 times what I experienced in Bangkok. As soon as I set foot outside the temple boundary, I was swarmed by children who, in perfect English, implored me to buy bracelets, postcards, a cold drink, scarves, t-shirts, etc. "Lady, you buy! Only one dollar! You buy from me!" Any response of "no" was met with "yes you can, I know you can! Only one dollar! I need it to go to school. You can help." If I was entering a temple instead of leaving, the pitch was "you buy on the way out -- I will remember you, lady!" On one hand, I take the 'hard sell' with a grain of salt, knowing that it's simply part of the culture here. On the other hand, having seen the contrast between Cambodia and Thailand, where development is faster and the economy stronger, I perceived a desperation in these merchants that was hearbreaking.
schoolgirls
This is not to say that I didn't have a wonderful visit. The people I met, from my guide Narin to my tuk-tuk driver to the innkeeper, were all completely lovely. The temples themselves lived up to expectation. Words don't do them justice, and neither do my pictures, but I'll post some anyway. For the record, I would also like to note that I woke up at 4:30 am on each of my two days to see Angkor Wat at sunrise, proving my theory that I'm completely a morning person on vacation, when I don't need to be.
the mother of all temples
Perhaps I was even more struck by Cambodia because I was on my own for this portion of the journey, and had lots of solitary time to think and observe. Regardless, it was well worth the trip!
written by  GoBlue on June 4, 2007 from Siemreab, Cambodia

The Wolverines have landed
Luang Prabang, Laos
Did you know that Lao Airlines, the government-run carrier in Laos, is not required to make its safety records public? For that reason, many companies and foreign governments apparently advise employees to find other means of transportation. However, after much due diligence, Christi and I decided that our chances of getting to Luang Prabang by air safely were actually pretty good, so we hopped in the Russian-made ATR-72 prop plane and landed in Laos just fine.
And thus, here we are in the sleepy, UNESCO world-heritage town of Luang Prabang. So far, we've sat lazily on the porch of our guesthouse and watched an amazing late afternoon thunderstorm roll through, and also spied on the young monk at the monastery across the street doing an exercise regimen of handstands and cartwheels (all in a saffron-colored robe). Cool. This place has a wonderful vibe to it -- calm, almost lazy. I think it's right up our alley.
We're off to find dinner and later, with luck, catch up to our Michigan friends Matt, Neda, Jeff, and Tanuka. Hope all is well back home!
p.s. for those of you actually following my travels closely (hi, Mom, Dad and Chris!), please note that I sneakily posted a report from Cambodia but back-dated it to June 4. So, you'll have to scroll down to find it. :)
written by  GoBlue on June 12, 2007 from Luang Prabang, Laos

Cheap, cheap. Look, look.
Denpasar, Indonesia
The rest of our time in Indonesia was pretty fantastic. At first, I wasn't sure I liked the place too much, but once again I left wishing I had more time.
A little more background on Kuta: almost every street I walked down, I initially have the feeling that I shouldn't be there because it might not be safe. Quickly, I realized that the seven foot wide street/sidewalk combo is actually safe despite dozens of motorbikes flying around in both directions and cars barely squeaking by and almost pinning me to the side of a building . . . as I walked down the street there was a local every three feet asking if I'd like to buy some of their goods. "Excuse me mister, you look, look it is cheap, cheap . . . you like it, it is good, good." I also got a lesson in negotiating from a local 17 year old kid named Coco. He told me I could rent a surfboard from him for 90,000 rupiahs ($10 USD) for two hours and I responded by saying, "woah, thats expensive". He told me "to bargain, its good for you, good for me".
At the end of the day, the Bali people are good people who are trying to make some money to support themselves or their family. Ever since the bombings in Kuta (2002 and 2005) they have had incredible excess supply without much tourist demand. Most of the people there make ~1500 Rupiah each day ($1.50 USD), so they are doing their best to survive. Still, despite what are probably slightly desperate times, they were very welcoming and for the most part trustworthy.
Other than hanging out in Bali, Joc and I were fortunate enough to surf the last morning we left (the waves were amazing). We also took a few days to go into the island of Java to the town of Yogyakarta. We visited one of the 7 man made wonders of the world, the buddist temple Borobudur--absolutely amazing
.
We also visited the temple of Parabanan, also very cool . Other than these great temples, I found the town of Yogya (Jog-ja) to be not very impressive, slightly dirty and not incredibly safe feeling. Still, really happy for the experience.
To wrap up Indonesia, I give it an 8 out of 10 to visit and a high recommendation.
PS - Did I mention that we visited a monkey forest and a small monkey bit Jocelyn? It was quite amusing since he didn't break the skin or cause any damage. So far on the trip, Joc has hung out with kangaroos, kualas and now monkeys . . . pretty cool.
written by  GoBlue on June 3, 2007 from Denpasar, Indonesia

Hoi An Happenings
Hoi An, Vietnam
Arriving back in Hanoi after Ha Long Bay, Joc, Carl, Katie, Jennie, and I said "later!" to Aaron who headed off to Hue and decided ourselves to make our way to Hoi An a day earlier than planned. Unfortunately (um, except not), the only seats available for the following day were on business class. We took them, flew into Da Nang, and arrived in Hoi An (~30 km ride) yesterday evening. The transport to Hoi An led us along a long stretch of beach, past China Beach and the marble mountains, and through a *gorgeous* sunset.
Hoi An is known for its tailoring and has over 200 shops. Thus far, we've hit up a recommended tailor and put in some "test" orders. After flipping through a number of catelogs, I decided to go for a long linen skirt, a sun dress, and a bathing suit. It's all a gamble, particularly the last item for me, when it comes to tailor made, but a number of our friends who have already gone through these parts have had at least partial success, and it's all comparatively inexpensive. JMac picked up a dress, Katie ordered several, and Joc ordered jeans, pants, and a jacket...Carl just watched and provided input. (Fear not, we got a rather large beer in him before we dragged him along for the experience.) We try on our items tomorrow...yup, that's right a 24 hour turnaround...sit for any alterations and that's that. Fingers crossed as if everything works out, orders for suits will be forthcoming by Joc and Jennie. I, on the other hand, have more suits from my previous life than I know what to do with. Anyone??
written by  GoBlue on June 23, 2007 from Hoi An, Vietnam

From Ha Noi to Hoi An
Hoi An, Vietnam
Halong Bay was as spectacular as ever, though with far more people than there were 7 years ago - almost to the point of compromising our experience, but not quite. Our tour did a good job getting farther off the beaten path on our second day, when we did some kayaking in and amongst lagoons. We were also lucky in getting a cool group of 7 people to hang out with.
Hanoi, however, didn't really welcome us back - no incidents, but we were ready to move on so we changed our flights to go down to Danang/Hoi An one day ahead of time. So far this town is much better suited towards me - a good bit less busy, fewer people, less honking, etc. We booked a functional hotel for our first night and then Carl and Viv scouted a great hotel that will host us for our remaining three days here.
The main point of Hoi An (its "brand", if you will), is tailoring. This morning we went to a shop that had been recommended by some friends and spent about an hour looking through catalogues and selecting a few tester items. Measurements were made, fabric selected, and tomorrow morning at 11am we will see whether this is going to work! It's pretty fun...
And now, off to the pool!
written by  GoBlue on June 22, 2007 from Hoi An, Vietnam

And then there were three
Nha Trang, Vietnam
Fond farewells to Ms Jennie McConaghy, who left today to begin the journey home - we'll miss you!
We're wrapping up two quick days in Nha Trang, a beach down just south of the demilitarized zone. Despite its potential historical intrigue, Nha Trang has been a place of semi-relaxation for us (or at least attempted relaxation as we have continued to Battle hawkers. The honking is significantly less here though, and there are some alternative cuisines that have temporarily staved off my despair at eating bland dishes and hoping to avoid MSG).
Our beautiful sunny beach day...
...turned to rain (but those thatched umbrellas are really effective!)
Highlights so far first include the company: we overlapped with Brendan and Allison for a day here, and it was great to catch up and bit and swap some stories. We also hit some mud baths today that were quite an experience - my skin is silky soft now (in theory at least).
Tomorrow we grab a bus to head into the mountains of Dalat for a few days. There, gasp, we may even need fleeces at night! Dalat boasts many outdoor attractions including good trekking, mountain biking, some climbing, and semi-natural water slides. Should be a fun change of pace. And from there, it's on to Cambodia to revel in the magnificence of Angkor Wat!
written by  GoBlue on June 27, 2007 from Nha Trang, Vietnam

And The World Is Your Oyster . . .
So, in the early 80s Murray Head wrote "One night in Bangkok" . . . "and the world is your oyster" . . .
Well, we spent two nights there. I'm not sure exactly what that entitles us to, but it was a good time. It was a short 40-hour visit, but we saw a lot of the city, making it worthwhile. I think one word adequatly describes 80% of my Bangkok experience: hot. The city was ridiculously hot. I'm not sure, but I'll guess ~95 degrees with 90% humidity (I might be exagerrating, but you get the picture). Not only was the weather hot, but the food was hot (tasty, but hot).
While in the city we toured the King's palace grounds and temple--all of it was incredible. On of the most enjoyable places within the grounds was the temple that holds the old and famous Emerald Buddha (he is actually carved of jade, but his is very green, thus known as Emerald). While visiting this area we learned how adored the current Thai King Rama VIII is (it is not uncommon for people to wear Lance Armstrong-like "live strong" bracelets that say "long live the king"). The current king is 80 years old and at ~60 years is the longest reigning monarch in history. Pretty interesting stuff.
We also visited the renowned Reclining Buddha at Wat Pho ("Wat" is Thai for temple). This was also quite incredible. As you may have seen lately in the news, Thai people are deeply intertwined with Buddhism and very much respect the teachings of Buddha, so this was a fascinating visit as well.
Bangkok turned out to be a "must see" and like many other areas, I would have loved just a few more days . . .
written by  GoBlue on June 5, 2007 from Bangkok, Thailand

shhhhhh!!!
Da Lat, Vietnam
After another early morning wakeup, Joc, Carl, and I decided that we had had enough. I guess there's only so much street noise (continuous honking), screaming children running up and the down the stairs in the hotel, a neighbor unfortunately coughing up a lung, morning propaganda on the street loudspeakers, and athletic Field comotion from the school outside our room - all of which commenced around 5am each morning and crescendoed as the early morning wore on - that we could take. Honestly, I've come to believe that noise, and lots of it, is par for the course in Vietnam. ;)
Joc and I did an early morning hotel search as Carl continued to nurse his ankle and now a cold that's taken hold. We postponed our mountain biking trip until tomorrow in hopes that Carl will have recovered enough to partake. Four hotel visits later - one was too expensive for what it offered, another full, and another too frustrating (though a good experience!) communication-wise - we've settled in at the Novotel Da Lat. High rollers we're not, but a bit desperate, yes! Hopefully we'll be able to get some rest here as we've requested a room as far away from noise as possible. ;) Wish us luck!
written by  GoBlue on June 29, 2007 from Da Lat, Vietnam

Cambodia pics posted
Luang Prabang, Laos
scroll down to June 4 for some pictures of my Angkor Wat trip...
written by  GoBlue on June 13, 2007 from Luang Prabang, Laos

Northern Thailand--Part 1
Our first few days in Chiang Mai were incredible. Joc and I found a great place to rock climb about 40 minutes outside the city. We booked transport with some local guides, rented a guide book for the day and Joc, Vivian and I headed out for a great day of climbing on some solid Limestone crags.
The next day we booked a local tour that included an elephant ride (they are huge, powerful, and hungry animals--they also blow elephant snot in your face if you don't feed them bananas on a frequent schedule), trek through two hilltribe villages, a waterfall and bamboo rafting down the Maung River (I think that is what the river was called). Toward the end of the rafting trip we stopped for some swimming and cliff jumping (video and pictures to come soon).
After touring the countryside we stopped at the Wat Suen Dok Buddhist temple for "Monk Chat" where we spent 1.5 hours discussing Buddhism with young monks who were finishing their university studies and wanted to practice their English. So, we got a very enlightening discussion about their religion and they got to practice English--win-win (and also a fantastic experience).
After our first few days in Chiang Mai, it is definitely one of my favorite cities on the trip so far.

Down in Da Lat but not out
Da Lat, Vietnam
As we wrap up our time in Da Lat (and my time overall in Vietnam), we leave behind the cool weather that's been such a welcome relief from the rest of our travels in this part of the world. It's been mostly uneventful here in Da Lat...if you leave out the part of Carl's compounding bodily injuries. While ankle, back, and nose (cold) may have fallen, his spirit hasn't...and, he's well on his way to recovery.
Carl down and out??
On to Siem Reap!
written by  GoBlue on July 3, 2007 from Da Lat, Vietnam

Professional Photos Now Available
Hanoi, Vietnam
In Chiang Mai, we reluctantly said farewell to Dave and Maddy Chapman, who had to head back to the states. We sure miss them a lot and wish they were still trekking around with us, but it seems Dave has been hard at work since he's been back. He's an amazing photographer, and has posted his "greatest hits" from the trip. Check them out!!
written by  GoBlue on June 17, 2007 from Hanoi, Vietnam

Da What?
We are in the mountains, and boy is the temperature change a welcome break - I am wearing pants!!! There was an article in the WSJ a few years ago about this town - it was developed in the late 1800s by a protege of Louis Pasteur. Apparently it's the top honeymoon destination in Vietnam, though it's not immediately clear why - perhaps in the non-rainy season it would be more of where I would choose to honeymoon.
Yesterday, however, we did check out the golf course. For a mere $90 you can play what looks like a fairly well tended and potentially interesting course. I think we are going to try it either tomorrow or Sunday for their twighlight special (on $40). We did hit on the range though, which was a lot of fun (just knowing we were playing golf in Vietnam!).
Despite
a rough start (a shouting match in the hallway outside our door at 6am) the day has turned out to be quite a kick. We started by hiring a car to go to the top of a tall local mountain. We got to the base of it and then transferredto a jeep (Russian-made, former war jeep). The view was almost completely blocked by clouds, but it was still pretty cool. It was pretty crazy to think that nearly 40 years ago an American soldier might have been driving up that same road - what would he have thought of the idea that in another few decades a tourist from his country would be driving up the same (US Army-made) road to admire the views.
We also visited "crazy house", which was designed in Alice in Wonderland style by the 2nd daughter of the 2nd president after Ho Chi Min. Crazy indeed.
All the beds had mirrors above them...weird. But cool for goup photos!
Next we went to a local waterfall that you reached via tobogan. That was pretty wild (though not as wild as it could have been - had to screech to a halt to avoid hitting the lollygagging couple in front of me - get off the brakes!!!) The water was pretty though.
Vivian and i are going through the local market soon. (carl is elevating his ankle - mysterious pretty serious strain). Tomorrow we are still hoping to go mountain biking.
written by  GoBlue on June 29, 2007 from Da Lat, Vietnam

Loving Life in LP (that's Luang Prabang, Laos, not Lincoln Park, Chicago)
Hanoi, Vietnam
Once again, our group diverged in search of different adventures, and we bring them all to you here using the powers of Blogabond. :) So, while Carl, Viv, Joc, Aaron, and Ben explored Sapa, Christi and I hung out in Luang Prabang, Laos for almost 5 days. I had been especially looking forward to this stop on my trip, and Lao did not disappoint us.
Luang Prabang was just different than anywhere else I've visited on this trip. At first the differences were imperceptible, so I couldn't really identify what was unique about the place. Staying for 4+ days really allowed us to soak up the place, though, and I've tried to gather some impressions.
-- PICTURESQUE. In contrast to Chiang Mai, where we had many fun outdoor/gastronomical/shopping/historical adventures but where the city itself is not especially beautiful, I found Luang Prabang to be really lovely to simply stroll around. It's an accessible small town, occupying a peninsula between the Mekong and Nam Kan rivers, and there's really only two main streets. In addition, it has the status of being a UNESCO World Heritage City, which I presume means there are many restrictions on development. As a result, the low-rise buildings lack the bland architecture we've seen in other parts of SE Asia, and there is a lack of advertising on buildings. Finally, there are still vestiges of French colonial architecture, as well as other French influences, so we ended up finding oodles of quaint shops, guesthouses, cafes, bakeries, and restaurants. There's nothing better than a Lao iced coffee with sweetened condensed milk or a mango fruit shake to refresh you in 90+ degree temperatures!
Nam Kan River, Laos
-- ISOLATED. We explored the town but also did some tours outside of town. Even on those short jaunts, it was amazing to see how mountainous the region is. Originally we meant to reach LP from Northern Thailand via a 2-day river cruise down the Mekong; the same route takes 15 hours to drive. Travel between cities in Laos takes a lot of time and patience for windy, bumpy roads. Along these lines, I was struck by our tour guide on our day of kayaking/elephant riding. He was from one of the local Hmong communities, and for him, Luang Prabang represents "the big city." As we kayaked, he asked me if I had ever been to Hong Kong, and if it is like Luang Prabang. I wasn't quite sure how to answer, knowing that he probably couldn't even comprehend the level of hustle, bustle, and population density of Hong Kong. In Luang Prabang, the most happening bar in town stays open until 11:30.
Lao countryside, south of Luang Prabang
-- FRIENDLY. As I did in Chiang Mai, I found myself letting my guard down in LP. Everywhere we went, people smiled. Even people who wanted to sell to us were remarkably non-pushy. The service was great, our tours did not disappoint, and shopping was a really fun experience.
In addition to these impressions, I wanted to write about our activities (and hopefully post pictures soon). Another special thing about Christi's and my time in Lao is that we met up with no fewer than six other Ross grads. Our friends Neda, Matt, Jeff, and Tanuka (as well as Neda's friend Laura) were on their way through, and we caught them for dinner and drinks at Hive (the very bar that's open until 11:30!) before they left for Thailand. In addition, we spent most of our time there with Karina and Ian, whom Christi traveled with during her Germany semester last year. It was probably the biggest Ross contingent Luang Prabang has ever seen!
On our first day in town, Christi and I wanted to take it easy and get our bearings. So, we did some sightseeing, shopping, and investigating to decide on treks for the upcoming days. We decided to try something a little different, as well, based on guide book recommendations, and headed off to the Lao Red Cross to try their spa treatments. For only $1, we supported their programs and got to try the herbal sauna. Popular among Lao women and men, the sauna promotes good health and skin using 25 different herbs in the steam. Now, why anyone would go in a sauna in 90+ temperatures, I'm not sure... but we bravely headed in anyway!
Luckily, a young Lao woman Deng befriended us, and showed us the ropes (shower in between sessions, wet down your sarong, drink tea now, don't shower after the last session or you'll wash off the herbs, rub your skin with milk, etc.) At first, we were the only "falang" (foreigners) there (two more came before we left), but there were at least 15 Lao. There was a bit of excitement when a ladyboy came in and popped into the men's side of the sauna wearing a sarong and a pink headband. This amounted to a fair amount of confusion when the poor Australian man who arrived after us walked in and right back out, thinking he had read the signs wrong! All in all, Christi and I were completely amused by our so-very-authentic sauna experience. Later that evening before dinner, we took in a performance at the Royal Ballet Theater, which sounds more professional than it actually was, but at least gave us a taste of Lao culture through dance, music, and costumes.
The next day, we ventured out on a Tiger Trails tour to see their Elephant Park Project, ride elephants, and then kayak back to Luang Prabang on the Nam Kan river. The elephants were lovely, and I can only imagine that they are treated better than the ones we saw in Chiang Mai. For starters, they didn't demand bananas and sugar cane every five steps, and the mahouts (elephant trainers) were more gentle as well. The ride was much more peaceful as a result, and we still got to feed Mae Nam (our elephant) at the end.
Now I know how high corn grows...
Kayaking was a blast; although the river was mostly pretty flat, there were a few spots with moving water. What actually made the kayaking so fun was the amount of village life we saw along the way. Every couple hundred meters, there was another herd of water buffalo bathing in the river, or a group of fisherman, or several children splashing around. Everyone we saw waved excitedly, and we shouted greetings of "Sabaidee!" back and forth. After reading so much about unexploded land mines in Lao, I was a bit startled to hear an explosion sound, but it was actually just gunfire from a local hunter up on the hill alongside the river. Our trip took 3.5 hours of paddling, and the only thing we could think to do afterwards was get a $1 massage to soothe our sore muscles!
Christi kayaking
That night, we decided to eat at an outdoor restaurant along the Mekong. Just as we selected the place, there was a dip in the electricity and then... power outage. Like my experience in Cambodia, there were often power dips in the evening, but this time, the power stayed off for at least an hour. It was actually quite amazing how quickly the restaurant lit candles and carried on, managing to cook our entire meal in the dark. (Good thing for natural gas!) The only light other than candlelight came from the headlights of passing motorbikes. I was almost disappointed when the electricity came back on.
Power outage... dinner by candlelight!
Friday was a big day for us, as we ventured to the Pak Ou caves in the morning with stops at local villages along the way. This was a lesson in "you get what you pay for..." we had decided to book a less expensive tour, which meant that our 1 hour longboat ride upriver was in a rickety boat with no real seats and approximately 1 square meter for Christi and I to sit in. As another tourist on our boat said to someone at the dock as we pulled away, "please tell our story if we don't make it back!" Despite a brief stop to re-fuel along the way, we made it to the caves. They are actually somewhat bizzare -- caves right on the Mekong, filled with Buddha shrines. Local children lined the steps up to the upper caves and sold fruit, stones, and other trinkets. Oddly, one girl also had a large black beetle leashed by a string as her pet, and another young girl was playing with her pets, two rodent-like animals (moles?) tied together by their feet. The children were sweet and gentle, but it was sad to see their obvious health problems (a broken or possibly congenitally deformed foot, skin diseases, etc.).
That afternoon, following a lovely lunch at Cafe Vat Sene, I hired a tuk-tuk to visit the Kuang Xi waterfalls. I had just enough time to get there and hike up to see the falls, as well as take a dip in the swimming areas. They were some of the most gorgeous waterfalls I've ever seen -- a tall falls that cascaded down into several pools of clear blue water.
Kuang Xi Falls
more Kuang Xi Falls
Jennie pre-waterfall-swim
On the way back, I stopped at Mount Phousi to climb 300 stairs up just in time to catch the sunset. The view of town, the Mekong, and the sun falling behind the mountains was stunning.
sunset over the Mekong from Mount Phousi
Next stop: L'Elephant, the fanciest restaurant in town, where we splurged on a scrumptious 3-course French/Lao dinner. My tab? About $14, including drinks. Amazing.
On our last morning, Christi and I took a 1/2 day class from OckPopTop, an enterprise that means "east meets west" and employs local women weavers to produce and sell handicrafts in their shops. We learned about weaving and dying silk and even got the chance to create dyes from tamarind, indigo, and sappan wood. Hopefully I'll come up with something creative to do with my hand-dyed silk thread.
Chris and Jen with yellow dye made from tamarind
We checked out of the Sala Prabang and headed to the airport with lots of good memories as well as a few purchases. This is a place I'd happily revisit!
written by  GoBlue on June 17, 2007 from Hanoi, Vietnam

Angkor Wat and then some
Siemreab, Cambodia
My main reason for heading over to Siem Reap was to explore Angkor Wat. It turns out that if that were all I actually saw (and in my ignorance, I thought it was the only attraction), despite its magnificence I would have really missed out. As Joc mentioned in her posting, the "city" of Angkor is comprised of over 100 temples. I won't say too much since she's done a great job of synopsising our explorations, but I've posted a few more pictures below.
I've really enjoyed my brief visit to Cambodia. (I did have a brief moment at the airport when we flew in where I wasn't sure I'd be let into the country because my passport pages are full. The immigration/customs guy definitely paused at each page wondering where he could stamp and gave me looks. A sign that I need to go home??) The food has been surprisingly good and nice on the stomachs considering friends who pit-stopped here earlier this summer suggested that "everyone gets at least a little sick in Cambodia" and they all had; the people have been great, friendly, and helpful; and the city has thrived from tourism. The Siem Reap Airport opened a year ago, new palatial hotels are being built, and signs of improvements to infrastructure are everywhere. I guess "thrived from tourism" has good and bad connotations. For the most part, and from conversations with our Angkor guide and my airport driver, it's been a positive in raising people's standards of living and casting light on the atrocities committed by the Khmer regime under Pol Pot, but a negative in the congestion and change of ways (e.g., muting of traditions) that is has also brought.
Angkor Wat
Carl being accosted by kids
One of the many faces at Bayon
Carl making out
Almost hidden by the trees
Beware of trees and their roots...
Setting of Tomb Raider
written by  GoBlue on July 4, 2007 from Siemreab, Cambodia

APB: Send sympathy vibes to Carl! Poor kid's had a rough stint...
Yes, strike three and he's down for the count:
1) Mysterious ankle injury set in in Ha Long Bay - could it have been from the back flips off the top of the boat?! Not helped by the fact that we never get a walking-free day, but he was managing well enough.
2) Cold. Who gets a cold when it's 100 degrees out? Acutally it's now around 70, so perhaps it was the climate change of going from the ridiculous heat of everywhere else in this country to the moderately pleasant constant drizzle of Da Lat. That was yesterday.
3) Mountain biking mishap (he's ok though - I'll state that up front). We postponed the excursion one day to give his cold a full day of rest and recuperation, but this morning on a particularly nasty steep downhill (and did I mention muddy? Very muddy) he lept acrobatically off of his bike and in an attempt to save stressing the ankle somehow tweaked the heck out of his back. We were just about at the farthest point on the trail, so he had a limpy 2-hour walk back to the sealed road, poor fella. Yes, strike three, and Carl is in traction. (I don't actually know what that term means - in reality, he's drugged up on advil watching mindless television upstairs).
The good news is he'll make it (he's a strong one). It's also nice that yesterday we decided to give ourselves a break and upgraded to the Novitel (the 2nd nicest hotel in town), so we are relaxing in relative luxury (we even ordered room service for lunch!). The bad news is he's down for the count (we're thinking of renting a DVD player). Unfortunately we have a flight to Cambodia tomorrow, so hopefully he will have a rapid recovery - go Carl!!!
Other than this minor tragedy, the ride was actually very fun - extremely wet and slippery, but (except for that one spot) not too steep in either direction. The bikes were decent, and the temperature perfect (got a little chilly when it started to rain; again, poor Carl walking home in the rain a day after spending the day in bed with a cold). We also had the fun coincidence of our two Irish friends booking the same ride as we did even though our attempts failed at passing them a note through their hotel telling them where we'd booked. So we had a fun group and a good adventure. Viv has a few "body illustrations" of a few of her escapades, but I will leave that to her telling - my contribution is this: it wasn't easy biking!
Now off to play paparazzi with some Vietnamese propaganda posters...fascinating...
written by  GoBlue on July 1, 2007 from Da Lat, Vietnam

Northern Thailand--Part 2
After a great introduction to Northern Thailand, we set off for a few days of cooking school. I think Joc, Viv and Jennie have all written about this, so I won't spend much time on it. But I will say it was a fantastic few days. If you are a Thai food fan and find yourself in Chaing Mai, I highly recommend the Thai Cookery School (http://www.thaicookeryschool.com/). We had the luxury of spending some time with Sompon Nabnian, the school's owner, and it was a great experience to see a successful entrepreneur in Thailand.
To finish our time in Chiang Mai, we hit the crags for another two days. We enjoyed the climbing destination so much the first time we went, we decided to return for our last two days. Our last day was an adventure on a number of fronts . . .we rented a vehicle and drove to the crag--very entertaining. Turns out by renting a vehicle, we actually just borrowed someone's personal car for the day and paid her for it. Seemed crazy, but it worked. Then during the last hour at the crag, we noticed a large, ominous cloud coming our way and we thought we had maybe an hour before it would start to rain. We actually only had about 20 minutes before an incredible wind and rain storm came through and left us huddling under the bamboo hut for dry warmth (that's right, after non-stop heat for a week, it actually was a bit cool!). However, the rain didn't keep us down. We retreated to a nearby cave-like structure and climbed there till dark. We then drove back to the city in the rain (3rd adventure of the day) and finished our last night in Northern Thailand with a simple meal at a nearby restaurant. Again, I hope to post some pictures soon . . .

Good Morning Vietnam!
After an incredible week in Thailand, good people, good food, good countryside, we have landed in Vietnam . . .
To give you a sense of how I feel about the place so far, I'm going to rank order the cities I have visited so far:
1. Sydney
2. Chiang Mai
3. Melbourne
4. Bangkok
5. Kuta (Bali)
6. Yogyakarta (Java)
7. Hanoi
As Joc mentioned in her blog, we were greeted in Vietnam by both incessant horn honking and getting ripped off (read Jocelyn's blog for the details). In general, Hanoi is a big, dirty, loud city with non-descript food and scenery and aggressive merchants. We recently found out that our friends were ripped off twice in taxis by paying with large bills and being refused their rightful change. It is also not uncommon for foreigners to be required to pay for many things that are free for locals. In general, I get the feeling that we are viewed as a means to making money with little interest in or concern for us otherwise (I mention this specifically because this is not at all what we experinced in Thailand). Long story, short: I'm happy for the experience but will be equally happy to move on earlier than planned . . .
PS - Did any of us mention yet how much horn honking is here? It is indescribably unbelieavable. Think New York city times 200!

And then there were two...
Siemreab, Cambodia
Safe travels Viv! The group travel has just about come to a close. I knew it would go quickly, but holy cow! I can't believe part I of the trip is over. (In my mind, it's a 3-part journey: part I was group travel, part II: Habitat for Humanity building trip, and then part III will be the Carl/Joc closure). I am having a blast; however, I was reflecting today that if I want that "momentus life" feeling, I have to proactively remind myself of the context - the day-to-day is more of a relaxed fun, which in and of itself is also pretty cool. I compare this in part to my trip 7 years ago, which was amazing, but also a perpetual struggle in some ways - against logistics, the cultures, group travel, etc. Perhaps it's just the difference of being 30 vs 23?
At any rate...
When we planned to go to Angkorwat, I'd say Carl and Viv were driving the process and I was following along to stay with them; at the time it seemed like a lot of travel and money for some cool temples. In retrospect, it was very much worth it, except we wish we'd had another day or two.
Cambodia was not at all what I'd expected. I had heard that Angkorwat was completely tourist-ridden and nearby Siem Reap overrun with junk souvenier shops. Instead, we found it a small town with nice, courteous people (plenty of shopping "opportunities", but they didn't force themselves on you like they have in other places. And the temples were ... amazing.
I didn't know this at first, but Angkorwat is actually a collection of more than 100 temples. Many of them are small, but it was pretty incredible to imagine the area hundreds of years ago without tourists and speckled with temples everywhere. Granted, most of the thousands of people who lived there didn't worship at the temples, just built them for the king. Nonetheless is was pretty cool to think about.
We started the day at the "Tomb Raider" temple. Although the day was full of fantastic sights, this ended up my favorite place, I think because of the interaction between nature and the temples. I haven't seen Tomb Raider, but I heard Viv comment that she thought the movie had been digitally engineered to show trees in and amongst the ruins - turns out, it's real! Extraordinary. We also had the luck of getting there before the multitudes of packed tour buses arrived. (We didn't try for a sunrise visit because it's rainy season and we were likely to be clouded in; instead, we got started just after 8 and still beat many of the crowds at our first stop).
We later saw the temple of happy faces - also very cool. Each spire has four faces on it, representing the Buddhist tenets of compassion, sympathy, calmess and charity. Another stop was at the king's temple, which overlooked a 125m swimming pool in which his 4,000 concubines would bathe. Every night he would climb the (ridiculously steep) stairs - on belay! - to have sex with one of them. The burdens of ruling....
How long did that chiseling take??
We finished the day at Angkorwat itself. Although very cool, don't get me wrong, it actually was less dramatic to me than some of the others. I should note that I was on the point of exhaustion though (due to poor laundry management I was down to just one very hot thick cotton t-shirt, and despite drinking 2 liters of water throughout the day, had to rest every few steps in order to make it through).
With the addition of two pleasant dinners, it was a great stop!
written by  GoBlue on July 5, 2007 from Siemreab, Cambodia

Full Circle
Hong Kong (historical), Hong Kong
I know it's cliche, but it really is crazy how time flies. I've come full circle in my travels having spent the last week in Hong Kong where it all started (on this side of the world at least!). I'm hopping on a plane this afternoon that takes me to Chicago where I get to spend 24 hours with Jennie before catching my flight home to Boston. An odd layover you might say, and you'd be right. Not that I mind, but clearly I was not paying close enough attention when I was booking my original flight. Turns out I need to look at dates and not just times. ;)
It's been great hanging out with my family and staying put. Some thing that I'd not thought about missing was not thinking twice about drinking water from the tap and eating anything and everything I felt like...definitely don't have to do that here! Turns out I had pretty good timing on my return. My grandmother just had knee surgery (she was fired up after hearing about Jennie's grandmother's 2 knee replacement surgeries and had it done while I was away) so I've spent some quality time with her in physical therapy and getting her active around the house. Other than that I could probably cut and paste my first entry from Hong Kong. I've done plenty of eating, resting, running, shopping, roaming, playing with my two little cousins, tv watching, beach time, and I think you get the picture. :)
Signing off...
A view across Victoria Harbor at Hong Kong, take 2
A view across Victoria Harbor at Hong Kong
Sunset from the ferry (Lamma to HKG Island)
Beach at Lamma Island
Hong Kong at night
written by  GoBlue on July 11, 2007 from Hong Kong (historical), Hong Kong

Chiang Mai memories...
My fellow travelers have written some great reports about our time in Chiang Mai ... sightseeing, elephant riding, trekking, bamboo rafting, mini-cliff jumping, cooking, eating, lounging at the Jasmine Rice Village, swimming, "Catch Phrase" playing, rock climbing, etc. Here's some pictures to go along with the stories:
Maddy and Jennie trekking away in Northern Thailand
Chef Sompon in the classroom
Didn't we just leave school for good?
Sompon: chef, hotelier, and Northern Lantern pilot
Jennie rock climbing at Crazy Horse Buttress
Jocelyn at the beginning of a tricky lead climb, with Carl spotting

MO512: Bargaining and Influence Skills ... Vietnamese Style
As many of my Ross friends recall, I struggled through our school's famed "negotiations" class last fall. Now that I've arrived in Vietnam, I've discovered that I have the opportunity to redeem myself from all my disasterous attempts at bargaining. So far, the results aren't much better than they were in class last fall... I somehow snuck away with a "good" back then, but I certainly haven't become "excellent" in the meantime.
Case #1: Having heard about the hotel scam pulled upon Carl, Jocelyn, and Vivian's arrival in Hanoi, Christi and I were prepared -- savvy and street smart, with our guard fully up. We went straight to the official meter taxi stand at the airport, which had a clearly posted sign indicating the flat rate to town was $10 or 150,000 Vietnamese dong. We reconfirmed the price with the eager driver who showed us into his cab, and I felt better when he chatted excitedly with us, asking where we were from and if it was our first time in Vietnam.
When we arrived at our destination, Christi offered a $10 USD bill as payment; he declined, asking for dong. "Great," I thought -- healthier for all involved not to rely on US currency. Without thinking, I pulled out two 100,000 dong bills and handed them to him. Next thing I know, he's shoved them in his pocket, grins widely, and says, laughing, "I good driver for you!" Uh oh. At first, I think he's joking with us, and politely ask for change. He declines. Repeat interaction 5 times. No progress, except Christi and I are getting angry, though we are keeping our calm. Finally, I decide to throw in the towel. 50,000 dong is around $3, so it's not the worst thing in the world, but it's still basically petty thievery. As we walk away, I yell at him that I would have given him a bigger tip if he had given me my change. Of course, this complicated a sentiment in English means nothing to him, but it still felt better to vent.
Case #2: After getting Christi checked into her tour group's hotel, we went over the the hotel I'd selected. With Frommer's advice that "everything in Vietnam is negotiable" fresh in my mind, and knowing that it was off-season, I was ready to bargain my way to my room. "Do you have any single rooms available?" Yes, of course, and the price is $30 USD. "OK," I say... "well, if I stay two nights, can you make the price $25?" The receptionist laughs and says, "well, Madam, I think we can lower the price $5 for you." Whee!!! Score!!! Wait... that was too easy... I didn't anchor low enough! Regardless, I checked in, happy that I was paying less than the originally quoted price.
Fast forward two days to checkout. Suddenly, the room price appears as $27.50 per night. What?!?! I brought it down to $25! I guess according to the hotel, though, they offered to lower the price by $5 over two nights, not per night. Oh, and they forgot to quote me the VAT (room tax) as well. Suddenly my good bargain wasn't looking so hot after all.
Case #3: I'm waiting in line at the Thang Long Water Puppet Theater, waiting to buy a ticket for tonight's performance. Prices are 20,000 dong (a bit over $1) and 40,000 dong (shy of $3). I step up to the window and ask for a second-class ticket at 20,000 dong, and present my 50,000 dong bill. The box office clerk stares at me, and asks if I have a smaller bill. Now, in Vietnam, I had already seen denominations of 100,000, 50,000, 20,000, 10,000, 5,000, 2,000, and 500. I can't see how scraping together 30,000 in change seems like that big a deal, so I hold my ground: "no, I don't have anything smaller." She stares at me. I stare at her. Repeat. Likely, the dozens of people in line behind me stare at me. Finally, I give in, and pay the extra $1+ for a first class ticket. Had I really been scammed, again? These are little tricks, but they add up, and leave a bad taste in your mouth.
Despite these rather deflating experiences, I will say that Hanoi grew on me over the course of my day. I wandered around the Old Quarter, dodging swarms of honking motorbikes, cyclo-cabs, and fruit sellers, to make my way to Hoan Kiem lake.
Hoan Kiem Lake
We really dug all the propaganda art posted in public places
It really offered great respite from the noise and crowds. I walked along the lake's perimeter, making several diversions to explore surrounding streets. I ate pumpkin soup for lunch, shopped for lacquerware (which involve more mediocre bargaining), and had fantastic geltao in Fanny's Ice Cream Cafe. Later that evening, the water puppet performance was quite enchanting (and ultimately worth the $3 I paid), and I indulged myself in a $10 meal at the Green Tangerine, a FANTASTIC restaurant with great French colonial ambience.
The lovely garden of the Green Tangerine in Hanoi
My 24 hours in Hanoi passed quickly, and then we set off for a 3-day tour to enjoy the stunning and peaceful scenery of Halong Bay. More on that to come...
In Vietnam, sight lines are optional

New Habitats
Kuching, Malaysia
I am now in Malaysia, working hard to build "Eddie and Katie" a new house! So far the trip is great. I really like our group (I don't know how that always happens, but it really is a great group of people!) Snapshots include 2 Toronto women who work for Microsoft, 5 Bain people (2 of whom I hadn't met before, going to other offices), 3 BCG people (yikes - consultants!), 3 Irish lads, a father/son duo from Marin county, a kid who played high school water polo with my brother Theo (and that kid's girlfriend), and a girl who won a photo contest through Habitat and got a free trip out of it. One of our leaders is also from Beloit, Illinois, just south of Carl's stomping grounds.
The house itself is coming along nicely, considering 1+ days of work. The roof was already built, so we are working on preparing the foundation. I have become somewhat of an expert in rebar bending and tying, and my posture is perfect right now in order to protect a very sore back (shoveling gravel and sand). A group of local kids is perpetually hanging around, and we all get a great kick out of shouting hello back and forth to each other and giggling in between.
The couple for whom we are building the house is currently living in the house next door with 8 adult relatives. That clan cooks lunch for us, and it's fun to sit around smiling at each other. Today I tried what turned out to be homemade chewing gum (sort-of; I wouldn't have recognized it as such without being told).
Tomorrow we pour concrete and while it's drying have the afternoon off to do some shopping. I am going to try to pick up some extra t-shirts as I am tearing through my wardrobe. Although it isn't as hot as I expected it to be (discomfort-wise), I still sweat out pounds every hour (drank 4 liters of water today during our 9-5 workday!).
It's great fun though, and very rewarding - Eddie works with us and he and Katie seem like very nice people. Katie's 8 months pregnant, so I think they will get good use out of their new house!
written by  GoBlue on July 10, 2007 from Kuching, Malaysia

Northern Vietnam
We are currently in the northern mountains of Vietnam after finishing a two day trek and spending the nights in local villages. It was a great experience, something I will remember for a long time to come. That said, I continue to get the feeling that Vietnamese people are not quite as warm and welcoming as other Asian cultures. However, I may not be getting a representative sample . . . it may be a result of finding ourselves on "tourist road".
The trek we walked is the common trek that most foreigners do when they come to Sa Pa. Jocelyn did this same trek 7 years ago and found no other foreigners on the trail and was not accosted by any village people who were looking to sell their trinkets. Now, however, at times we were literally in a line of people walking the trail and were asked at least 60 times a day "you buy from me?" by a local village person (usually young girl or woman with a baby on her back). Along these lines, the homestays where we stayed were lacking the interaction we were hoping for. I speculate this is an extension of the local people seeing hundreds of tourists a week and not being especially interested in interacting . . .
All that said, there were some amazing positives to the trek. The scenery is stunning. The manner in which every inch of a mountainside is used for either rice or corn crops is amazing, and the simple, demanding nature of farm life was understood and appreciated. Once again, I hope to have some pictures soon to show the beauty.
One of the highlights of the trek was our first night homestay. We were introduced to what the locals call "happy water" (aka rice wine)--the more you drink, the happier you get. There were 5 of us from Ross (Joc, Viv, Ben, Aaron and me) and we were joined by two people from Ireland and the family whose house we were staying in. We thought it would be a glass or two of the Rice Wine (which, by the way, drinks way more like grain alcohol or vodka than wine), but they continued to fill up the bottles and pour the shots. Before it was all done, we had 13 shots (smaller than normal) of rice wine and some beer and Aaron paid the family $10 USD for a duck so we could chase it around the yard . . . enough said (I will elaborate for you poultry lovers out there. After realizing that if we chased the duck they would then kill it and eat it because it would sustain injuries during the chase, we opted for a few pictures with the freaked-out duck instead of a chase).
On our way out of the last village we stayed in, we opted to ride on the back of motorbikes up a dirt road being turned into a paved road. On this day though it rained incredibly hard and the dirt road quickly became an ultra-adventurous mud road! Aside from driving up the mud road on the back of a motorbike, we also stopped twice as the road workers blew dynamite, sending huge boulders into the air. Pretty crazy. What was also somewhat crazy to me were these young Vietnamese guys driving us up what was most likely an unsafe mud road . . . when a generation ago we would have been pointing semi-automatic weapons at each other. In that sense as well as how touristy this area has become so quickly, it is quite amazing how times and places change. All for the better? Again, only time will tell.
All-in-all a great trek with amazing scenery I hope to share soon.

Bain is looking pretty good...
Kuching, Malaysia
This work is hard!!!
The trip is going well. I really like the group - a great group of individuals with mix of laid back-ness and interesting-ness. We are making decent progress on the house too. The daily rhythm is something like this: leave the hotel at 8am, drive 45 minutes to the village, working by 9am. Break at 10:30 for 10-15 minutes, work until 12:30. Break for 30-60-minute lunch, work until 3ish, maybe another quick break, then finish at 4:30.
After a day or so of framing and dirt shoveling, we were ready to pour concrete. The first day of that was all manual mixing, which is very, very hard! On the way to the internet cafe tonight I passed a pile of sand beside a pile of gravel and it gave me the shivers. My back was nearly broken for the first day or so despite decent efforts to use my legs, but it seems to be recovering. We also found a great massage place nearby that's $15US per hour! Very therapeutic.
Today, thanks to a wonderful new invention (the cement mixer), our work didn't involve manual mixing - such a treat! We carted wheelbarrow-fulls of this to the site this morning and finished pouring the floor of the house. Then we formed human chains to move many bricks and started on the walls.
Aaron, one of the Irish lads and I also played soccer against the local kids at lunch today - that was a ton of fun, though in 90+ degree heat, it wiped me out for the afternoon. Hopefully we will repeat that, without the dehydration factor. Eddie, the husband in the couple we're building the house for, played on our team as did one of the young girls; the other 12 were against us, and when they come up to your hip height, it's quite a challenge not to send bodies flying!
Every night we congregate around 7 for a group dinner, then have free time (though by then most of us are eager to crawl into bed - long days!). It's a good rhythm - lots of fun! And now, off to dinner...
written by  GoBlue on July 13, 2007 from Kuching, Malaysia

At 5:45 am, I fell out of bed because the roll-away mattress fell off the cot
See title. :)
Seriously, though, I can't get over how funny this was. I was sleeping on the make-shift third bed in our room at the Prince II Hotel, which was a mattress atop a camping cot about 70% its size. Needless to say, this was not the most stable contraption. When I woke up, I reached for my watch to see what time it was, and next thing I know I'm on the floor, legs legs in the air, mattress on its side, laughing hysterically. So much for trying not to wake up Viv and Katie.

Adolescence can suck, kinda.
Hoi An, Vietnam
Well, everyone knows how difficult the teenage years can be . . . I've decided that Viet Nam is firmly in the middle of its teenage years . . . It is not quite the young, developing country that makes one appreciate the difficulties of life; yet, it is definitely not a fully functioning, healthy country (politically, economically, or otherwise). This, I'm learning, can make traveling difficult.
For instance, you will learn from reading all our blogs on this site that we haven't yet met a foreigner traveling in Viet Nam who has not been ripped off (to varying degrees). From a different angle, we also have found it incredibily efficient to book tours to see the country (so far Sa Pa and Ha Long Bay), but with this comes a certain feeling of being part of a large herd. Because of the infrastracture here we have found it difficult to get too far off the beaten path, forget about planning an adventure on our own sans tour guide.
Still, all that said, I have been incredibly happy with my Viet Nam experience so far. Ha Long Bay was ridicuosly gorgeous, great green "mountains" rising out of calm, warm bay water (pictures coming soon). Even Hanoi grew on me after a while, granted for a while there I thought I was going to go the way of my father and also loose my hearing in Viet Nam, but I eventually learned to tune out the constant honking. I also became less concerned with walking into oncoming traffic (because every place I walked there was oncoming traffic of some type).
Now that we are in Hoi An, I'm also finding the Viet Namese people to be more warm and friendly. We aren't exactly off of "tourist row", so I don't think it is purely a result of leaving the heavy tourist areas . . . I can only guess that people in the North might be less welcoming, but I have had such a limited experience here that I couldn't say for sure . . .
So far Hoi An seems like a great place. We saw an amazing sunset as we drove from Danang to Hoi An last night (as a side note, we passed the old US Army base in Danang and I was wondering if my Dad had been to the same place before . . .). Hoi An is a sleepy little town that has over 200 tailors! The ladies who form my traveling entourage were fitted today for various pieces of clothing that will be made from scratch for them tonight and ready to be tailored tomorrow. Pretty cool. The town also has some great restaurants, bars and other shops, making it a great place to spend a few days. I'm also hoping while we are here to spend some time finally uploading some pictures . . .
written by  GoBlue on June 22, 2007 from Hoi An, Vietnam

Turns out I'm not a very good pool player . . .
Nha Trang, Vietnam
So, since my last post, we have left Hoi An, the tailoring capital of SE Asia. For more on how our tailoring experience turned out, read Joc and Vivian's blog entries. I refrained from spending too much money on the process, but our group as a whole spent a lot of time and money getting "cheap" tailored clothes made from scratch. It is a fascinating and scary process because you have no idea what you are purchasing, but fun nontheless. Aside from tailoring, we spent a wee bit of time at the beach and hanging out at restaurants and local bars. Oh! I almost forgot . . . we also had our first motorbike rental experience in Vietnam. From our previous posts, you might surmise that this was quite an experience. I thought it was fun and no one was hurt, so it was extremely worthwhile.
After leaving Hoi An two days ago, we flew to Nha Trang in a two-engine prop plane. We've since spent a lot of time relaxing--watching Wimbledon in our room, playing pool at a local pub, hanging out on the beach, and visiting local herbal mud baths. (On a side note, I irritated my ankle a week ago by hiking, not stretching and doing back flips off of our junk boat in Ha Long Bay. So, I am looking for a few days of down time to give my ankle a chance to let the swelling subside--almost there). Part of my Nha Trang experience has involved multiple rounds of "haggling" with a local boy over purchasing some of his postcards. He immediately challenged me to a game of pool with the condition that if he won, I would buy his postcards. I knew immediately that because he challenged me to this, there was no way I could beat him. Still, after a number of conversations with this kid (I thought he was 10 or 11, turns out he is just about 16), I decided to play him just to see how good he was . . . the short of the story is I will be sending 10 people a beautiful postcard from Nha Trang, Vietnam (if you'd like to be one of the 10, please send me your address!).
Carl being bested my a mini poolshark
Anyway, after a brief visit to Vietnam's favorite beach town, we are leaving Nha Trang tomorrow morning for a "very Bohemian experience" in the temperate mountain town of Dalat. I'm looking forward to some more beautiful vistas and potentially some mountain biking, climbing and golf, depending what my ankle allows.
I know I've been promising pictures for a while, but we have been struggling to find internet with decent speed that will allow for picture uploading . . . hope it is coming soon.
PS - I met a a 53kg female Rottweiler yesterday named Su Su. She is a large, gorgeous dog who is in way too hot of an environment for how large and black she is . . . still, despite losing a fist full of hair to my hand while petting her, she was happy to see me . . . I miss dogs.
written by  GoBlue on June 27, 2007 from Nha Trang, Vietnam

So long, Vietnam!
Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
Today marked the beginning of the end for me, as I'm now in the home stretch of my trip. Parting ways with Vivian, Carl, and Jocelyn was really quite sad - they are such a great travel "family," and we've had so much fun together! It was really a privilege to spend the majority of my vacation with Saucy, Dub Dub, and Vivouac, as well as with Dave, Maddy, Christi, Mike, Aaron, Ben, Kurt, Brendan, Allison, and Katie.
Luckily, our goodbyes were mixed with a good bit of humor. Just as my taxi pulled up in front of our Nha Trang hotel, the young boy who had tried multiple times to sell us postcards (or, if you are Carl, the chance to lose to him in a game of pool!) showed up as well. This kid was a real kick, and the sight of him standing next to my friends, mimicing their good-bye waves as my taxi pulled away, made me laugh like crazy.
For my last true stop in Vietnam, Nha Trang was a delight. The beach was lovely, we had a great time with Brendan and Allison, and we visited the mineral mud baths for an authentic spa treatment. We even went to a brewpub on the beach for a fancy dinner to celebrate my last night.
Who knew Louisiana-style microbrews are so big in Nha Trang?
Maybe it started with the idea that sat in mud for a half hour to cleanse my skin, but on my journey south to Saigon, I continued thinking about some things that have struck me over the past couple of days. Call them ironies, or contradictions, or just plain rambling ... but bear with me:
-- "Safe" is a relative term.
I was white-knuckled for at least 50% of my short Vietnam Airlines flight to Ho Chi Minh City. Due to some terrible weather, and despite being in a large Airbus jet and not the ATR-72 prop plane, I had one of the bumpiest descents of recent memory.
It's not night time...it's just a big rainstorm that makes landing extra exciting
I'm generally a pretty stoic flyer, but as the plane jolted around, I had to repeat my mantra of "it's nothing worse than a road filled with potholes" many times. Strange, though, that when I hopped in a taxi in torrential downpour to travel the chaotic streets of Saigon (where "traffic" should be called "lunacy"), I was completely unfazed! The reality is that I was in far more danger in a taxi without a seatbelt, but I guess I've become accostomed to honking motorbikes and near-misses.
-- Getting there is more than half the fun.
I think this applies best to our time in Hoi An. On the way into town, we watched the mountain-filled sky turn from blue, to amber, to blazing orange, before it faded into dusty pinks and dusky blues reflected in rice paddies and tributaries.
A gorgeous sunset on our trip from the Da Nang airport into Hoi An...
... and it just kept getting better!
Our driver was kind enough to let us hop out and take pictures. We had been so excited to arrive in Hoi An that it was a surprise to see such a great sight before we even crossed the town line. When it came time to leave town and head back to the airport, we left early to give ourselves time to hit Marble Mountain and China Beach. Marble Mountain is actually 5 separate mountains, all mined for their different colored marble. We climbed up one of the mountains to see its religious caves and pagodas, as well as panoramic views of the mountains, countryside, and ocean.
South China Sea seen from Marble Mountain
Then, we dipped our feet in the warm, sparking waters of China Beach and watched super-shy crabs digging their way into the sand.
Viv frolics in the China Beach surf
China Beach may be the prettiest beach I've seen in South East Asia, and it was certainly the most deserted and least built-up. It's funny how these memories will float to the top, even if they weren't in Hoi An proper.
Hoi An streetscape
Likewise, as Viv described so perfectly in her entry on our tailoring experience, we learned to relish the process more than the end product. While I'm really quite happy with my suit, two dresses, and four pairs of pants, in the long run, it's the memories of being like a kid in a candy store, selecting fabrics and styles with all my friends, that will last.
-- Girl, you'll be a woman soon.
What I'm getting at here is that being an MBA graduate-turned-backpackers is kind of a weird phenomenom. We don't quite fit into the 21-some crowd, which becomes clear when we can't stay up past midnight and party at the clubs/beach parties/karaoke bars to save our lives. (OK, I'm speaking for myself here.) Yet, we share the "trail" with the shoestring travelers, staying at budget hotels, booking economical tours, etc. Mostly, this works out just fine, but on occasion, it's a bit of a mismatch. Case in point: I was thrilled with our decision to upgrade to business class, for a mere $44, on our flight to Hoi An. It was great to arrive a day earlier, and it was even better to do it in such style.
OK, so we don't LOOK like we're business class travelers. Is it because we ate everything in sight in the airport lounge?
Later that night, we arrived at the Vinh Hung 1 Hotel -- which, according to our book, was an "atmospheric old Chinese trading house... an institution in budget hotels," but which in reality offered dark, musty rooms and the occasional cockroach. I found it hysterical, as I fell asleep in a sleepsack, cowering from bedbugs, that I had been flying high in business class earlier that same day.
It's time for me to sign off so I can get a good night sleep before my Saigon-Bangkok-Hong Kong journey tomorrow. Hopefully I'll get some good pictures of the Victoria Harbour skyline on my last night in Southeast Asia. Speaking of pictures, I've uploaded a bunch and added them to some to our entries below, including Halong Bay and Hoi An tailoring. Plus, Aaron has some good ones on his site, too: http://www.aaronshouse.shutterfly.com. Enjoy!
Follow that fish!!
written by  GoBlue on June 28, 2007 from Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

We built a house!
Kuching, Malaysia
So I think in retrospect I am going to reflect on this part of the trip as a blast (too). It's been really fun hanging with some new cool people.
Updates since the last blog:
On Saturday we went to the market. While in some ways a typical Asian market, this one was particularly fun because we had a local guide, Min (a man), who's great. It was mostly a food market, though it also had some other stuff (junk), and Min led us in a lot of sampling. My favorites included some fried falafal-like things that were Indian, peanut pancakes (crepe with butter and peanuts), and fresh pineapple. I also found another new fruit (langan?) that I am allergic to. Other than that we saw a ton of fresh vegetables, many of them new to me, as well as some jellyfish and interesting forms of meat. All told we spent over an hour there and I greatly enjoyed it.
While waiting to move on to dinner, I also got to hear from Min more about Habitat in general; highlights included learning that they are not exclusively Christian in the sense if the recipients are Muslim, as Eddie and Katie are, they receive a Koran (instead of a bible) with the keys to the house. Interesting, and in my opinion appropriate. Later that night we also went out as a group for the first time - tons of fun. It's interesting hanging out with people of such different ages - makes for a neat dynamic.
Sunday morning began with a 7:30am pilates session (Andrea, one of the BCG Stanford grads, is an instructor back home and several of us were interested in trying her class, so we rented out the hotel conference room for an hour). It was ridiculously hard - so much so that I really couldn't do much of it and didn't even really get a workout because I spent most of the time in a failure state. Nonetheless, it was fun, and it was a great prequel to the next event: the spa. I got a 1-hour massage and then some stim on the left side of my neck to try to adjust the chronic sleep-induced ache that has returned.
That afternoon we went to the rainforest wold music festival, which was awesome. I had low expectations going into it, and it turned out to be very cool. The afternoon started out with 2 workshops; I chose feuding fiddles and an introduction to Afghani music, which I thought I was going to hate and ended up really liking. They had a drummer that was unbelievable (and drums that were unbelieveable). One was sort of a tom tom with a little iron plate in the middle that allowed the player to make about 15 different sounds, and he had incredibly fast hands.
We took a 2-hour break to eat some good ethnic food, and then that night there was a big concert with 11 bands from all over the world - local to kick it off, then Afghanistan, Poland, UK, Vietnam, Tuva (which I deduced and have since confirmed is near Mongolia), Kuala Lumpur, Italy, South America and Madegascar. Each group played for between 15 and 60 minutes each, and it was really interesting. The Vietnamese group had some crazy instruments including clapping their hands in front of pipes (like you can do on your mouth). (The woman actually started out by playing a song on her mouth (something we all knew so we could see it was working)). They also had some ... weird ones - hard to describe, but cool. The polish band ("Shannon") is also worth looking up - almost Dave Matthews like, but different (same same but different!). The fiddler was great though - had seen him in the afternoon workshop too. We left the concert at about 12:30 and then bussed back for an hour.
Monday we got started late because we were up late the night before, but still made good progress, and today we finished up our work on the house! Eric, our foreman, said we did well - were ahead of schedule (and hopefully made a house that won't fall down). We finished all the brickwork except for a tricky spot in what will be the ceiling of the bathroom, and plastered several of the walls (turns out plastering is my favorite task). We're in the process of assembling pictures, so I will have some soon, but suffice it to say that we build a house! Pretty cool.
Tonight we have our local farewell dinner with the affiliate and then tomorrow we leave for the country to visit a long house hill tribe for 2 days. Then Friday we depart! It's gone quite quickly (I seem to say that about every location) but has been a great time (also say that about every location). Again as usual though, I am really looking forward to the next stage too!
written by  GoBlue on July 17, 2007 from Kuching, Malaysia

Over (the Pacific) and Out
Chicago, United States
My three-day, four-flight trip home is over, so this last "J-Mac's Junket" blog entry is bittersweet. But, spending my last 18 hours in Hong Kong was a great way to end a whirlwind trip.
one of the world's greatest skylines
My flight from Bangkok arrived in the late evening (putting me in the city at 9 pm), and although I missed the nightly Victoria Harbor light show (8 pm), I considered the skyline to be a pretty fantastic show in and of itself. My digs at the YMCA Salisbury Hotel couldn't be beat, either.
View from my room at the YMCA ... note the Peninsula next door and the HK Air and Space Museum across the street
Situated right next door to the famous Peninsula Hotel, the YMCA is a great option. They even gave me a free upgrade so that my room had a partial view of Victoria Harbor ... all for less than $100 a night, which is a steal given HK prices. Highly recommended!
Victoria Harbor
a Junk lit up by the Harbor skyline
On Friday, I ran around town to do a bit more sightseeing and shopping before heading to the airport. The Star Ferry across from Kowloon to Hong Kong was a brief but memorable ride. Once I started making my way through the pedestrian walkways connecting the MTR stations, malls, and office buildings, I immediately sensed a strong police presence. Only later did I realize I couldn't have been far from Chinese President Hu Jintao, who was in town making the rounds to participate in the celebration commemorating the 10-year anniversary of the return of Hong Kong to Chinese rule.
Getting Around in Hong Kong
near Hollywod Ave., Hong Kong
Parades, ceremonies, and a giant fireworks display were all on schedule for the long weekend, and so were protests staged by those fighting for universal suffrage. It was exciting to sense all the activity.
In true form, my United flight for home left two hours late. Once I was on the plane, I re-discovered how much fun (I think) it is to listen to the flight deck on channel 9. You can really hear some crazy things coming from your pilots. For example:
Hong Kong Ground control: "United 828, once you've completed pushback, taxi right... yada yada"
Captain: "Um, we have a little bit of a problem here. Apparently, one of the passengers is having some kind of a panic attack, so we may have to return to the gate to get him off the plane. One of the co-pilots is downstairs talking to him right now. Is there anyone behind us, or can we sit here for a few more minutes?"
(Apparently the situation resolved itself, since we didn't have to return to the gate, and there was never an announcement asking if there were any mental health professionals on board.)
13.5 hours later...
Janesville, WI air traffic control: "United 828, turn right 18 degrees and slow to 25* knots."
Captain: "Roger, right turn and slow to 25 knots. Gosh, that just about turns us into a hovercraft."
Janesville, WI air traffic control: "Well, it's because of sequencing getting into O'Hare -- there's a lot of traffic."
(*I don't really know how many knots they said, but apparently it wasn't a very fast speed for a 747.)
5 minutes later...
Captain: "Any chance we can pick up the speed here?"
Janesville ATC: "Nope. Sorry."
And there you have it. Having flown over Taiwan and Japan, crossed the international date line, eaten three bad airline meals, and completed my first ever sudoko puzzle, I landed at O'Hare around 9 pm. I'm signing off for now, until the next trip... and will be eagerly keeping up with Viv, Joc, and Carl as they continue their adventures! Thanks for reading, all.
Victoria Harbor and the Avenue of Stars
Back on American soil at ORD
written by  GoBlue on July 2, 2007 from Chicago, United States

The cool side of Vietnam
Apparently it has been a while since I’ve posted . . . I guess I was preoccupied with physical aliments for a bit, but I’m up and around again (sort of). Well, since Joc and Vivian did a great job of keeping everyone apprised of what we were up to, I don’t have to put a lot of info here, but I’ll just add a quick word for each of the places we visited.
First, Dalat. It was amazingly cool compared to the rest of the country. Where everywhere else we visited was in the 90s, Dalat was in the low 70s (or maybe even upper 60s). This was a welcomed change. The other cool thing about Dalat was the architecture. There were some cafes where we ate that if we looked out onto the street corner it would feel like a little French villa—overall, the landscape was beautiful. Although we weren’t able to climb, it was still worth the trip to this mountain town.
As far as my mountain bike injury, I’m not a young pup anymore. At least that is what my body keeps telling me. The cold I had turned out to be a 24 hour deal, which is better than I can say about my back . . . I stepped off my bike on a muddy downhill in order to avoid running into Joc and as soon as my foot hit the mud it slide while I was simultaneously trying to stop the momentum of my body from going down the hill. My back didn’t like this combination too much and it seized up immediately. The seizing really did some interesting things to my posture, including pulling my right hip forward and to the right of center of my central body line. For a few days if you looked at me, it looked like I had some serious scoliosis.
So, that was Dalat from my vantage point (although close, it wasn’t just the inside of a hotel room).
written by  GoBlue on July 1, 2007 from Da Lat, Vietnam

T minus one stop!!!
Darwin, Australia
Holy Cow! We're down to just one more stop before we head back to the US - crazy! Carl and I leave Darwin, Australia early tomorrow morning for Cairns and the Great Barrier Reef, our last stop before departing this part of the world. I haven't checked in since I left Malaysia, and that's just a testament to how great the trip's been! It was fantastic to be reunited with Carl in Thailand. We had a great week climbing and relaxing there (actually extended the trip by a few days). Next was Singapore, which was terrific even though we only were there for 20 hours - what a cool city!!! And then into Darwin, where we rented a "wicked van" (spray painted with numerous irreverent sayings and pictures, $77AUS a day and outfitted to camp out of and sleep in). It served us well, as we cruised through Kakadu and another local park (Litchfield). All beautiful, all great, all fun. Back in the US on the 10th and back with my laptop - will do more pictures and blogging then if not sooner! Hope everyone's well - getting excited to catch up soon!
written by  GoBlue on August 4, 2007 from Darwin, Australia

Scuba diving IS fun!
Cairns, Australia
Carl and I spent the day on the Great Barrier Reef doing some introductory scuba dives - GREAT fun! Much better than I expected, actually. We took a shuttle early this morning about an hour north to Port Douglas, and then caught a sizable boat out to the "outer reef", which is supposed to be one of the better (untouched) regions. Neither he nor I had ever done this before, so we went for the heavily shepherded "introductory dives", in which we went down with 1-2 other newbies and 1 instructor, never more than 12m deep. The instructor helped us with our boyancy and monitored our air levels, so we just had to deal with mobility, steady breathing, ear clearing and if necessary mask clearing. Quite manageable, and very cool. I had some very close encounters with a Malabar (?) cod - about 3-4 feet long and fairly big. He came within a foot of my face and stared at me, I think looking for food, because when I held up empty hands, he swooshed off. We also saw some very colorful coral, a pineapple sea cucumber (huge! and aptly named), the Nemo clownfish, and many other amazingly bright creatures that I didn't catch the name of. It was a pretty fantastic day though - a bit windy and therefore cold above deck, but otherwise ok, and the diving was really fantastic! We took an underwater camera down - hopefully some pictures will turn out.
We're still plotting what to do with our last two days Down Under - hopefully some climbing. And then it's off to home soil!
written by  GoBlue on August 6, 2007 from Cairns, Australia

Cambodian Delight
Angkor Wat was absolutely amazing. I’m not sure I can say much more than what others have already typed here. I can definitely echo the sentiments that it was way better than expected, and I wish I could have spent a bit more time. After my limited Cambodian experience, I was especially interested in traveling throughout Cambodia. In fact, I almost skipped some of my time in Southern Thailand to travel more in Cambodia, but at the end of the day, I didn’t want to be on the move so much with my back as irritated as it has been . . . I guess it is for another trip. I hope to get some more pictures of the temples here because they were great!
PS – I’m not sure that Joc or Viv mentioned the interesting conversations we had with our Angkor Wat tour guide about the Khmer Rouge brutality experienced in her country in the late 70s. Suffice it to say, I am incredibly fortunate to have been born in the USA where I was never limited to one handful of rice each day, forced to marry a particular woman for breeding purposes or found my grandfather shot because he was trying to feed his family by fishing in a plentiful lake. The Khmer Rouge was an incredibly merciless regime that killed hundreds of thousands of people in the name of socialism and creating an enlightened society. Absolutely amazing what some people have had to live through. We are a blessed bunch.
written by  GoBlue on July 4, 2007 from Siemreab, Cambodia

Post-HFH...Carl, here I come!
I confess this is the first of what will be several retrospective blogs. I am in Hawaii right now, with some time to do catch-up work for the final few weeks of the trip, which flew by at a crazy rate!
The long house experience was also pretty cool, though the transportation required to get us there was not so cool. "It's all about expectations!" We heard that many times in school in our MO classes, and I firmly believe it anyway. We thought the transportation was going to be a 4-5-hour bus ride; instead it was a 3 hour bus ride that was made into a 6 hour bus ride because we had a guide who decided/was instructed to stop a number of times on the way to see (what in my and most of the group's opinion were) trivial/annoying tourist sites. Then despite voicing an interest in getting to the Hilton resort more quickly, we continued with the stops and then missed the 3pm boat and had to wait for the 4pm boat to get across the lake to the resort. Mutiny. I had a brief go at some mediation between cranky co-workers and the leaders, with mild success; everyone was also better after a swim and an excellent buffet dinner.
The long house itself was pretty interesting. To some extent it replicated some of the other hill tribe tours we've done (akin to a human zoo). However, this group had a chief who seemed like the real deal. When long house tribe chiefs first become chief, they tour around to the various villages under their purview and at each point hear a different part of lore from the village elders and with that exchange receive a tattoo. By the end of the tour their entire upper body is covered, as was the current 73-year-old chief's. He seemed like a pretty extraordinary guy, though my attempts at communicating with him through our guide (who was still annoyed with us from our "pushiness" the previous day) were rebuffed. (Every time I would ask the guide to ask the chief something, the guide would answer for him, regardless of how much I clarified that I understood the precedent but was interested in hearing this chief's exact words (and watching his reactions, etc.)). I was mostly interested in hearing how he has seen his leadership responsibilities change over the course of the decades as his tribe went from head hunting (yup, like some of the Indonesian tribes, these practiced raids of their neighbors and staked the skulls of their enemies at the village entrance) to tour hosting (every day welcoming another group of farangs (foreigners, usually white people). He seemed genuinely pleased to have us there and excited to show us their ways. Most of the women seemed very angry all the time, though the guide insisted that they were happy, despite their dark faces.
The Hilton was also a nice break. We swam, lounged, played pool, played mafia and generally relaxed. I also discovered a minor travel crisis in which my flights from Kuching to KL and then to Bangkok were booked with 5 minutes of layover time. Oops. So I asked Kris and Seth whether I could jump on with the Canadians for the early shuttle to the airport. Instead, the whole group rallied to leave the resort early - I think it fit others' schedules, but no doubt it was also to make my life easier, and I greatly appreciated that. In the end, I was able to go on an earlier flight (purchased an entirely new ticket; nice, Air Asia), made my connection to Bangkok, and one hour after landing was checked into the ridiculously nice Novotel, where I spent only 10 hours (don't figure out the hourly rate), but got very clean and had an excellent night sleep.
Then, on to Krabi and my long lost boyfriend!
written by  GoBlue on July 21, 2007 from Bangkok, Thailand

Fingers Shredded, Satiated with Sunsets, We Hit the Road
Krabi, Thailand
Another retrospective blog…
Carl and I had a great time in Thailand – so much so that we increased our stay there by three days. He had been there for several weeks already so had the climbing scene all spec’d out for us. He met me at that airport (in a heroic journey that actually took more time than it took for me to get from my hotel in Bangkok to Krabi), and then we took the taxi/boat combination that he had arranged to get us back to Rai Lay beach. (No slippery treks through the downpour for me!). We spent the first afternoon climbing on a wall right behind the hotel we were staying at and then over the course of the next week and a half hit 4-5 other areas around the island, and it was great. The rock was solid, the climbs led to extraordinary beach overlooks, and if you were smart about the shade (and Carl had scouted this as well) it was possible to do all this without overheating. The areas usually didn’t have a lot of what I would call “easy” climbs, so my warm-up usually felt someone abbreviated, but it all worked out – no further injuries, and some great climbing.
The daily rhythm outside of climbing was quite chill. I picked up a copy of Harry Potter 7 in Bangkok, and Carl had first dibs on that because I was still finishing my review of the previous books. So we spent a lot of time reading, ate all our meal’s at Mom’s Kitchen (which was cheap, tasty and reliably safe), and wandered around the island a bit.
The one other adventure we had was renting a kayak and paddling to one of the neighboring islands. The goal was to find a hawker-free, quiet beach, and we thoroughly succeeded, finding a deserted stretch of good sand with a great view of other islands (and the storms that were circling but never really got us). I read, Carl napped, and then we enjoyed a gorgeous sunset from the water on our paddle back – good fun!
Having been wanting to climb with Carl in Thailand ever since I went there in 2000, these were a great 2 weeks. The world was calling, however, so we moved on to other adventures.
Thanks to the fare incentives of Singapore-based Tiger Airways, we had a 20-hour layover in Singapore on our way from Krabi to Darwin, in Australia. We thought we’d check the city out, and were quite glad we did, because it was very cool! Singapore is clean and modern, with a fantastic mix of ethnicities (felt like an Asia melting pot). We spent our one day there doing a walking tour of the city, hitting the Arab, Indian and Chinese quarters, with miscellaneous city architecture in between. (The only downside to the visit was that we came through on a Sunday and much of the city was shut down).
My favorite area by far was the Arab quarter, which was bustling without being overcrowded and had a neat mix of textile stores, restaurants, coffee shops, etc., all frequented by locals. Even though we were only 2 hours away from breakfast, we tried some Muslim food (advertised as the best in the city), and indeed found it quite tasty. Little India was not quite as quaint, and I was traumatized by a lunch experience in which I think we were “taken” by our waiter and were served about 4 times as much food as we needed for about 4 times the price; couldn’t even make a dent and then had to go to the ATM to cover the bill. Nonetheless, the rest of the walk was enjoyable and interesting and by the end of the day I was back to raving about Singapore.
written by  GoBlue on July 26, 2007 from Krabi, Thailand

Enough with the Nam and the Viet
Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
Finishing up Vietnam. It has been an amazing and educational 3 weeks. Joc and I ran into a chap from Australia the other day who followed a similar path to ours through Vietnam. We asked him what he thought about it and his answer was incredibly accurate and simple: There are a lot of things to like about Vietnam and a lot of things to not like. With that in mind, I thought I’d make a short list regarding my top likes and dislikes:
Likes
1. Scenery was absolutely amazing.
2. Interesting people/culture that have suffered through many years of hardships but are progressing nonetheless.
3. Ability to travel freely and affordably
Dislikes
1. Constantly circling, aggressive merchants
2. Hanoi (specifically the pushiness of people)
3. Excessive honking
This is a very short list, off the top-of-my-head. I’m sure in hindsight there will be many more things that can go in both of these columns.
One quick note on Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City): it was great. WAY better than Hanoi, and if I had the experience, I would have done the Vietnam traveling in reverse, starting in Saigon and ending in the north (This is one of the interesting things about Vietnam. You will inevitably do a lot of things wrong that will cost you time or money or both before “learning your lesson”. However, the chances are you will not encounter quite the same thing again so the lesson is a bit lost. Alas.) Anyway, Saigon is a bustling big city on the verge of becoming a true cosmopolitan city but it is missing the deceitfulness and constant noise (at least to the same degree as Hanoi). So, overall, I enjoyed it immensely more than Hanoi. It was a great way to leave the country, helping my entire Vietnam experience to sit incredibly well.
written by  GoBlue on July 7, 2007 from Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

You can do it, put your back in to it.
Krabi, Thailand
Ok, so I’m all alone now. So sad, kindof. Although I miss my travel companions (and especially Joc), the upside is I’m completely on my own schedule and free to make as many bad decisions as I’d like with no one else to blame. Wait, that’s not necessarily an upside . . . Anyway.
With two weeks completely to myself, I’ve been struggling with the decision of what to do. Visit Laos? More of Cambodia? Back to Northern Thailand? Viv’s family in Hong Kong? A bit of Malaysia? In the end, I decided to come to Southern Thailand for a few weeks of both rest and recreation. I’m now in Railey Beach, one of the top climbing meccas in the world. It is comprised of amazing overhung limestone jetting out of beautiful beach and surrounded by lush jungle. I chose to come here, to only one place, in large part to hopefully heal my back and then climb a bit while I wait for Joc to finish with her good karma acts in Malaysia (I’m hoping she is working hard enough to provide good karma for the both of us because I am being satisfyingly selfish and lazy).
Although this place is gorgeous, I had one of the worst days of the trip so far getting here . . . good story. I read in the guide book that the only way to get to these beaches is by long tail boat from the port city of Ao Nang. So, when I arrived in Krabi by plane I took a taxi to Ao Nang and stayed there for the night because a storm was coming in and the long boats were done for the night. The next morning I awoke to an amazing monsoon-type storm at 6am that must have had sustained 40mph winds (it was crazy for about 1 hour). By the time I loaded onto the boat the seas were pretty rough (and as a side note, the rain cover for one of my packs ripped while getting to the boat). About 3 minutes into the 20-minute boat ride a wave came up and over the front of the boat, completely soaking me and both my bags.
The boat then dropped me off at Railey Beach and refused to take me to the neighboring Ton Sai beach even though that was what I paid for. Then as it started raining (which really didn’t matter given my status) I headed to the nearest climbing shop to get the low down on the area. I ran into a kid who was staying at Ton Sai and told me that I didn’t have to wait till low tide to walk to Ton Sai, I could instead walk over a rough, bushwacking trail to get there earlier. I decided I would like to get to my bungalow to get all my stuff out of my bag and start drying as soon as possible, so I started walking. I got on a trail that was definitely not easy and could be described as “bushwacking” so I continued. I realized later that I was WAY, WAY off course! 1 hour later and a frighteningly close call with slipping on a cliff and almost tumbling into the sea (my hand and wrist are now all cut up from my “heroic” save of myself and bags), I found the real trail and ended up in Ton Sai. Only after hauling my 70lb bags for 1.5 hours did I find out that it is low season so they only have electricity in Ton Sai for a few hours a day. Despite what the website showed, I would not be getting an A/C bungalow with warm water . . . I thought this would make for a difficult time drying all my wet belongings. Turns out I was correct.
After two nights of effectively camping out in Ton Sai I put my heavy bags back on and trudged another 45 minutes back to Railey to a bit better bungalow with electricity all day. Now I am chilling for a few days, sleeping, reading and exploring the cliff faces. I climbed two days ago and my back wasn’t too happy about it, so I’m hoping that a few days off will set me up. In the meantime, I’m finding the best crags to visit and recovering a bit. Provided the sporadic, heavy rains cooperate, I think I’m in for a great time here over the next few weeks.
PS - I tried to upload some pictures today, but was thwarted again . . . I might have to wait till Australia to find a good connection, but I'm hoping not.
written by  GoBlue on July 11, 2007 from Krabi, Thailand

Aloha
Hilo, United States
And lastly, Hawaii. What a brilliant last stop! It’s been incredible to do some of our re-immersing in real life from the comfort and luxury of this house. On the up side, we’ve been able to get mostly caught up over the course of a week; on the downside, we’ve only been to the beach and driving range once in 7 days (no full golf rounds), and for our last day (tomorrow) a level 2 hurricane (Flossie) is supposed to hit. Oh well. It was still nice to stave off some of the panic that inevitably awaits after 3 months away from “the real world.”
What a trip it’s been though! Carl’s working on some superlatives, and so far I entirely agree with them. I’ve enjoyed seeing so many beautiful places, and specifically have enjoyed thinking about how different nature’s beauty is in different parts of the world. I’ve also come to appreciate more the value of short-term relationships; many of the people we’ve met I probably won’t see again, but I have really enjoyed our time together all the same.
So what’s next? To Boston for Angie Peluse’s wedding, then to Minneapolis for some time with Carl’s family, and then he drives west to start work! And I head south to begin establishing myself into Chicago. In some ways I can’t believe it’s time for that already; in others, school seems like it was an eon ago and so much has happened in between. I’ve enjoyed this time in part because I know there are good things to come after it, and I am starting to get excited for those next steps, as different as they will be. Onward!
written by  GoBlue on August 14, 2007 from Hilo, United States

Kakadu & Litchfield Parks - Awesome!
Darwin, Australia
Another retrospective...
We arrived in Darwin, Australia intent on visiting world-famous Kakadu National Park and perhaps other surrounding parks. We hit an immediate hiccup in that it was a school holiday at the time and many Australians were on the road making a similar circuit as we were. As a result, our “play it by ear” plan ran into some availability issues that put us in Darwin itself for an extra day while we waited for a camper van to become available through Wicked Campers. Two days after arriving, however, we were packed into a –crazily-painted converted van packed with groceries and were on our way to the park.
We made good time (4 hours) and arrived just in time to check out some of the Aboriginal (“Traditional Owners”) rock paintings for sunset. True to in-town warnings, there were many people there, but the park was big enough for our experience not to be hampered by the presence of so many others. The artwork was very cool (ranging from 20-years old to thousands of years old), and the vistas were spectacular.
The next day began with a 9am cruise of the yellow river. Although it was pretty pricey ($55/person), it was very cool. Over the course of 2 hours we saw numerous crocs (from a safe distance and the security of a boat), and a lot of neat birds. It was also cool to cruise the floodplains, which are an interesting geological feature in and of themselves.
We spent the rest of the day touring a few of the other sites of the park, including another Aboriginal painting site, a lookout or two, and a long washboarded dirt road out to our camp area. We arrived there just as the sun was setting and booked it up a short hike to some croc-safe pools at the top of a mountain – gorgeous view, and for the small price of hiking back down nearly in the dark, we got a pretty secluded experience.
On the whole I would say Kakadu was very good, though I am infinitely glad we did it on our own power and not with a tour; otherwise, I think it would really have felt like a ton of driving for some good (but not really spectacular) photo points amongst many other tour groups.
Our next stop was Litchfield Park, another park in the area that’s less known world-wide but was supposed to be beautiful. We planned a climbing stop along the way and successfully made an afternoon at Robin Falls, a small turnoff with some beautiful falls and decent slab climbing (and only 1 or 2 other groups there, none of whom were on the wall). It was fun to do a different kind of climbing and a nice way to break up the drive from Kakadu to Litchfield.
The next day we entered Litchfield, which is most known for its many swimming holes. (Litchfield is more or less croc-safe because its water access is not from the ocean). We drove to several beautiful areas, but more or less made a bee line for our target camping area so we could have some down time in the afternoon.
We had planned to camp for the night at a less crowded pool accessible only by four wheel drive (which our little van supposedly had), but hesitated because it turned out the road involved a river crossing that looked fairly formidable, and our van had no snorkel. After carefully measuring our clearance against the .6 meters that the depth stick was registering, we decided to wait to see if others came by, and within minutes a new Nissan arrived and barreled right through it, then hollered from the other side that he would wait to make sure we made it. Note that there was another croc warning sign, which again seemed “unlikely”, but it was interesting to think about what exactly a contingency plan would entail if we got stuck. Carl put the car in gear and powered right through it though! It was very exciting.
The successful crossing led us then to a camping area with only one spot left (we grabbed it, and then shared with another car that came in a little later – we’re such nice people). We packed up our reading materials and hiked out to the local swimming hole, but found it plagued with flies and much colder than others we’d passed, so after a quick dip and courageous (because it was cold; this one was asserted croc free) swim to the falls, we headed back to camp for some bug repellent and dinner.
The drive out the next morning was also exciting because we couldn’t really get the car into 4WD (or we couldn’t be sure that it had worked) and we no longer had an escort for the crossing. We made it, though once on the other side the car wouldn’t go into 2-wheel drive for a while, making horrible grinding noises whenever we changed gears. Thankfully, it worked itself out though, and we proceeded on to our last Litchfield stop: “Lost City.” This place is basically a big boulder field, and we found a nice traverse that kept us busy for a few hours and left us worked and ready to just drive again at the end. We refreshed ourselves at yet another swimming hole on the way out (this one was sort of a terraced stream), and then headed for Darwin again.
Our last night there was rough in we had to return the van in the morning, but our flight was at 6am. So we slept in the parking lot, which I found nerve-wracking because it wasn’t in a great area of town. It worked though: no incidents, and our taxi showed up on schedule at 4:15 to pick us up. Next stop: the Great Barrier Reef!
written by  GoBlue on August 4, 2007 from Darwin, Australia

You can do it, put your back in to it.
Krabi, Thailand
Ok, so I’m all alone now. So sad, kindof. Although I miss my travel companions (and especially Joc), the upside is I’m completely on my own schedule and free to make as many bad decisions as I’d like with no one else to blame. Wait, that’s not necessarily an upside . . . Anyway.
With two weeks completely to myself, I’ve been struggling with the decision of what to do. Visit Laos? More of Cambodia? Back to Northern Thailand? Viv’s family in Hong Kong? A bit of Malaysia? In the end, I decided to come to Southern Thailand for a few weeks of both rest and recreation. I’m now in Railey Beach, one of the top climbing meccas in the world. It is comprised of amazing overhung limestone jetting out of beautiful beach and surrounded by lush jungle. I chose to come here, to only one place, in large part to hopefully heal my back and then climb a bit while I wait for Joc to finish with her good karma acts in Malaysia (I’m hoping she is working hard enough to provide good karma for the both of us because I am being satisfyingly selfish and lazy).
Although this place is gorgeous, I had one of the worst days of the trip so far getting here . . . good story. I read in the guide book that the only way to get to these beaches is by long tail boat from the port city of Ao Nang. So, when I arrived in Krabi by plane I took a taxi to Ao Nang and stayed there for the night because a storm was coming in and the long boats were done for the night. The next morning I awoke to an amazing monsoon-type storm at 6am that must have had sustained 40mph winds (it was crazy for about 1 hour). By the time I loaded onto the boat the seas were pretty rough (and as a side note, the rain cover for one of my packs ripped while getting to the boat). About 3 minutes into the 20-minute boat ride a wave came up and over the front of the boat, completely soaking me and both my bags.
The boat then dropped me off at Railey Beach and refused to take me to the neighboring Ton Sai beach even though that was what I paid for. Then as it started raining (which really didn’t matter given my status) I headed to the nearest climbing shop to get the low down on the area. I ran into a kid who was staying at Ton Sai and told me that I didn’t have to wait till low tide to walk to Ton Sai, I could instead walk over a rough, bushwacking trail to get there earlier. I decided I would like to get to my bungalow to get all my stuff out of my bag and start drying as soon as possible, so I started walking. I got on a trail that was definitely not easy and could be described as “bushwacking” so I continued. I realized later that I was WAY, WAY off course! 1 hour later and a frighteningly close call with slipping on a cliff and almost tumbling into the sea (my hand and wrist are now all cut up from my “heroic” save of myself and bags), I found the real trail and ended up in Ton Sai. Only after hauling my 70lb bags for 1.5 hours did I find out that it is low season so they only have electricity in Ton Sai for a few hours a day. Despite what the website showed, I would not be getting an A/C bungalow with warm water . . . I thought this would make for a difficult time drying all my wet belongings. Turns out I was correct.
After two nights of effectively camping out in Ton Sai I put my heavy bags back on and trudged another 45 minutes back to Railey to a bit better bungalow with electricity all day. Now I am chilling for a few days, sleeping, reading and exploring the cliff faces. I climbed two days ago and my back wasn’t too happy about it, so I’m hoping that a few days off will set me up. In the meantime, I’m finding the best crags to visit and recovering a bit. Provided the sporadic, heavy rains cooperate, I think I’m in for a great time here over the next few weeks.
PS - I tried to upload some pictures today, but was thwarted again . . . I might have to wait till Australia to find a good connection, but I'm hoping not.
Large Lizard near Escher Wall in Railay
View from top of Gengis Bond (6b) on The Keep Wall
written by  GoBlue on July 11, 2007 from Krabi, Thailand

Green Season
Hello everyone. I haven't written much the last two weeks because I didn't think my updates about another day on the beach or yet another day of climbing would be all that fantastic of a read . . .
So, instead I've waited ten days to write that I've spent all my time hanging out on the beach, climbing, reading and in general relaxing. As usual, I wish I had some pictures to post to show you how beautiful it is here, but I always seem to have a hard time getting my pictures online. However, Jocelyn is finishing her time in Malaysia today and will be joining me in Railay Beach tomorrow and I will be able to upload some pictures then (using her equipment).
For those interested in stunning scenery, the beaches here have amazing white sand, clear blueish-green waters and vistas that include limestone cliff islands that jut out of the clear blue water. It is incredible. Also, even though it is supposed to be "green season" (a.k.a rainy season), the weather has been phenomenal--no rain for 4 days in a row now, which leads to stunning orange/red/pink/purple sunsets from the beach.
For those interested in climbing, Railay has over 700 sport climbing routes on beautiful limestone cliffs, all within a 15-minute walk from where I am staying. It truly is an amazing climbing destination. Again, the lack of rain has made the climbing enjoyable.
The wildlife here is also quite impressive. The other day, after I finished a climb, I was untying my knot while talking to the guy who belayed me. At the same time a twig fell off a nearby tree and landed on my climbing knot. I wasn't paying much attention, but when I looked down I realized that said twig was in fact a 12" brown snake with a greenish head that was draped over my knot! I quickly grabbed him near the tail and flung him away. No harm, no foul. However, I found out later that there are a number of dangerous snakes here, including king cobras, pythons and vipers! I haven't seen any of those yet . . . but I have also seen very brave monkeys and a few freaky looking large spiders with green bodies (many of you know my love for spiders).
As usual in Thailand, the locals are very friendly. I was speaking with a woman the other day about the Tsunami in 2004 and found that she believed that Railay wasn’t as badly hit as Ko Phi Phi or Phuket because there is far less prostitution here than in those places. I thought about asking if she was a fan of Jerry Falwell or Pat Robertson (who announced similar views about why America was hit by terrorists on 9/11), but then I thought it was better to smile and look surprised rather than judge her outright for such misguided thinking.
Anyway, there is also a lot of “herb” here, as the locals call it, due to the westerner, tourist influence, which is highly unfortunate because the locals don’t actually need anything to lower their already low ambitions. Then again, this is a Western way of thinking . . . According to Buddhism, not being overly ambitious leads to a happier, more peaceful life. So who am I to judge lifestyles that have been thousands of years in the making? Still, smoking or selling too much pot can’t be great for the locals in the long-run. In fact, just last week two local, well-liked businessmen were separately arrested for bringing over 30 kilos of weed into Railay. It is too bad that the locals are paying the price for Westerners who want easy-to-get and cheap-to-buy “relaxation” while on holiday . . .
So, thus is my time in Railay to date. I could write more, as usual, but perhaps for another time.

20-Hour Layover: Singapore!
Singapore, Singapore
Thanks to the fare incentives of Singapore-based Tiger Airways, we had a 20-hour layover in Singapore on our way from Krabi to Darwin, in Australia. We thought we’d check the city out, and were quite glad we did, because it was very cool! Singapore is clean and modern, with a fantastic mix of ethnicities (felt like an Asia melting pot). We spent our one day there doing a walking tour of the city, hitting the Arab, Indian and Chinese quarters, with miscellaneous city architecture in between. (The only downside to the visit was that we came through on a Sunday and much of the city was shut down).
My favorite area by far was the Arab quarter, which was bustling without being overcrowded and had a neat mix of textile stores, restaurants, coffee shops, etc., all frequented by locals. Even though we were only 2 hours away from breakfast, we tried some Muslim food (advertised as the best in the city), and indeed found it quite tasty. Little India was not quite as quaint, and I was traumatized by a lunch experience in which I think we were “taken” by our waiter and were served about 4 times as much food as we needed for about 4 times the price; couldn’t even make a dent and then had to go to the ATM to cover the bill. Nonetheless, the rest of the walk was enjoyable and interesting and by the end of the day I was back to raving about Singapore.
written by  GoBlue on July 27, 2007 from Singapore, Singapore

Railay--Quite Amazing
Jocelyn finally finished her self-indulgent trip to Malaysia and joined me in Railay Beach on July 21 for six days of climbing and beach relaxation. It was a great time. In fact, so great we decided to shift all of our plane tickets back two days to spend extra time in Thailand and less time in Cairns at the end of the trip.
So, our planned five days of "hard" climbing turned into six days of "hard" climbing. We actually did climb pretty hard considering neither of us have been climbing much over the last 5 years. We visited 7 walls in six days, climbing approximately 26 5.10s and 5.11s. It was a great time. I don't feel as strong as I once did, but I am inspired to start climbing more again.
Given that climbing was our focus, we also managed to do a few other activities during our off-days, including beach reading (yeah, we both devoured the newly released Harry Potter 7 while in Railay--bought it at the Bangkok airport), kayaking to an island that was probably 1 mile away from our beach (it was a beautiful day with brilliant green water and amazing clouds in the sky), soaking in amazing sunsets (by far the best of the trip) and eating (we ate almost every meal at Mom's Kitchen, a cheap place with great food and an entertaining 50-something, free-spirited Thai women to talk to).
For sure, Railay is a great place to climb/hang out and a great place worth spending 3 weeks.
Sunset in Railay Beach
View from Tyrolean Wall in Railay
Joc climbing A Man Can Tell 100 Lies (6a), Wee's Present Wall
Carl climbing The Sit Spins (6b+) , Dum's Kitchen Wall
View from top of Wee's Present Wall
Amazing sunset in Railay

Singarich
Singapore, Singapore
So, we've been traveling frequently on “discount” airlines. Either there is no such thing as a discount airline or the old adage of getting what you pay for is without a doubt true. I think the truth may be somewhere in between. Joc and I chose to fly Tiger Airways from Krabi, Thailand to Darwin, Australia because it was less than $100 (without taxes and surcharges, of course) to do so. However, this approach required a 24-hour layover in Singapore. No worries. We’ve never been there, so we thought it would be cool to check out a new city for a day.
It really is an amazing city. It is so rich with culture, commerce and history that it was well worth the visit. In our 19 hours in the city, we managed to see a large chunk of it, including the Arab quarters, Little India, Chinatown, the Central Business District (CBD) and the Government district. By the end of our day I was beyond tired from walking, but I am really happy to have seen the colorful neighborhoods, tried some various ethnic foods and somewhat experienced a truly world-class city.
I can clearly see why every Singaporean I’ve ever met is proud of their city state. It is an incredibly clean city with amazing public transportation. It has food from everywhere, business from everywhere and cultures from everywhere. Overall, an impressive place that I highly recommend checking out.
As far as Tiger Airways, they were pretty good as far as discount airlines go. They only charged us for excess baggage upon leaving Singapore, so we got away without paying extra on one-leg. The planes also had enough space and the personnel were friendly.
Hindu temple in Singapore
written by  GoBlue on July 29, 2007 from Singapore, Singapore

Litchfield and Kakadoodle-do
Darwin, Australia
Returning to Australia was both amazing and shocking. We walked out of the airport to a perfect tropical temperature, no sweltering heat but a great breeze and pleasing aroma. Plus, not one person was in our face trying to sell us a ride or lodging or anything else for that matter. The ease with which we navigated indicated that we had arrived back into a more established, richer culture. The shock came when we were confronted with how much one has to pay for this type of culture. Australia is expensive!
The Economist’s Big Mac Index recently showed that Australia’s currency is about right on the mark—which is entirely impossible. I tend to agree more with a recent McKinsey report stating that the Australian dollar is about 20% overvalued. Even still, I’m not sure this goes far enough . . . The Carl Index (in which the world will soon be placing its trust) indicates that the Australia dollar may be overvalued by as much as 70% compared with the US dollar! As an example, we paid $130 for our first full night of lodging at a place that would go for maybe $60 in the US (in an expensive, more-demand-than-supply type US city). The amount of money we spent on this one room equated to what we spent for a similar style room in Railay Beach for 8 days! (I know this isn’t exactly an equal comparison, but shocking nonetheless). Long story short, I spent as much during our last week in Australia as I did traveling for a month in SE Asia. Australia is expensive!
Ok, with that out of my system, I can now explain how cool the Darwin area is. Darwin itself is an inviting little town that serves well its position as a jump-off point to local National Parks, Kakadu and Litchfield. We spent 2.5 days in Kakadu and 1.5 in Litchfield—both great places. We were warned that Kakadu is a huge park that requires long drives between notable sites and that in August it would be extremely busy because of local holidays. We found the first warning to be right on, but not so much the second. Because of the long drives, we opted to rent a campervan from Wicked Campers, drive at our own pace and stay where we like in lieu of paying for a tour from Darwin. In the end, we were extremely happy with our decision. We saw all the major attractions at Kakadu, including aboriginal paintings, amazing vistas, crocodiles, lots of cool birds, amazing forests and waterfalls with beautiful pools. Theses attractions were a fair bit away from each other and each beckoned for different amounts of time, so it was pleasant to have our own transportation and go at our own pace. Although I expected a Yosemite level of “busy”, including thousands of visitors at each site, we only found a few dozen each place we visited—not bad at all.
From Kakadu, we headed to Litchfield National Park. Along the way we stopped at Robin Falls and climbed for an afternoon. We jumped on half-a-dozen slab-like lead climbs on shoddy rock and had a blast! From there we drove into Litchfield where we found a lot more of the same that we found at Kakadu, except I think the waterfalls and pools were more magnificent (for starters you could swim in them without fear of crocs) and the attractions were much, much, much closer to one another, also convenient. Also, there is a part of the park called the Lost City that contains hundreds of sandstone boulders that makes for great bouldering (it was a lot of fun watching Joc send The Dusty Mutt Traverse, a V1 boulder problem we created).
Darwin and the local parks is a must-see for anyone going to Australia—great, unique scenery and culture.
Ugly brute
Florence Falls--from base
Joc on The Dusty Mutt Traverse, V1
written by  GoBlue on August 4, 2007 from Darwin, Australia

Visible from Space?
Cairns, Australia
One of the lines they like to tell you when visiting the Great Barrier Reef is that it is the only living organism that can be seen from space. Actually, you hear this often about a lot of things. Turns out it isn’t quite true—lots of things can be seen from space
But anyway, the Reef was amazing in so many ways. The fish life, coral life, colors, etc. It was also a lot of fun to do an introductory dive in the Great Barrier Reef. The day was even more enjoyable because we successfully were able to dive with no accidents and neither of us became sea sick! Woo hoo! I think we would have liked to do it again, but the weather turned nasty with high winds and it would not have been nearly as enjoyable.
Instead, we spent our last few days indulging in other outside activities and enjoying the great weather. We golfed at the Cairns Country Club and climbed/bouldered on some really interesting, sharp volcanic-like rock on Trinity Beach near Cairns. We contemplated driving 250km south to Townsville for a few days of climbing, but opted out of it. In doing research for this though, it looks like there are literally thousands of climbing route options in Queensland that haven’t been fully explored or developed yet. Any climbers out there looking to put your mark on Australian climbing? Queensland may be your place . . .
So, an enjoyable, low-pace last few days in Cairns wrapped up our time not only in Australia, but also abroad. I think almost three months traveling was just what the doctor ordered to recover from school, as I am feeling ready to dig into some work! Crazy, but true.
Joc on Rip It Up, V1+
Bouldering in Trinity Beach
Outer Reef--Turtle Reef
written by  GoBlue on August 9, 2007 from Cairns, Australia

Ah Flossie, you break my heart
Hilo, United States
Our last week of true vacation . . . I start work two weeks ago yesterday, we have a wedding this weekend, family visit next week and travel to Seattle after that. This is it, but what better place to spend the last week of true vacation than in Hawaii?
As usual, it has been fantastic here. First of all, a truly comfortable bed to sleep in for the first time in months! And I’ve been taking definite advantage of that by sleeping many hours every night. Other than sleep, we have been doing the normal Hawaii things: a little golf, beach time, pool, croquet, grilling, reading, etc. It has been quite nice. I have also been attempting to catch up on computer-related activities while beginning some of the logistics of moving to a new city. What better place to do it?
The only thing not going as planned is Hurricane Flossie. She started rearing her ugly head yesterday as winds picked up dramatically. They continue today and should bring some rain with them before too long as the Hurricane passes close by the island this afternoon. We are hoping she passes today as planned so that tomorrow and Thursday morning we can enjoy a bit more beach time before boarding our plane back to the continental states.
In the meantime, I’ve been reflecting how incredible the last 3 months have been. I was fortunate enough to visit 7 countries while hanging out with great friends—and all safely. As part of this reflection, I’ve been contemplating some superlatives related to my memories of the trip. Here goes my list so far:
• Favorite city visited: Sydney, Australia
• Best wildlife encounter: Kangaroos in Grampians National Park, Australia
• Best Lodging: Cabin in Grampians National Park
• Most beautiful temple: Borobudur, Indonesia
• Best surfing: Bali, Indonesia
• Hottest city: Bangkok, Thailand
• Best Food: Thai food in Chiang Mai, Thailand, courtesy of none other than world-class Thai chef Sompon Nabnian
• Loudest city: Hanoi, Vietnam
• Best night of drinking: Rice Wine with village family near SaPa, Vietnam
• Most stunning scenery: Halong Bay, Vietnam
• Most painful experience: Mountain biking in Dalat, Vietnam
• Most interesting history: Hearing about Khmer Rouge from Cambodian local
• Most beautiful sunset: Railay Beach
• Best climbing: Railay, Thailand
• Cleanest city: Singapore, Singapore
• Best weather: Darwin, Australia
These are the first to come to mind. Perhaps I will update this blog in the future as I continue to reflect on what an awesome trip it was.
Incredible Hawaii Sunset
Flossie is coming
written by  GoBlue on August 14, 2007 from Hilo, United States

Florence Falls

Tjaynera Falls

Termite Mound

Flossie is coming

Bouldering in Trinity Beach

Outer Reef--Turtle Reef

Joc on Rip It Up, V1+

Joc on The Dusty Mutt Traverse, V1

Florence Falls--from base

Ugly brute

Hindu temple in Singapore

Amazing sunset in Railay

View from West Railay Beach

Carl climbing The Sit Spins (6b+) , Dum's Kitchen Wall

View from top of Wee's Present Wall

Joc climbing A Man Can Tell 100 Lies (6a), Wee's Present Wall

Monkeys near Wee's Present Wall

View from Tyrolean Wall in Railay

Sunset in Railay Beach

View from top of Gengis Bond (6b) on The Keep Wall

Pranang Beach

Large Lizard near Escher Wall in Railay

City street in Ho Chi Minh City

Temple in countryside outside of Ho Chi Minh City

Ho Chi Minh City traffic

Big Buddha in all his glory

Visiting Cinderella

Rainy day in Disneyland - ponchos to the rescue