Bangkok Photos

HAPPY HALLOWEEN! Alas, no costumes this year, unless we go for the Gilligan's Island theme. Geoof and I have found a very secluded beach resort on Koh Phi Phi Island in Thailand so we're staying put until after my birthday. Our apologies for not returning emails since our resort only has power for 6 hours a night.

While Ryan, our guest blogger, sleeps off his jet lag, we're posting some photos from Bangkok to keep everyone interested. Look for his post in the next few days.

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Bangkok, Thailand

Geoff and I love traveling together. We have found the right groove that makes this less of a trip and more of a life excursion. But every now and then we need to be shaken out of our routine, and that is where our friend Ryan comes in. He arrived in Thailand on Thursday, and chaos has prevailed. It's been great having him here because when Geoff and I are ready to take a nap, Ryan arranges a trip out of town. When the night is about to slow down, a pitcher of Margaritas is ordered. And somehow, even when we're just walking down the street, a baby elephant is sitting at the bus stop. I'm not sure if it's Ryan's good karma or the craziness of Bangkok, but the pace of our trip just got notched up.

Bangkok started out benign enough with drinks at a local German draught house down the street, but it's impossible not to notice or mention the amount of 50 year old men and 20 year old Thai hookers walking arm in arm in the streets. And while the ladies are not as young as I thought (thank goodness), the whole thing is definitely creepier than I imagined. If only because the men are shameless for the attention. They come to Bangkok for a week and hire the women all week, a la Pretty Women, to escort them around town. They take them to museums and restaurants and spill their life stories to these young girls. I guess it's just sad. But here's where it becomes funny: I'm standing outside the Westin Hotel wearing cargo pants and running shoes, waiting for Ryan and Geoff who are using the bathroom. And a seemingly nice, older Turkish man stops and asks me if I'm a tourist. I say yes thinking maybe he needs directions. But he asks me several times if I'm a tourist and then if I live in Bangkok. Finally, he just comes out with it and asks if I'm a lady. Which I almost answer yes to until it dawns on me, I'm being propositioned! Seriously?! Should I be flattered or appalled? Should I call him a dirty old man? Well in the end I just laughed and said, No,tourist! I'm bearing down on 30 and like my friend Cary says, Still Got It!

Bangkok has really surprised us with how metropolitan it is. I was expecting something like India or China, but the city has a great subway and monorail system, beautifully restored temples and great shopping. Not to mention the best English in Asia. Also, topping our must-do list (well Geoff and Ryan's) was a Muay Thai fight. Thailand is the heart of Mixed Martial Art fighting and while Geoff wanted to take classes we settled on going to watch them fight instead(although things could change in 3 weeks) .The sport definitely caters to the Farang (foreigner) populations' love for Ultimate Fighting, so we were ushered into the stadium to front-row ring-side seats (we sat next to a Canadian and his obviously appalled Thai escort). I won't lie, I love MMA and it was really fun to watch 100 lb kids go berserk on one another. Anything goes--punches, kicks, elbows to the side, take-downs. It was entertaining, but very little blood. Maybe this is why Geoff and I are meant for each other. Unfortunately our night ended at 2 am with Ryan doing a running elbow drop on Geoff. Don't worry, he'll be fine.

From Bangkok we're heading to Chang Mai where we'll be riding elephants and chilling in the jungle, all of which Ryan will be guest blogging about.

Ahh, but I should back up a moment to Saigon and the end of our Vietnam trip. While it was raining and flooding the whole time, we still finished off Vietnam in style and I still contend it is the sleeper hit of our trip. If only because the local magazine did a taste test of the best Mojitos in Saigon. What's not to love? We decided for our half way point we would treat ourselves to a real night on the town. Geoff wearing his snazzy new suit with French cuffs and me in my brand new dress. We went to the best restaurant in town, tried several of the top Mojitos in Saigon and still spent less than a mediocre night in any American city. It was a nice change of pace and something we probably won't do again until we get a job, but a night out in Saigon was quite a treat.

And a final note on Vietnam street crossing (this is it, I promise). The above picture is of me and an official Saigon crossing guard. It looks like I'm not the only Westerner with crossing issues. Geoff tried to explain to him that he was captain of the crossing guards in fifth grade, but it didn't quite translate. This young gentleman is part of a 200 person crew who stands on all the major streets corners and will literally hold your hand while blowing a whistle to get you across the street safely. Traffic never stops in Saigon, it's more like a school of fish that instinctively knows to split around you. Whatever the method, it was appreciated and free, and we got out of Vietnam with no more scooter incidents.

Oh, and we did ride on the back of a scooter, but don't tell my mom and dad.

GO RED SOX!!

Finally, here are our photos from all of Vietnam.

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Mui Ne Beach, Vietnam

[GEOFF]

I think if Erin could move to Hoi An, she would. Of course, I wouldn't let her because her skill-set would likely keep her in a sweatshop 20 hours per day. As far as a vacation spot, though, it's fantastic.

Hoi An is a small town - miniature by Asian standards (about 100,000 people) with pedestrian streets and a riverfront lined with shops and restaurants on both sides. There is even a Latin-influenced restaurant run by a Vietnamese guy about our age who had opened the place after traveling around the world. When I told him I was from Philly, he responded "No way! My homegirl went to Temple!" We were then introduced to said "homegirl" who gave us some great advice on where to get our clothes made. This was all Erin needed to hear.

There are probably about 50 clothes stores in Hoi An and chances are they all outsource to the same sweatshop. The place we chose had a sweatshop of its own upstairs (they even let us see it) so we took this as a good sign. After flipping through an endless supply of fashion magazines and inspecting shelves of fabric, Erin picked out a dress and I found myself a suit and shirt - all to be custom-made. Our measurements and digital photos were taken and we were told that our clothes would be ready in about a day. Erin was ecstatic to be on the other side of things, for once.

We got up the next morning and headed down to the river for our cooking class. First, we walked through the local market to learn about local ingredients and kitchen tools and then we boarded a small boat and headed upstream to the cooking school. During the class, we learned how to make local dishes including fresh spring rolls (we even made the rice paper) and then we got to sit back and enjoy our creations. The school even made special accomodations for Erin's allergies, which was a nice touch.

Returning to town, we darted over to our tailor to pick up our clothes and were surprised to find that they were actually of pretty good quality and fit. After some final adjustments, we were good to go. The best part is that they saved my measurements so if I want to order more custom suits or shirts when I get home, they'll just charge my credit card and mail them to the USA. For less than $100, that's not too bad.

From Hoi An, we took a cab up the coast to Danang (aka China Beach) to catch a train to the Phan Thiet/Mui Ne Beach area. Mui Ne is a 20km stretch of beach that bills itself as "the kite surfing capital of asia" but apparently hasn't spread the word too well because there's basically nobody here. The beach is lined with empty resorts - brand new ones. We stayed in a nice room with a balcony overlooking the South China Sea and a palm-tree lined garden for $25 per night. Again, not too bad. We've been here four days already and done pretty much nothing but lay on the beach. Although this makes for a boring blog entry, it also makes for a great life.

We're headed out today for Saigon (aka Ho Chi Minh City) to try to find a nice part of town to rock our new gear. We're also due to celebrate the halfway point of this trip, which passed about 2 days ago. It's insane to think that we still have 100 days left!

We're off to Thailand by the end of the week and we'll post pictures when we can.

Hanoi and Hue, Vietnam

I wonder if in 30 years our son or daughter will be
sitting in a corner cafe, drinking cheap beers and
making friends with the locals in Baghdad. I'm sure 30
years ago my parents never thought we'd end up in
Hanoi at a corner cafe. For that matter, I never
thought we'd end up here. But after 5 days, Vietnam is
becoming the sleeper hit of this trip--and we haven't
even hit the beaches yet. This place is great!

Where to start? Well I'll start with the cheap beers
because they are cheap and plentiful. It's called Bia
Hoi here which translates to Happy Hour all the time.
The "bars" are just street corners with child sized
chairs and a lady called Old Mama who serves up 12 oz
beers from a keg for 12 cents. Yes, that's right.
We're buying rounds of beers for anyone in sight
because we can. And it's good beer. Fresh, light, kind
of citrusy. The view is priceless as we could sit for
hours and watch the scooter traffic weave around us.
Our favorite part: someone yells police and we all
have to drag our chairs out of the street and squeeze
onto the curb for 30 seconds while the police roll by.
Then back to business as usual, spilling out into the
streets. For a second Geoff and I thought we were at a
high school party--but the beer tastes slightly
better.

My next favorite thing is the national dress of most
Vietnamese women. It seems to have evolved into
pajamas all day, every day. I could get used to this.
They are lovely pajamas. Cotton, matching tops and
bottoms, slippers. But it's hard not to laugh when
they are riding on a scooter or eating dinner in their
jammies. This is my kind of town.

And of course I can't write a blog without mentioning
the Vietnamese national currency is the Dong. I can
hardly type it without laughing. I'm immature, I know,
but paying for hotels, dinner, water, always elicits a
tiny snicker from me. It's funny. I'm sorry. It just
is.

For those of you at home betting on the Matrix of
Danger, if you had the square for
Erin--Vietnam--Causing a scooter accident, then you'd
be a winner! Let me begin by saying no one got hurt
unless count the banged up scooter. Also, I should
preface with the fact that I am a very skiddish street
crosser. In the metropolis of Chapel Hill I look
several times before crossing. Traveling through
Vietnam, I knew I would be challenged. 90% of the
traffic is scooters and there are no stoplights. It's
an amazing feat at intersections when it seems every
bike knows the right dance moves to waltz right on
through. People rarely slow down they just all know to
anticipate everyone else, and although there were some
almost misses, we never saw a bump. And these are
people on cell phones, families with infants, men
carrying bushels of fruit--and they all seem to move
effortlessly. Now insert foreigners who only have
crossed streets like these when playing Atari. Books
tell you to walk slowly and traffic will move around
you which sounds easy in theory but we've stood on
curbs for minutes trying to find the right break. And
if you take the time to pause and look while crossing,
you'll instinctively freeze in fear, which is worse
than moving. Fast forward to me making a go at it on
a random Thursday afternoon. I was sure I had found my
break and sans Geoff I went for it, at a good pace,
across 3 lanes of traffic. It seems I underestimated
the speed of one scooter and as I reached the opposite
curb I turned back to the loud noise of two people
sliding across the pavement under a scooter. I froze,
on the verge of tears. Was that my fault? It seemed to
be as several locals pointed at me. Geoff was stranded
on the other curb watching as the two boys
miraculously stood up, brushed off, checked for broken
bones (none, thank god), picked up their taillight and
rode off, never looking back at me. Meanwhile I've
started crying out of guilt and fear and mostly
because I'm now stuck on the same block , only taking
right turns, until 2 am when the traffic slows down
enough for me to try to cross back over. In hindsight,
Geoff says that it probably wasn't my fault (well,
mostly) and it's better I didn't look or I would have
froze and surely that wouldn't be good. I'd like to
believe they were purse nabbers and I was only helping
some old lady stop the burglars. So now I'm relegated
to holding Geoff's hand with the Vulcan death grip
while crossing. We have a break while we're in the
countryside, but Saigon will be a whole new monster
with 8 million people and 4 million scooters.

We've now moved down the coast to continue our 3 part
series of depressing war torn areas. This time we took
a tour of the Demilitarized Zone of central Vietnam,
seeing the Vinh Moc tunnels, the Ben Hai River and the
Khe Sanh American Combat base. It's almost hard to
believe that 40 years ago this country was bombed and
burned to pieces. The Vietnam countryside is some of
the most beautiful we've seen with rolling hills and
re-emerging jungles. Along the highways, bomb craters
litter the rice paddies, now turned into watering
holes for water buffalo. Vietnam has been another good
testament of a country moving on and forgiving.

We're off to Hoi An, the sewing capital of the world
(your Gap shirt is probably from here) where I'll be
buying a custom-made dress and some fabric and Geoff a
brand new custom suit, shirt and tie. They're probably
pretty good at tailoring for the smaller framed man.
Look for our next post at our half way point next week!

Hanoi, Vietnam

Well, we've made it out of China to a more user-friendly communist country and can finally post on our own. Many thanks to those who posted for us while we were being suppressed. We'll try to get back to our previous posting schedule of at least once a week.

So after the Korey's left Beijing, we managed to get the last two seats on a 26-hour train ride to Chengdu. Like most cities in China, Chengdu is about twice the size of New York and nobody's ever heard of it. However, this city in southwestern China was in our sights for one simple reason: The Chengdu Panda Research and Breeding Center (aka Panda World). In fact, during the initial planning of this trip, we intended only to go through Australia and New Zealand. However, after becoming panda fanatics, we added China to the list and the journey in this incarnation began to take form. Needless to say, Panda World was a VERY big deal for us.

We got to Panda World early in the morning to see the pandas feeding - there must have been at least 40 in the park. Although there were some fences, we were able to get about 10 yards from some of the adults. There was also a panda nursery that housed about 5 newborns that were all less than a month old. Pictures weren't allowed, but we got to watch the staff members feed the little furballs out of a bottle. Pretty cute.

As we exited the nursery, we saw a group of tourists crowded around an employee entrance and quickly realized that we had found our mecca - the panda holding area. For a stack of what looked like monopoly money (some of which suspiciuosly went to our cab driver as a kickback), we were escorted into the caged area and draped with surgeon's outfits. Before we could realize what was happening, a one-year-old, 60 pound panda was placed on my lap and after a few minutes, it was Erin's turn. Although we read that it "was like touching a unicorn," I would compare it more to meeting a real-life Jim Henson character. As it was eating bamboo and I was rubbing its belly, it was hard to believe it wasn't fake. Truly unreal. Erin and I were both in a daze for hours.

Thus, with our trip to China - and pretty much all of Asia - seemingly complete, we were at a total loss as to what to do next. We decided to fly east across the country to Guilin and take a taxi down to Yangshuo. Yangshuo is actually a small town and somewhat of a backpacker haven. It is notable for its strange landscape of limestone karsts jutting out of flat rice fields. There are also many outdoor activities. For example, you can kayak down the rivers, mountain bike through rice fields and return to town on a bamboo raft. You can even finish the day with a Budweiser and a Philly cheesesteak. Of course, we did all of this and really enjoyed our time in Yangshuo in the process. We were there for about 5 days and it was a good break from the business (and pollution) that is appraently the rest of China.

Our visas for Vietnam now ripe, we arranged a bus journey from Yangshuo to Nanning (near the border), a night in Nanning and another bus journey from Nanning to Hanoi that included our first border crossing on land. Although no English was spoken by anyone other than us in this process, we managed to get to Hanoi completely without issue and are, frankly, a bit impressed with ourselves. I think we're finally starting to get a hang of this - not too bad after missing our first flight months back in an English-speaking country (Ireland).

Although we've managed to dodge miserable weather events in about 5 different countries already, we finally seem to have hit one head-on as a tropical storm of some sort is heading our direction. This may mean we won't be able to make it east to Halong Bay and that we may need to head south sooner than planned. Serendipity, however, seems to be on our side. Although the rain may also keep us in our hotel room for a few days, our $16 room includes ESPN - on which the revolution will be televised - that is, the Phillies' playoff games! GO PHILS!

Here's a big block of photos from our time in China. Thanks again for hangin' with us during our radio silence.

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