"This is Burma, and it will be quite unlike any land you know about." (George Orwell, Burmese Days)

s: We have heard that there is a joke going around Yangon that George Orwell wrote not one book about Burma, but three: Burmese Days, Animal Farm, and 1984. It is fitting, then, that the government here requires that internet cafes take screenshots of what their customers are doing every few minutes. With this in mind, some specific stories may be saved for later, particularly to protect the locals we've met along the way.

a: In general, though, we agree that Burma is at once the best and the worst place we've ever visited.

s: This is because of its dramatic authenticity... and because of its dramatic authenticity.

a: Nothing about daily life here is reminiscent of America, which makes our clumsy journey around this nation exhilarating but exhausting. For instance, at a pagoda in Mandalay, we gave 1000 kyat (about $1) to a mother and her diaperless baby. Within seconds a swarm of more mothers with diaperless babies as well as young children surrounded us with a cacophony of pleading hello, hello, hello's while they pointed to their mouths. Flustered, heartsore, and feeling dumb about our initial donation, we darted out of the pagoda, tailed by several of the mass. We searched for our rickshaw drivers, but they were not at our agreed upon location. Ugh. It's moments like this that make Myanmar a really difficult place to be. In no time, though, our drivers came smiling down the road, excited to give us gifts: peanut candies they bought for us while we were in the pagoda. Our drivers. Who had been bicycling our weight all around the unpaved ground in the humid, dusty city of Mandalay. All day long. For a measly five dollar fare. Left. On what should have been their break. To buy us peanut candies. It's moments of unrelenting Burmese kindness like this that make Myanmar so wonderful.

s: So, while not everything about our stay in Mandalay was perfect (and clearly, whoever designed the glitzy Vegas hotel has not visited its grimy namesake), any difficulties were seriously trumped by the ridiculously wonderful Burmese people who will not stop giving me back the $20 bills I keep accidentally sticking in the midst of 3000 kyat. After two days in the city, we caught a night bus to Nyaungshwe, the town bordering Inle Lake. Unfortunately, Amy had gotten a 24-hour bout of heatstroke--

a: It's really hot here.

s: --so the bus ride involved a lot of fanning and trying to give her space to breathe (the latter being pretty ambitious on a Burmese night bus). Luckily, though, Nyaungshwe turned out to be a small, quiet town with vaguely Western cuisine options, so we were able to spend a day just relaxing with mango lassis and coconut water.

a: Coconut water doesn't taste so great after a couple of sips.

s: Yeah, but you needed the electrolytes.



a: Okay, fine. Eventually Nurse Sara had found enough coconut water and parmesian cheese to cure me. We took a day trip out on Inle Lake with our new friends, a super nice Israeli couple we met in a taxi from the bus station. All I will say about Inle Lake is that it would take too many words to describe it, and they would fall short anyway. We'll post pictures when we can. Until then, just imagine tons of houses, stores and monasteries on stilts, floating tomato gardens that have to be pinned down with bamboo sticks so they don't float right away, Long Neck tribe families, and white puffy clouds in the sky reflected on the water. At least there's a start.

s: I think it's a sign I've grown too used to south-east Asia that I found myself wondering, "Of course, who wouldn't get to work by canoe?" It was a little bit confusing to realize that I couldn't think of anyone at home who did this, which I rationalized with the fact that I couldn't think of anyone who lived near enough to a river for canoe travel to be practical. You all do have chickens though, right?

a: I'm constantly saying things like "Wow, Sara, look at those five people crammed on that motorcycle," to which she'll reply, "Oh, that's normal here." Or, "Sara, there's no light in this squat toilet," and she'll passively remark, "Yeah, it'll be okay." Or, "Sara, should there be seat belts in this (insert bizarre foreign method of transport)?" --"No, we want to be able to jump off if we're about to hit something." (Don't worry, parents, we're safe.)

s: Finally, you may have noticed occasional switches between the names "Burma" and "Myanmar." This is driving Amy crazy.

a: My name's Amy. Or, Blarfy! YOU decide! It'll be such a fun game for your mind to play every time you try and think of what to call me! YAY!!

s: Which is fair. So, to clarify, they're the same place. But, if you're super curious and have time to kill, I'm sure Google can tell you all about the politics. As Amy implied, there's not really a "right" answer.

a: That's it for now. So, in the words of a pleasant Burmese shop owner, "Thank you for your comings." To our blog, that is.

Love you all bunches and bunches,
Sara and Amy (Blarfy)

we are siamese if you please :-)

s: Hi all!  It's Sara (hence the little 's') writing from Burma.  Amy has joined me, so this blog marks the return of the Sistahloos Narratives!  She has brand new eyes for SE Asia, so I'll turn the narrative over to her.

a: SOUTHEAST ASIA OMG!! The smells! The colors! The accents! I don't understand why Sara isn't still freaking out.

For me, it all started on Sunday, when Dad dropped me off at LAX and I hopped on board my first solo flight (Note: I'm so adult). I was served a vegetarian Jain meal, which I requested when I booked my ticket--my ticket, which I paid for with my own earnings (please refer back to previous note). I learned about Jainism in my Eastern World Religions class, and its principle doctrine is extreme nonviolence.
Jains are even restricted to a special type of above-ground farming to make sure no bugs are harmed by ploughing, etc. I was curious to eat like a Jain and my opportunity had arrived. Luckily, my meals were nonviolent AND delicious! I would have believed the stewardess if she told me my meal was take-out from Heart of India Cafe. So after dinner, Moulin Rouge, breakfast, an episode of Glee, and reading a book, a mere thirteen hours after I left LA...I wasn't even in Bangkok yet. I was at my layover in Taipei, Taiwan.

s: I waited SOOOO long for her!  But at least I wasn't waiting on a plane.

a: Eventually though, I did arrive in Thailand and found my way to THE SISTALOO! We drove to our guest house and spent the next day exploring Khao San Road. We also saw the biggest Buddha statue in Thailand...or maybe the world. I can't remember right now. But it's really big.

s: In the evening, we decided to splurge on the Siam Niramit, which is supposed to be Thailand's big world-class show.  Something about the Guinness Book of World Records?  So hard to know what Thai people are telling you when they get really excited, but we took the excitement as a good sign and went.  It turned out to be a the history of Thailand, told through Thai dancing.  While most of the scenes were
pretty earnest (villagers, goats, an elephant, a river with real water on stage, impressive dance-y thai kick boxing) the funniest part was undoubtedly the scene in which they demonstrated hell.  There were English captions on a projector narrating each new thing that would happen, and with each one I thought, "they're going to show THAT next?"  Samples include "if you kill an animal, you will have your innards eaten by demons," and "if you drink alcohol, you must boil in water."  Somehow, in the midst of this, it was considered appropriate for men to be running around with nylon covered flour sacks for bosoms.  Definitely quite something.

a:  Then yesterday morning we took a flight to Yangon, Myanmar. There was so much to look at! Colorful buildings, street vendors, rickety mostly-broken-down cars filling up the roads. One of our cab drivers appeared to be seated on a hot pink plastic lawn chair where his car seat should have been. Also unusual is the fact that most of the men wear skirts here. Sara and I laughed at a line from an article by Mike MacEacheran, which reads, "The longyi, a wraparound cloth worn by both sexes, though slowly being phased out by American jeans, is still a sign that Yangon keeps one foot--or rather, one flirtatious hairy knee--firmly rooted in the past." What an image.

s:  And true:-)   But despite the hairy knees, the Burmese people are definitely as wonderful as everyone says.  We'd barely been in Yangon an hour yesterday  when Amy asked a monk if there were any good restaurants nearby.  The monk, whose name might have been something along the lines of "Saisuku" proceeded to walk us three blocks to a restaurant he knew of, and when it was closed he asked several locals who pointed us in the direction of another.  We asked him to join us for dinner, and while he sat with us, he refused to even let us buy him anything.  We got to talk a bit about our lives (he's the youngest of four children, and he spends a lot of time studying) and after dinner he spent over fifteen minutes finding us a cab that he felt was giving us a fair rate.  Truly, so wonderful-- and the really baffling
part is that it seems to be the norm here.



a: I want to befriend ALL THE MONKS! They're so cool. Anyway, the taxi he found for us took Sara and I to the Yangon bus station. We hopped on a 12 hour overnight bus to Mandalay, which is in central Myanmar. We made a 4:30 a.m. breakfast stop at a restaurant, and after we finished eating we decided to hunt for a restroom. We asked a young Burmese waitress where they were. She pointed. We walked a few feet in the direction she'd pointed.

s: And then we stopped.  We were at the back door.  Were we meant to go out the back, or was it simply NEAR the back door?

a: The waitress noticed our struggle and pointed out the back door. We walked out the back door.

s: And then we stopped.  Were we supposed to go STRAIGHT out the back door, through the field?  Or was it attached to the back of the building?  We looked around.

a: The waitress noticed our struggle. She pointed across the field. We started walking across the field.

s: OH!  There they were, right in front of us, a long row of bathrooms.  Except...

a: The "MEN" and "WOMEN" signs were in Burmese writing; half of the doors were labeled with a circular squiggle while the other half were labeled in a mountainy swirls. We stopped. We internalized the two symbols, and were able to make no conclusions. Back and forth we looked, and noticed there was a person in a door that was labled with the moutainy swirl! We only had to wait for him or her to exit to know which stalls were meant for us.

s:  But alas, we couldn't save ourselves further embarassment.  The waitress had already noticed our struggle.  For the record, if you're a female in Burma, you want the circular squiggle.

a: Hopefully we won't be as clueless in our Myanmar adventures to come. Thanks so much to Geo for posting this! We'll add pictures when we find wifi, which may not be until we get back to Thailand.

Much love,
Sara & Amy

mai pen rai:-)

*note: photos through about July 29th for anyone interested can be found at http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=228207&id=503370711&l=3a3deb14a2 (This should be a public link, no log-in required.)

Hi world!

I'm writing to you at the close of a fabulous week in Thailand with my friend Punky. Our trip began last weekend with a visit to Koh (Island) Phi Phi, pronounced "pee pee." Maturity, that's why you guys keep me around, right? We met up with some of Punky's friends to catch the night bus to Phuket (that one's pronounced poo-ket) and ferried to Phi Phi, a smaller island near the even smaller one (Koh Phi Phi Lei) where the movie The Beach was filmed.

Due to the monsoon season weather, most of our weekend was relatively uneventful. Saturday's weather allowed us to do a little bit of hiking and beach visiting, but the rains were visiting and so the better part of Sunday, in particular, was spent watching Friends, getting a massage, and perusing bookshops. But, thankfully, the weather let up Monday and we were able to take a day trip to Koh Phi Phi Lei.

Getting to Koh Phi Phi Lei turned out to be pretty entertaining. It began with a lift to the the pier, which wouldn't have been unusual had Koh Phi Phi been a place where there were cars or even motorcycles. But, it wasn't, so we had expected to be led on foot. Silly us. We were picked up by two guys on bicycles, which we were expected to ride on the back of (no extra set of pedals or anything, just an unpadded metal frame for a seat). We surveyed them with an eyebrow raise, but even us Westerners accustomed to safety standards had to admit that they went so slowly, especially with two people weighing down on the slightly flat tires, that the biggest danger was simply falling over sideways.

We made it successfully to our longboat, which turned out to be essentially a 12-person canoe powered by a propeller on a pole, steered by a driver using said pole something like a regular canoer might use an oar, except off the back rather than the sides. The propeller allowed the canoe to go remarkably fast through the choppy open ocean, and within minutes we were all completely drenched in salt water, forced to keep our eyes shut to avoid the spray, and fairly prepared for the boat to capsize at any moment. It never did, but I am highly suspicious that it must not be all that uncommon an occurance. Truly crazy.


After some stops for snorkeling and swimming, we arrived at the island of Maya Bay. Unbeknownst to us, part of the reason that it was cheaper to take a longboat than a bigger boat is that the longboat cruisers don't pay the entrance fee-- they instead use the "back entrance." Oh, Thailand. The back entrance involves the boat parking near a dip in the cliffside (pictured upper right), and some swimming and climbing for the people entering. (Punky and I briefly debated life jackets, and we were super glad that we ended up using them.) Basically, you jump off a boat and swim with the waves towards the cliff, taking care not to actually collide with the cliffs (which, thankfully, were at least smooth, if one did get swept into them) but instead with the series of ropes in front of the staircase. You scamper over the ropes, getting up on top of them as quickly as possible to minimalize the effect of the waves crashing, and carefully gets onto the stair-ladder thing which warns, "Caution: Slippery!" as if there were nothing else worth worrying about. (Incidentally, there were several upset-looking young kids attempting this whole process, and I didn't envy them or their parents in the least.) After climbing over (no small feat, with only one railing and two directions of reluctant-to-leave-the-ladder traffic), disembarking was assisted by a scraped-up local at the bottom watching for when the wave was about to burst through the hole in the rocks near the bottom of the ladder-- during the break he would yell, "NOW, FAST!" leaving you with about five seconds to navigate the jagged ground below the surface to the other side of some rocks, a few feet away, to safety. Phew. Of course, "safety" still involved a not-so-comfortable walk over similarly jagged ground to the shore, but at least the waves were gone.

Worth it, of course, not that I'm ever likely to do it again. The island was one of the prettiest places I've been, even if Maya Beach itself was a bit overpopulated by tourists. But I did put on goggles for the longboat ride back.

I took the Tuesday night bus back to Bangkok while Punky flew to make it home in time for work, so I got to hang out on Khao San Road for about a day until we met up. I caught the local bus to Punky's on Thursday afternoon and we met up with her friends Jo and Jenny for dinner at Denny's. Yes, American food. I'm not sure if I've mentioned it, but I'm doing a cleanse of fried noodles. My esophagus was starting to get pretty annoyed with me. And Denny's had minestrone, yum!

Then, Friday, I got to visit Punky and Jo at the local school where they work as English teachers. The kids have a really long day here-- 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., 10 periods, with just a half hour for lunch and no breaks at all otherwise except sometimes briefly if it takes their teachers an extra minute or two to switch places between periods. I also heard in passing that corporeal punishment was considered acceptable, eek. The kids, however, were super sweet, and even the lower classes were at least as good at English as I am at Spanish. They played games like scattegories ("name as unusual a food that you can think of that starts with an "S") learned how to compare transportation ("The skytrain is faster than a bicycle") and, in Jo's most advanced class, discussed the morality of genetic engineering.

The weekend was spent finding odds and ends to do around Bangkok with Punky and Jo, which was a lot of fun. Probably my favorite thing was visiting a gay karaoke bar with Punky on Saturday night. Punky didn't want to sing, so instead my co-singer was a flambouyant Thai man who happily accompanied me singing "Hit Me Baby One More Time." (Punky said that after the fairly earnest renditions of "Can You Feel the Love Tonight" and "Killing Me Softly," it livened the place up a bit.) We also visited Lupini Park and a few shopping malls with Jo, but it was mostly just really fun spending a few days exploring mostly less touristy areas in fabulous company.

So, now I'm at the end of the Punky portion of the trip-- tonight, I meet SISTAHLOO! at the Bangkok airport-- so excited! Our next leg of the trip is in Burma, and I have no idea what our internet access will be like at all, as government censorship makes Burma the third worst country to be a blogger, or something like that. So, we'll see:-p We're due back in Thailand on August 16th, so you'll definitely hear from us by then. (And, for those who have been asking, we fly home on August 18th, so I will get to see all you Los Angeles in just a few short weeks:-) )

Until next time, much love,
Sara

sabai dee from just out of laos:-)

Sophie came into the room our first night in Laos. "I have seen . . . " she paused, searching for the word in English. "Something terrible."

I was urged to go downstairs to be her witness. Sure enough, the kind-faced Laotian woman running our guesthouse in Pat Beng was happy to show me her catches-- two plump, scuttling cockroaches held captive in a tupperware, each roughly the size (including height) of a small mouse. "These are the best Lao cuisine!" she told me happily, and explained that she planned to cook them with honey for breakfast. Such began our stay in Laos.

People often recommend at least 10 days for Laos, supposedly because it's a country where it's best to relax and ease into the slow lifestyle. I'm sure this is true; however, it's also because overland travel takes FOREVER. Sophie and I had 8 days until we needed to be back in Bangkok, and we spent about 5 of them in transit: One day to the border at Chiang Khong. Two days on the slow boat to Luang Prabang with an overnight in Pat Bang, a small town where most residents have never heard of WiFi. (There's a fast boat, incidentally, but it's said to be quite dangerous). An evening, a full day, a morning in Luang Prabang. 7 hours to Vang Vieng. One day, then one morning in Vang Vieng. And then an afternoon/night bus back to BKK. And this was just to visit two main tourist towns with a paved road between them. Thankfully, the transit time was easily passed with spectacular scenery, books, travelers swapping stories, naps, and my own personal French tutor.

We finally made it to Luang Prabang, where we were recruited to take a look at the SpicyLaos backpackers hostel. I'm so glad we went, because it turned out to be fabulous, and we were welcomed right in to a room full of friendly backpackers. Sophie and I celebrated our successful arrival by dining in style at L'Elephant, a Casablanca-style French restaurant which David in Chiang Mai had said was his favorite place to eat in all of south-east Asia. Our meals, local fish with a creamy sauce and veggies and a shared tiramisu for dessert, cost $15 each-- 5 times the cost of our dorm beds! Though I'm definitely not spending that kind of money every night here, it was a pretty delicious treat. Although I can't say for sure whether it was as good as those breakfast cockroaches were said to be. (As one traveler commented, "Well, maybe they know something we don't!")

The next day, we took a tuk-tuk (with a new friend, Cornelia from Romania who lives in London) to the local waterfall. Once there, we heard about a hike, and decided to check it out. It was a steep, muddy climb to the top of the fall, where we could walk ankle-deep in rushing water and just past our ankles, water would spill hundreds of feet to the bottom where you'd started-- we were standing in an infinity pool, and it felt like conquering the world. (There was a quite firm guard rail, for the record.)


(Sophie is the one with the friendly butterfly on her bag, and Cornelia is the redhead:-) )















After the waterfall, we returned to the hostel for a nap, and met up with Megan from Los Angeles (yaaay LA) for another climb, up the hill in Luang Prabang for the view at sunset. (Megan was taking a course during the day to learn how to make a silk scarf on a loom-- I got to visit the next day, and it was pretty cool.) While the climb had a beautiful view of the town and the rivers, there wasn't so much a sunset-- for reasons I'm not sure of, we don't really seem to be getting any colorful sunsets here (perhaps the time of year?) and Laos was quite cloudy and rainy the entire week, possibly in relation to the typhoon in China. So, oh well. Still pretty, and in the evening we found cheap street food for dinner, wandered the night market, and finally settled down for drinks at a place called Utopia that fully lived up to its name. It was pretty much a paradise; a cafe made of bamboo on stilts with cushiony mats and candles, and something about the set-up and the warm weather and the night skies and the palm trees made it seem like the most peaceful place that could possibly exist in the world.

The next day, Tuesday, we made our way to Vang Vieng, a town known for its tubing, caves, and the fact that every restaurant and bar in town played re-runs of Friends or Family Guy all day long (one also plays The Simpsons). The road there was something incredible. On a map, it looks as though it is a relatively straight line that should take perhaps two hours. In practice, it is a six-hour tilt-a-whirl ride through a kindergartner's craziest scribble, full of hairpin turns and loops around mountains and chickens and children running in the street and a mini-bus driver that seems overly enthusiastic about the possibility of running them over.

In the midst of this, though, it is beautiful. We were just so small on this little mini-bus while the mountainside erupted around us, at times at such steep angles that the mountain wall was actually concave, textured by a thousand shades of jungle green save for the bits of sheer cliffside that looked as though they'd been streaked by hand with beige and black pastels. I kept finding myself thinking, "I just didn't know there were mountains like this." As though it was blasphemous that I hadn't known, and as though it seemed be urgent to apologize to the Creator for not having realized sooner. (My pictures don't do this any justice, by the way-- it was quite a bumpy ride, and difficult to even get any shots that weren't just of jungle brush.)



Finally, we made it to Vang Vieng. This entry is getting quite long, so suffice it to say that tubing was quite an experience. It's something like spring break Florida-style meets Hurricane Harbor meets the monsoon season with south-east Asia safety standards, and I'm really glad that we listened to the guidebook and took lifejackets. It was really fun, though, and relaxing once we got the hang of not crashing into the brush along the riverside.

So now, we're back in Bangkok (though Sophie is probably on a plane to one of the islands by now) and in a few hours I'm meeting up with Punky for a weekend trip to Phuket. Yay!

Until next time, much love,
Sara

in the jungle

Hi world!

On Monday, we embarked on our first ever jungle trek. Que divertido! (It is entirely possible that this entry will be littered with Spanish phrases, because...) We climbed into our sangthaew-- the local bus/truck combo-- and met our co-trekkers, 2 British girls and three couples from Spain. Un bien oportunidad! As you can imagine, we got quite a bit of Spanish practice in, especially since (for once!) our Spanish was deemed to be generally no worse than their English.

Getting to the jungle took a little bit of time, since we first stopped at a butterfly farm (somewhat random, but strangely unavoidable when trekking), as well as at a local market for lunch supplies. But finally, we made it! Our trek began with an hour long elephant ride, and I was glad to see the elephants were well treated-- it was clear that with all the tourists, the elephants had all the bananas they could eat. It was funny because the elephants didn't seem tot at all mind drinking water from ditches with us in tow, which from our perspective made for quite a roller coaster;-)


Promptly after our ride, we started up on our hike. And by up, I mean what turned out to be a continuous 45 degree climb for about three and a half hours. While the exercise was great, it was not at all what the brochure or our guide had described, and I wasn't surprised when one of our number (Emily, from England) got a cramp in her leg just one hour in-- especially since we hadn't even stretched beforehand. Given the difficulty of the hike, I was perfectly happy to visit with Emily while we took our time at the rear of the pack. In the end, we all made it to the top without collapsing, and we slept pretty well, too. Minus the roosters.

The next day Emily and her friend Sara were to go rafting, so we said goodbyes. While it was a bummer to lose them, it meant that the primary language of our group became Spanish, which was very exciting. We learned several practical phrases such as "Ten cuidado de la mierda" (mind the poop) "jodidos gallos" (an expletive to yell at the roosters at 4 a.m.), and "El manejero es un tocon" (the driver is a creeper!). The entire group was a delight to be around, and in the evening we played Charades (famous movies) and Spoons together. Finally, the last day was filled with white water rafting and bamboo rafting, both of which were really fun and I'm glad I had a chance to do them.

The one down-side of trekking was that I learned the hard way that mosquitos can bite right through water sneakers, and I now have about fifty bug bites on my feet. Fabulous. Fortunately, we're not in a malaria zone at the moment, but the itching was so awful that last night I found myself wishing I could jump off a bridge if only it would make the itching stop. Thankfully, that was in today's itinerary almost precisely!



We did it! And yes, it did help the itching. For a little, anyway, until I made it to the pharmacy for ointment in the afternoon.

So, today actually ends the Three Musketeers portion of the trip. Fonze and Jeff fly home on Sunday, and by chance I've met a Swiss girl named Sophie who had almost precisely my dates of availability to travel to Laos. So, after a good-bye dinner with David and Newee we said our own sad goodbyes-- and in the morning, Sophie and I make our way to Luang Prabang! Ch-ch-ch-chianges. (PUNNY!)

Until next time, much love,
Sara

chiang chiang, chiangity chiang she bop:-)

Hey all,

I last wrote on Monday, just before we left Hanoi. Our flight to Bangkok on Tuesday went smoothly (well, it was bumpy, but our execution of the day went smoothly), and we went straight to the train station to buy tickets for a night bus to Chiang Mai, in the north of Thailand. Since we had all our bags, we basically just hung around the train station for the day, which was fine-- we ended up meeting a couple of Australians who had just been to India, so we spent the afternoon swapping travel stories and then caught our train at 6 p.m.

We decided to ride glamourously in 2nd class berths (I've done night trains without berths, and have since decided that they are NOT worth it) and the whole thing was a lot of fun. I think I just love any excuse to sleep in a bunk bed, really. We played cards before bed, and I'm not sure if I've mentioned, but card games are a big hit with the Thai people-- whenever we play, we always have a flock of them around us trying to figure out how we're playing and how to help us along. One of the train stewardess ladies actually sat right down with us and had quite a laugh figuring out how the game worked (though she didn't QUITE get that the cards were meant to be kept secret from the other players.) Lots of fun, and I got a surprisingly great night's sleep. (I suppose it helps when one doesn't have burly German women busting through the door for border control at 3 a.m., of course.)

Wednesday morning we arrived in Chiang Mai, where Fonze's uncle's friend David had kindly volunteered to pick us up from the train station (he's lived in Chiang Mai for fifteen years or so). He took us out for a delicious breakfast, and made plans to visit for dinner the following night. We spent the day wandering the Old City, which has about a trillion wats and lots of shopping. (I bought the most beautiful flowy blue Renaissancy skirt ever for about $13-- a small fortune in Thailand, but SO worth it.)

We had heard about a hike that ended with a temple on a hill, so we were talking about going there on Thursday, but we'd need to hire a tuk-tuk. Thinking we'd save money and have an adventure, we discussed renting a motorcycle for the day, but then we decided that for safety reasons (like, not having anyone to teach us to drive it) that probably wouldn't work. Jeff and Fonze then proposed that biking there would be a fun alternative. Cue an eyebrow raise on my end, because it was supposed to take a half hour to get there by TUK-TUK, before even starting the hike. I opted to pass, and on the way home from dinner I was able to book a ziplining excursion instead.

So, I got to spend my Thursday ziplining in the jungle. It was so much fun! There were 22 stations-- something like 15 ziplines, 3 suspension bridges, 3 rappelling stations (including the final "Happy Ending," a 40 meter drop), and a rickety spiral staircase. The group was just me, some Irish backpackers, and an Israeli family who spoke only a little English, so I made friends with the Irish group and our tour guide, "Mr. Boston." I got home around 3:30 p.m., and Jeff and Fonze were both already asleep in our room. I had admittedly had a less strenuous day than them (not having had to bike down a 3 mile hill without brakes or whatever it was that they were up to) but I was actually quite pooped too... so, it was group siesta time until David picked us up for dinner at 5:30. Dinner was a treat: His wife, Newie, made us (and a British friend of theirs) pad thai with shrimp for dinner, and mango pie for dessert. Yum! I am really going to miss all the fresh tropical fruits when I get back to CA, but luckily I have several weeks left of passion fruit and mangoes and pineapples, and that's quite alright in my book. (Must get an avocado-- I've seen them a couple times and they look delicious!)

David was pondering what else we might want to do while we were in the area, and he mentioned that his foster daughter, now age 20, was living with a hill tribe in Chiang Dao, and we could go visit her for the weekend. So, we had more wandering time in Chiang Mai on Friday, and then Saturday morning we hopped on a bus to Chiang Dao, about an hour and a half from Chiang Mai. Chiang Dao was BEAUTIFUL, a small town with just one main road, surrounded by jungle and steep green mountains that went straight up to the clouds. David's daughter Nasee and her boyfriend Aak helped us with transport, and took us to see a local cave ( super cool-- lots of bats) and to visit their hillside tribe. While there, we got to meet Nasee's grandma, who is revered because the tribe believes she can talk with God, as well as her mom, sister, and niece. In general, the tribe kids seem to think that we white people are fairly hysterical looking, which is amusing. We also climbed up a jungle hill to see a local wat, which was especially neat because it had inspirational messages left by monks, like "You've passed 201 toughest steps, with 309 easier steps to reach the Chedi and the Venerable Phra Ajarn Sim's cremated remains." Very sweet of them:-)



All in all, things are pretty good, and I'm enjoying being back in the land of a thousand smiles. We returned to Chiang Mai today, and tomorrow we're going on a 3-day trek and then we're planning on -- yes-- bungee jumping. I'm quite nervous about the latter, so I've been practicing the jumping part ("one, two, three, bungee!") off of curbs and things like that. Quite silly. Also, for anyone concerned at home about safety, I've promised Julie that I will make sure that someone else jumps before me, penguin style. But, we're going with a quite reputable company with a good track record, so there shouldn't be too much to worry about:-)

Until next time, much love,
Sara

P.S. I almost forgot-- for anyone out of the facebook loop who is interested, I've posted a photo album on facebook with more photos from the trip: http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/album.php?aid=228207&id=503370711 . My profile should be pretty public, but you will probably need to log in from a friend's account if you don't have your own.

viet nam

Hi world,

I'd been delaying writing about Vietnam because I hadn't quite made up my mind about it...and then I didn't have internet access for three days, so I couldn't have written if I wanted. But, we're back in Hanoi for the night so....hey there!

We arrived in Saigon on Tuesday (June 29th), which is basically a big city. It turned out to be quite a fun place in some ways. The traffic, for one, is quite entertaining. You know when you're trying to walk by someone in a hallway and you sort of do a little dance trying to figure out who will go right or left? This is the game that pedestrians play with motorcycles in Vietnam-- on the paved road, as well as on the sidewalk. The main roads had insane traffic and the electrical wires were really quite a sight (see photo-- Dad, don't worry, we're leaving Vietnam tomorrow), but the culture of the city was really up all the little alleyways, where women served pho for 50 cents at child-size sets of tables and chairs, and you can see guys practicing their karaoke skills in their open-air living rooms.

We also found some interesting things to do ourselves, like seeing the War Remnants Museum about the here-named "American War" (pretty depressing-- I feel surprised the Vietnamese has let us back into the country at all). Additionally, we had our second encounter with blind masseuses, but the massages weren't quite as impressive as the ones we'd gotten in Cambodia. Although, they did have private, curtained off rooms, and I splurged and spent 50 cents for air conditioning. I wasn't exactly sure whether I was meant to undress, though (we hadn't the last time), so I didn't, though perhaps the curtains should have been my indicator. It was quite fair, then, that when my masseuse came in, tugged at my skirt and pointed at the hooks on the wall. So, I hung my shirt and skirt there, but (not wanting to be too presumptious about local modesty customs) I left my bra and underwear on. The masseuse returned, and reached out to figure out where I was standing. She quickly noticed my bra and yelled, "AAARGH!" and tugged at it so that it snapped at me. It still makes me laugh to think of it-- friendly, huh? She pointed at the hook again and left. For a total of $2.50 I suppose I can't complain too much.

In general, though, Ho Chi Minh was yet another big city, and we found ourselves quickly getting frustrated. Everyone talks about how pretty Vietnam is, but you definitely can't see that in Saigon. We decided to book a daytrip to the Mekong Delta for Thursday, which seemed to make sense for money and time reasons. It did have its fun moments, but on the whole the day was a bit underwhelming and we got rather tired of being taken to souveneir stores with overpriced trinkets. Probably the funnest part was going in a little canoe with just the three of us and two Vietnamese rowers, or perhaps also taking a small wooden cart pulled by a horse-- little moments that felt a little more like they COULD have been authentic (even though I'm sure they were no less touristy than riding a gondala in Venice.) In any case, though, the rest of the day wasn't quite worth writing home about.


So, we booked a flight to Hanoi for the next day, with plans to get out of the city to Cat Ba Island (in Halong Bay) as quickly as possible. After our not-so-spectacular Mekong Delta tour, we were fairly intent on getting there independently. Luckily, due to the hotels being overbooked for the weekend, we were forced to go on a tour boat. This turned out to be an AMAZING "back-up" plan. We booked a mid-priced three day tour of Halong Bay that included one night on the boat and one night at a hotel on Cat Ba. The boat was so fun, I can't even tell you. We basically had two full days with a really great group of about 15 people from Switzerland, Belgium, the Netherlands, Taiwan, Australia, Singapore, and England. The trip included plenty of time to kayak, swim, and see caves in what was basically Never Never Land. There were some other boats around sometimes, but they were all of a classic smallish wooden design that made you forget that they were full of other tourists too. We jumped off the roof of the boat for nighttime swims and though we had rooms, a bunch of us spent part of the night sleeping under the stars (until it got quite windy around 2 a.m.) All in all, it was amazing and so worth visiting.


Cat Ba, by the way, turned out to be kind of lame. We went on a really cool/intense hike there, but the city itself is basically a crowded party central with lots of overpriced alcohol. Sooo glad that we didn't go straight there.

So, today we came back to Hanoi, but we were pretty much done with Vietnam. While the country does seem to be a pretty place, we're not quite as enchanted on the whole as we'd hoped to be. The men are significantly less respectful than the ones we'd found in Thailand and Cambodia (I am not a cat, please stop clicking your tongue at me as if it will make me attracted to you-- and also, please don't grab my butt and then grin at me as if that was perfectly appropriate), and we're quite tired of the fact that Vietnamese consider honking to be defensive driving-- even in more rural areas, it is incessant and inescapable. The scams are more frustrating than anywhere we've been (no matter how clearly you agree on a price for transport, it is common that more is demanded on arrival) and disagreements seem to easily become shouting matches and physical violence-- not that we'd care enough about a dollar to get involved in a fistfight, of course, but all of these things combined make for certainly not the most pleasant of environments. Maybe we just didn't do this country quite right, but it doesn't seem to be working out for us this time around.

So, we're ready to move on, and we've decided to leave tomorrow, and skip Laos for now (though I may go later this summer) in favor of less time on buses and more time in the north of Thailand while Fonze is with us. Yaaay elephants:-)

Until next time, much love,
Sara