home again

Hey yall


So as S has already stated, we had a little snag in Vang Vieng, Laos... Its all good now, but at the time we seriously thought we had met our watery deaths... and then wandered through the jungle with no clothes or shoes and subjected ourselved to thousands of mesquitte bites. My legs are so nasty!! red and swollen. But lets not dwell on the bad. We met up with our friends Sean and Jorg again in Vientiane.. the city with the most beautiful name ended up being the most shitty. Seriously, the city was without water for most of our stay and there was nothing redeeming architecturally or scenically. So we made our time there very short.

Our final stop on the journey was Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. A place I have always dreamed of going to but never thought we would actually make it. The city is the beacon of modernization in the far east. It was gorgeous! Killer buildings, mad traffic, hustle and bustle, everything that makes a modern city exciting, plus all the character and ambience of southeast asia. Outdoor markets and foodstalls, colors everywhere, bright lights, a mishmosh of cultures. Malaysia was the only muslim country we visited and the difference was incredibly apparent, but not overwhelming or intimidating. We ate indian food with our hands just like all the muslim business men for lunch. We ate malay food with our hands for dinner with all the drunk kids. It was great. Also, we just happened to visit on their independence day!! The city was crazy busy with excitement and revelry. We got to see the fireworks show over the skyline of downtown KL, which was incredible. The next day we visited the Patronus Towers, the east's twin towers. They were spectacular and represented the rise of the east.. watch out America! We are not going to be the most affluent country in the world for long.. Malaysia is rising.

So after 24 hours of being on airplanes we are home again. I have killer jet lag and the beginnings of culture shock. We ate chicagos pizza as soon as we arrived. It was spectacular. I didnt know I was addicted to pizza until I began dreaming of it almost everynight since the third day of the trip. Fall is here and i am cold for the first time in 5 weeks. I am back to waiting tables as of two hours from now. The adventure is over... and I am only beginning to process what i have experienced. It is good to be home.. but the US is different to me now. I have seen the other side of the world and seen many ways to live and be. So lucky to have been able to go on this trip. Thanks to my parents for helping this happen for me. Love you all and cant wait to see you!!

i have presents..

signing out.

J

to all our new friends we met along the way, expect pictures soon. We have some crazy ones!

from best to worst

hey there all. apologies all around for not keeping the blog updated. we ran into a bit of a snag in vang vieng, laos... the main attraction in this small town is floating down the nam song river on big inner tubes. there are gigantic swings along the way, zip chords and the most spectacular mountain views. we had a fabulous time our first time down the river and decided (with our south african friend, roxy) to go 'round one more time. the scenery was so beautiful and the day so sparkling and the river so smooth that we brought along molly's camera in a dry bag. we decided that this was the most splendid day that we had had on our trip...

then our "most splendid day" turned into the worst day of our trip. as we watched the sun set we couldn't have been happier until we realized we were further from the river exit than we thought. sometime after the tubing exit, the river forks and one side gets rather "rough." because it was so dark we started to get a bit worried that we had missed the exit - there was very little electricity in the town - and had already lost a tube to the current. then we lost another tube. our friend roxy got out about 100 m upriver from us at a sort of staircase. we not-so-lucky-3 were presented with jungle as our exit! we scrambled up the bank into a thicket of plants. we recalled Sr. Louise from Cambodia telling us about these plants - the viet cong had planted them as a line of defence during the war becuase they are so unbelievably damn prickly. we had lost our clothes and shoes to the nam song so after tromping through the brambles we were covered in thorns and mosquito bites that swelled and hurt and itched worse than any bite ive ever had. (pictures to come) sometime during this hysteria we lost our dry bag with molly's camera and jeff and s's money, debit cards, credit cards and driver's licenses. our friend roxy was shouting to us from the outside "follow the light!" we walked and slid til we saw her and she kicked down the boards of a fence to get us out. we then began the 3 k walk back to town. it seemed like every tuk tuk in asia had wanted to pick us up no matter where we were. now NOBODY wanted to take us to town. the owner of the tubing place drove by on a motorbike and we eventually got home after much barefoot walking. upon return we were told we had to pay for the lost tubes even though we thought we were gonna die (maybe a bit of melodrama, but hey). then they got really ridiculous and told us we were gonna go to jail if we didn't pay the 7 dollars per tube. thankfully molly had stashed some australian money for just in case and we were able to pay them off.

next morning we got out of vang vieng as fast as possible. this experience, though much worse than any others we had, is pretty representative of loa. people depend so much on tourism for their income that we were lied to quite a bit. for example, on our 2 day slow boat from the thai border through loas to luang prabang, we had a night at a small town full of guesthouses and pushy loatians. our friends woke up to catch the boat and were told that it had already left and they would have to purchase a ticket on the speed boat. the speed boat was incredibly loud and fast, required life-jackets and helmets, and was two rows of people in a 3-foot-wide boat! our friends double-checked and, of course, found that the boat had in fact not left and they were being scammed. there's no telling how many times we were scammed and just didn't realize it. we caught a lot of the scams and made it through loas ok but it was work.

despite the dirty dealings we thought loas was the most beautiful country we travelled to. but we won't be going back to vang vieng any time soon...

there are many more stories to be shared but that's the big one for now.
hope all is well and i know i speak for all of us when i say we can't wait to see you!!!
peace to you,
s

we live

sabaidee! we're not dead! no computer access for the last few days because of several reasons: the internet we used in pai closes for drinking on mondays, we took a horridly long bus ride from 11 pm to 7am from thailand to the laos border, then got on a boat for a day (can barely be called a boat: two rows of wooden benches that were constructed bolt upright or slightly FORWARD with a bench wide enough to fit three inches of buttocks), spent the night in a shady sleazy scuzzy town where the electricity for the whole town turns off at 10 pm, another day on the boat and now we are here! the boat-ride was eye-popping beautiful with crazy-jungle-covered-mountains that were so beautiful the clouds were attracted too and hovered around them. we went through picturesqe mist, light rain, heavy rain, horizontal rain and it was all so beautiful. i woke up from a nap to an immense vista of clouds and mountains and jungle. my first thought was (british accent) "shitting hell! i'm on the mekong river!" not one time for two days did i lift my head and look at the landscape and believe my eyes. so powerful.

we met a german, a south african and a canadian who are cool and have joined our party. between them and the beerlao (local drink of choice) the first day on the boat was quite pleasant despite getting off a bus after 8 hours. second day we were all grumpy as hell but are having fun now.

tomorrow we are hoping to go up to veng vieng to go tubing down the river. you just lay and float down river and rafts in the middle of the river throw you a rope and pull you over to give you beer. it comes highly recommended...don't worry moms - we'll stick together and wear life-vests.

gotta run since our group now consists of 5 people waiting for me instead of 2...
much love,
s

ho-lao!

Ok sorry for the blog neglect... much has occured these last few days. We just arrived in Luang Prabang in Laos a few hours ago... this was after taking an 8 hour bus ride from Pai to the Thai border, taking a fishing boat across a river, then taking another bus to the pier, taking a 2 Day(!!!!) boat ride down the mekong river...

ok being a little dramatic. We had a lot of fun on the way, but I am done sitting on little wooden benches with more than verticle backs and seats so little even my ass didnt fit on it... The boat ride was beautiful though. The river is a lot like iced coffee, but the landscape is incredible. It felt like we were going through jurassic park. Lush greenery, and sheer cliff face.. so cool. Woke up today with a killer case of cunjunctivitis which is a gnarly version of pink eye (think no itching, much burning, and three times the red veins on your eye ball... not so pretty) and had to sit on the boat for 8 hours with tears running down my face from my plague eyeball... not so fun.

The rest of Pai was great. We made a welsh friend, Ian, who hung out with us the whole time. Rode our motorbikes to the hot springs outside the town and had a nice dip in the mountains. One of the pools was over 200 degrees farhenheit and you could buy eggs to boil in it. Crazy! We also attempted to ride our motorbikes to the waterfalls but after driving through the razorblade grass and losing much skin and blood, almost falling in drainage ditches, sliding down a dirt trail backwards while screaming "foot brake!!!", losing my shoe in a river, and talking to a villager who said we had a 3k trek through the jungle with no trail, we eventually aborted the mission. It was fun to watch the other farang (thai for foreigner) attempt to see the waterfall though. We talked a few of them out of it after they saw how bloody and muddy we were, but we waited till they went through a few mud lagoons first.

Cant believe we are in country number 4!! I am completely accustomed to the constant moving and its gonna be so weird to be sedentary when I get back. Cant wait to eat some cheese though!


Love
J

Ps. played an open mic in Pai on our last night! It was so fun and I felt cool singing in thailand.

pps. i got another tattoo!!! Sorry mom and dad.. Its a stylized phoenix on my shoulderblade. discreet and cool... couldnt resist.

elefants!!

Yo

so guess what we did today? yup you guessed it. We rode elephants through the thai jungle!! It was so crazy! Such a good experience minus the mad ass pains i have from sitting on the elephant back for 3 hours and my swollen thumb that got bitten by a giant green caterpillar with a pink bum that got stuck to me after we got driven through a tree...

Beyond that though, great times... except when the elephant stopped to eat her second breakfast and left us 2 feet away from this giant crab sized spider with a web that was three feet in diameter and looked very hungry... she was poised to strike i could tell.

It was killer though! Amazing landscape. Both jungle and mountain, all from 10 feet off the ground. We all rode with our guide Noi on this 37 year old elephant named Mai (which is funny coz that is mollys nickname) and took turns sitting on her head. At first I was in the front and Mai's right ear had this wierd curl that enveloped my leg... Freaky in the beginning and then ended up being great bug and spiky plant armor once we were in the bush.


The best part was when we went down this steep hill and molly was in front and was seriously sliding down Mai's face. She was on her eyes and grabbing desperately for Noi while gasping in panic every step Mai took. All four of us laughed hysterically until we reached level ground. I keep laughing everytime I think about it. We also got to take Mai in the river which was basically a quickly moving mass of thick brown mud. It looked like ca phe sua da from Vietnam. The guide, Noi, told us that elephant sit down and I was not ready for what happened next. I got launched off the ten foot tall elephant as she began to roll and was dragged damn far down river while struggling to get back on her massive back. Slightly panicked but it was so fun!!

Anyway, Pai is great. very small.. but wonderfully chill with great food. Staying in a small bungalow which is fun and will be a great MTV cribs video. Wait till you see the toilet!!

gotta go. there is food to be eaten and beers to be imbibed.

love
J

mountain biking

So today the three of us took our bikes to the top of the mountain to see the wat near chiang mai. We were informed that there was only one road to the wat and therefore we would not get lost, but we did. Not only did we take the wrong road to the mountain, we all three had runins with a ditch and then proceeded to get lost in this random zoo that was on the mountain although none of us could remember the point when we crossed into zoo territory... we were just driving up a mountain and next thing we know there are rhinos. They tried to make us pay for a ticket when we finally found the exit, but we just kept saying no. We eventually did find the right road and it was the craziest winding mountain road ever! Dont worry dad we wore our helmets today. We felt pretty badass driving up a mountain on motorbikes though. The view was absolutely spectacular and we had the best pad thai ever at the top. The wat was cool minus the 268 stairs (my knees are killing me) it was still functioning and had many worshipers as well as this giant gold temple in the middle. It was the most ostentatious thing I have ever seen, but very beautiful. We leave chiang mai tomorrow for Pai which should be great and will definately involve elephant riding.

ps. We ate maggots again last night when we were drunk at this reggae bar. And they were still good!!

J

and a few more

ok so heres the dilly yo. Thailand is great! We have eaten the best food today. We had this amazing thai salad for lunch that involved an old lady with a giant bowl and huge stick that mashed chillies, crabs, and various vegetables together for our eating enjoyment. It was mad spicy, but delicious. Later we went to a big booth and ate a snakehead fish on a stick, which sarah has explained in her post. gloriously good. We rented motorbikes today and raced around the city. It was so hot out, but the breeze on the bikes was great. Much safer in Thailand. They actualy have street lights, lanes, and stop signs. They do drive on the left side of the road which took some getting used to but no big deal. Happy to be back riding the red wave!

peace to y'all


Jim Chambeaux

more pics

todays installment of photos courtesy of jim chambeaux. This is a great shot of all of us with the kids we taught english to in cambodia.

Also, our wharf rat hostel had the coolest lights at night so we had to take rock star photos.

then we have a splendid pic of sarah in a tuk tuk on way to killing fields.


also a pic of us goofing around at the 3 kings monument in chiang mai. You gotta make your own fun... and we do.
J

yay!

yay!!! tummy is feelin good for the first time in 17 days! thailand is fabulous and motorbikes are like flying and life is so good i'm high! the food market we went to tonight was incredible - can you imagine how healthy america would be if food courts were indiviual food stands selling incredibly fresh food that wasn't deep fried in poly-mono-saturated-unsaturated-sinthetic goo? we ate a snakehead fish on a stick - fish popsicle! it was awesome. everything is awesome in thailand. it feels a bit like hanoi which is so comforting because everyone there was so friendly. walking around the food stalls tonight brought many smiles in addition to the crazy-good food. maybe it's just cuz i feel like a person again...
i love this!
s

yay!

yay!!! tummy is feelin good for the first time in 17 days! thailand is fabulous and motorbikes are like flying and life is so good i'm high! the food market we went to tonight was incredible - can you imagine how healthy america would be if food courts were indiviual food stands selling incredibly fresh food that wasn't deep fried in poly-mono-saturated-unsaturated-sinthetic goo? we ate a snakehead fish on a stick - fish popsicle! it was awesome. everything is awesome in thailand. it feels a bit like hanoi which is so comforting because everyone there was so friendly. walking around the food stalls tonight brought many smiles in addition to the crazy-good food. maybe it's just cuz i feel like a person again...
i love this!
s

more

ok this is it I promise!

A pic of molly eating dragon fruit on the boat in haylong bay. They cut it and it kinda looks like teeth.. hence the picture

A pic of the three of us at a pagoda outside of hanoi


A pic of the motorbike chaos of Saigon. It wasnt even rush hour! needless to say we traveled by foot in that city.

A pic of sarah and our british friend atin who chilled with us in Saigon and took us to the places with the cheapest food and the nastiest "muk" or cuttlefish

A pic of me smoking this traditional vietnamese bong on the boat in Haylong Bay. The boat staff really wanted us to try. It was harsh!! Dont worry it was only tobacco

J

more random photos

ok here are some more


A pic of sarah and our vietnamese host and motorbike master phuong riding the "red wave"

A pic of me reflected in the motorbike mirror while buying fruit from a lady so old she looked like gollum and had black teeth

A pic of us and our hanoi friends drinking bia hanoi and eating gross but good food

A pic of the three of us in Haylong Bay. How sweaty are we? it looks like we jumped in the water

and a pic of me, sarah and phuong in action on the bikes in hanoi

why can't i eat that heart?

all kids are cute - but these kids are reeeeeeal cute aren't they! kindof glad to be out of cambodia tho... don't tell sister louise. there are especially good vibes flying around here in thai! the city is cool and looks like we won't have death by motorbike. i can't wait to get back on a bike. i just wanna ride around, get a little lost and check out changmai. the banana guest house can arrange all of our trekking, elephink rides, visit to village-of-very-long-necks and even our transport to luang prabang so it looks like we might have moved in for a bit - which is kindof a nice feeling.

i'm still sick by the way. feeling very... fragile. if i get jostled or don't focus on swallowing carefully i feel like i'll lose my lunch - or whichever of the 8 meals a day that we eat. j and m are annoyed that i'm still sick. me too. probably you too.

i just want to get well enough to start eating some really weird/gross things without suppressing the gag reflex. last night we went to a lau place - a pot of fire on your table with a can of propane and you add your own ingredients to a pot of broth and in this case a duck. i love duck. i can eat a whole duck (which i may never do again after seeing hungry kids in cambodia). when my family has duck they get one and i get one. hoewever, this duck was all the things that we don't eat... i don't think there was more than one bite of meat for each of us, if that. it was all the business from the insides. normally i would be very into trying all of the unidentified organs - really my biggest motivation for coming to SE asia was food - but i tried to do a chunk of what i think was heart and couldn't finish. soooo disappointed in myself. i ate part of the liver and that was good: smooth and buttery. didn't make me wretch only because it was familiar. the "heart" or whatever it was, was dense, and the texture of many squid in a stack - it sort of had levels of chewiness but somehow tasted very CLEAN. like squeaky clean. but meatier than squid. normally this would turn me on: a totally new thing in a place where they serve it all day long, packed with locals and recommended by a true cambodian. damn.

hope everyone is doing well!
i love yous!
s

new pics

ok here are the pics of the kids i promised. They were like little climbing monkeys! I had so many on me I fell and ripped a huge hole in my pants. I had to walk around the village with my bum out all morning.... embarrassing.

J

News from Thailand

So we are officially in country number 3: Thailand. I was sad to leave phnom penh, our wharf rat guesthouse really grew on me, and we did not have time to see much of the city. However, I am happy to leave khmer food behind, which was kind of a combination of everything asian with nasty ingredients like snakehead fish and chicken feet mixed in. The thai landscape was breathtaking on our flight in. The countryside was scattered with mountains with stainglass-like rice fields carving up the lowlands that reflected the sunlight up to the sky in vibrant olives and browns... it was cool to say the least. We are staying at another guesthouse called the Banana Guest house. The walls are covered with the graffiti of all the other backpackers who have stayed there before, which is really funny. Cant wait to leave our mark. We will be doing some kind of trekking, and definately riding elephants on a safari while we are here. Cant wait! Tomorrow we will rent cheap motorbikes and explore Chiang Mai, which is much smaller and chiller than the cities we have visited so far. Still having a blast in Asia. At this present moment i am in an internet cafe where geckos are running around the desk and it is slightly comforting and normal. Its strange how accustomed you get to things.

Miss you all and will have exciting posts coming in the next few days.


J