I should have a blog up about the horrible farm I'm at but the 2 and 1/2 hours of work I just did were deleted by this stupid India computer. I will not have internet access again until I get to Greece which, thank god, is in less than a week. Even then I am not sure when I will have a computer again so, sorry. I really tried. Just another reason why I can't wait to leave India!

The Taj Mahal

The next day we went to the Taj Mahal. We wanted to get their for sunrise and Mimi was told that it was a nice place to spend the day and read so I brought my kindle. Once we got our tickets and waited in line I got to security and they told me that electronic reading devices were not allowed. I then had to walk about a mile to the "locker room" and pay to keep my kindle there. By the time I got back the sun had risen. The Taj Mahal was still beautiful and it was early enough that there weren't that many people there and we got some good pictures. We dressed in our "saris" that day and wore colorful bindis and looked very festive. Throughout the day I think more people took pictures of us than the Taj Mahal and we got many comments on how nice my sari was. It was especially nice to hear it from the older Indian women because I find them the most judgmental and it seemed to validate what I was wearing. We left for 10 minutes for lunch and decided to buy playing cards. Security almost didn't let us in, but finally told us we could bring them in if we didn't open them. We got away with playing cards on a bench for about an hour until 2 men told us it was not allowed. I asked them why and they just pointed at the Taj Mahal. Apparently because its a mausoleum you are not allowed to do anything fun there. It was nice to watch the light change on the building which, from a distance seemed small and far away, but with the feeling that it would be huge when you got up closer. It was very big, but once inside it seemed like it should have been even bigger. The inside of the building was intricately designed, with semi precious stones, but not nearly as impressive as the exterior view. We ended up spending 6 hours there which seemed to fly by. If I don't see anything else in India, my trip here was worth it for that.

Sandipani Muni School

On our 4th day we went to the Sandipani Muni School. They title this school "For the Poorest of the Poor." They started in 2002 and now have over 1000 kids. The school goes from preschool to 9th grade and the facilities are amazing. Many of the more promising children who are more likely to stay in school are sponsored by people around the world. Some sponsors pay more money when sponsoring girls to ensure that they stay in school through the age of 18th to prevent child marriage, and at the age of 18 they are giving a pension. Some girls enter marriage at age 12 and get pregnant immediately which makes them very sick, as they are children and don't get any medical care. The school has a computer room, library, classrooms, a play ground, a tennis court, basketball court and 3 ping pong tables. Kids get free breakfast and lunch everyday. The chef has been working there/serving food to the poor for 18 years, cooking 2000 meals every day. The children are overly friendly and affectionate, but all seem fairly well behaved. The head of the sponsor program was telling us how the children come to school knowing krishna is god, but not knowing the earth is round. When she said this, for a moment I thought that his might be a bit more secular than any of the other teachings in the city, but I soon realized that all the teachers, Indian or ex-pats were krishna devotees and the main goal of the students was for them to become practicing devotee themselves. They still teach manners, math, basic facts, and low level education, but mostly religion. She said its hard too keep a lot of the kids in school because the parents put them in, but then take them out after they have been given their uniforms, just so they could get the free clothes. She also told us that most of the kids come into the school with blond hair due to malnutrition, but leave with dark black hair.

The next day we went back and spent the whole day at the school. In the morning we played with the pre-schoolers who were ages 5-9. We played head, shoulders, knees and toes with them, and the hokey pokey as well as with some of the toys that were in the play room. Most of the toys had a ton of gekko poop in the bottom of the bins, which came with a really foul smell. Teaching is a lot of work. By our third and last group of children my energy level was at a 3. The kids don't really know how to share and they hit each other a lot which is not reprimanded by the teachers. It was hard to communicate with them since they don't really speak any english. They all called us Matadee (which i'm sure i'm spoelling wrong) which means "Mother."

After lunch we played sports with them. The day before we had decided to buy Gopi sets, which look just like saris but are comprised of a skirt and a scarf, making it much easier to wear and, wouldn't you know it, being specific to krishna devotees and vrindavan, which we found out after our purchase. So we had to play sports in these get ups, which made everything more difficult. I felt like an Indian version of Laura Ingles Wilder running in 115 degree heat with a basketball being chased by 10 fourteen year old boys. They know what a basketball is, but they don't know how to play it as an organized sport and they don't care to learn, so it was very difficult to keep a game going. If there was one aggressive child, the game was over, because he was the only one who was allowed to touch the basketball. I tried my best to make things fair, but that didn't really fly with the children and the smaller ones got pushed away.

That night we helped give out food to poor children and widows in the multipurpose room of the lower school. We were planning on going to Agra the next day and found out that some of the kids from the school, as well as the school directors were going and we could join them on the bus.

On the bus, which was a school bus, we each sat in a seat with about 4-5 children. Most of them had never been out of Vrindavan before and were very excited about looking out the window. They were very well behaved on the bus which surprised me. We found out that their field trip was to a hotel where the owner lets them use the multipurpose room for games and dancing and them provides lunch in the dining room. Because we came with the school we were given a discount on the hotel. We played with the children all day, learning how to dance with them, picking them up and spinning them around. During lunch we tried to teach them about napkins and forks and not to dip your hands in the water. By the end of the day we were exhausted and smelled very badly, but were sad to see the kids go.

March 18th: day 3 at the ashram

Day 3 at the ashram. Today we went to Chandi's farm and....cleaned up trash!!! Chandi lives in a huge red sandstone house with lots of guard dogs and more construction workers than furniture. In the one furnished room we saw, was a monkey in a carrier who had just had his arm amputated after sticking his finger in an electrical socket at the ashram and getting electrocuted. All the walls of the house are glass. We were quickly hurried out of the house and riven to the farm, without getting the opportunity to meet Chandi. We asked when we got there if we could help with the harvest and they said firmly, no, and just to pick up trash, so we did that, even though there wasn't much trash to be collected. We had been told the farm was next to a bird sanctuary, and while we were there we saw 5 egrets, so I guess that's what they were talking about. Around noon, it got too hot so we came back to the ashram. Later that night we went to a "concert" in a temple. The concert consisted of lots of people, women on one side, men on the other, sitting cross-legged around 3 men singing and playing instruments. They sang about 7 renditions of the "hare krishna" chant while we were there. The melodies changed each time, but the words stayed the same. Everyone sang and clapped and prayed to the deities that were on display. The deities looked like the means for a puppet show. A red velvet curtain would open to a stage which gets lit up and everyone runs over towards the deities to pray. I really expected music to start and the deities dolls to jump up and start telling a story.

After the concert we went to a restaurant that served western food. Most of the hare krishna devotees are westerners who make their pilgrimage to Vrindavan. It actually became more interesting to me once I learned more about Vridnavan, and it being the place where the religion started and where krishna was born. One woman we met compared it to people making their pilgrimage to Jerusalem. It made me a little more understanding of how intense everyone's devotion was, as this really was the mecca of krishna, rather than just being a cult town.

March 17th: first day of work

"We do selfless work for a higher power. We ask for NOTHING in return, not even gratitude or thanks. It's purely selfless."

We went to the Yamuna river to clean up the trash. On arrival we learned that everyone from this town who dies is cremated on the beach where we were cleaning and their ashes sent out into the water. So during our clean up we had to pick up dead peoples clothing, some still covered in ash, human hair, an occasional human bone. There are cows littering the beach, which in India are sacred so no one picks up their crap. There are also a lot of cow skeletons on the beach. I'm not exactly sure what happened to those, but probably a mixture of heat exhaustion and being attacked by a dog makes the most sense. Most of the trash is buried under cow shit which is all covered in flies. A lot of the garbage is torn up into little pieces and some of it even looks as if it made its way all the way through the cow. At one point children approached and instead of helping, threw garbage at us and yelled at us, which really was very comforting and made our charitable work that much more rewarding. Another group of children approached up and threw dirt at us using a big stick. The dirt came with a girl of a snake, and so I excused myself out of the landfill and went back towards the water. As the sun rose higher in the sky the heat became almost unbearable. I picked up a floating bag and out rushed what I could only identify as blood and I did my best not to faint. For the 3 hours we picked up garbage a man and woman in the distance sang, in turn "Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishan, Hare Hare. Hare Rama, Hare Rama, Rama Rama, Hare Hare." over and over and over again. I know these words very well as I sang them in the musical "Hair" my junior year of high school, but these devotees did not continue their song with "Love, love love love love love love love drop out drop out drop out drop out be in be in be in be in" or "beads love freedom happiness" or any of the lyrics about getting high. It was simply those phrases sung over and over and over again, continuing on until after we left. On our walk back I commented to Rada Govinda, one of the devotees staying at the ashram, that the people singing the songs must have a lot of patience to sing the same thing over and over. She smiled and replied "Its an honor to sing the name of god. They are lucky they get to do it all day long. It will bring them closer to god." Personally I think the only thing it could possibly bring on is insanity. On the way back to the ashram I saw 2 monkeys have sex. It was the raunchiest thing in the world and I am traumatized. I saw the male monkey lick his palm to lubricate his member, bend the female monkey over, and have his way with her from behind. It was almost as if he was mocking the guru. Later that day taking a shower never felt so good, even though I did have to squat under a faucet next to a ground toilet that didn't flush. Being clean felt like a privilege.

March 17th: morning meeting

We woke up at 6:30 AM, and I quickly washed out my wounds in the communal port-a-potty they call a bathroom. We went downstairs where the "guru" was waiting for us and surprised we weren't up at 5 am for yoga, which he never mentioned to us. He then asked us what we knew about the Hare Krishna and when we said nothing he led us upstairs and had us sit down on the roof. Soon we were surrounded by about 16-20 devotees, all wearing headphones and I realized that one man was translating the guru's talk into spanish so everyone else could understand him. (most of the devotees living at the ashram were found in South America and "led" to India by the guru). The guru assumed, because we happened to be volunteering at the ashram, that unlike your typical westerners, we were living a life of purity and searching for meaning through a higher power. He did not know how wrong he was about us. He talked about wealth and beauty and plastic surgery as evils and purely materialistic and in his words therefore "horrible sins." He looked right as me when he said it as if he knew something, but them smiled and I realized that only one of his eyes was looking at me and I wasn't sure if it was the working one. His eyes were never looking the same direction. He talked about sex, aside form procreation, as an evil and drinking as well. He talked about love as something stupid that your soul in your temporary body might seek out in another temporary body, but that it wasn't really love because the only love you could feel was for god. I don't believe in God. He doesn't believe in Darwin. I figured we were even and dismissed any feeling of discomfort that his lecture had made me feel.

There are two little girls living here with their mother. One is 3 and the other is 6. They are originally from Australia. They each have nose rings, a side one and a bull ring. They have no manners and are rude and obnoxious. They know how to dance and preach to us about Krishna and what we should do to please him, but they don't know how to count. The guru talks about secular education as a downfall, but who is teaching these children? All they know is a cult religion. He talks about money as if it doesn't exist in India, and that westerners are ruining everything for them (He is German, everyone else is South American), but I had been in India for one week by that point and already I had noticed a caste system that still exists and has everything to do with money. The men working at the hotel we stayed at in New Delhi are treated like slaves by the managers there and the people across the street from the hotel were living in lean-to's made out of garbage. He also talked about disease as punishment for one's past lives and a lesson that has to be taught. I'm not sure if its a coping method, or if he has never been sick or known anyone sick, but I thought that was crazy. He thinks that everyone who doesn't believe in god is closed minded, but he seemed more closed minded than anyone I had ever met.

Vrindivan/ the "Eco Village" aka ashram/ hare krishna ashram

We took a train from New Delhi to Vrindavan, where the Eco Village we were going to stay at was. The train was dirty and crowded and lots of beggars came through with missing limbs or eyes, waiting for you to give them money and screaming at you in multiple languages. Ignoring them did not work you had to scream at them in return to get them to leave. It was only a 2 hour train ride and once we got off we were bombarded by tuktuk drivers. We finally found a van cab to take us and our huge bags to Vrindavan which was 40 minutes from the station. Once we arrived at the Eco Village we realized it wasn't an eco village at all...it was an ashram. And on top of that it was a hare krishna ashram called the Vrindavan Institute for Vaishnava Culture and Studies. Straight off the bat it was 100% cultish. The guru, Swami B.A. Paramadvaiti, started telling us his views which included "secular teachings are ruining the world and giving out poor eductation," "vegetariansism is the only way to live and if you dont you are a murderer," and " you must believe in a god or else your life is meaningless and serves no purpose." He told us that the next day we were required to attend a class at 7 am, led by himself, and that we had the honor of going to the Yamuna river and "collecting" garbage. It felt more like convict roadside community service especially since many of the men in the hare krishna wear orange. The beds in our rooms were essentially small wooden tables with a cushion on them and had there not been so many bugs, I might have been more comfortable sleeping on the ground.

Vrindavan has more monkeys than people and they will steal your glasses, sunglasses, cameras in order to get food. Sometimes when they give you food they give your items back, sometimes they throw them, and sometimes they break them. Its really a toss up. They are apparently vicious too, biting people and taking large chunks of skin with them. As much as I was already feeling threatened and uncomfortable by the aggressiveness of the Indian people, now I had to fear the animals, too. India is by far the hardest place I have been in my life.

India - New Delhi

We flew into New Delhi from Bangkok, and were picked up by someone from our hotel, which was a nice surprise. New Delhi is one very large construction site. They are hosting some sort of games there and the construction has to be done by November, so literally every street is dug up. Aside from some women's clothing, it was not as colorful as I had imagined. It was very hot and we had to cover up as to not be rude. Aside from covering up though, indian people do not have good manners. They spit all the time, burp, and smell. They also throw up whenever they want to, usually when walking down the street. They are extremely pushy and yell a lot, even if they aren't angry. The smells in India are wonderful and terrible. Most of the time I try to breathe out of my mouth, but every once in a while you smell something really really good and take a deep breath but by the time you're done breathing in the smell had changed to something putrid and it stays with you for 5-10 minutes.

We walked around a market close to our hotel where there were a ton of people selling things on the street and in stores. Many of the stores had people dressed as clowns outside trying to lure people in. As if that was going to make me go anywhere near that store, haha. We decided to buy some colorful tunics at the market which made us feel very festive. All of the women's sari's were beautiful and looked very nice on their dark skin.

The food was instantly great, as indian flavors are nothing like any other country we had been to. In my whole life indian food is probably the food I have eaten the least of, so I was very curious about their flavors and adventurous in my ordering. Eating with my right hand is not easy and I always forget. Luckily most of the restaurants we went to in New Delhi had silverwear so it was as huge a faux pas as when you have to eat directly with your hand.

Our 2nd day in New Delhi we went on a tour of New and Old Delhi. We saw Gandhi's last house and where he was assassinated, Indira Gandhi's house, the first Indian Woman Prime Minister, the President's house, and the Lotus Temple, all in New Delhi. Our "tour guide" turned out to just be a driver with an opinion about where we should go. At the lotus temple, there were many people whose jobs were just to tell other people to be quiet and escort them out if they were not being quiet. It looked like the worst job in the world and you could tell they agreed because everyone doing it was in a terrible mood. Our driver kept making up excuses for not taking us to old Delhi but we finally convinced him to. We went to Jama Masjid, a very large mosque in old delhi. Because we were white and not muslim, they made us put on these over-sized pink and white spotted clown, moo moo robes. All the indian people laughed at us and took pictures of us in a mocking way. It was the least flattering thing I've ever had to wear in public, maybe in private too. Before we entered we were told to take off our shoes and place them on the side. When we left a man was standing next to our shoes and made us pay him the equivalent of 50 cents to get them back. I don't think he worked there and I pictured my dad doing the same thing to tourists so I was ok with it. Besides, I had come to realize that everything in India is a scam in one way or another and everyone is going to do their best to rip you off and even when you think you're not getting ripped off, you still are. Old Delhi is much more crowded and dirty than New Delhi. It is pigeon heaven also, so if any pigeons are sick of New York City, they should make the pilgrimage. There is so much traffic, and just like south east asia, very few traffic laws that I could see and it was really a miracle that everyone doesn't get extremely injured when they get into a car or attempt to cross the street. In vietnam there was a lot of traffic, but people walked across the street slowly and calmly, knowing traffic would go around them. In india, everyone runs across the street, knowing if they are a step too slow, its over. One day we took the subway, which wasn't as dirty as I imagined, but just as smelly and crowded. You have to wait on a very long line to buy a token. Then you have to wait on a very long line to go through security. They you have to wait on a very long line to go through the turnstile. Then you have to wait for your train. Then you have to push as hard as you possibly can to get on. They you feel like you're getting molested by everyone on the train. Then you have to push your hardest to get off the train. Then you have to wait on a very long line to get out through the turnstile. By the time we got off and walked to the restaurant we were going to I was mentally and physically exhausted.

We went to a Revolving Restaurant on the 24th floor of a building in Connaught place called Parikrama. One full revolution takes an hour and a half and there are signs that you arrive at inside the restaurant telling you what you are looking out at. The food was good, but a bit expensive, and its obvious you're paying for the experience more than the meal. The next day we took the subway to the Red Fort, in Old Delhi, which again was just too overwhelming for me. We met up with DJ, a boy who Ashley had been emailing with about us maybe staying at his parents house up north, which she had found through work away. He informed us on our meeting that they could not host us, and then could not tell us anything about the red fort, except that once he lived there when he was a kid, which I don't believe for a second. We only had a little bit of time to walk around because we were going to an expat reggae party that night who we had heard about from a friend of a friend of Mimi and Ashley's. The party was fun and the music was good. It was nice to be around people who spoke english and it kind of felt like a safe haven in India, and if the music hadn't been so loud I would have liked to ask everyone there what they were doing in New Delhi. We finally got in contact with an Eco Village and decided to take the trip and stay there for a week, getting ourselves out of Delhi.

Thailand

Mimi and I flew into Bangkok and needed a few days to recover from Cambodia. Our taxi driver from the airport couldn't find out hotel and started yelling at us, which wasn't exactly the warm welcome we wanted, but having been to Thailand, and Bangkok specifically before, I wasn't surprised. We finally arrived at our hotel 2 hours later, but our room was very nice, especially for the price, so we were happy. (By the way, if anyone ever needs a hotel we've been using Agoda.com which has great rates and the hotels are always as nice as they say.) We decided to go to a mall for the day, surprisingly that is what my mom and I did last time we were in Bangkok, but this mall was much nicer than the one I'd been to 3 years ago. We saw the movie, Valentine's Day, which was fairly awful, and I was appalled that they called it the American version of Love, Actually. I did find an amazing dress though, so please inform me if you're getting married or there is a party I should attend once I get home because I'm going to need somewhere to wear it.

The next day we took a sleeper train up north to Chiang Mai. I had never been in a sleeper car before and it was much more comfortable than I imagined. They came in and made our beds for us and gave us blankets, etc. We did make the mistake of ordering breakfast though and were woken up at 5 am and forced out of our room. When we were allowed back in our beds were gone and our breakfast didn't arrive for a half hour after that. All in all though it was a painless process and we were happy that we had the whole day ahead of us once we got to Chiang Mai. Our first night there we met two Australian girls and went with them to Mui Thai, a Thai Boxing match. It was a lot of fun to watch, not violent at all, and we started putting down bets with the people sitting behind us. After the match we were walking around looking for somewhere to go and decided to jump on some motorbikes who took us to the rasta area. We went to one bar where a cover band was playing. I begged the lead singer to let me sing on stage and when he finally agreed and played 'Sex on Fire' I obviously forgot all of the words. My energy level was up though so it wasn't a complete failure and everyone was self involved enough not to throw things at me. The next day we went on the "Flight of the Gibbons," where you zip line from tree to tree, flying through the air like a Gibbon might. You dont actually see any gibbons on the trip, but it was a great experience, flying from platform to platform. Each group had 9 people in it and although we had been told it was a lot of waiting in line, it seemed to go pretty quickly. It also felt very safe which I liked, as I'm not the best with heights and risky activities.

The next day we took a bus back to Bangkok to apply for our India visas and then flew to Koh Samui. After our flight we took a ferry to Koh Phangan, where the famous full moon party was. It wasn't for a few days but every night leading up to it was a huge beach party. The day of the actual Full Moon Party Ashley met up with us again. By that time we had met a lot of people at our hotel and so we all went togther, but quickly lost each other once we got to the beach. Having been there for days in advance the Full Moon Party seemed overwhelmed with people and completely claustrophobic. I felt as though I could be trampled at any minute. The next day was our last on Koh Pangang and so we decided to go out, one last time. Every night we were there there were fire activities on the beach; fire jump rope, fire high jump, fire limbo, fire twirling, etc. I had always avoided the fire, knowing no good could come of it, but saw other people doing it every night and coming out really without a scratch. So, on our last night, when there were fewer people on the beach than we'd ever seen before, I decided to give the fire high-jump a try. I figured I was a great high jumper in 4th grade and probably nothing had changed, right? WRONG. Aside from gravity deciding it was no longer my friend, many other things went wrong. As I was running toward the high jump they raised it and re lit it, causing me to misread the height and the heat, and run into it rather than over it, very badly burning both of my legs and ruining the rest of my time in Thailand.

The next day, bandaged up and barely able to walk, we took a ferry boat to Koh Tao. It was very very beautiful there, but by the doctors orders I couldn't go near the sand, water or sun, so I enjoyed the view from my hotel balcony and got some reading in. As much as I dont LOVE snorkeling, I was very jealous of anyone who could do water activities. A few days later we went back to Bangkok to pick up our visas. We saw Alice in Wonderland in 3D, which I think distracted me from the movie itself, but I still enjoyed it nonetheless. As I was still in pain and recovering I decided to go to the hospital in Bangkok, and aside from some mandatory errands I had to run, spent the rest of my time resting and recovering before India.

The moral of this story is, don't play with fire.

Siem Reap, Cambodia

Traveling with someone who is not on a budget and is generous is wonderful. Instead of taking an excruciatingly long bus ride to Siem Reap from Phnom Penh, Lance and I flew on a painless 40 minute flight. When we got off the plane we didnt have a hotel but told our cab driver our budget and he said he would make some good suggestions and wait until we found one we liked that could take us. I forgot about cab driver commissions and scams until the 5th hotel we were shown. We finally asked our driver to take us to the FCC, a hotel that we had seen in a guide of Siem Reap and we wanted to see. Our driver told us it was a very bad hotel in a very dangerous area and that young cambodian children got drunk around the corner and then came and robbed you. Finally we asked him to call the hotel and ask about availability. He called them and spoke in english saying, "oh! you have NO availability? You only have 20 rooms? Ok thank you." It didn't make sense that he would call them and speak in english so we had him take us there anyway. Not only did they have room for us, but it was a beautiful hotel, right around the corner from all the other hotels we had seen. Our driver seemed fairly embarrassed and probably angry that we didn't decide to stay in one of the hotels he got commission from. As a belated birthday present Lance bought us a 3 day package from the hotel which included breakfast, a 3 day pass to Angkor Wat, a tour guide, driver to take us to watch the sunrise there, dinner and lunch, as well as a 15 minutes foot massage.

Our day trip to the Angkor Wat temples was very nice. Our tour guide was perfect in that he gave us lot of information, but wasn't constantly talking. As I often become very ADD around tour guides and would rather just wander, it was nice to only learn the essential information. Of course if either Lance and I asked any questions we was always ready with a perfect answer as well. We saw three temples that day, Bayon, the temple where Lara Croft Tomb Raider was filmed and Angkor Wat. Of all of them the Tomb Raider temple was the most impressive. It is being held up by tree roots and if they were to deteriorate the entire temple would collapse. Another amazing thing that happened there was that I ran into the Bildners, who had been on my mom and my Backroads trip to Napa. It was a very funny coincidence and I talked about it for the rest of the day which I'm sure irritated Lance a lot. Bayon and Angkor Wat, beautiful as they were, were both under very heavy construction, which took away some of their beauty. Even though they were being reconstructed with original stones it felt very artificial. Angkor Wat is really beautiful from a distance and I definitely appreciated it as we approached it, but once we got up close, yet again we were surrounded by roped off areas of construction and refurbishing. One thing that was lucky was that the 3rd floor of Angkor Wat that had been closed for the past 5 years due to reconstruction, of course, had reopened 5 days earlier. The views from the 3rd floor were incredible, but it smelled as if for the past 5 years the construction workers were using it as their very own personal port-a-potty, which made me feel very sad considering the original purpose of Angkor Wat and its timeless beauty. A few days later Lance left to go back home and Ashley left to go to Northern Thailand and work at a school. They both left on the 14th, Valentines day, which for the first time I was happy no one was celebrating. To my surprise though, the night before Lance left I came back to the hotel to find a dozen roses on the bed. It was sweet and corny and after he left I carried them around for two days and everyone looked at me like I was nuts.

One evening Mimi, Katie, Laura and I went to the Floating Village for sunset. It was beautiful and sad at the same time, completely filled with poverty, but set out on a beautiful body of water and as I watched the sun set I thought if anything they could feel lucky once a day that they got to witness something so beautiful. At the place where we stopped to watch the sunset there was a little room in the deck below filled with crocodiles which gave me the idea for our dinner. That night we went to a Cambodian bbq restaurant and ordered Crocodile, Snake, Ostrich, Kangaroo, and Frogs Legs. The snake was not good, but the Kangaroo was probably the best tasting meat I've ever tried in my whole life. We all had a lot of fun trying the different meats and it was definitely one of my favorite food experiences on the entire trip. That night, mostly by pure chance, we ran into Allie and Haley, from Skidmore. We had known that they were spending a little less than a month traveling S E Asia, but thought at that point that if we hadn't heard from them yet it was not going to happen, so we were not only surprised but so happy at this crazy coincidence. We went out with them for a few nights on Pub Street which is filled with bars and clubs. It was really nice to see them and took away and pangs of homesickness I might have been feeling. After Siem Reap we all went out seperate ways. Allie and Haley went to Laos, Laura went to Ho Chi Minh, Katie went to Hanoi, and Mimi and I went to Bangkok. It was a bittersweet goodbye, but we were definitely ready to move on from Cambodia.

Phnom Penh, Cambodia

After The Killing Fields and S-21 and the area in which our hotel was located we were feeling pretty down about Phnom Penh. Once we started walking around though we realized that it had much more to offer than just depression and motorcycle/tire shops. The road by the water was littered with restaurants of all types. There were traditional Khmer restaurants as well as, new american, italian, mexican, you name it. Although crowded, it was a nice place to walk as well. I loved the juxtaposition of an air conditioned international restaurant and a woman outside of it with her cart of cockroaches, which locals bought as snacks. One day we visited the Royal Palace, which was beautiful, but after having been to the royal palace in Bangkok, Thailand it did not measure up. As always the buildings open for public viewing were beautiful, but most of them were places of worship and pictures were forbidden. The part of the Royal Palace that looked most appealing of course was the part which we were not allowed to enter such as the Royal Gardens. They were listed and numbered on the map so Lance was convinced there was a way to get to them, but all the guards with their guns suggested otherwise. One night Lance took me out to a very nice French restaurant where almost everything on the menu included Fois Gras, caviar, or lobster, and I think all the staff was laughing at me when I was literally drooling at the menu. The next day we walked around Phnom Penh where there were more dentist offices than Starbucks in New York. We walked into one shop where they had to unlock the door, and followed us from floor to floor. I guessed they probably had 4 people on average in the store every day. It was an odd mix of 80s prom dresses and clothes that looked like they'd been lifted out of the back room at Lohmann's. We quickly excused ourselves and the doors were promptly locked behind us.

We had visited the Apocalypse Now bar in Vietnam, and in Phnom Penh they had a Heart of Darkness Club. It was the same idea, filled with prostitutes and lady boys and older white men who were willing to take their chances. They was a stage we we quickly found ourselves dancing on and the best part was that because of where we were we didnt even attract that much attention to ourselves. A few days later, being who is his, Lance found a casino. One of the perks of a casino apparently is good restaurants, and we decided to go to a Korean bbq. It was fun because I knew what everything was on the menu and exactly what to order. It was as good if not better than the Korean bbq I had in korea, probably because I wasn't on such a tight budget (because Lance was paying). After dinner I played blackjack for the first time with Lance's help and as much as I thought I understood about the game going into it I lost by the time I left the table. Luckily I did not lose any money, even if it was borrowed.

Cambodia - killing fields/s-21

We decided to cross the boarder from Laos to Cambodia by bus which means you essentially cross on foot. Since we were starting from the 4000 Islands in Laos, we took a boat to the mainland which, with its 10 passengers and 10 backpacks/bags, felt like we would most likely sink before we got there. When we reached the mainland a bus was waiting for us and we got seats right in the front with extra leg room. We knew it was an 11 hour bus trip and I somehow imagined that we were taking this bus straight across the boarder into cambodia for the whole 11 hours. That was a mistake. After my horrible bus rides in Laos I decided to take a sleeping pill. That was also a mistake. We reached the boarder much sooner than I had expected and before I could fall asleep but just as the pill was making me feel loopy. We had to then get off the bus and carry our heavy backpacks to multiple checkpoints where we had to get our passports checked, stamped, purchase our visas and had our temperatures checked. THe way they check your temperature is by putting what looks like a vibrator with a light on it against your forehead. It took us all by surprise. We had read that sometimes boarder patrol will try to get a dollar or so out of you but that it is illegal and that techinically you dont have to pay. At each station they would ask for a 1 dollar fee for passport stamps, etc. Some people protested and those people were told that they could sit down and wait but unless they paid they probably would not be allowed to cross the boarder, so we decided that the extra 4 dollars was worth it for our trip to progress. We were some of the first people to cross and then had to wait in the sun for about an hour for everyone to get across and then board a different bus. Cambodia uses US dollars and we quickly realized that everything you can buy in cambodia is at least 1 USD. Once we were back on the bus the ride was fairly simple and we arrived in Phnom Pehn around 10 pm. Katie and Laura were already there and had booked us rooms at their hotel so we settled in for an early night and went to bed.

The next day we went to the Killing Fields and S 21. And we were told to visit them in that order. When we arrived at the killing fields we got a guide who knew absolutely nothing about why they were there, or any information about the Khmer Rouge, only that his father and mother were killed there. He took us around and pointed out signs we should read and told us to take pictures of it all. With or without a guide, each point of focus was labled with a number and a path led you around. The experience in itself was sobering and at times horrifying, taking us back to the reactions we had when going to the Vietnam War Museum. Some of the "main attractions" at the killing fields were the Tower of Skulls, which held almost all of the skulls found in the graves (mostly from graves that were comprised only of human heads), The Killing Tree, on which babies were flung against until they were dead, the Loud Speaker, which played music to drown out the sound of the screams so passers by wouldn't know what was going on, The Graves, which at this point were just semi-large holes in the ground with a plaque next to it explainign how many people had been buried there. Next to these graves were the occassional bone that our guide would pick up and show us and say "arm bone" or "leg bone". There was also a museum room, which gave brief over views of the leaders of the Khmer Rouge, as well as some of the weapons that were used. Because they didn't have access to guns, or other military weapons, they used every day items to kill people as well as found items, i.e. a palm tree leaf to saw a man's head off (which happens to be very sharp) hence the necessity of the killing tree. There was also a 15 minute movie clip, which really explained nothing and, like our guide, went over the different areas of the killing field. We left depressed, but confused as none of us really understood the reason for the overtake of the Khmer Rouge and the necessity of killing all of these people.
Some of our questions were answered at S-21. S-21 was a school taken over by the Khmer Rouge and used as an interrogation prison for Cambodian people before they were shipped off to the killing fields. It was broken down into 4 buildings, which had each served different purposes. Some of the rooms were large, with a very small bed in the center with shackles hanging off of it. In each room there was a picture of a decaying man that had once laid on that bed to be tortured. Other buildings were broken up into many many small cells with barely any light and a small box to go to the bathroom in. Other horrifying items were the places where children used to play which were turned into torture devices where they would hang people and whip them in order to obtain information. Some floors of buildings were laid out with information about the Khmer Rouge which was very helpful in understanding why everything was going on. It was true that every one of the people who was being killed was innocent and it turns out there was no real concrete reason for killing any of them aside from the will to overturn an empire. It was purely the powerful against the weak and helpless, so it made a little more sense that our guide did not comprehend the ordeal. Again, just as seeing the kids who are still suffering from effects of agent orange, or hearing people's stories who had been through the Holocaust, most of the people who had grown up in Phnom Penh were just children who escaped the Khmer Rouge.

Laos

Before i start this post I need to comment on the fact that there is a 75 year old woman on the computer next to me playing a game where she owns a farm and is collecting animals. The sound is on.

From Hanoi we took a flight to Vientiane, Laos. This time the plane was small and crowded. Ashley sat next to a boy named Oliver on the plane and we ended up going out with him, and a traveler he met once we landed, Matt. We went to dinner and to a bar that we chose out of lonely planet because its description read "Beward of the women sitting at the bar eating beetles who claim to be hairdressers." Yes, Lonely Planet is on crack. There were no people eating beetles and no one asked to cut my hair. We were very disappointed. (I just heard two horse 'nays' followed by an elephant sound. What kind of farm is she running??) In Vientiane we went to the Buddah park which is literally a park filled with buddah statues. We took a local bus there which was really just a van with a few seats. Somehow 6 Loatians managed to sit in each sit which would fit 1/4 of an american. We stood for a good hour. We decided to take a bus from Vientiane to Luang Prabang which we were told was an 8 hour bus ride on the "VIP bus." Stupidly I thought VIP was actually going to be a bus for Very Important People who chose to spend the extra 50 cents. BOY WAS I WRONG. Not only did the bus almost leave without us (with our bags already on board) but everyone around me threw up. And they knew they were going to. They boarded the bus with a roll of plastic bags. It was a disaster. The bus ride also lasted 10 1/2 hours. I wanted to die the entire time and swore I'd never get on a bus again. When we finally got to Luang Prabang I was very shaken up from my traumatic experience (apparently it was only the people on the back of the bus that felt the need to vomit for the entire time) and we set out to look for a hotel. We found one but once we went out we realized that we had forgotten to take the card of our hotel and had no idea what it was called or where it was. I'm usually the one with a great sense of direction and I was totally lost. Ashley is usually the one who walks the wrong way to the bathroom when we're in our hotel room but after an hour of walking around, her instincts finally led us the right we and miraculously we found out hotel. I think she must have blacked out because she had no idea how she knew it was the right way. Laos has an 11 oclock curfew so we went to dinner and called it an early night. It was just a few days till my birthday and Lance came to Luang Prabang to meet me. It was a nice birthday present on top of the beautiful hotel my mother so graciously set us all up in. The night before my birthday we all went out to a bar that we had been told was open until 1 am so we could ring in my birthday with a bang! The bar actually closed at 10:30 though so the girls sang happy birthday to me in the room. It was sweet and I didnt mind because I've realized over the past few years that my birthday is completely overated. (she just bought 8 sheep and 4 more elephants) The Chang Heritage where we stayed for my birthday was really beautiful and the staff was really nice. The beds were comfortable and my nightmares of vomiting Laotians started to subside. On the actual day of my birthday we woke up early to feed the monks who walk down the street in a line with metal containers that you fill with sticky rice and bananas. It was the longest line of bright orange I'd ever seen, but it felt nice to do something for other people on my birthday. Later we went to see the waterfalls and mistakingly took the path less taken to the top. It turned out to be quite a hike. That night Ashley and Mimi took me to dinner at a restaurant across the Mekong River. We sat in a private little hut and ordered Laos Fondue which was a mixture of Korean BBQ and sukiaki and very delicious. After dinner we were all so full that we didnt know how we were going to walk back to the hotel, but somehow made it.

A few days later we took a one day "cycling" trip through green discovery. Cycling turned out to be off road mountain biking, and probably some of the hardest biking I've ever done. It was all up and down hill, but it was so rocky that the down hill was even harder than the strenous peddling the uphill required. For lunch we treked across the river on foot and had lunch in a tree house which was really very nice until I realized we had to keep biking. We biked through a few very small villages and saw some of the local children playing games. We finally made it back and were so tired that we sat in the green discovery place for about an hour before we could walk back to the hotel. Lance and I decided to go out to a big Lao dinner from which I got food poisoning :(. The next day we went to Vang Vieng and this time we decided to take a "mini bus" also known as a van. There were only six of us in the van, Ashley Mimi Lance and myself and another couple also from the US. Everything was great. We eat got our own row and we left the bus station with no problems. We were comfortable. About 3 minutes after we left the bus station we came to an abrupt stop. 3 Laotians were standing on the side of the road, all carrying feed bags. We picked them up. Everyone groaned and rearranged positioning but I knew that something horrible had just happened. THEY THREW UP THE ENTIRE BUS RIDE. True, our driver drove like a mad man and I thought we were going to go flying off a cliff, but what was worse than that was all the vomit. The noises, the smells and the bags of vomit shifting violently from one side of the van floor to the other as we rounded each mountain bend. It was my nightmare part 2.

We finally arrived in Vang Vieng. Vang Vieng is a weird weird weird place. The restaurants all have the same menu and each have 2-3 tvs. Some restaurants play episodes of Friends, and some restaurants play episodes of Family Guy. No one talks while eating they just sit and watch tv. We didnt understand this until after we went tubing. We had been excited to go tubing down the river in Laos for a while and were told it was a lot of fun but we did not expect what it turned out to be. Tubing in Vang Vieng was the equivilent of Spring Break on crack. Its jsut bar after bar that you can float or walk to that serves buckets of alcohol. We also happened to go tubing on Australia day so the ordered chaos that usually went on was not so ordered. Each bar had very high rope swings where you could hurl your drunken body into the water. I felt like an old jewish mother saying "oh be careful!" or "that looks so dangerous should he be flipping like that?" every time anyone jumped. It was almost too much for me to handle. We went to one bar that had a Tug-O-War in which the losers were pulled into a mud pit. I actually enjoyed that a lot and it felt like good clean dirty fun. That night all we wanted to do was sit and watch Friends. I finally understood the appeal. There was one bar/restaurant in Vang Vieng that had a food menu and it also had a happy menu. The happy menu consisted of drugs. They were legal to buy and smoke/eat/drink in this venue. The main 3 offered were weed, shrooms and opium but they implied that if you asked for it they probably had it. It was weird and exciting but I decided not to experiment. While we were in Vang Vieng both Lance and Ashley became violently ill for days and once they were feeling better we decided it was time to leave. We took a bus to Vientiane (no one vomited tomy knowlegde) and then flew to Pakse. From Pakse we took a 3 day kayak trip to the 4000 Islands. The first day was great, and we kayaked 4 hours down the Mekong River. That night we stayed in bungalos near the river that had working bathrooms in room and mosquito nets for the beds. it also might have been a chicken farm. About 20 hens and their chicks were running around and about 10 roosters all having cock fights over their women. The roosters in Laos are also retarded and crow all night and never sleep so between that and the heat, neither did I. The next day we hiked to a water fall and then kayaked 1 hour over some mild rapids and saw some river dolpins swimming. That night we did a "home stay" which actually meant that we slept on a family's porch. We never met the family. They all slept behind a wall, I think there were about 10 of them. We slept on the porch. In bug nets. See-through bug nets. No privacy. It was about 100 degrees. There were lizards and frogs and mosquitos everywhere and at that point I wondered why the trip had cost so much money. There was one bathroom we could use but the woods were more sanitary. I cried myself to sleep. Camping? Bring it on! At least a tent has walls. The last day we kayaked over some more rapids and did a little ceremony with a tiny drunk man who gave us some rope bracelets for good luck.

SIDENOTE: the cats in Laos have short tails that look like they've been hacked off badly with a dull axe. I asked our tour guide on the kayak trip why they cut the cat's tails and he responded, shocked "NO ONE CUT TAILS HERE!" I'm still not convinced.

We spent one more day on the islands on our own before heading to cambodia where we crossed the boarder on foot which I will discuss in my next blog!

Hoi An - Hanoi

Wow it has been a very long time since my last blog due to my laziness. At the moment I'm in Phnom Phen but I'm going to back track and talk about the rest of Vietnam and Laos first. It was a mistake to do this after showering because I forgot to put on bug spray and in the one minute I've started this blog I've been bitten by 8 mosquitos. Mosquitos love me more in SE Asia than at home. Not good. I look like a walking bug lamp I guess due to my pasty white skin. Oh well. Anyway, back to Vietnam. A few days after we got to Hoi An the 3 guys we met in Nha Trang came and met up with us and would continue traveling with us for the rest of our time in Vietnam which was really a lot of fun. My absolute favorite part of Hoi An was the food. For a very small place it had some of the best food I've eaten on my whole trip. There was one restaurant, Streets, that was owned and run by an expat from New York. The whole concept was upscale Vietnamese cuisine for a reasonable price that took local kids off the street, gave them jobs as chefs, waiters, etc and gave them a culinary degree from the ICE in NYC. A prix fix meal, 3 courses of excellent Vietnamese food, all for 5 dollars. We ended up going back twice and the owner gave us some tips about things to do in Hoi An which included a bike ride past an herb farm to a local beach which was a beautiful ride. (bug update: one of the bites on my leg just reached the size of a silver dollar and I'm scared) One night in Hoi An we went to a bar which was essentially just a small room with a dance floor. We danced for hours. At one point in the night, "Party in the USA" came on and we got so excited and sang so loudly to it that the bar ended up turning it off mid-song. No wonder foreigners hate americans, haha. A fwe days later all of our clothes we were having made were finished and it was time to go to Hanoi. On the day we left we decided to do something cultural so we went to My Son which had a bunch of ruins. It was very hot that day and after walking around for about an hour and taking some pictures we decided to head back. It was very beautiful, but disorganized and random. We decided to not waste an entire day traveling and take a plane from Danang to Hanoi. The plane was huge and about 1/4 of the way full.

When we got off the plane in Hanoi it was cold and we were not prepared. It had been very hot everywhere else in Vietnam and we didnt realize how far north we had traveled. We had figured out which hotel we wanted to stay in on the plane and asked our cab driver to take us there. He said he knew where it was but before we knew it we were in a dark alley at a random hotel and he was telling us to get out. Luckily it was 6 against one and he finally took us to the original hotel we asked him to. The hotel was, as Vietnam is, very disorganized and unecessarily complicated and for the first 3 nights we were there we all had to switch rooms each night. The first full day we spent there was Lachlan's birthday and we decided to go see Avitar, which, despite rumors that it was not all it was cracked up to be, we all enjoyed. The boys got very emotional and cried about 3 times each during the movie which only made the experience better. That night we went to a restaurant called 69 restaurant, but despite its name was just a normal, and good, restaurant. Hanoi has a curfew of 12 am so after dinner we went to a bar that looked closed. We asked our cab driver to just take us back to the restaurant so we could walk around and before we knew it we were at a club. This club turned out to be a late night underground bar filled with Vietnamese mafia. We were the only white people there and danced for a few hours. We were not allowed to take any pictures in the club and aside from bottle service the only thing we were allowed to order was beer. There were also very few women in the club which seemed strange and everyone pretty much kept to themselves. The next day we took a 2 day boat trip to HaLong Bay which is filled with these huge rock masses that stick out from the water. It was misty and very beautiful but even colder than Hanoi. The boat we took was very small, but the bedrooms were very comfortable and nicely put together. I was very nervous because I had been on a cruise before and the bedrooms on the cruise ship had looked and felt like little prisons where you had to sit down on the toilet in order to take a shower. These rooms very surprisingly spacious though and it felt like a little bit of luxury. However, unlike a cruise where meals are prepaid and unlimited, I remember my uncle ordering one of everything, just for the hell of it, food on this boat was hard to come by. They served us 3 meals a day, but there just wasn't enough food. Dinner was served at 6 pm, and it was over by 6:30. When we asked if there was any more food they sternly said, "No." and that was the end of the conversation. At night we flagged down a little paddle boat and bought some over priced pringles from the 2 women manning it. One of the boys bought some "pot" that turned out to be tea. Some people on board smoked it anyway, just incase it just smelled like tea, but having grown up in a house where even if we had nothing in the fridge we had about 20 types of tea, I knew I was not mistaken. Further than that I identified the tea as Earl Grey. During the boat ride we stopped at a cave and were given a tour. The cave was very large and was lit up with neon lights to look more like a dance club than an old preserved cave. Our tour consisted of a man with a red laser who would point to a stalagtite formation and say "This looks like Dragon." or. "See, this one looks like dog drinking water from stream," or my favorite, "this looks like one woman breast." The dragon formation even had little red lights where its "eyes" were. It seems very ridiculous to me, but obviously, a main attraction of the trip. The next day we stopped at a floating village which consisted of about 40 tiny houses literally floating on the water. None of the people who inhabit these houses can swim. Does this make sense to you? It does not make sense to me. Why would you live ON THE WATER, SURROUNDED BY WATER, NO LAND IN SIGHT, and not at least attempt to learn how to swim? What happens during the rainy season? They all drown and new people come and inhabit the houses? Obviously no one could answer my questions. Some things just baffle me. We returned back to land and took a bus back to Hanoi. The next day Lachlan left and that same day Mimi and Ashley decided to go to Sapa, a small village at the Northern tip of Vietnam. At this point I was feeling pretty sick, or as the australians say "shit ass" so I decided to stay behind and do some cultural things in Hanoi with Jamie and Ian who still had a few days left before they continued on in their own directions. We took a cyclo around Hanoi whichw as a good way to see the city. A cyclo is a man on a bicycle and you sit in front in a little seat and he just peddles you around. I thought walking across the street was intense, I thought being in a cab in traffic was intense, I thought being on a motorbike was intense, the cyclo though just seemed like the perfect way to die a tragic, painful motorbike-car-bus-gridlock related death. You're moving about as slow as possible, comletely exposed to all the elements, in front of your driver heading into oncoming traffic that does not slow down. It took me 30 minutes to start breathing and accepting the fact that before I died I would like to look around. It turned out to be a good way to see everything. Once I openned my eyes. The next day me and the boys went to the prison and the temple of literature which were both part of "the top 5 things to do in Hanoi." The prison, what was left of it, was really intense and furthered my interest in world wars and torture. 1/3 of the prison remains where as the other 2/3rds have been torn down to make room for a HUGE UGLY hotel. Yes, I'd like to stay in this hotel and please give me a window with the view of the prison. Again, I dont get it. The prison area that remains has been kept as it was though, and it was very hard walking around inside. The cells are so small and you can go into them and close the door. Luckily they've removed the locks, so your friends can't lock you in (even though they both tried). There is one room with a guillotine, still sporting a very sharp blade, and pictures of women's heads all over the room. At that point Jamie almost threw up and I definitely got chills. We then went to the temple of literature which, unless you do a ton of reading about before you go (as I did not) it is hard to really truely understand what it is all about. There was also a lot of constrution going on inside the grounds which made it hard to appreciate its beauty. The next day the girls came back and we said goodbye to the boys and went our seperate ways, which was definitely bittersweet. I'm going to end this blog here and start fresh with a new blog about Laos. Total mosquito bite count: 17. NOT JOKING.

Nha Trang - Hoi An

Nha Trang was a vacation within a vacation. The beaches were beautiful, the people were friendly and the drinks were cheap. Nha Trang is very small and it didn't take us long to feel comfortable there. It turned out to be the perfect place to spend for New Years/Mimi's birthday. The day before New Years we took a boat trip called the Funky Monkey tour, around the islands of Nha Trang. It turned out to be the perfect way to meet people. We met some really nice Australians, Kimmy and Timmy who are dating, and Heidi, their friend who were all traveling together. We ended up seeing them every night after the boat trip and it was really nice to feel like we had friends and people we felt comfortable with. The boat trip cost $7usd and was from 9-5. It included snorkeling, lunch and happy hour on a floating bar. We were also taken to a beach and after lunch a band comprised of the staff played music and sang songs, which was entertaining to say the least. The water was warm and when the boat was stopped we were allowed to dive/jump/bellyflop off the top of the boat which was a lot of fun and also really scary. The only downside was that there were sea lice in the water and every few minutes you'd feel a bite or sting somewhere on your body. Overall it was a great experience though and the friends we made out of it were worth much more than $7.

I probably had the best New Years of my life. There was no drama, no crying, no worrying where we were going to go or how much fun we wanted to have. We had low expectations and a great night. We went to a place called the Sailing Club which was located on the beach and had a really nice restaurant, dance floor and bar. On New Years a band played and the whole beach became a dance floor. I probably danced for 2 hours straight and have never felt more care free in my life. The day before New Years we also went parasailing which i've wanted to do since we got rained out when I was 13 in Tortola. The day we also met some other Aussies who we became friends with. A few days after New Years we rented motorbikes, which turned out to be just as scary as it looks. Now we weren't on foot or in an enclosed car but directly in the intense motorbike traffic. We originally intended to go to the waterfalls, but realized it was going to get dark too soon and then instantly lost one another. We only ended up driving around for 20 minutes or so because Jamie, my bike's driver, was so petrified that we had to stop. Luckily he didnt tell me how scared he was until we got off the bikes, otherwise I think I probably would have been freaking out the entire time too.

Finally after a full week of vacationing we decided to head up to Hoi An. We took a night bus which took 12 hours. Luckily the bus had makeshift beds. It was kind of like the Night Bus in harry potter except the beds didnt move around and we took ambien to put ourselves to sleep. There was a bathroom on the bus, but the sign read something along the lines of "Not To Use Toilet For Making the Bus Smell Bad." It was locked and we weren't allowed to use it, essentially, and the bus stopped every half hour for bathroom breaks which was seemingly why it took us 12 hours to get there in the first place. It wasn't a terrible ride though and when we arrived it was morning in Hoi An.

Hoi An is the place to go in Vietnam to have tailor made clothes at cheap prices. You can go in with pictures, but they also have a ton of fashion magazines you can look through and say "can you make that?" and they say "Oh, yes I make I make" and then they take your measurements and you return the next day to try on your clothes. Aside from a few alterations the clothing seems to be of good quality and I wasn't disappointed. I also have very good taste and therefore I made smart purchases :) It was a good thing that we were given a recomendation on the tailor to use because literally every street is filled with tailors whose clothing looks exactly the same. After our clothes are finished we are heading up to Hue and then to Hanoi, which I'm sure will include some more intense bus traveling. Last night we went to a bar after dinner and met some girls who had brought a DARE game with them and we agreed to play. The dares were fairly harmless and very intertaining and by the end of the night we had about half of the bar involved. I have definitely learned that a huge part of traveling are the people you meet and I feel very lucky to be having this experience. Lately I have been making myself slow down a bit and really take in everything that is going on around me. I was sitting in a hammock on the beach the other day and I realized that I was truely happy and so lucky. Today we rented bikes (bicycle bikes) and biked through Hoi An to the beach and the view was so beautiful. We had the river on our right and rice paddies on our left and it was just picturesque and real and I can't believe I'm here.