theresricehere

A sort of so long

2008-12-06T06:04:00.000-08:00

Ultra quick post, because Lindsay wanted me to post something:

We MAY be leaving tomorrow (Sunday). Actually we MAY have left today, but as we are flying standby we are never sure for sure. Tomorrow morning's flights are looking better then today's though, so we'll see!

We've been in Bangkok for about 10 days now, just hanging out. It's been nice, and I think we're going to miss Bangkok, as well as the rest of SE Asia of course.

For those who don't know, my parents had planned on coming over however the international airport was shut down for something like a week+ thanks to a bunch of protesters (it was actually a pretty big deal and was a top story in quite a few international newspapers and things) which meant people were not able to get in or out. Including my parents. I'm still getting over the disappointment, but to be honest I think it was much worse for my Mom/Dad.

Anyway, because they were not able to come, we've decided we're gonna head home. So that's what we are doing. Originally our plan was to stop over in Tokyo, but funds are getting a bit "tight" and Tokyo would have been expensive, so we're gonna skip it and just come home. If we are super lucky (and that's doubtful) we may be home by Sunday evening in good ol' Jenison. If we are not lucky (more likely) we'll be home _______ night instead. IE we don't really know. But eventually we're gonna get on a plane! If you know anybody getting on the 6:40 AM BKK -> Narita flight tomorrow, tell them they should skip it because so we can get on the plane! ;).

This seems like a totally inadequate way of "signing off" of our trip, but in reality it's not. Even though it may sound dumb, I think we've got at least a few more things we'd like to post/share for our own memories/etc. So this isn't the end of the blog, but it could be the last post from the other side of the world.

Love you all, and again special thanks to Jan for making this trip 6 months instead of 4.

Also special thanks to StoraEnso/NewPage for letting us work for them and make money, which went a long way in paying for this trip.

And I'd say thanks to other people, but I feel like I'm making a Grammy speech.

See you all soon (hopefully!!)

how i met vi.

2008-11-30T20:49:00.000-08:00

a few days ago, while paroosing the second-hand book shop, i happened across a compilation of short stories by Paul Auster. well, not actually, "by" paul auster (which is too bad, because i love that man) but rather by 183 americans who decided to write NPR with a small anecdote about their lives to be read on NPR's This American Life (which just so happens to be my very favorite of all NPR programs). naturally, without any hesitation, i bought it.

needless to say, the last few days i have been savoring the random tid bits my fellow countrymen and women have chosen to share with the rest of us. at the end of every story is the author's name and where they live. i have been dreaming up crazy stories about what they might be like after reading just a tiny fragment of their life. i feel oddly connected to these people whom i have never, and most likely, will never meet. but, i suppose that's what the book is all about. i have read stories about love, war, dreams, and even about a chicken who knew how to let himself in a screen door by himself. while they're not all poetic masterpieces, they are especially poignant and in my opinion, time very well spent reading.

so, i have been carrying this book everywhere. on the bus, on the skytrain, everywhere. yesterday kevin decided that a trip to Pantip Plaza (a 3 story building solely devoted to selling electronic goods of every kind) was in order. not surprisingly, i declined and let him do his nerdy gadget shopping independent of his naggy "kevin, are you ready yet?!" girlfriend. instead, i thought a trip to Lumpini Park (one of our favorite hangouts) sounded nothing short of perfect. i could people-watch, read by the water, and just lay around under the shade of one of it's many trees. so, we went our separate ways, and i headed down to the park. i cannot begin to tell you how amazing my afternoon was. lounging under this giant tree, water rushing by, people jogging, temperature at a balmy 70ish degrees...and my book...it was perfect. i was laughing, crying, and overall just totally immersed in the richness of these stories.

a few stories in, i started to read about a girl who's day was going totally, and completely wrong. she was trying to make it across country for a funeral, during which she got on the wrong expressway to the airport 3 times, left her credit card at the gas station, realized she had brought the wrong check book, used her last few cents to buy a lottery ticket (on accident) instead of to make a phone call (i dont totally understand how this happened, but it seems like both the lottery ticket machine and pay phone were right next to each other? strange.) and the list goes on. i must admit, that i was enjoying her misfortune, and was chuckling to myself throughout the entire story. it was quite well written. so, after recanting the entire story about her god-forsaken day, she writes, "it's annoying when life seems to shit on you when you least expect it."

end of story. i smile.

just then, with this ridiculous grin plastered on my face, a pigeon shit all over me. and i do mean ALL over. all over my thighs, calves, feet and my hand. it is everywhere. so, here i am, covered in shit, book in left hand, shit on right, laughing out loud at how ridiculous this situation is. then, out of no where, this tiny 5'1 asian girl comes up laughing too, and hands me a kleenex. "i've been living here 15 years," she said, "and you never can plan for when you'll get shit on...and not just by the birds..."

and this, is how i met vi.

Thanksgiving with prostitutes

2008-11-27T05:50:00.001-08:00

Thanksgiving with prostitutes, originally uploaded by Kevin Mitchell.

I realize this blog may have a mixed audience so I'll leave out the graphic depictions, but long story short Lindsay, Biggi, and I had Thanksgiving dinner at a bar/brothel tonight. It was actually a really high class place and the food was great, but it was certainly the first Thanksgiving dinner I'VE ever had that was served by somebody whom I could "hire" for "something that was NOT serving food."

We had ham, turkey, yams, stuffing, gravy, tomato stuffed with green peas, and a piece of pumpkin pie with what tasted like real whipped cream. What's more we sat with a 60+ year old drunk physiologist from LA who talked from the second we sat down until the second we left about his adventures and travels. Apparently he gave up working quite a while ago and has just traveled and done expensive things like learning to paint in Paris, and stuff, or something. Looked a bit like Jack Nicholson in the shining when he smiled. The girl you see in this photo is apparently a director or something who makes films in Sweden but lives in NYC... we didn't talk to her, because as soon as she recognized the guy we were sitting with she moved to the other side of the bar.

Happy Thanksgiving all!

p.s. We're thankful for all of you, in particular you who are reading this blog now.

p.p.s. I want to give credit where credit is due: Lindsay was 100% responsible for making Thanksgiving dinner plans, and without her I'd probably be sad and alone crying on a street somewhere or at least happily using my iPod Touch. Thank you SOOO much Lindsay, you are an angel and your teeth are so shinny and white (and big) and you are really great at cooking and I think your cheeks are very cute even though we all know they are a bit chimpmonkish. But only in a cute way. U r my little frog, my Wat Mahot, my little lamb.

Lindsay walks stairs and looks to be in pain.

2008-11-26T05:26:00.001-08:00

Lindsay enjoys cilmbing stairs after running Bangkok Marathons, originally uploaded by Kevin Mitchell.

Lindsay ran the marathon and finished it, so that's good. Jake, hope you enjoy this one. The drink in her hand is actually a new drink here that tastes like grapefruit but has no sugar or something, and it's really good, unlike those other fruit flavored water drinks, which are not good.

we're terrible bloggers.

2008-11-22T02:45:00.000-08:00

so another picture post will have to suffice.
here's what we've been up to (well, some highlights, anyway) since our last blog:

tubing down the mekong river in laos.

surprisingly, there were even ziplines and tree swings, which were AWESOME.
cuttie patootie.

we also volunteered at an organic farm.
here's kev feeding and cleaning out the goat pen.

we also milked the goats and made goat cheese. it was deeelish.

then we went to this amazing waterfall.

we hiked up to the top (kev about freaked) and then went swimming in the rapids (not pictured).

then we traveled back to thailand for the last time!!! (chiang mai) and biked up to our favorite spot: the coffee village, which is about 30 km up the side of this amazing mountain. there aren't any foreigners there, and it's really just an amazing, unbelievably beautiful experience. we drank coffee (well, kev did), walked around the beautiful farm, and played soccer with a few of the guys that worked there. definitely a highlight of the trip.
i've decided i'm going to get on a co-ed team when i get home.
finally, as kev mentioned...i decided to run a marathon! so far, this is how i feel about it...

i have a feeling that my sentiments may change in a few hours.

dirk insisted that i needed to drink a lot of electrolyte drinks during the "training" process, which i personally hate and think are dumb. since there hasn't been much (any) of a training process, i decided that one would be enough. here's me enjoying my "electrolyte" (read: mcdonalds orange drink).

and finally, here i am with our crazy new german friends who talked me in to doing it to begin with. bridget and dirk, sporting our new spiffy special marathon shirts.

the bloody thing is in less than 10 hours, and i'll be honest, i'm starting to freak a bit! kev and i are sitting in the internet cafe, biding time (he's actually putting a bunch of podcasts and music on my ipod for my running enjoyment, such a sweetie.) before the big race! which, naturally won't really be a "race" for me, but a "please god, let me finish it" experience. it starts at 2:00am and it's supposed to rain. surprise, surprise. thank you, bangkok, for having awesomely humid and amazing weather. oh, and because i'm one of the runners who figures it will take them more than 5 hours to finish, i am running with the elderly (women aged 65-80 and men aged 70-90 :)) i'm sure the grannys and pops will kick my butt, but i can handle it. good for the ego.

gotta watch out for old people. their looks are deceiving.

regardless, i'm going to finish if i have to crawl my way to the finish line.

kev's convinced that he has the hardest job, staying up for 8 hours, walking around looking for us, and taking pictures.

i'll let you know if i live...or agree with him once the race is finished.

love and miss you all.

see you in (oh my god, less than a month!)

xxx

lgt

edited 5:37 PM POST race: i did it! and it was INCREDIBLE!!! although, my body is telling me (knees in particular) it wasn't quite as "INCREDIBLE!!!" as i think it was. if i were just basing the experience on how my body felt, i would say potentially the "worst and most painful experience of my life." but i'm not. i ran with a perfectly clear, "i know i can do this" mind, and it was without question one of the best experiences of my life. i seriously had a "runners high" the entire race (short of the last 3km, when i just wanted to see that finish line!!!!) i didn't stop at all in the first 21km (1/2 marathon) and my time was around 2hr 15 min, which frankly, i'm pretty happy with. after km 20 though, i ran 2km and would walk for a while and start running again, and walk because my knees hurt so horrifically bad. but it was awesome. more than awesome. starting the run at 2:00 am in the king's palace, surrounded by thousands of little old thai men and women (and a few young people, although i think i was one of the only (white) foreigners. the africans were ungodly fast, and passed me 2 hours after i had started (they started at 3:30 am) at the half-way point. naturally, they took the "golds" and "silvers" and "bronzes" etc, etc.

ahhH! running across bangkok's largest bridge right at sunrise, watching the city wake up from the streetside, getting blessed by a monk (i think he was worried that my face was too red, and i might have a heart attack or something :)) and seeing kev at the finish line. amazing. i would do it again in a second....

well, maybe more than "a few seconds" :)

i'm starving, and kev and bridget and i are going to go rustle up some grub. one somewhat funny thing....at the end of the race, they handed out 2 mcdonalds burgers for ever finisher. isn't that weird? at least a side salad seemed like maybe it would have been more appropriate.

regardless, i ate them both in less than 5 minutes :)

love you all.

cheers!

It's been a long time...

2008-11-18T08:08:00.001-08:00

too bright but on purpose, originally uploaded by Kevin Mitchell.

It's been a long time since we posted anything, and this is not really anything worth writing home about (I think there's a joke there somewhere), but I figured I'd at least share a picture I enjoy. It's just a very quick version of what I hope will eventually be something I print out on a wall to remind me of what's important in life. Lots of photoshop will be needed, but I'm convinced this photo has potential. It's (as you may see if you read the description) a photo of a place that Lindsay and I stopped at often in Vang Vien Viang (spelling?) to have a water and a coke (total cost: ~80 cents) and look at the incredible rice fields... The photo truly does not do the place justice, the small shack you see was actually somebodies small house that they sold drinks from out front, and it was on a 30 or 40 foot cliff... so when seated on the mat yuo see in the front, you were sort of suspended over top of these beautiful fields... sort of like when Simba was held up in the lion king, same sort of feeling I would imagine.

Anyway, as of now we are actually out of Laos. It was amazing and we both wished we stayed longer, but incredibly Lindsay has decided to run a MARATHON in Bangkok on the 23rd of November so we've started the journey to BKK. We are currently in Chiang Mai, hanging out with some incredibly awesome people (Germans no less!) who we've been traveling with the past few weeks. There are running the marathon in BKK as well. I'm sure you'll hear lots more about all of this, but for now I promised Lindsay I would be on the computer an hour and it's going on three (sorry Lindz, I love you!). I'm really excited for Lindsay to run the marathon, it's pretty crazy/incredible really, and I'm sure it's going to be painful.

much love to you at home, and a special "shout out" to Ken and the rest of the SENA/NewPage "crew" - thanks for the email Ken, I got it a few hours ago and want to write you back (I've actually been meaning to drop you a line but Laos wasn't an ideal email country!) but for now must run as you read above! It's so nice to hear from you, I think of work in WI more often then you might believe (and I think of it fondly even!)!

noise.

2008-11-01T00:21:00.000-07:00

ask yourself this question: what would you do if everything you heard...every radio, loud speaker, cell phone ring, supposed-to-be-entertainment-on-long-bus-rides "music videos," EVERYTHING, besides the noise of incessant honking or rain patter, sounded like the beginning to "hopelessly devoted to you" on the Grease soundtrack?

(need a quick reminder? here you go: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJpyG3PXoKw)

you'd kill yourself, right? well, let me assure you, i'm just about to my breaking point.

now, don't get me wrong. i love grease. i love olivia newton john and idolized her snazzy black (p)leather getup. i know all the moves to "grease lightening" and have belted out "look at me, i'm sandra dee" (complete with motions) too many times to count.

"I don't drink! (no)
Or swear! (no)
I don't rat my hair! (eew)
I get ill from one cigarette! (cough, cough, cough)
Keep your filthy paws, off my silky draws! Would you pull that crap with Annette?"

love it.

i played that soundtrack front to back, back to front, over and over and over again. ask my parents. i was 10. i loved it. best christmas gift ever.

that said, there was one song too lame to ever listen to. this was clear to me at 10 years old, and the same holds true today. number 3 on the cd (fine, i just looked that up). skipped every time. i didnt want to hear about how painstakingly awful olivia's breakup was, or how she could only ignore her heart for so long, and frankly, i don't want to hear it now. please. let's be honest. john travolta isn't even all that cute. get over it. let's get on to the more exciting things! lets rock out to the hand jive and forget all this sappy stuff, right?!

i know i'm sounding awfully cynical here. a real "debbie downer" on the breakup front. i know it's unfair. hell, i've had my fair share of breakups (right kev? :))! i know what it feels like to be in misery over a man! (ha!) to be fair, as i'm sure many of you are familiar with, when you break up with someone you love you feel like the world's gonna end. no. you WANT the world to end. all you want to do is sit, cry, and wallow in self-pity (alright, fine, maybe that's just me:)). i don't want anyone to tell me that it's going to be alright. i don't want to get up and go do something. i want to sit. cry. and wallow. oh, and listen to horribly sappy, horribly depressing music. like natalie merchant, or bonnie raitt's "i cant make you love me."

oh yeah. that's a killer.
(and if it's raining, thunder-storming, or just plain grey outside +10 pts).

we've all got our songs. phill collins (take a look at me now). the beatles (eleanor rigby). styx (babe). R.E.M. (everybody hurts). bob dylan's (positively 4th Street). damien rice (every single song he has ever written). or my personal favorite, the postal service (nothing better).

(it seems that the rockers of the world really have this down pat.)

in the past, listening to ungodly depressing music puts the mess of jumbled feelings that i couldn't (or didn't want to) sort out to some sort of order. it made me feel better that someone, someone far more poetic or articulate than i will ever be, could pin-point my sorrow and could put words to it. someone understands. someone understands, and feels no shame in wallowing. you can indulge in your patheticness. yes, lindsay. you can. it's alright. no need to feel guilty. it feels good. wallow baby, wallow.

friends of breakup-ees know that there really is nothing they can do for their friend in this state. the breakupee has extraordinary powers, complete with the ability to suck their friend (mother, father, brother, dog) into an enormous pit of all-encompassing quick-sand depression. all thebreakupee wants to do is be sad, and they have no qualms about taking hostages (as many as that may be) in their quest to immerse themselves in cheerlessness. everyone knows at this point, it's better to just let the wallowing run it's course and check in every now and again to make sure they're not dead.

fine. i understand. i really do. it's therapeutic. but PLEASE just answer me this. how does an ENTIRE COUNTRY of people all need to wallow ALL AT THE SAME TIME (ALL THE TIME)!?? that's all i want to know.

it's been raining here for the last 36+ hours straight. nay, not raining (sound familiar :)), POURING. raining like i have never seen. apparently there have already been 20 deaths in hanoi (where we're currently staying). i'm sure that is not helping my cause any. yesterday morning, i ventured outside around 2 pm, my hunger giving me strength, to find some bread for a breakfast/lunch/snack, only to find the water in the streets up to my thigh. it's grey. it's raining. it's depressing. and the only sound to be heard short of the rain and honking, is that of "hopelessly devoted to you."

i don't know what it is about the viets. every single (i swear to god) music video kev and i have watched on tv (and the last few days, that has been A LOT) has followed this plot line.
boy likes girl.
girl likes boy.
boy and girl are happy.
another boy comes in the picture.
boy #1 gets dumped.
constantly sees girl with new boy.
boy very depressed.
lots of sad singing, distraught facial expressions and tears.
girl somehow dies...car accident (hit and run, runs into the car, in a car and is t-boned), terminal disease, suicide.
boy #1 is hopelessly depressed forever.

it seems people here like to wallow. which is fine, but i'm sick of going down with them.

where's some bohemian rhapsody when you need it? somehow, that song talks about someone's mom killing someone, and then killing herself, and STILL manages to be upbeat and dance-friendly!!!

in other, still noise-related news, i need to make quick mention to the loud speakers.

while the my list of faults seems to not only be endless, but also seems to be on display on our blog every other day, i must let you in on another. when i'm tired or hungry, i get VERY grumpy. if i remember correctly, i think kev has made mention to fearing for his life because i was overly hungry, and might beat him in an earlier post. this is not far from the truth, as many of you who know me can attest. i'm a terrible person. i cant help myself. that said. back to the loud speakers.

we are in the capitol of vietnam. a city where war propaganda posters still dominate every street corner. a city where many people wear military helmets accompanying their daily attire. although this is turning in to a somewhat "debbie downer" post itself (although i really do feel perfectly happy, albeit slightly agitated), i must say strictly for the chance to dictate thoughts, feelings etc per kev's request, that the people here are rude. we've heard for however many miles now, that the further north we go, the less friendly people get. not wanting to get sucked into that mentality (we seriously have loved vietnam!!!), i didn't think much of it. but as it turns out, it's true. really, it makes sense. these really were the people we were fighting us in the vietnam war. seeing a white face, i'm sure can only bring about feelings of anger, frustration, and annoyance. sure. i understand. but i must say, i am tired of the unfriendly, unhelpful. unsmiley faces. okay. i digress. back to the loud speakers.

every morning, at approximately 6:05am-7:45am, the city's loudspeaker BELTS out propaganda (and local news) about all kinds of things: war, birth control, abortions, civil disobediances, etc. now, i understand that this might be the most efficient way to communicate with members of their community. without access to many tv's, the loud speakers can do the job tv commericals can, and at a fraction of the cost. but at 6AM?! REALLY?! i swear to god, if i were vietnamese, i would do everything in my power to avoid listening to the government's "news," no matter what the cost. ear phones, ear plugs, ambient noise, a LOUD BEEPING ALARM CLOCK, ANYTHING would be better, than being woken up out of a wonderful, relaxing sleep to listen to the damn loudspeaker at 6am every morning. 6am is to early to do anything besides sleep. seriously people. and, as you might expect, not only did the loudspeaker happen to be parked right infront of my bedroom window, but at the beginning and the end of the "news" broadcast is the music. the hopelessly devoted music. what a way to start your morning.

finally. on far happier, and (i think) funnier note, 2 more tiny, itsy, bitsy stories, as this post is getting longer than is worth reading.

story number 1: the market.

two days ago, kev and i went on a mission to find dried squid to bring home as presents for all of you (suprise!). it, as i have mentioned, was raining cats and dogs, and i had neglected to bring my poncho. even still, i had managed to get to the market relatively dry, and was feeling quite proud of myself for doing so. (i was sliding around corners, crouching in small areas, dodging mopeds, really, quite ninja-like in my quest to stay dry). this market is a HUGE, strictly vietnamese market. i am not sure i saw one white person there the entire time. perfectly fine by me. disheartened about the fact that we could not find a place to have our favorite snack packaged to be brought home (sorry, i didn't want to be smelling like a fish for the rest of our trip :)) i decided we should check one more place before heading home. since it's pouring outside, kev suggests that we wait a second to see if it lets up a little. me, inpatient as always, say, "oh come on! we've made it all this way without getting that wet! i have mastered the art of tarp-running, and i know i can make it to that next one without getting very wet." alright. so we're off. i'm running, dodging things, and make it, no problem, to the tarp. i turn and smile victoriously at kev and am just about to say, "SEE?!" when i hear a loud RIiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiippppppppppPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPP! i look up, just in time for the tarp above me to break. down pours the mornings rain (and other disgusting things i'd rather not mention) all over my head. kev was spared and as you can imagine, found all of this quite funny. the butt of yet another "the world is against lindsay" joke. the smileless hanoian people all seem to lose their frowns and are all laughing, staring and pointing at me, now soaking head to toe. i look down. shit. note to self: rainy days are not good days to wear a white t-shirt.

you go white girl.
story number 2: halloween.

this story is just pathetic. this is a story about nothing (GO SEINFIELD!) wearing nothing orange, black or costumesque. eating no candy, sweet snacks or carmel apples. carving no pumpkins. not even drinking a beer. just sitting in hanoi. rained in. watching THE SIMPSON'S HALLOWEEN MARATHON for like 3 hours straight before falling asleep by 9pm. we're quite the cool cats. but couldn't even manage to be the black kind.

story number 3: the most beautiful girl in the world.

the other day, i met a group of vietnamese teenagers while waiting for kev to get out of the internet cafe (surprise, surprise). we were chatting it up, and having a nice little conversation about how old they were, what their names were, where they were from, what they did in their city, etc, when one of the girls looks at me and says, "you know, you could be the most beautiful girl i have ever seen......if you didn't have these...."

and points to a freckle.

classic. too bad freckles are now covering 2/3rds of my body.
there goes my aspiration of attempting for miss universe.

love and miss you all.
keep the noise down, please,
xxx
lgt

a picture supplement (and slight addition) to kev's previous (ridiculously long) post.

2008-10-21T06:57:00.000-07:00

ho chi minh city, vietnam.

pictured below: tri's family, waterpark, ridiculous traffic, snails, housing, ice coffee.

left to right: tri, tri's mom, trang, dam.

(this one's for you dad :))

dalat, vietnam. (the alps of SE asia.) ***incredibly, kev didn't get this far in his blog post, so i'll give a quick recap, although i'm sure another blogpost will be coming soonish. last wednesday, we jumped a bus from ho chi minh, and 14 hours later landed in dalat, an incredibly beautiful mountain city--unlike anything we have seen in the past 4 months. although the pictures can't do it justice, it was amazing, and the temperature was, although a welcomed change from the standard sweat-dripping-out-of-your-eyeballs, COLD! as cold as it was in michigan, we found out later. sporting the only warm clothing i had (sweatshirt and zipoff pants) i craved a hat and gloves the entire time. it was THAT cold. we didn't stay long, just enough to fill up on aritchoke tea (a local speciality), avacados and strawberries (the cool weather apparently was the perfect environment for growing crops) and to galavant through the mountains on a motorbike.

it was well worth the stop.

pictured below: local kids coming home from school, kid bundled in hat and gloves on motobike (i promise, it was FREEZING in the mountains), artichoke tea, and a beautiful cemetary.

nha trang, vietnam. *** from dalat, we jumped back on the bus, took off our sweatshirts, and another 7 hours later, landed in the sunny, gulf shores of vietnam, nha trang. pretty much the entire time we were there, we spoiled ourselves rotten. dirt cheap rooms, beautiful sunny days, an entire day of lounging around an organic spa (mud baths, mineral springs, beautiful swimming pool) for less than $4 a person (kev kept commenting on how soft his skin felt after. dont tell him i told you :)), and island hopping--snorkling, fresh seafood, and jammin to a live band singing "Proud Mary" on the boat (mom, i belted it out with them in honor of you :)).

pictured below: mud spa and island hopping, complete with freshly caught sea annenomes for lunch.

now, we're already in hoi an, the tailor-making capital of (i swear to god) the world. there are over 500 tailor shops in this tiny town. i caved, and am having a coat made as we speak. i'm a sucker for "cheap" things. i'm sure there will be plenty of pictures to post of everything very soon. as you can see, it seems like we're flying up vietnam (our month long visa is already expiring in 10 days!!!!) but haven't had adequate time (or quick enough internet access) to stay up to date on everything we've been doing. vietnam is a LONNNNNG country. from here we're heading to a city called hue, which is 6 hours away, and then to hanoi (the capitol) which is another 17 hours away, and THEN we have to get our butts over to the Laos/Vietnam border, which i can only imagine will take close to 24 hours. so. we have a lot to see/do, in not much time! i feel bad i haven't had time to post stories (god knows there's a few to share!), we just can't seem to update quick enough! anyway, we'll try to keep you posted as often as we can...and although we may not be able to call as much as we'd like, know that we are thinking about all of you everday, and miss you something fierce.

happy trails, and enjoy the fall colors for us.

xxx

lgt

p.s. kev uploaded like 17 pages of new photos on flickr, if you feel like seeing a few more... :) www.flickr.com/shoelessone <3

edit: i have total buyers remorse. surprise surprise. cute coat, but come on now. what was i thinking. too bad there's no "return with receipt."

"Ho Chi Minh City" or "Kevin Types 3523 Words On An iPod Touch Then Is So Sick Of It He Doesn't Check For Typing Mistakes"

2008-10-18T04:36:00.000-07:00

It's been far too long since our last blog post, and a lot has happened. As I type this Lindsay and I are once again on a bus, once again leaving a place we've had the pleasure of calling home the past 13 days.

13 days ago we left the Kingdom of Cambodia and entered Vietnam and passed through imigration without (much) issue. Lindsay's passport and VN Visa somehow ended up being stamped for entry on the third, as apposed to the second which was when we actually were entering Vietnam so we had to pay an extra 10 USD to get in. After passing through imivration we had a humorous customs experience. Everybody was supposed to pass their bags through a metal detector but lots of people just walked right past the inspection station. The gaurds were somewhat more adiment with Lindsay and I so we put our luggage through, but not before taking out a large bag that contained my film and other electronic gear. The guards didn't even bother looking through the stuff I took out, so the moral of the story was to make sure you take out your bombs, guns, and drugs before giving your bags over for customs inspection. Maybe you had to be there to enjoy the humor of the situation.

I'm no writer so I'll switch between describing things and telling about what we actually did. Sorry.

After crossing the border things changed quite rapidly in the road quality department. To be honest Cambodia was wonderful but also fairly impoverished and the roads seemed to be a good indicator of this. For some reason I FEEL a lot about where I am based on the roads I'm driving/walking on (maybe because Michigan has such distinctly bad roads) and Vietnam felt great. It's a bit hard to explain but as we approached Ho Chi Minh City things just picked up and somehow felt a lot more inviting. I never got that feeling in Phenom Penh or Siem Reap. Ho Chi Minh streets are incredible and so full of life it's really something to experience. Here the streets are basically comprised of small shop after small shop after small shop, and everything can be found in these shops. You might have a trendy coffee shop next to a motor bike repair place blackened with grease with somebody welding on the sidewalk next to a stall with a 90 year old woman selling dog. It's wonderful to stand on the sidewalk and look up because the buildings themselves are often times beautiful and unique. Many French styled buildings whose designs, heights, and colors are as varied as the shops housed in their base. 99% of the buildings here are tall and skinny but unlike in the US each building looks and feels unique to itself and as though how the building would look next to it's neighbors was never considered. Hopefully a picture will go here to make this point.

After getting off at the bus station in HCMC it was getting late and dark (it gets dark around 6:30 here) and although we had great intentions of finding one of a few specific guesthouses we ended up just walking into the nearest hotels and asking about room rates. This seems to work well for us most times and this was no exception. We landed at the "Freedom Hotel" at 12 USD a night, down from the 15 originally quoted to us. This included AC and TV and fridge which is nice. After unloading our ever expanding load of gear we went next door to get some food.

We went to Pho 24, a popular cheapishish chain in HCMC. I knew I was going to fall in love with Vietnam and HCMC as soon as we walked in and sat down (spoiler: I've fallen in love and honestly want to move here and work for a year). The restaurant was cheap and wonderful and had iced coffee AND flan. The Pho (popular rice noodle soup dish here) was incredible and served with a plate of fresh bean sprouts and other greens. Here you are also normally give a cold wet towel that smells of eucalyptus. And the iced tea! Almost Everywhere you eat you'll be provided with a cup of iced tea like nothing I've ever had in the States. The tea is very mild and has a slightly sweet aftertaste, not at all bitter or harsh like the iced tea I generally drink in the US. The whole meal with huge bowls of Pho, iced coffee, iced tea, flan, a whole fresh young coconut, and napkins-touched-by-god was maybe 6 bucks USD.

Prior to eating we actually made a quick run to an ATM which is semi note worthy. Here the currency is the Dong and the exchange rate is something like 1 USD = 16585 Dong. In order to cut down on the number of ATM fees we pay we generally try to take out large sums of money and here the most you can take out at once is around 120 dollars - around two MILLION Dong. It was a very strange feeling the first time I payed for lunch with a 100000 bill.

Anyway our after our first night in HCMC was our first day, and most of it was spent trying to get our barings on the city. This in the long run turned out to be difficult as the city is very large with something like 8 million people living in it and in the days to come we'd learn that HCMC was split up into a bunch of different districts and that we were in district one. District 1 is very large itself and has the "backpacker area" (which thankfully bares little resemblance to Ko Sanh road in Bangkok) as well as a lot of the more Western stores and prices. It was not at all uncommon to see a white face when walking around. To be honest I enjoyed walking around and looking at all of the westernish stuff during the first day. Surprisingly though we ate very little western food in HCMC, in fact other than one breakfast where we ate eggs and toast we ate Vietnamese food, or middle eastern food for a few lunches. I digress. The first day we explored. Wonderful to experience but not much to write about.

The next day we went to a large market in the morning and explored more during the afternoon. In the eveningish we met up with Tri for the first time. Tri stayed with Lindsay a few years ago in Jenison, for a year. He is Vietnamese but speaks English incredibly well and has a vocabulary better than most native English speakers. You'd have a hard time finding a contact better than Tri. We met up with Tri and his (our) American friend Sarah at a coffee shop called Sozo before heading to Bobby Brewers, a Western style chain complete with AC and free wifi. It was great to see Tri after 2 years and obviously a window into the Vietnamese world (albeit the germ free version ;)). Sarah was also a wonderful friend to have as she herself has a lot of Vietnamese experience. After dinner we went back to Sozo for "English corner" or something like that. Basically Vietnamese tweens (18ish-22ish) get together and practice their English. If a foreigner shows up they mob them and drag them to a table to practice talking English. I sat with a 20 year old girl and a few 18idh year old guys and talked. They want to know about where I went to school, how much it cost, if I have a job, etc. Lindsay sat at a different table and talked about who knows what. It was a lot of fun and was the first real time in Vietnam I experienced feeling like a celebrity.

***FYI I have now been typing this for two hours***

The next day or so was more exploring, more Pho, more flan, and more iced coffee. The next "big event" was lunch at Tri's Grandma's house. The lunch deserves it's own post in order for justice to be done but Lindsay doesn't seem on the writing mood and I don't want this segment of our trip to pass unmarked before details fade so I'll give a condensed version. The house was in a nicer section of HCMC and getting there required a 30 minute taxi then a walk with Tri through some backstreets. As I mentioned earlier houses here tend to be tall and narrow and his grandmas house is a perfect example. I think it had four or five floors and there were quite a few relatives stating there. An uncle and an aunt and another uncle and a cousin, etc. This was the first time we met Tri's sisters as well, whose names I would probably misspell but are something like Tam and Trang (who we love). Lunch was a feast and consisted of lotus stem salad, beef, rice, whole coconut, coke, battered shrimp, other shrimp, and maybe a few dishes I'm not remembering. The food was served family style, which means everybody gets a small bowl (empty) and chopsticks, and the food is placed on dishes in the center of the table. Then everybody takes a little bit and puts it into their bowl and eats it, rinse and repeat. I was not sure if I should eat a lot to demonstrate my loving of the cooking, or a little to show that I wasn't a pig/selfish/etc. In the end I ate a bit more then average but didn't exactly gorge myself. Conversation before during and after lunch was limited as only Tri and his uncle (and cousin and sister) spoke English, and everybody other than Tri was a bit shy I'd say. Still everybody was extremely doting and wonderful and I wouldn't say the experience was awkward. It was pretty great actually and the first time on this trip we ate dinner with a family. After lunch Tri's aunt took Lindsay to get a face massage and her nails done. Lindsay claimed the facial was amazing and incredible, etc, and I tend to believe it. Keep in mind this facial was at a Vietnamese hair saloon in the back streets far away from the foreigner areas - I wouldn't be surprised if Lindsay was the first American customer this place ever saw. But as with most places we've been here it had a great vibe and wonderful people. So much nicer then a hair place in the US, there really isn't a door to the place it's just a building with an open wall and steps leading into the shop - you just sort of walk down and sit down - Tri and I for instance just walked in and sat on the floor/chairs and chatted, no big deal. There isn't a waiting area or places you don't go, you just kinda become a resident of the hair saloon when you come in. After the hair place we walked a bit more and went to a restaurant and had some flan. Great flan, similar to what I might make in the US but with better sugar carmelization and with a twist: a bit of ice cold strong coffee on top plus crushed ice covering the flan. Great, great stuff.

An unrelated side note; people burn stuff in the streets and side walks here. Whether it's a bust street with lots of traffic or a narrow back alley it's not uncommon to have to step around somebody on the sidewalk or street squat down with a little pile of flames, burning something. Honestly I'm not sure what it is that is burned, but something is.

I'm not exactly sure what we did after lunch and facial and flan but eventually we worked our way into a taxi - I just remembered, we went to a new mallish plaza and had sugar cane juice - we worked our way into a taxi and went to meet Tri's parents at a fancy Vietnamese restaurant.

This is a funny story that wasn't funny and maybe isn't actually funny. Lindsay and I have limited clothing items, and most of the time we have on one pair I'd shorts or another, and a t-shirt of some sort. We were hot and not exactly crisply clean after our daily cycle of sweat/cool/sweat/sort of cool/etc. Anyway we show up to meet Tri's family for the first time at a fancy restaurant and they are dressed up, his dad has a tie on and his mom and sisters are beautiful. To make matters worse literally the second we sit down before we even finish saying hello I get "sick" and have to literally RUN to the bathroom. I felt really uncomfortable, but things quickly improved. Again (and for the rest of our meals) we ate family (or whatever you want to call it) style and had another feast. Frog legs, shrimp, other things, etc. Plus Tri's awesome dad and I went "tit-for-tat" with Heinekens and I think each had 4 or so beers. It was a good binding experience for us I think. Luckily I wasn't sick again and dimmer went great. I feel a bit bad as I don't think it was cheap and Tri's parents paid. Conversation was a bit difficult as Tri was the only one who spoke English (well, Tam speaks also but at this point she didn't say too much!) so we spoke through Tri all meal. After dinner we parted ways and planned on going to Tri's house the following day for dinner.

***now it's been almost three hours and we're listening to loud Vietnamese hiphop on the bus radio***

Before reading this, spend 5 minutes and go to http://YouTube.com and search for "ho chi minh traffic" and watch a few videos. We have plenty of our own now also but we can't post them with this Internet connection.

The next day, after spending 300000 or so Dong on taxis, I decided to rent a motorbike. I say "I" because Lindsay wasn't sure it was a great idea, but I love scootering so much and taxi fares were so costly and driving seemed like such a fun and doable challenge that I decided to do it. I could easily talk for 30 minutes about driving and traffic in HCMC, but if you watch a few YouTube videos you'll start to get the idea. Traffic is pretty different here then in the US. Most of the streets are packed with motorcycles as apposed to cars. People transport all manner of things on motorbikes, from glass doors to 10 foot steel bars to bags of ice to live pigs (to dead pigs). Driving on side walks is OK, running red lights is pretty normal and I've more than once felt UNSAFE stopping at a red light for fear of being rear ended. Still, after the first day or so on a bike I felt pretty much totally comfortable in HCMC and after a week I feel like a pro. I will admit I'm quite proud to have conquered HCMC driving and I met more than a few Americans LIVING in the city who still hadn't ever attempted driving. To be honest though it's really easy - the secret is you just go and make sure you don't hit anybody else. I have a left turn phobia in the US, but here despite the incredible throng of traffic that might be driving in the left lane turning left is no problem. You just slowly move your bike into the left lane, head on, and people just sort of swerve around you. Very cool, and surprisingly safe feeling. I LOVED our bike: a Honda Air Blade and according to Tri a more masculine version of the Honda Click I've been driving in Thailand. Actually I've driven quite a few different bikes here, a Nuovo, Click, Air Blade, and some other Yamaha bike. It's good practice for when I buy my own scooter!

***ok 2 days have passed since I wrote the above, and once again I'm on a bus, this time a terribly bumpy bus full of foreigners making our way to Nha Trang. Da Lat is completly deserving of it's own post, which I guess will come after this is done! Nick, I was tempted to post this ahead of completion but here I am, and there you are, and herethis blog post is, on my iPod. The point here is that I've lost my train of thought and who knows where this post will be going now... I'll try to keep it on track.***

So the last few days we states in the hotel we did pretty much the same things on the mornings and afternoon. We ate at this middle eastern restaurant for breakfast (well, lunch really) called Fallalim which was incredible and had the best falafel I've ever had with hummus to match. Then we'd ride around the city exploring, getting lost(ish - we always had my GPS, which for the record we are BOTH happy I brought) and that sort of thing. We shopped a bit and got a few Xmas presents. We stopped and had ice coffee.

There was one notable exception to our afternoon activities and that was on the day that Tri and Sarah brought he to RMIT for "game day.". Sarah teaches English at the university and Tri attends the school as a student. It's one of the better universities in Vietnam because it's actually an Australian owned and run campus. Anyway at fun day Lindsay and I played (or watched) such classics as "Pass the Parcel", "Dance in a Circle and Freeze When the Music Stops", and so on. I'd say the general vibe from the class was different then you'd have in an American group of Tweens. It was a great experience and once again it made me somewhat jealous to see how fun loving, generous, and easy to please this group of people were. After leaving RMIT we rode home and while driving were approached by a Vietnamese real estate agent who talked to us about property as we passed it, gave us a business card, and gave us directions to her office complete with hand motions. Keep on mind this was WHILE driving at 45 Kilometers an hour down the road. That's something I forgot to mention in the last paragraph, it's nice because here everybody drives scooters so when you are driving next to somebody it is like being in the car with them. More then once I've asked for directions from a total stranger while working my way through traffic.

Fast forward (or rewind - I don't remember which) to the first night we ate at Tri's house. Tri's aunt invited us over to her house to eat crabs (seafood seems to always get an 's' at the end of it, like "shrimps") but somehow that turned into us eating crabs at Tri's without his aunt. I'm pretty tired of typing here so I won't give a full description of Tri's house because sooner or later we'll post a video of a house tour so you can see the house for yourself. A very short description might be, "a 3 story house with two rooms on each floor, and on the first floor one room is a fabric shop facing the street with a living room of sorts, tucked in the corner and the other room is the kitchen. Dinner was great and on the first night as well as the nights to come Tri's mom cooked a Vietnamese feast. This particular night we had crabs. These are not the traditional crabs you might expect to eat in the US, but slightly smaller crabs that are served whole. You basically rip the crap open, take out the "internals" that you can (black gill things, etc) and then pick out what meat you can with your fingers, and the rest you suck out by putting the various crab parts in your mouth. To be totally honest I sometimes wondered what I was eating. But the food was great. We also had shrimp prepared two different ways (sometimes they eat the shell), dried squid, and of course I shared a few beers with Tri's dad. Bia Saigon.

Tangent:
Dried squid deserves it's own post probably but instead I'll give it it's own quick paragraph. In the busy streets of most of HCMC and other cities in Vietnam (and possibly/probably Thailand and Cambodia - we don't remember) you can normally find an old bike with a vertical rack of flattened, dried squid about the size of a hand with fingers spread. The things are normally light tanish with a white powderyish surface. They ate normally attached to these vertical racks via clothes pin like devices. Also gerry rigged on the bike is normally a small stove sometimes with always burning coals, sometimes with a gas flame, that is used to roast the squid before giving to the purchaser. The squid is sometimes a bit expensive at around 10-20 thousand dong per large squid. The squid is ripped into thin strips and eaten with chili sauce (found on every table - a combination of what seems to be ketchup and mildish chilies) and beer.
END OF TANGENT

After dinner we all looked through family photo albums before Tri, T(D?)am, Trang, Lindsay, and I went to a local place to get "cocktails" - a mixture of a bunch of different things such as Durian, various jellies, nuts, fruits, etc, put into a cup, with crushed ice on top, and a ultra sweet syrup on top. T(D?)am had flan and trang had ice cream. Our cocktails were very good. We were tired and took a taxi home (at this point we actually didn't have a bike yet, I think we got the bike the next day).

***we are driving in mountain somewhere, to the right is a sheet cliff and I can't see over the side because of fog. I'm very nervous, this bus isn't great and a part of it fell off a bit ago and we had to stop to pick up whatever it was and reattatch it with a wrench***

We went to a water park. Actually fairly similar to an American water park, except in the middle of HCMC, with a different food court offering, and only a few whities (we saw 2 other white people all day). There were tube slides, a few rides with inner tubes, a slide with mats, a lazy river, a wave pool, a suspended cable with handles you slide on, and maybe a few other things I'm missing. All in all a pretty normal water park. What was different is how many people openly stared at us throughout the day. Everybody actually. The only people that didn't stare at us were the people who didn't look in our direction (or were blind, although I suppose "didn't look in our direction" covers them already because they wouldn't have LOOKED, but I was trying to be funny). Lindsay was approached several times with a camera, thinking the couples wanted Lindsay to take a picture of them, only to discover the cute Asian girl with her arm around Lindsay throwing up a peace sign at her boyfriend who wanted a picture OF Lindsay. This type of thing was quote common, Lindsay has had her cheeks pinched by old woman and my arms and hands have been grabbed and held by all manner of folk. Anyway the water park was great, the water park food was not, and it only cost 80,000 dong a person (5idh USD). Oh, I almost forgot, on the water park maps (hopefully we'll post a picture so you can see) there is an "attraction" called "sunbathing area for foreigners" - we thought this was funny. Tri said that he always tries to come to the park with foreign friends so be can use the foreign area which has nicer bathrooms I guess - he gets kicked out if he comes by himself.

***Ok, now I'm in Nha Trang - time for me to finish this!! Sorry if the detail and amount of writing takes a turn for the worse here... I'm really hoping there are enough pictures here to make up for the things I'm missing or my less than perfect writing doesn't do justice to!***

We went to a movie, the day after the water park I think. Galaxy Cinema, and each ticket was around 60,000 dong I believe. We saw "Eagle Eye" which while the acting was surprisingly decent the imagery and general feel of the film was effective, I think it sucked thanks to a terribly overused story line, and a terrible ending (well basically the last 45 minutes of the movie). I guess I'm talking about the movie instead of the experience because it was really pretty standard. Vietnamese subtitles, and assigned seating, but other that that a pretty normal and pleasant movie watching experience.

The next big (and probably biggest) thing we did was move in with Tri. Again, we'll post a video "walk through" of his house so I'll leave the details out, but we lived on the second floor. I slept in a great bed, and Lindsay got a hammock. One interesting thing, although i don't know how universally Vietnamese this is, under our sheets there were thing woodenish mats. I'm not sure what they are for, but they were really comfortable and I liked the sleeping experience. I am guessing the wood (or whatever it is) helps to keep you cool by radiating heat as opposed to the mattress which might be a bit more of an insulator. But again I digress. We feel bad (and spoiled!) because Tri's parents went out and bought an air conditioner slash fan unit for us when they found out we were coming. And that was the story of our stay really - constant doting and feeding. Everyday when we got home there were two cups on saucers with a jug of tea. Every night Tri's mom would bring Lindsay and I some sort of fruit smoothy. When we mentioned a certain type of food we were curious about Tri's mom would jump on a motorbike and find whatever it was for us to try. Tri's dad I felt very close with as I always felt that he would watch out for me as a fellow man. Things like offering me a beer at dinner, that sort of thing. Very wonderful man, and a very wonderful family. We really enjoyed Tri's sisters as well. Very awesome girls. Tri's older sister, T(D?)am didn't speak much English when we first arrived but after a few forced translating sessions in Tri's absence we found out that she actually speaks very well and her pronunciation was spot on. Sometimes you meet people with a huge vocabulary who you still can't understand, but while her vocabulary isn't huge (yet!) she was a pleasure to talk to because everything she said we understood perfectly.

At Tri's house we ate a lot of stuff for the first time: whole, head-on-quail - snails-by-the-bowl, thing-we-can't-spell-1, thing-we-can't-spell-2, thing-we-can't-spell-3-through-???, and so on. We had a few fruits for the first time as well. I wished I remembered the names but there was one that was an interesting cross between a tomato and a nectarine. Honestly really good. Then there were small nut looking fruits that tastes sour and great. Almost like a quickly dissolving sour patch kid that's sour all the way through. All in all I'd say that we were incredibly well fed, stuffed in fact, for the three days we stayed at Tri's.

***ok, almost there! I think.***

One evening T(D?)am asked us if we wanted to go with her to meet a few of her friends. We of course did and walked to a local park. The time spent with her was great and her fiends were wonderful as well. Lindsay and I could both see enjoying hanging out with them had we lived in HCMC and gone to school with them. Anyway we played a few games (a variant of freeze tag) but the real highlight of the hang session was the Ghost House. You would NOT expect it, but in the middle of this green little park was a haunted house type thing. The haunted house itself was pretty good but the thing that was an experience for me was having a group of screaming 18 year old Vietnamese girls literally shoving me in front of them to take the scary rooms head on. As I've said to some of you already, I have NEVER had so many girls trying to hold my hand. At one point I literally had three girls hands in my hand, one nearly pulling my arm off, and a few pulling at my shirt. At one point I almost fell over (really) because so many people were pulling at me. I was happy to see the stars again when we finally exited as I feared for my life, or more honestly I feared I would be pulled over and crush one of the girls who were trying to use me as protection. Lindsay thought the experience was great ad well, and in one of the rooms after I was nearly dragged over she was forced to the front lines and found the experience "scary" and "well done" - I concur.

So that pretty much sums up the major points that I can remember at the moment. Still there is much more to our time in HCMC that right now I'm just not feeling up to writing about. For instance a deserted 6 floor mall with zero customers and a "3D ride adventure" on the top floor that Lindsay and I experienced in an empty theatre, by ourselves, after it took 15 minutes to warm up the theatre's projector after days of unuse. Lots of great memories and little things like this. The flan lady that had a small street stall and the best flan to date. The endless cheek pinches and arm grabs from interested Vietnamese. The interesting and wonderful coffee brewing technique. The Bia Hoi street beer vendors (ian: a draft for 3000 dong aka 20 cents). The romantic and magical (cheesy I know) arms width side streets full of sleeping Vietnamese and tiny restaurants. The roasted dogs. Shoe shopping with Tri.

Ok, then we left. To Da Lat we went, the Swiss alps of Vietnam.

blood. money. and blood money (not really).

2008-09-30T21:30:00.000-07:00

a few weeks ago while in phnom penh, i happened across an article talking about a man who has devoted his life to trying to help save cambodian children's lives. through the article, i found out that every saturday, this man performs a concert, under the stage name "beatacello," where he provides information on medical statistics in cambodia, and asks for money or blood donations to help keep the hospitals running, and blood available for those who need it.

(there is a chance i might get carried away here as i tend to do sometimes when i feel strongly about something.
i'll try to be concise, but i'm not promising anything :))

in 1975 (during the war) this man, dr. beat richner (a perfect name for a cellist and doctor, wouldn't you say? :)), came to cambodia with the red cross and has since spent his life trying to raise the money necessary to build hospitals for cambodian children throughout the country. since 1991, he has been able to help open 5 hospitals and a maternity ward in cambodia -- all of which offer free services for their patients. during the concert, he spoke on some of the issues listed below....
* approximately 34% of Cambodians survive on less than $1US/day
* of a population of 13 million, nearly half are under the age of 15
* 51% of cambodian children are malnourished
* 1 in 7 children die before their fifth birthday – largely due to preventable causes
* the HIV infection rate in cambodia is the highest in SE Asia

beat was determined to provide every child who needed it access to full medical treatment, unhampered by corruption -- a daunting task, but one he felt was achievable by offering fair wages to the entire staff... down to the people who clean the floors --something that does not happen here.* each year 75,000 children are hospitalized (average stay: 5 days)
* 800,000 ill children receive treatment in the outpatients department
* 400,000 healthy children get vaccinated
* 16,000 surgical operations are executed
* 12,000 birth in the maternity (designed to prevent mother-to-child AIDS and TB transmission)
* and 3,000 families daily receive health care education
ALL because of these hospitals. amazing, right? and as i mentioned before, all medical services are free of charge since the families in Cambodia are simply too poor to even make a small contribution towards these medical costs.

without Kantha Bopha, 3,200 additional children would die in Cambodia every MONTH.

we walked away, knowing full well we were unfortunately not in a position to help financially, but that we could give blood.

so we did.

this was cool, because we got to find out what our blood type was.
each of the 4 dots (i think) was being tested for a different type.
kev's set was way prettier (type A+) and I was O...
whatever the case, mine was an ugly brown color, while his was a pretty blue.

i should say that the hospital was extremely clean, and we were given treatment just as we would in the united states. it was really quite an impressive outfit, especially when you looked out of the windows at the types of conditions surrounding the hospital.

without access to modern cooking amenities, the majority of cambodians still cook on ground fires. because of this a HUGE number of children who come into the hospital are burn victims, who fall into the fire (we have seen countless burned children since we've been here, and had no idea why until last saturday). since the roads are so terrible, and many are coming from the countryside, many children are in shock by the time they finally make it in, and need full blood transfusions. this was the first time i had ever given blood and i was amazed how simple and painless it was. i'm not a needle person, or a hospital person, or hell...a blood person, but it really was a piece of cake. it made me realize how something so simple could be so important.

although this blog is not intended for political purposes, if you feel you are in a position to help this hospital, and these people, i feel i should at least mention where you can get more information.
http://angkorhospital.org/default.php
http://www.fwab.org/help_donate.php

unbelievably, 85% of the funding necessary for these hospitals to run come from PRIVATE DONATIONS. the annual budget of the running costs is now 24 Million USD. less than 1 million comes from the cambodian government. yet, even still, Kantha Bopha's relation costs/healing rate is one of the best in the world.

just something to consider.

6 million words later, just as i suspected, i got carried away.
love and miss you all.
a giant CHEERS for all the doctors and nurses out there...studying or professional.
xxx
lgt

imma klutz (and other stories).

2008-09-27T22:03:00.000-07:00

well, cambodia is everything we hoped it would be and more. as i'm sure my previous posts made clear, the first few weeks were somewhat trying, but since we've been in Siem Reap, things have been nothing short of awesome. kev and i both just finished up our first week of volunteering, which we both found to be extremely fulfilling (for lack of a better, less cheesy word). kev worked at a place called TrailBlazers, which builds really simple water filters for people in remote villages allowing them to have access to clean water. just to give you an idea...inside of a 2ft high, rectangular cement box, was the filtration media, which consists of a layer of gravel, a layer of course sand, and a layer of fine sand. there is a plastic diffuser plate above the water level to avoid disturbing a "bio-layer," which holds key bacteria essential for removing biological pathogens and parasites found in the water. he woke up early every day and went and scrubbed out giant plastic containers, sifted sand and rock, and then washed the sand for the filters. it was quite a "grassroots” organization, but the work they were doing was quite incredible. with the most meager of supplies they were able to send these $45 filters off to villages for free, thanks to volunteers and a little hard (if not monotonous) work.

in the mornings (from about 9-12), while kev was at work, i hung around, went running and explored the city via bike. when he'd get home, we'd normally head to Lucky Supermarket, a new and very exciting edition to Siem Reap (it's the only supermarket in the city, and opened our 2nd day here), to buy some of the cheapest lunch meat, bread and, on a day we felt like splurging, cheese, they had for lunch. by the time we cycled back to the guest house, and ate, i had to get ready to go to work myself!

i worked at a "school" teaching english to about 30 kids aged 5-17. i say "school" because the school really was nothing more than a roof, about 6 rows of homemade wooden tables, and a white board. a few weeks ago, the students were meeting at one of the temples near by, but the government has been cracking down, and forcing the schools to relocate in order to keep the temples available for tourists to visit. because of this, many schools have been forced to shut down, leaving many kids no where to study. thankfully for the students at this school, a nurse offered to "donate" the lower half of her house for the school to run. so, we met there. their teacher was a 19 year old cambodian student, who was quite possibly the sweetest, most dedicated teacher alive. she was given a small stipend by a local NGO to provide pencils, paper and food for the students, but short of that, she worked for free. many of her students are orphans, and until a few weeks ago, were living on the streets. since the house has been donated, many of the students now live at the school, all sleeping on the cement floor together under scraps of ratty clothes and burlap bags. their teacher lives with them, and along with her other responsibilities, now acts as their guardian -- cooking, cleaning and caring for these 9 students. the school is open to the poorest of the poor children from the siem reap area. all can attend for free, and 95% of their families are making under $1 a day.

i cant even begin to describe how amazing these students were, and the kind of energy they filled me with each and every day. i have posted some pictures below so you can see their faces. from the pictures alone--never hearing their voices, or knowing their personalities--you will fall in love. it’s impossible not to. even though the kids were definitely spread out in age, they all played together during their game time, and seemed to genuinely care for each other. the older ones would sit by the younger kids and help them copy the words off the board to their notebooks, and help pronounce words they didn't understand. if one student brought in a small bag of fruit for a snack, they would share with the entire group, even if it meant the kid who brought the food only got a small bite. it was truly incredible to see the way they understood the world. inspiring.

for more pictures go to: www.flickr.com/shoelessone

anyway, we’re off to go rustle up some grub.

it looks like i have a few more seconds...very quickly while kev’s uploading some photos, here are just a few things that have happened or i have realized this week....

· while running a few nights ago, i was jamming to christina augliara’s “aint no other man but you” and stepped in i swear to god, the smallest pothole i have seen in cambodia. go figure. figuring i could brace my fall in the split second before actually hitting the ground, i put my hand down, and managed to not only scrape my knees, elbows and chin, but also sprain my finger. as i’m sure many of you know, gracefulness was not a trait i inherited at birth. as you can imagine, my fall was definitely not elegant, attractive nor fluid. if the pain of the fall wasn’t enough, there happened to be a group of people riding down the street on their mopeds who were just close enough to see me wipe out. great. bloody knees, purple finger, and pride sore from embarrassment. not bad for a night’s run.

· i realized yesterday that i have not washed my only pair of pants since i have been here. they’re the zip off ones, so i feel like i’m wearing 2 different pairs on any given day. (yes, i know that’s not the case.) i washed them immediately after i came to this realization. dark brown cannot do the color of the water justice.

· speaking of my innately klutzy behavior, i must relay this, yet again, extremely embarrassing story. earlier this week, i met with a guy (who happened to be a monk) to learn some Khmer. it was a really funny, albeit awkward experience, but i walked away feeling like i learned a lot, and was really excited to start trying out some new words. needless to say, it’s very difficult to pronounce half the words with the letters used, let alone get the inflections right. sometimes they’re practically inaudible – at least to my untrained ear. but i tried my best (for instance, try pronouncing the word chngng anh. that is how the monk spelled “delicious” for me. like those lack of vowels? yeah, it drives me crazy too). anyway, my very first day at school (really, within the first minute or so), in an attempt impress her with some Khmer, i said, “hi there, how are you doing today?” instead however, i managed to ask if she had sex with her brother in front of the entire class. immediate uproar. completely unaware of what i had just asked, i sit there smiling, waiting for her response. while she’s getting noticeably uncomfortable, and trying to quiet her class down, she turns to me and says, “i think you should retry your question.”

looks like you can be klutzy without actually falling.

here’s hoping i’m not the only klutz out there,
xxx
lgt

cambodian hodgepodge.

2008-09-19T22:04:00.000-07:00

Tuol Sleng Prison, Phnom Penh.

room of tourture cells.

S-21 victim.

cambodian countryside.

phnom penh riverside.

Angkor Wat and surrounding temples.

RANDOM.
kevo gots a haircuts.

going for another shrimp plate at shabbi shu.

someone's excited about their food...

elephants in the market.

avid bike rider. 49km yesterday! woo hoo!

Ok

2008-09-18T05:34:00.000-07:00

Ok, so this may not be a particularly epic post, but I'm going to lay down the facts with my less than perfect grammar and sentence structure.

First, as of now Lindsay and I are in Siem Reap. Siem Reap is a gigantic step up from Phnom Penh as far as we are concerned, and from the second we got into Siem Reap we both felt very positive about it. Though Lindsay's two previous posts may or may not have given the impression, we had/have mixed and even negative feelings towards aspects of Phnom Penh (there wasn't much to do, it was pretty expensive, it rained every day, etc) and our traveling souls were starting to feel traveled out. Siem Reap is a breath of fresh clean air and has lots to offer.

A few highlights, in no particular order:
1) Our guest house is called Bou Savy, and is in the Northern part of Siem Reap. It's 13.50 USD a night and includes AC, a TV, free water, and free breakfast. This isn't super cheap however the free breakfast and great location makes it a steal for us and we feel very positive about it. The people are incredibly nice and friendly here - plus there are two puppys that eat breakfast with us in the AM. Lindsay and I love the puppies.

2) There are a bunch of volunteer opportunities around here. OK, I hate the words "volunteer" and "opportunities" next to each other as to me personally it sounds cliche and canned, so I'll call these things, "places you can work at." But whatever you may call them, there are a bunch of them here and they seem to be well organized and generally attractive. Tomorrow Lindsay is meeting with a teacher from a school she is hoping to help out at, and I'm meeting with a guy who builds and installs water filters for poor people. Our general plan is to stay in Siem Reap until our visa expires at the end of the month.

I can't speak too much about Lindsay's volunteer program as neither of us know much yet other than she'll hopefully be going to a local school to help out in a classroom with English related topics. I don't know much either, but I know that I'll probably be doing mainly manual labor, washing gravel I believe. The filters that this organization builds are actually something of an open source design I believe (feel free to google open source :)) and are used around the world in a bunch of third world countries. They are cheap the build ($45 USD will build 1 filter) and easy to maintain. They process around .6 L of water a minute. Basically they are 3ish foot tall cement structures that have several layers of different materials (gravel to filter some stuff out, sand to filter some smaller stuff, a section of specific bacteria which kill 98ish percent of harmful "biomass", etc) and while I'm not going to kid myself or you and say I'm going to be doing anything romantic (installing these things amid shouts of praise from the village kids who smile and splash each other with clean bacteria free water after I'm done with my noble work!!) I am looking forward to doing SOMETHING physically demanding and hopefully it will help somebody out along the way.

3) Today we saw Ankor Vat, and a bunch of temples around the area. This is perhaps worth a post of it's own, and certainly deserves some photos which we'll post later, but for now I'll say that it was incredibly impressive and yet hard to appreciate. Honestly this series of temples and ruins was probably one of the most amazing things I've EVER seen, probably at least in the top 10. (My) Words can't do it justice, basically there are beautiful temples and ruins in beautiful forests. Big temples. We'll post some photos later (see my next point).

4) For my fellow nerds, let me tell you how terrible the internet connections over here are. the computers themselves have been anywhere from incredibly terrible to ricer XP installs with Vista skins to actually pretty newish computers, but the internet connections have been universally terrible. I've been testing my connection speed everywhere I go and the FASTEST sustained download I've managed is 25ish kilobytes a second. More regularly I'm seeing 10-15 kilobytes down and 10ish up. This wouldn't be a big deal as I don't spend a ton of time on the computer, but call it a crime to humanity or not, I have been downloading podcasts and things for long (5 hour +) bus rides and trying to upload full resolution photos to flickr for archiving purposes and it's impossible to do. More shamefully I want to give the iPod Touch 2.1 firmware a trial run, and have converted all of the latest season of house to iPod Touch format via VNC at home and uploaded it to webspace to download. Plus I lost all of my music last firmware update a month or so ago so am trying to replenish my collection somewhat. But generally I'm getting things like this:

5) Food is cheaper here then in Phnom Penh. In Phnom Penh Lindsay and I were shopping at a supermarket the last few days which was actually pretty nice but that was in part because the food was pretty expensive there (10 bucks or more normally for a meal). Here we've been eating for less than 5 bucks for the two of us.

6) It's illegal to rent a motorbike as a tourist in Siem Reap, but Lindsay and I rented peddle bikes today/yesterday and have been putting on a few miles. Yesterday was 48.something kilometers, today was around 39 or so. My legs/knees actually hurt a bit today, but whatever doesn't kill you...

Ok, my neck hurts and I'm off to drink water.

Miss you all back home!

Much love,
kev

it makes me angry.

2008-09-15T07:21:00.000-07:00

thus far, cambodia has been somewhat of a hard place to travel. not for any real reason, besides the pace is so much slower than Thailand, and the people seem so much poorer. we've been staying in Phnom Penh, and for the life of me, i can't wrap my head around the fact that this is in fact a CAPITAL of a country. people beg on the streets all day, everyday. í know it could be just a gimmick, but it's been extremely hard for me, knowing full well that no number of riel that we could possibly afford to give would really help all that much. it's tiring. for the last few weeks, i have resorted to carrying around carrots and various other food items in my pockets to hand out to the street kids that beg for food (i would carry around a backpack chock-full of food, but we've recently heard about a large upsurge of bag-snatching, both in broad daylight and at night; in crowded streets and deserted ones alike. the victims are almost entirely western women riding in tuk tuks or on motorbikes, so i'm sticking to carrying stuff in my pockets! :)). giving money (or so i've heard) makes them extremely vulnerable to explotation, which is expected. it's hard. Phnom Penh alone claims to house 40,000 street kids. 40,000! it makes me sad, frustrated, helpless and angry every time.
the other day, we visited Tuol Sleung Prison (s-21), which was about a block from our guesthouse. the prison was once a highschool which was converted into Cambodia's most important and secertive prison in 1975. More than 14,000 people were tortured here before being killed at the Killing Fields south of Phnom Penh; only 8 prisoners made it out alive. what really made it disturbing for me though, was the fact that this prison is truly in the heart of Phnom Penh's suburbia (if you could have ever called it that). apartment buildings and shops surround the walls of the old highschool, just as they would in any major city. the fact that 14,000 people were tourtured among streets bustling with street vendors, shop keepers and city residents blows my mind. it's sick. really makes you wonder what's happening in your own backyard. oh, not to mention that it happened almost within my lifetime. it's one thing to read about hitler in history class. it's another to see tourture rooms still stained with blood, the thousands of battered mug-shots on the walls, and the men and women, who could be my parents, on the street, knowing full well that they are probably survivers of a horrific genocide which happened less than 25 years earlier. it's things like this i know i must see to truly know what a country is all about. it leaves a mark though, for the good or for the bad, and is something i know i'll never forget. it makes me angry.

(i'll post pictures when the internet connection isn't so slow).

Stung Meanchey Municipal Waste Dump is located in southern Phnom Penh, in a district of the city of the same name, Stung Meanchey. it is a part of the city with low-income neighborhoods and slums. the dump itself covers about 100 acres, or almost 6 hectares. it's flanked by private property on which rubbish pickers build makeshift huts and are charged extortionate rents by landowners. roughly 2,000 people, about 600 of which are children, live and work there. it's nicknamed “Smoky Mountain” because of the miasma of smoke that the dump constantly gives off. It is literally on fire; the waste creates methane as it rots and the methane burns. in monsoon season and throughout much of the rest of the year, the surrounding area is swamped and the children live and play in fetid water.

most of the rubbish pickers at Steung Meanchey are either from Phnom Penh or came to Phnom Penh looking for work and ended up in the slums. many of the approximately 600 children have parents or relatives who also work on the dump and look after them. some of them go to school, but most do not - at least not on a regular basis -and it is safe to say that virtually none of them ever completes a primary school education. the school fees are too high and their families need them to collect rubbish to contribute to the family income. adults earn, on average, 4000 to 5000 riels (US$1.00 to $1.25) a day; children earn on average about half that amount. (source: The Centre for Children's Happiness ) it makes me angry.
we're leaving tomorrow for Siem Reap (home of the infamous, Angkor Wat) for a few weeks before we regroup, and go visit Tri in Vietnam, which frankly, we're really looking foward to. i'm planning on volunteering at a school teaching English in one of the Angkorian temples in Siem Reap, which i'm really quite excited about. i'm calling the principal tomorrow to confirm everything, but it looks like it's going to work out. i cannot wait to see how a classroom is run, and experience something new.
the internet joint is about to close, so i gotta jet.
love and miss you all. xxxlgt

Welcome to Cambodia.

2008-09-09T23:19:00.000-07:00

In a word: potholes. I wonder if that actually is supposed to be two.

Welcome, fellow readers, to Cambodia! A land of dirt, dust, smiles and POTHOLES! Our journey here was nothing short of hilarious. We left Thailand from Chanthaburi by minibus for an uneventful 2-hour trip to the Ban Pakkard/Pailin border on September 3rd. Much to our relief, we had no trouble getting our visas (horror stories can be found here: http://www.talesofasia.com/cambodia-overland-bkksr-reports1.htm), and after a “tip” for the border patrol guy, we were on our way. We jumped on the back of a moped (motodup) with two very smiley men –one with terrible cataracts, the other wearing a Julia Roberts’ Pretty Woman hat for the 50km trip to the city of Pailin. Awed by the National Geographic-esque countryside, I embraced the potholes and sent silent words of encouragement to my half-blind driver, mentally helping him avoid driving us into a ditch.

The one thing Cambodia has to offer right away is dirt. Red-orange dirt. Loads of it. I had read about this. Countless rants from countless travelers. Nothing I could have read though could have prepared me for just how ridiculous the dirt, coupled with the potholes could be. Hilariously ridiculous. Tears streaking my now orange cheeks, coughing uncontrollably, driver laughing hysterically -we pull into Pailin. We jump off, and the Julia wannabe explains in KhmerEnglish that he is going to find us a taxi to take us to Battambang, where we were planning on staying for a few days. Perfect. Turning around, we are surprised to see a whole group of people have assembled around us, laughing and trying to speak to us in broken English. Amused, we take out our tattered phrasebook, and try to indulge them by speaking some no doubt, terrible Khmer. Just as we had gotten past the formalities, Julia is back introducing our “taxi” driver.

This is where the fun begins.

Ami (that’s his name) is adorned in a full hunter green military getup, complete with terrible acne, pants tucked into black lace-up boots, a frown, and a military cap. After drawing the payment required for the trip to Battambang on the dusty window of his rusty Honda, he throws a cell phone in Kev’s face and says, “talk.” While I’m laughing with the other 20 people standing around watching this transaction take place, Kev, looking totally freaked out and annoyed, keeps saying, “what? Uh huh. Yes. What? I don’t…What? 1200 Baht? Yes. Yes….” while shooting me “stop-laughing-if-you-know-what’s-good-for-you” looks. (In my defense, no matter how hard I try, it seems Cambodian men refuse to do any sort of business transaction with women, at any time.) Finally, Kev hands the phone back and the man opens up the trunk. We throw our stuff in, say our “aa gohns (thank yous)” and jump in. Turns out, the guy on the phone wanted to be sure that Kev had actually given him 1200 baht to take us to Battambang. Fishy right? This was not a certified cab, and despite his military appearance, Ami was not a member of the military. Just a guy with some wheels. We were not on the road more than a minute when Ami’s phone goes off. Looking more pissed than ever, he pulls over and starts honking his horn relentlessly. Soon, a man appears at the window, and he hands him some money. No smiles. No thank you. No nothing. Just a debt paid. I think during our 3 hour trip, Ami’s phone went off 6 times. Which meant: 6 more headache-inducing honking sessions, 6 more unfriendly payments to 6 more unfriendly people, NOT on the way to Battambang.

Just after the first debt was paid, it started to rain. Nay. POUR. It’s funny to think back to when I complained about the rains in Thailand. Thailand doesn’t understand crap about rainstorms. They don’t have dirt roads. Or potholes. The best thing about the rain here is that even though the cars can hardly make it down the road without stalling out, and even though there are 10 year olds swimming up to their necks in the streets, there is still dust. There is still dirt. Not mud (although there is plenty of that too), but dust. I can’t explain it really. It’s one of the craziest things, but it’s true. Anyway, so there we are, driving along. Ami skillfully swerving around the road trying to avoid the potholes (well, every 3rd, anywayJ), my arm fat jigglin’ to a song I didn’t want to dance to. NOTE: There are a couple of things that tell a girl she needs to start doing some pushups. 1) driving down a Cambodian road. 2) doing the Chicken Dance at wedding parties. Let me just be clear. I did 20 pushups that night before bed.

So back on the road, we end up picking up a few more passengers. Naturally, with 6 bodies now packing the car, the windows start fogging up. It is still pouring rain. Pouring. The windows must all stay up to avoid drowning in the car. Now, I swear to god, you CANNOT see out of the windshield. The guy sitting on the stick shift is wiping off the condensation every 30 seconds for our irritable, sweaty driver. All you can see are black blobs slowly passing in front of your eyes. Oh! There’s a cow! Oh! There goes a truck! Oh! There’s a kid playing in the water!

We almost hit cars. We almost hit dogs. Chickens. Children. Even though Ami could see no better than my driver with cataracts on the first leg of the trip, he had one thing the first driver didn’t. A horn. Even though we couldn’t see a damn thing, we kept our 30km/hr pace, flying over potholes, gripping the safety handrails to avoid smacking ourselves into a concussion, horn wailing non-stop for over 3 hours, all while watching orange water fly over the top of our windows.

That is, until the car broke down.

Yes, a little transmission problem! That’s all! Stalled in the dead center of the road, everyone piles out of the car to stand by some cows, while a now seriously cranky Ami phones his brother to come pick us up. Luckily we didn’t have to wait toooo terribly long, and soon we were all loaded into his brother’s car. We left Ami with his rusty Honda in the middle of the road. Ha. Poor Ami. September 3rd was just not his day.

Anyway, the guesthouse we sought out was owned by an Aussie and his Khmer wife, who promised to be an open book for all the Cambodian questions one could ever think of. That sounded great to us, as we could hardly pronounce “hello” correctly at this point. Too bad he turned out to not be all that cool, and mainly seemed to be working us at every angle for more money. Just the same, the rooms promised A/C, which was quite welcomed after our hot and humid trip there. Just as bed is starting to sound nice (around 10pm) the power goes. Within 15 minutes I am literally dripppppping with sweat. I have slept in many a non-air conditioned room since we’ve been here. No problem. In fact, I can count the number of times we’ve had A/C on one hand. Trouble was, the man neglected to put screens on his A/C room windows –which was perfect considering we are in the Malaria capital of the world. Since we were too cheap to get Malaria pills at home, it wasn’t a risk we were willing to take, and our window stayed shut. So, I resorted to getting up every 15 minutes in attempts to cool myself down with a cold shower. It is so dark I truly can hardly feel my way to the bathroom. It’s kind of scary. I get Kev. There we are. Laying on opposite sides of the bed, refusing to touch each other, window closed, in pitch darkness, sweat pouring out of every crevice on our bodies. Disgusting is the only real way to put it. After an hour of incessantly trying to ignore the heat and will myself to sleep, I am just about there. Floating above my body, aware that I’m still awake, but barely. It is at this point--3 in the morning, 5 hours since we lost power--that the worst possible thing happens. The manager’s 10 month old baby starts crying. Nay. Not crying. Wailing. The wailing of an over-tired kid who is so hot, and so sticky, and so uncomfortable that they couldn’t embrace sleep if they were knocked unconscious. I’m sure our parents can remember such a cry. Nothing you can do will make them stop. They just have to cry themselves into an even greater exhaustion until they fall asleep again. And that’s seemingly, just what his parent’s decided to let him do. 2 hours later, he finally stopped. 5-something in the morning, and a million cold showers later, I set myself back to willing myself to sleep.

The next morning, we woke up starving. Thankfully, the power had turned back on around 6:30am, so we got a couple hours of good, non-sweaty sleep. When we walked downstairs at 10am, we encountered quite the sight….
So an archaeologist, an English teacher, and a land mine bomb technician walked into a bar...

Sound familiar?

Long story short, we ended up partaking in a wonderfully drunken birthday celebration for a 68 year old British English teacher. The bomb technician worked for the government, and bought us COUNTLESS (read: too many) drinks. As it turns out, his truck had just run over a land mine an hour earlier, on the way to our guesthouse to buy his friend some drinks for his birthday, blowing it to pieces. He acted like it was a pretty common occurrence. Not too shaken up about it, crazy enough. Although we tried to fend them off, the man proceeded to buy us more “doubles” than one should ever drink, let alone at 10 am on an empty stomach. It was an awesome time. Story after story. Hour after hour. I kept pushing my drinks to Kev (he kept taking them every time I got up to pee or talk to anyone) and needless to say, by 5pm we were drunk. Very drunk. Kev though, was a little more than very drunk. It was hilarious. He maintained this goofy grin on his face for close to 4 hours, and kept babbling on about, “how great of an experience this was,”as only he could. For some reason, unbenounced to me, he decided to involve us in a late-night poker game with some of the regulars. Still drunk, he lost his money within 5 hands, while I managed to stay in for an hour or so before losing. Overall, it honestly was a really fun, if not a terribly unproductive day.

And now, we’re in Phnom Penh. I’m exhausted. There’s a lot to write about here, but I’m just too tired to do it now. I don’t understand why I always decide I should write a post late at night on this damn ipod. You’d think I’d learn.

On an entirely random note, I bet I almost step on 10 cockroaches on any given night. They’re everywhere. And big. Easily as big as a small gerbil. Not that I mind really. At least they’re not spiders.

Also my Crest toothpaste has about one more use left, and then it’s time for the no-brand Asian stuff. Again, it’s not a big deal, just weird to think about having been here long enough to have gone through an entire tube of toothpaste. And toothbrush, for that matter. My toothbrush is in rough shape. But that guy was in rough shape before I even got here. I like them broken in. Like, bristles flattened to the plastic, broken-in. That’s the best way. Plus, if you use it down that much, it makes getting a new one that much more exciting. Teeth brushing has always been a big thing for me. I like clean teeth. Over here, I find myself brushing them 3-4 times a day (which I know isn’t even good for them) because of all the dirt flying around. It seriously feels like the Wizard of Oz. Yes, if you can imagine the dust storm in the Wizard of Oz, coupled with rain, you can imagine Cambodia. By the end of the day, you’ve been crunchin’ on dirt particles for 10+ hours. For the orally fixated, it’s cheaper (and maybe healthier) than cigarettes or gum, I suppose.

Now that I’m thinking about it, I think my toothbrush may have brushed its last tooth. Tomorrow may be the day for a new one.

Hope the roads aren’t dusty where you are.
Miss you all.
xxx
Lgt

So an archaeologist, a English teacher, and a land mine bomb technician walked into a bar...

2008-09-08T23:59:00.000-07:00

A good title (also true) I had to put to pen, but Lindsay is hungry so I'll have to fill this with content a bit later... sorry for the lack of posts all!!

miss u all,
kev

Vi sitter här i venten och spelar lite DotA.

2008-09-02T00:01:00.000-07:00

I just had to share quickly, last night was awesome as Lindsay and I went to an internet cafe to do some Cambodia research, and what should I find but a few fellow DotA players! DotA, being a somewhat obscure video game I play (not enough? too much? I'm not sure..) back at home. Anyway, it was great to see such a familiar, "important" thing to me in such a distant place, being played by guys who couldn't even speak english. It was pretty awesome.

rant.

2008-08-28T22:53:00.000-07:00

This is how my morning began.

I could tell it was going to be a terrible, horrible no-good very bad day.

Once one's head hits the pillow for their midnight Bangkokian slumber, it becomes extremely apparent within the first 30 seconds that their rickety old ceiling fan (circa 1800) on "high," from their $4.50/night room just ain't gonna cut it. Within the first minute, the frugal tenant comes to terms with their cheapness and prays for a morning where their face doesn't look like they smeared it with Vaseline per their nightly bedtime anti-wrinkle regiment. They also pray they won't slip-n-slide their greasy way out of bed in the middle of the night and break an arm. When prayers aren't enough, they buy soap. Plenty of sudsy shower soap.

I have never hailed myself a clean freak. On the other hand, nor have I bragged about how few of showers I had taken in any given week (*cough KEVIN*cough*). That said, soap is what gets me through the hot sweaty nights. Soap is what makes me feel a little less like the skuzzy traveler I know I am, and bit more like the skuzzy CLEAN SMELLING traveler I know I can be (albeit for the first 20 minutes, anyway). When I dropped my soap this morning, my ONLY hope of smelling (and feeling) even remotely clean all day, down the squatty potty....a squatty potty which looks like it hasn’t been cleaned in well over a month (see that lovely ring?), in (once again) a $4.50/night room, with cockroaches...within the first 10 minutes of my day, I knew it was going to bed one of THOSE days. A day when just looking at me the wrong way may constitute a punch in the face.

A no-good, very bad, straight-up rotten, kind of day.

Now, I recognize it might seem a bit drastic to deem a day "rotten" within the first 10 minutes simply because I won't be able to degreasify my body. This may, I understand, to those unknowingly basquing in the ordinary comforts of an air conditioned home, seem drastic. But let me assure you. It's not. Do you ever just have one of those days when you wake up grumpy? Maybe you slept funny, or couldn't find your blanket for 1/2 the night, or MAYBE you went to bed grumpy, and therefore, woke up that way? Unfortunately, that's what happened to me. Last night, around 2am I decided having a clean, non mildew smelling pair of shorts to workout in would make my new step-aerobic friends more likely to want to stand by me (did I mention I've been doing step aerobics in the park with the gay men, and little old ladies? Well I have. And it's awesome. But that's for a happier, less "woe is me" kind post. Stay tuned:)). So, I got out my trusty little bar of soap, and went to work. Once all my workout clothes had jumped up a few notches on the clean scale, I had a second wind, and thought, "Hell! While I'm here, I might as well do everything!" I should mention that a few days ago I bought some new (read: used) clothes off the street for 50 baht that I LOVE. 2 cute shirts, and a pair of green cutoff shorts. I've been wearing them everywhere. So, I scrubbed and scrubbed, and close to an hour later, thrilled about saving the money by washing everything myself, but exhausted from all the hard work (thank god for modern day advances), I started to hang up everything to dry outside my 5th story balcony window.

I felt very domestic.

So just as I'm hanging my last sock, I swear to god, the only gust of wind Bangkok has felt in 2 months comes swirling by, and knocks my favorite new CLEAN pair of shorts off the line, down 5 stories, into a muddy gutter way above anywhere I could reasonably reach without a 40 ft extension ladder.

So I may have misspoke when I blamed my day going wrong when I dropped the soap in the toilet at 9am this morning. Come to think of it, I had a hankering my day would be a little less than perfect around 3:30 am staring over my balcony at my shorts. My favorite new CLEAN shorts (man, there seems to be a clean-theme here I didn't recognize before this!!).

I'm sorry that you all might be getting a little bored with my little sob-story. I don't care. It's not done yet. It's days like this where I feel totally justified complaining about everything and anything...but wait a second! There's nothing new with that, now is there!!! :)

Okay. So lunch. I was starving. Must have been all those step aerobic workout moves, but I'm pretty sure my stomach would have eaten all of my other organs if it could have. For some unknown reason, I have this uncontrollable craving for "Seafood in Sticky Gravy Sauce," a dish I tried one of the first few weeks here, and really loved. So, Kev, being the trooper he is, ignores my mood, and brings me to find what I've been craving. I order it. It looks great. Exactly as I remember. It looks like this:

Yes. Noodles covered in sticky, mucus-like gravy....uh oh. Sick. Just as I'm about to take a huge delicious bite of the one meal I have been craving...the meal we have spent over a hour looking for, I am reminded of an episode of "Dirtiest Jobs" that we watched with our dear friend Nick in a hotel room in Seattle one night on our way out west. Sick, slimy, disgusting mucus-expelling sea slugs. A Japanese delicacy. The sea slug mucus is exactly what is covering my noodles, and I can't take my mind off it. Why then? Who knows. I’ve eaten this meal before. Fate was against me. I try singing a tune. I try playing "Expando" on Kev's iPod. I can't shake the sea slugs.

Lunch: ruined. I stomach a few more bites not to totally annoy Kev too, and leave, vowing to never again to watch "Dirtiest Jobs."

Skip forward to much later in the day (I'm sure lots of reeealy annoying things happened in between there, but it's getting late, and my tiredness is overriding my need to vent about the previous 24 hours:)). In an effort to get me in a better mood, Kev takes me to see Mamma Mia! which I have been ecstatic about seeing since we saw the preview during Death Racer. Lame, yes. I was thrilled just the same. Thrilled until I noticed the lead was the same chick from Mean Girls. Thrilled until Pierce Brosnan started singing. For the record, Pierce Brosnan should never sing. I don’t know where his agent was on this one, but if I was her, I would tell him to look for 2 things: movies where he can just sit, flash his pearly whites and look pretty, or movies where he can choke on half-chewed pieces of shrimp in fancy restaurants. Too bad I'm not getting paid the big bucks--I would have just saved that man's career. All in all, the movie was terrible. Just kidding. Kind of. I can't be too hard on it. It was terrible, but at the same time, any movie where you can watch Meryl Streep shake what her momma gave her in gogo boots can't be all bad. Also entertaining? Looking down your row at all of the men singing, "Dancing Queen." Tonight being the opening night, and ours being the first showing, I expected to see a lot if girls with their mom's or girlfriends. Nope. Quite the opposite, actually.

Score for tonight's events:

Movie:5.2
Entertainment:9.5

So we left the movie. Walking quickly enough to make the last run of the Skytrain. It's 12:09am. One step from under the Skytrain's aunning... lightening. CRACK! Thunder. Torrential downpour. Look at each other. Laugh. Taxi? Bah. Can't stop a bad day set in motion. Just gotta let it run it's course.

Total expenses trying to get me in a better mood (food, entertainment): 735 baht
Total travel costs to get me in a better mood: 180 baht
Walking for an hour through crazy downpour, getting the best shower (with or without soap) Bangkok can offer: PRICELESS.

Rant: I still don't have my shorts.
Rant: I hate the traffic here. After 2 months I still don't have a clue which direction it's going to come from.
Rant: I hate the bugs who bite your legs and leave SCARS! I have 22 unknown bites on my legs, and look like I might morph into a leopard from the thigh down. Kev's feet are worse. Terrible picture, but you get the idea.

2:52am. Almost 24 hours exactly to when my "terrible, horrible, no-good very bad day" began.

Here's dreaming of a happier day tomorrow....and soap.
xxxlgt

Omg

2008-08-28T04:21:00.000-07:00

OMG I was just literally 3 feet away from all of the Thai Olympians
with their medals!!!

Idea

2008-08-25T01:48:00.000-07:00

Learn how to make sesame things
Banana roti
and
cow neeow sune kaya.

sharing.

2008-08-21T23:05:00.000-07:00

ayuthhaya. once capitol, now ruins of thailand.

unbelievably, the humid thai air has enabled kevin to grow facial hair.
he talks about how manly he is at least 5 times a day.
(i'm not lying).
he has also been experimenting with different looks.
pictured above: gotee
pic for proof.

epic.
(and i don't even like that word.)

head/armless statues.
decapitated and amputated by the burmese playing mind games in 1767

buddha resides in all.

beautiful wat (temple) in chiang mai.

takkke me to the riiiverrr! drop me in the waaaterr!
dinner on the riverboat in chiang mai.

kevin attacking my face.
waterfall somewhere far away(15+km) from chaing mai.
we don't know where... just happily exploring.

leaving ayutthaya for bangkok, for the 3rd time in 2 months.

BKK bound.

A few new photos

2008-08-19T09:24:00.000-07:00

Well, we're in Ayutthaya at the moment, but tomorrow we're heading off to Bangkok. It's 11:30 PM here.

Tonight, as sad as it sounds, was almost ruined by two terrible meals. First was at a place called the Moon Cafe. I ordered "chips and cheese with salsa" for 100 baht, which I figured would be a cool thing to eat, considering I haven't eaten any sort of chips in the last month and a half. But, I ended up getting Dorritos (sans cheese) on a plate with a bit of salsa (which actually wasn't bad to be honest) for 3 bucks. The second bit of food was the same sort of thing.

The night was made better by a trip to seven eleven down the street where I found a bottle of goats milk, which I bought and drank and was very very happy with.

I really love food.

Also, just FYI I posted a few photos on Flickr. I'd post them here as well for those of you who don't feel like clicking on a link, but I have 1 minute left before the ocmputer shuts off.

much love to you all, miss you!!!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/shoelessone/

A detailed budget of sorts

2008-08-18T05:49:00.000-07:00

500-ferry-kohphangan-koh tao
Taxi-200
400-big blue lodging
Internet-50
Indian food-400
Sandwhich-50
----1600-----
--------------
100-Thai lunch-res
30-mango shake
200-lodging
320-dinner
30-banana pancake
50-beer
20-soap-711
3600-diving-big-blue
----4350------
------------
120-breakfast-2egg-sandwhiches
270-dinner-coconutsoup-gingerchicken-rice-frenchfries-icecoffee
1356-tickets-koh-Tao-champhon-kirikah-boatbustrain
400-rooms
60-smoothies
50-cake
30-lemon shake-street
----2286----
-------------
120-breakfast sandwhiches-res really good double decker
10-ice 711
40-soup for lindz-street
40-soup for kev-street
120-dinner-friednoodle-padthai-iced coffee-tip20b-res
35-cholate nuts and soymilk-shop-trainststion
500-hotel in kiri khan
----865----
------------
500-hotel
90-breakfast at hotel 4 eggstoast
90-umbrella
100-rice for kids
35-ice cream and cake
20-crazy drinks
60-soup at stand
15-coconut
10-monkey food
100- foot cream
110- laundry
490-dinner ouch-lindz=300
70-food market @10icecream
-----1690----
------------
90- breakfast
30-711 ice coffee
45- coffee and desert
80- monkey feeding
500- rooms
40-pad Thai street
40- chicken soup street
5- dumplings street
15- egg and meat stick
40- ice cream
20- kow neo- sticky rice with custard
24- toilet paper and H2O
-----929----
--------
100- nice lady breakfast
10- rice and sugar in bamboo
10- noodles on train
12- ice cream
28- pruat kiri Kahn - hua hin
88- hua hin to Bangkok
470- rooms at not such a nice place w cold AC and no adjustments
10- water
70- taxi from train station
80- Internet
110- Internet
50- pad Thai
32- batteries
-----1070----
--------week1-----
470- rooms
120- may kaidee
13- yogurt at 711
20- fresh guava from street
5- water
12- needless giving
6- 3 statue guys
30- Internet
50- pad Thai
10- water
30- sky train
109- gormet shopping orange juice and milk
15- chocolate puff
240- movie
80- taxi
70- mango and 1.5 hours Internet
----1280-----
------------
8-3-08
70- taxi to siam from khoason
12- bread for Lindsay
11.75- yogurt at fancy store
470- rooms
70- cipro
12.75- yogurt from fancy store
6- water from gormet store
20- curry naan from mall
12- Japanese custard pancake
70- taxi to khoason road
100- stuff
50- dinner
22- 711 stuff
20- pop
-----1196.5---
----------------
15- Internet
90- taxi from khosan to suk11
800- nice rooms at suk11
453- crepes+50 baht tip
40- internet
50- BTS
60- 50 iced coffee
40- BTS
-----1548----
---------------
160-Internet
85- lunch
1222- 2x train from bkk to chiang mai
70- taxi from nana to train
100- dinner at train station
60- beer and water
80- train junk food - bun, dognut, etc
-----1777----
----------------
6-8-8
550- rooms- hollanda montri
100- tuk-tuk to rooms from train
650- sushi
--1300----------
------------------
550- rooms
90- food at street stalls
1200- visa run
1000- border crossing to Burma
280- mikes burgers
400- deposit for cooking class
40- internet
60- shake and leomanaide at border
---3620---------
------------------
1400- cooking class
130- 711 shampoo, razor, batteries
550- rooms
25- giving
--2105---------
-----------------
550- rooms
60- lunch
144- dinner
75- Internet @ 20b/hr
-----829-------
----------------
180- rooms darets
20- giving
40- drinks
29- gas station
25- sushi
20- dumplings
10- fish desert
30- sushi
300- scarves
30- sushi
40- games
69- coffee + custard
80- Internet
60- wallet
10- earings
50- postcards
5- water
20- kow lahm
110- purse
200- shirt
20- games again shooting targets
----1348--------
-----------------
180- rooms at darets
300- bike for 2 days
70- breakfast
90- gas
60- wat entry
150- prison backrub
40- prison coffee
20- kow neow
70- lunch
150- umbrella
300- dinner at da stafano
45- mango shake and lassi
-----1375-----
----------------
180- rooms
74- breakfast
80- fuel
225- dinner
40- street food
100- ice cream at mall
20- video game
5- pen
20- coconut shake
135- Internet
15- guava shake
49- tea at grocery
-------943-------
------------------
180- rooms
400- bike x2 days
90- breakfast
492- dinner
80- gas
-----1240----
----------------
180- rooms
60- Internet
240- dinner
38- desert at street market
110- paper market
199- helmet
70- fuel
90- breakfast
15- soap
18- almond thing
----1120----
--------------
180- rooms
75- breakfast
400- bike
600- haircuts
40- desert
20- video game
10- massage chair
250- shoes
565- dinner on the boat - riverside
12- water
---------------
676- ticket to ayuttaya
180- rooms
80- drinks
77- breakfast
70- gas
100- bike
150- dinner
128- buds ice cream
80- Internet
15- ducttape asprin
--------------

+++27793+++
16 day average:
///1737B///
54.20 USD

------------------------
asia.shoelessone.com
(from iPod Touch)

Just a trim.

2008-08-15T11:00:00.000-07:00

Well, I guess It's been a while since I've written much of anything, and after a lot of harassment from Kev, I realized I do actually have a few things to report. As it turns out, 1 1/2 months later, I need to make another addition to "the list...but I'll get to that in a second.

As of 6 tonight, I "bit the bullet..." "went all out..." [add other ridiculous little phrase here] and got cute shoes AND bangs!!! Okay fine, my shoes aren't really all that cute. In fact they're knock off, $4.50 Birkenstocks, and my bangs, well...without a blow dryer, curling iron, or straightener, you could say they're looking a bit funky, air drying with all this crazy humidity...but I will not be discouraged!! Kev actually was first to get his hair cut earlier this afternoon, and after watching him get a (seriously, no lie) 10 minute head massage and shampoo, I decided it would be a crime if I didn't get one too (right?!). So, I found a cute little picture of a hair cut I liked, and showed the guy what I wanted. Obviously there is a BIT of a language barrier in this joint, but when he saw the picture I liked he said..."Oh! You want Asian girl hair! I give you straight Asian girl hair!" (this is what I THINK he said, by the way.) l smile and nod my head, and adjust myself in the really sticky pleather chair. Now there are two things I should mention at this point. One. While, yes, I picked out a picture of an Asian woman to copy my hair after, there were absolutely NO magazines of any white girl haircuts to choose from (not that I initially minded). Two. As I mentioned earlier, my hair's been runnin' with this whole humidity thing, and has left me with quite the crrrazy do's these days. My hair is thick. I am white. Unfortunately, no amount of hair product will leave my hair as straight, slick or shiny as any of the girls' here. I figured the man would recognize this. But decked out in his pink Lacoste hat, matching polo sweater vest, tight leather pants, and enormous diamond encrusted cross necklace and earrings-- it was obvious, this man was on a mission. Almost 2 hours later, my "trim with bangs" was completed. Looking down at the floor, I laughed at the 1/2 of head of hair laying on the ground. This poor man truly could not handle the wave in my hair. Every time he cut and released the hair he was holding, my hair would lay with a slight wave. I watched as his face tensed up, and he grabbed the thinning shears, trying to thin my hair down to a point of no wave. When he could thin-no-more, he resorted to the hair wax, and methodically attempted to tame my hair into the "Asian hair" style he promised. You could almost read the profane words of frustration coursing thru his brain, mixed with the lack of understanding on "why it won't lay flat!!!" In the end, afraid of losing any more hair, I finally stopped him, and just told him I liked it just like it was. He smiled, and whipped his hand across his forehead with a sigh of relief, and then proceeds to say, "You the first white girl hair I ever cut! Not like Thais, it hard!" Ha. My poor hair has been through so much over the years. It's a wonder it doesn't fall out just to spite me. I walked out looking like a drowned rat, while yelling at Kev for laughing at my "special new hair cut." It was quite the trip...but now I'm one step closer to "fitting in"...right?! :)

Okay, so back to the list. Number 3... (Dun, dun, duuuuuun!) Being able to drive a scooter like a bat out of Hell. Let me just say for the record: Kev has mastered that skill. I wouldn't be surprised to learn he has Thai blood coursing thru his veins. Today alone he ran 3 stop lights (common practice), utilized his horn multiple times (common practice) and mastered the delicate art of car/tuk-tuk/pedestrian/songatheaws/scooter/stray dog weaving. Needless to say, I'm veerry impressed (and scared to death most of the time:)). Speaking of stray dogs, the other day Kev picked up some dog treats at this night bazaar and has been carrying them around searching for hungry stray dogs for close to a week now. A giant bag. Full. Of smelly dog treats. It's pretty cute, I will say.

Tonight we ate dinner on this boat while putzing along the river. It was an amazing way to see the city from a different angle. After, we went to another night market (where I bought my shoes!) and drove around looking for stray dogs to feed for an hour. It was really fun. Although pretty scraggly, they are pretty cute...and make me miss Clee the Beeo.

On a totally different, not so happy note, the other day I went to the Women's Prison to get a massage. I heard that they had just implemented a program where 100% of the money the women made would go directly to help them get back on their feet when they were released, or to their families, assuming they weren't getting out for a while. The woman I was with was named Soi, who seemed to have an incredibly sweet, but unmistakable sadness to her. I was just making small talk with her when she said, out of the blue, "so I bet you want to know why I'm in here." After trying to assure her that, no, it really wasn't any of my business, she said she needed to talk, and wanted to tell me. So I sat back and listened to how she had just seen her 4 year old daughter a few hours earlier and had been doing a lot of "thinks" all day about how she got there. She told me about how she found out her husband was molesting her daughter, and when she found out, she bashed his head in with a mortar and pestal. A bit graphic, sorry. She said he was in "really bad shape," and that even though she was just protecting her daughter, she had a long time to serve. I haven't looked into this, but she told me that in Thailand children are considered almost like adults by the time they're 3. Which means, even though this little girl had no way of truly protecting herself from her dad, she still is responsible for her safety as far as the court is concerned. It was really difficult to take in. She also talked about the child-sex industry and made mention to why it's so big here. She told me that even though it is now illegal to sell your child into the sex industry, parents (in especially rural villages) often have no way of protecting their daughters from it. And, of course, there's no protection for the parents trying to protect their children. It's a sick, frustrating cycle. I asked her if I could do anything, give more money, etc, but she told me no, she was just giving a service, and couldn't take a cent more from me. When I left, she gave me a giant hug and thanked me for listening to her "thinkings." I smiled, asked again if there was anything I could do and left feeling unbelievably drained, helpless and sick to my stomach. So much for a relaxing Thai massage! I guess this is the kind of stuff you find out once you've been somewhere for more than a week...you trim off the fat, and get to the meat of the issues effecting the people you've been surrounding yourself with.

I'm planning on going back to see her tomorrow.

Anyway, enough of this depressing post. It's been a long day--and I think I'm hittin' the hay. Miss and love you all.

Trim what you don't need.

Xxx lgt

I bought a bike helmet

2008-08-14T09:02:00.000-07:00

I just bought a bike helmet. It was 199 baht, a bit less then 6 bucks. I bought it because it has a visor, and I'm tired of my current loaner helmet which doesn't have a visor (makes driving in the constant rain difficult), plus my current helmet smells terrible.

plus, i'm going to buy a scooter when I get home. Mom/Dad, we're gonna need a bit more room in our garage!

terrible pic: