Josiah and Anna's Trip

• Just got my mytouch 3g. Maybe the push I need to actually use twitter? #

Powered by Twitter Tools.

We’re home! We arrived safely in Chicago yesterday afternoon and are super excited although a little overwhelmed as well.  I haven’t been back in 15 months and Anna hasn’t been home since Christmas.

Anyways, give me a couple of days and I’ll start uploading pictures from the remainder of our trip so everyone can see some of the amazing things we were lucky enough to get to see.

Until then, we’re going to be enjoying hot showers and sleeping in dependably clean beds.
JER

Hi everyone! Again I’m posting after a long period of writing with only a short amount of time to update. We’re in Cairo and since we last wrote we’ve seen the Taj Mahal, the pyramids and a ton of other amazing things. However, because of poor internet connections and limited amounts of time we haven’t been able to post pictures which has made writing seem far less appealing to me – big blocks of text are far less interesting without pictures.

Anyways, we just wanted to let everyone know that we are still OK and that we haven’t given up on showing you all of our pictures, we’ve just been delayed. As soon as I get a reliable internet connection I will upload pictures and tell you all about Nepal, India, Egypt and the rest of our trip home. So, give me about two more weeks (we’ll be back in Chicago June 26th) and I’ll start telling you the story of the remainder of our trip.

We’ll be seeing lots of you soon and we’ll be much more capable of keeping in touch with everyone else in just a couple of weeks!

JER

Just a quick post to let everyone know that everything is going well and that we’re still alive. It’s the hot season in India and Nepal now which means constant power outages and in turn almost completely inaccessible internet. We’ll try to update you all on everything that’s happened in the last couple of weeks as soon as possible but we still have nine more days here and it may not happen before then.

JER

Well, as you can all probably see, I’ve finally gotten some pictures up of Cambodia and Laos. I didn’t put up a lot of them because they take an incredibly long time to upload, particularly since we’re pirating wi-fi from one of the hostel’s neighbors and it’s not too fast. Anyways, check the Cambodia post again – you should finally be able to see some pictures to describe what I wrote before

On to Laos. Our first interaction with Laos came when we flew Lao Airlines across the border (to avoid hassling with getting a visa ahead of time) from Siem Reap to Pakse in southern Laos. I was a bit nervous about this, since I’m not fond of flying as it is, and this airline had a bit of a bad reputation about ten years ago. I had heard that it had improved but I really didn’t know what to expect. Actually, it was totally fine. The airplane was a solid French built turboprop (I had heard rumors of old Chinese or Russian built planes), we were served food in the 50 minute flight, and other than the door flying open on landing it was totally uneventful. That flight kind of epitomizes our trip there – we had heard that it would be generally rougher travel in Laos than elsewhere in SE Asia but in the end the people were great, the attitude was totally relaxed and other than a little thing here or there, it was fantastic.

As soon as we landed in Pakse, we headed south nearly to the Cambodian border to an island in the Mekong River called Don Det. It’s become a popular place to go in southern Laos for those few backpackers who actually make it that far south so the area is really backpacker-friendly but the area around is a great place to see what the people’s lives are really like living along the Mekong. It took us nearly three hours in a saenghthaw (like a pickup truck with a cover in the back used to carry people) and a quick boatride, so we were happy to settle into our little bungalow when we finally arrived. For about two dollars a night we got this cozy little place, mosquito net and great river view included:

There is no electricity on the island except when they turn the generators on for about three hours after dark, so we bought some candles and settled into our hammocks to relax for a couple of days. Other than a bike ride around the island one day, in which we saw some pretty awesome waterfalls (check the pictures below) we just relaxed on the island for a couple of days.  It fit what we had heard about Cambodia and Laos – “In Cambodia you relax, in Laos you fall asleep.”

After a couple of days bumming around the island we decided to move to the capital Vientiane. This was a bit of an adventure, since there’s really only one way to get from southern Laos to northern Laos without going through Thailand and this is by road.  So, we bought ourselves tickets on the VIP sleeper bus that runs overnight from Pakse to Vientiane taking about 10 hours. We were shown some pictures of a relatively roomy bed so we were optimistic that we would get a good night’s sleep. After waiting around Pakse for the day (there is literally nothing to say about this little town) we found out that rather than actually having nice roomy beds, the bus company had a fantastic photographer who knew a lot about camera angles. While this is definitely not the worst overnight travel I’ve had by any means, it’s notable because we were so surprised at the size of the beds. Have a look below and note that each of the beds you see is for two people (sorry that we don’t have a better shot):

Anyways, other than the fact that the bed was too short for me, Anna and I were totally fine – unlike the girl you see in the picture above, we at least didn’t have to share with complete strangers.

After arriving in Vientiane we had a quick nap and then took a trip around town to see the sights. While it’s not a big city, it has a long history and there are some pretty interesting things to see around town. We went and saw Pha That Luang, the golden stupa you’ll see below which we had seen pictures of all over Laos in the previous days (sorry, no picture right now – I seem to have forgotten to upload it). We also saw Patuxai, a Lao take on the Arc de Triomphe, and quite a few temples that I won’t go into detail about here.

We spent another relaxing couple of days in Vientiane. There wasn’t much to do there either but there was a lot of good food (thank the French for that one) and a lot of nice places to hang out and wander around. I guess this is what we liked so much about Laos, is how relaxed the atmosphere was. We never felt like we were going to be tricked by anyone, everyone was happy to smile at you and we could just relax. It was a good time and it made the transition back to Bangkok a little intense, but I’ll leave that for the next post.

JER

Hi everyone, just a quick note to let you all know that everything is going well. We just got back to Bangkok from a great week in Laos which we’ll tell you all about later when we have more time on the internet. For now, everything is good – we have three more days here before we move on to Kathmandu.

We’ll get you pictures from Laos soon.

JER

Since I wrote last, we’ve spent five days in Cambodia and have had an absolutely incredible time. After a relatively long trip from Phuket (only two hours of flying but many long hours sitting in Bangkok airport)  we settled into our new home in the Boeng Kak area of Phnom Penh. It was a pretty scummy area next to the lake, but there are a lot of guesthouses there so that’s where most backpackers go to find a cheap place to stay. We had a nice enough room with AC for only $12 a night and there were some good, cheap restaurants near there so we enjoyed it quite a bit. After resting up we headed out with a tuk-tuk driver to see the major sights of Phnom Penh. We started with the Royal Palace, where the king of Cambodia still lives. Although we’ll probably see similar architecture in Laos and Thailand it was our first time seeing anything like it and we were really pretty impressed.

From the Royal Palace we went to two places related to the Cambodian genocide. First, we went to Tuol Sleng Museum which was the former sight of S-21, a prison created inside a former high school where thousands of people were tortured and killed for almost no reason at all (check the photo album for some pictures).

After that, we went to the Killing Fields of Choeung Ek, where nearly 17,000 people were executed between 1975 and 1978. While the prison was powerful, the Killing Fields were just eerie. I’ve probably only experienced something like it once before, and that was when I visited Auschwitz-Birkenau.  It’s particularly strange in these places because they seem so totally normal and even though we’ve been told of the atrocities commited there it’s nearly impossible for our brains to imagine it. The one thing that really brought it closer to home in Choeung Ek, though, compared to Auschwitz, was the fact that there were clothes and bones sticking out of the ground, apparently something that can’t really be stopped with all of the heavy rain here. It was a chilling experience.

After a physically and emotionally tiring day, we just relaxed next to the lake and watched the sunset before an early night.

The next day we made our trip to Siem Reap, the small city next to Angkor Wat and several other famous Angkorian ruins. It was a six hour bus ride but no matter how many crazy bus rides a person has been on, it doesn’t seem to make the next crazy one any easier to relax on, so we were happy to be picked up by our tuk-tuk driver at the bus station. He was apparently happy to see us too, since he decided to invite us to his sister’s wedding which just happened to be going on that night. Although we were a little incredulous at first, after being reassured by the owner of our guest house that he was just being friendly, we decided to go. It was a great time.  We ate some good Khmer food, talked to some of the many other tuk-tuk drivers who had been invited and were taught a little bit of Khmer dancing. We were really lucky to have been invited and we were impressed by the hospitality of everyone there.

Even though we had a bit of a late night at the wedding, we woke up at 5:00 the next morning to head out to Angkor Wat for sunrise. Although it was a bit cloudy and we didn’t get a very good view of the sunrise, we were incredibly impressed with Angkor Wat.  I’m having a difficult time thinking of a good way to explain it, which is maybe explanation enough for how fantastic it was.

From Angkor Wat, we visited several other Angkorian ruins including gigantic Angkor Thom with its four sided Avalokiteshvara heads and Ta Prohm which could have seriously come straight out of an Indiana Jones movie. They were all really great and each one was unique so we weren’t bored for nearly seven hours of templing.

Obviously, Cambodia has been a really interesting and exciting place for us and we’ll be sad to leave tomorrow, but we’re headed on to Laos which I’m sure will be equally interesting in its own way. However, we won’t even have electricity let alone internet on the islands we’re heading to tomorrow, so give us a few days to let you know how that goes.

JER

So, we’re approaching almost a month since we left Japan and it’s absolutely amazing how quickly it’s all gone. Sorry if we haven’t had more time to write, but as we said before we were limited by time in New Zealand and have been limited by internet time since then. We finally got a dependable internet connection here in Phuket, but I’ve been so preoccupied by the beautiful beaches and delicious Thai food, that I’m only posting this on our last night here. Anyways, better late than never.

We both told you a little bit about New Zealand previously, but let me go into a little more depth now. We were picked up at the airport by our friends (and dedicated tour guides) Leroy and Krystle who took us on a fantastic tour around the north island for the first four days we were there.  We visited Leroy’s family’s house and dairy farm in Waihi, saw the sights around Waihi, Tauranga, Rotorua, Lake Taupo and lots of well-chosen stops along the way. We seriously couldn’t have gotten a better trip from anyone, so thanks guys for taking care of us so well in New Zealand!

When we got back to Auckland we met up with Tomoko, our friend who used to work as the secretary at ALS in Numazu. We spent a couple of fun nights with her before we headed on to Perth, so we got a dedicated guide almost from the moment we stepped off the plane to the moment we stepped back on.

Since we had done so much in New Zealand, we had spent nearly eight hours flying and twelve hours traveling to Perth,  and we had the biggest time change we’ll have before we fly from Europe home (seriously we’re hopping around so much that the four hour time difference between Auckland and Perth is the biggest) we were happy that Perth had some nice beaches to relax on. We spent our one full day there swimming in the Indian Ocean for the first time and checking out Fremantle Prison,  one of the only reasons people originally populated Western Australia.

We had a relatively rough flight to Singapore (departing at midnight from Perth and arriving at 5:30 in Singapore) and we were immediately slammed by the intense heat and humidity that is year round in Singapore, but we really enjoyed our time there a lot. We walked around and saw some of the different ethnic districts, the resort area called Silosa, as well as the riverside area with its ridiculous but famous merlion statue (don’t ask, I have no idea):

From Singapore we took a five hour VIP bus ride to Kuala Lumpur. We were served airplane food and had in seat tv systems all for a pretty minimal price – Southeast Asia is cheap and it’s great! In Kuala Lumpur, we had some trouble with the place we had reserved and when I say trouble I mean that the rooms were more like caves that some animals probably wouldn’t sleep in. We had to fight a little but we got out of there and got a much nicer place across the street. After that, we really enjoyed KL – we checked out the national mosque, the tallest flagpole in the world in Merdekka Square, and of course we saw the Petronas Towers, which were the tallest buildings in the world for a short period of our lives and are still the tallest twin towers in the world.

We also took a little trip outside the city in order to see the Batu Caves. The caves are amazing natural formations that house a famous Hindu temple and once a year host nearly a million people during the Thaipusam festival. The rest of the year, they attract tourists like us mainly for the cool caves and the absolutely epic statue of Murugan that stands over the 200+ steps up to the top:

So, that finally brings us to Phuket. We flew here from Kuala Lumpur on Thursday and we’ve been enjoying the beach and the sun ever since then.

It really is as close to paradise as we could have hoped for and we’ve had a great time. We even were lucky enough to get a really nice hotel room for relatively cheap so we’ll feel completely refreshed when we leave tomorrow for Cambodia.

Well, sorry if that was a long post – I tried to keep it as short as possible, but that’s nearly two and a half weeks of pictures and info. I’ll try to update more often in the next few weeks, although no guarantees once we get to Laos. If you want to see more of the pictures in these albums, either click on the “Photos” tab in the upper lefthand corner or just click on the pictures – they should take you there.

JER

hey everyone! We arrived in singapore yesterday morning after an overnight flight from perth. Last week in New zealand was great….we traveled all over the north island with our friends and went to the glowworm caves, hot sulfur springs, and plenty of lakes, waterfalls, and beaches. The landscape there was amazing! We even stayed with our friend on his family’s dairy farm in Waihi and saw the big gold mine that his town is famous for. It was great. After we left auckland, we flew to perth for a day and a half. We went to the beach in a town called Fremantle, just outside of Perth. We also took a tour of the old Fremantle prison that was used from 1850-1991. It was interesting to see where all the convicts stayed when they came from the UK. It was also interesting to see how little the prison changed from when it opened to when it closed. That kind of security would never fly in a US prison, haha. We left Perth at about midnight and took our flight to Singapore, arriving at about 6 am yesterday. Singapore is hot, hot, hot. When we arrived yesterday, I think it was about 92 degrees Fahrenheit and about 95 percent humidity. A big change from Australia and NZ. We walked around yesterday morning and checked out Chinatown, Little India, and the downtown area. We also had to see the famous Merlion statue in the harbor (half lion, half fish. pretty startling to look at.) Today, we went to Sentosa Island – a pretty, touristy beach island just 10 minutes on the train over the water. We also enjoyed eating a lot of the cheap ethnic food that Singapore has to offer. Tonight, we are enjoying our air-con hostel room and preparing for our 6 hour bus ride to Kuala Lumpur tomorrow morning. I’m still not exactly sure how to upload pictures onto this thing…..so that will have to come later. Sorry! More soon!

Anna

Hello everyone, sorry that neither of us has been able to update the blog but we’ve been really busy in New Zealand. We had an awesome time and we’ll get pictures up as soon as we can, but for now we just wanted to let you all know that we’ve made it safely to Perth and we’ll be headed on to Singapore tomorrow night. Hopefully we’ll get some solid time with a wifi connection to get all of our pictures and a quality post up once we get there.

Josiah and Anna