I'll finally be able to wear cotton again!

Well I leave Bangkok and Southeast Asia for good tomorrow and I thought I would have more to say on the subject for some reason I'm just drawing a blank. I've left plenty of locales probably never to return again and to my surprise leaving an entire region feels no different. I'm heading to a place every bit as strange as anywhere I've been so far and I'm actually quite excited for this one. You see, I'm flying to Japan tomorrow. It's the land of robots, talking toilets, video games and wacky game shows... all things that I would say I'm pretty interested in. Leaving a region where you cant drink the water or flush the toilet paper too go to a country where not only do the toilets lift their lids for you but they greet you as well will definitely leave an impression. So, expect some random musings in the future but for now in lieu of some sort of SE Asia recap or wrap up, here's Darren's short list of Vietnamese road hazards:

1. School children walking to school on the highway
2. Giant trucks that use the whole road on blind corners
3. Motorbikes carrying 50+ Jackfruits (they are spikey and are about the same weight and size as a bowling ball)
4. Motorbikes carrying an entire family of 5 (and their groceries)
5. Motorbikes carrying livestock
6. Motorbikes carrying other motorbikes
7. Traffic lights (because obeying them can get you killed)
8. Wheel swallowing pot holes
9. Daily thunder storms
10. etc...

So far as I can tell, none of those were out of the ordinary either... Just another day on the roads of Vietnam.

I've got all of my pictures from Vietnam uploaded to the flickr account and organized by city. You can click the collection entitled "Vietnam" to see all the sets I've made and then just go from there. Well I'll end up writing more once I get to Japan but for now, it's so long Southeast Asia, hello temperate climate (thank god!).

What a Long Strange Trip It's Been

Well the 3 month anniversary of my leaving was just yesterday and I think this is an appropriate time for some sort of retrospective. Three months may seem like a long time but really, it seems like I stepped off that airplane in Bangkok yesterday. I've been through all sorts of crazy experiences, things that I could have never imagined before leaving, especially not from behind a desk in DC. Many of the roads have been long and the destinations not always worth it but I've been really surprised how far a healthy sense of adventure can bring a person. Three months... wow, has it really been that long?

I stepped off that plane in February with an ounce of excitement and a pound of trepidation. Landing in a foreign place at 2am without any idea of where to stay and just a vague idea of a part of town was a real trial by fire. But, fear quickly turned to anticipation and like I've said before, the uncertainty of it all is a real catalyst for excitement.

So what all have I really done in the last 3 months? Here're a few things:

• Rode a motorbike out 70km to some crazy cave north of Chiang Mai, only to return to the city in the middle of rush hour.


• Rock climbed out on cliffs above the Andaman Sea until I got tired and then just jumped in the ocean near Railey Beach, Thailand.


• Had an absolute blast bartending in Siem Reap, Cambdia. Things can be just as much fun on that side of the bar for sure.


• Made a split second decision to accept an invitation to spend the night with a Cambodian I met on a bus. I bathed in the Mekong, ate cow stomach and drank with her entire family.


• Rode in a minivan into northeastern Cambodia that was completely full. There wasn't even room for my day pack behind the back seat but a man we picked up on the side of the road was able to fit 4 live chickens back there. They made so much noise as we rode down that bumpy dusty road.


• Lounged in a hammock at my bungalow on Don Dhet in southern Laos where there is only electricity between the hours of 6-10PM. There was no doubt that all the chickens running around were the same that ended up in your dinner.


• Rode 50ft rope swings in Laos where the closest hospital was at least 3 days away.


• Played a game of beach soccer with a bunch of Vietnamese kids that needed an extra player in Nha Trang.

It's crazy to think about how much has really happened in the last 3 months but at the same time I feel like I just left. Some of the longest days of my life have been on miserably hot and long bus rides but at the same time one can wonder where the day went while drinking a beer in an inner tube on the Nam Song river. The days are usually long but the months are short it seems.

I may have been gone for awhile but it still takes some pretty unique situations to bring everything into perspective and remind me of how special all of this really is. I took an overnight bus yesterday which was supposed to have air con but like most times it did not (or the driver just didn't feel like turning it on). As I sat there at 11 at night drenched in sweat and listening to my ipod while trying to nod off to sleep, a song came on randomly that I used to hear a lot while working late nights in DC. Music can really bring you back to situations that you may associate with songs and this particular one just reminds me immensely of sitting at my desk at 8pm doing telecom research. Haha, sitting on that bus on the way to Nha Trang, it seemed really hard to imagine a situation that was farther removed from all that song represented. And nothing makes me happier than knowing that I just as easily could have been sitting at a desk but instead I was on my way to one of the best beaches in Vietnam.

Well this is getting long and if you cant already tell, I could talk about this for hours. My trip is officially one quarter over and so much has happened, I could go home happy tomorrow. But I'm not, and there is plenty of open road ahead of me. I'm spending a few days here in Nha Trang before hitting the rest of the sights on the way to Saigon where I'll catch a flight to Bangkok and then another one on to Tokyo.

Lastly, you may have noticed that I added a small advertisement on the right side of this page. If the ad seems helpful, go ahead and click it... It may just help me travel for a little longer!

Ridiculous Situations Seem to Be the Rule, Not the Exception

The first place I ever felt like I truly arrived at the ends of the earth was Ban Lung... but a lot happened between Siem Reap and there.

After reading in the guidebook and asking around I was fairly confident that I could make it to Ban Lung in 3 days. Although it was pretty much due east of Siem Reap, the lack of paved roads or bridges over the Mekong required that I head all the way south to just outside Phnom Penh and then back north again.

After running around Siem Reap looking for a bus to take me the farthest on the first day, I eventually booked a ticket to Kratie (which is the stupidest transliteration ever because it's pronounced Krawtcheh... saying Kratie got me plenty of blank stares for awhile). Getting a bus with good air conditioning is like winning the lottery and it wasn't my lucky day so most of the ride was pretty toasty. The entire time a group of locals were talking loudly and laughing about something but I couldn't figure out what. Eventually, a Khmer girl in the seat in front of me turned around and explained to me that the woman at the center of attention had two younger husbands and this made her quite a curiosity.

Lena continued to strike up a conversation with me by asking me all about where I was from and how long I planned on staying in Cambodia. She explained all about how she is getting married in a month to a man almost twice her age but that isn't nearly as unusual as the other woman on the bus. She eventually explained how she has had foreigners stay with her in her house outside of Kratie plenty of times before and that she would love for me to stay the night with her family.

Before I knew it, the bus stopped by her house and she looked at me and asked whether I was coming or not. Without any time to really think it through, I grabbed my stuff and got off the bus. Lena, her fiance and I dropped our stuff off in her house and went to the Mekong for a swim. She told me to grab some shampoo if I had it as well. After walking across the street, down an embankment and across a large expanse of dry river bed we got to the water.

I stuck my foot in and was shocked by how hot the water felt. She assured me that it was cooler farther from shore so I swam out. The first foot and a half of water was probably around 80-85 degrees but it dropped dramatically below that. I swam around a bit and then washed my hair. Showering in the Mekong under a setting sun was probably not something I will forget for a long time.

After this, Lena and her mother started preparing dinner and I started preparing for whatever I was going to have to eat out of courtesy. Right as we were about to eat, much of her extended family showed up with cases of beer. Dinner was pretty good but I didn't much care for the cow stomach or liver. I ended up sticking mostly to white rice and stir fried vegetables.

After dinner, glasses full of ice were passed around as well as beers. Everyone filled their glass and gave a loud cheers and drank the whole thing. After a refill they repeated this ritual and made sure that I did the same instead of just sipping. Lena told me that they were trying to get me drunk but I let her know that I had been working in a bar for the last 2 weeks and I didn't think there was enough beer around. They continued their ruinous strategy until they were sufficiently tanked and then things got fun. Everyone forgot that I don't speak Khmer and I was just trying to figure out what the hell was going on. Enjoying friends and family over good food and drinks truly is a universal thing. All in all it was a really fun night.

The next morning, Lena's father tried to convince me to stay for a couple more days but I needed to head out towards Ban Lung. I packed up my stuff and said goodbye to my gracious hosts.

More on Ban Lung later but check the flickr page for more pictures and descriptions.

On the Road, Again.

Well my brief stint in Cambodian employment has been prematurely cut short. Long story short, the owner sees employment in his bar as a tourist attraction and not as a viable job so he had no intention of following through on a pay increase that he promised from the very get go. Oh well, I got about one and a half solid weeks of fun and money out of it and although I will be losing a small amount of money during my stay here, I did get 2 free t shirts and some astronomical number of free drinks out of those assholes.

People have been wondering what my living conditions have been like while I'm here. I've been staying in a guesthouse called the Mandalay Inn. For $6.50/night I get a TV, fan, hot shower and wireless internet. It's a bit more expensive than other places I could stay but what was most appealing was their claim that it "look expensive but not." I checked and sure enough it not expensive and they came down on the price since I was staying for awhile.

Food in Cambodia is nothing to write home about (well I guess that is what I'm doing right now but whatever). Most of it is pretty bland except for the curries which are not spicy at all but have plenty of flavor. I try to eat at least 1 meal a day for $.50 which is usually just a packet of ramen noodles fried with chili sauce, vegetables, salt, sugar and oil. High class? no, but it is filling. The street stalls in town sell all kinds of fried noodles or rice with meat for $1 a dish which is usually my dinner. Again, pretty bland but filling none the less.

Well these past 2 weeks have been the longest I've spent in any one place since I've left and now it's time for me to get moving again. I'll be heading to Ban Lung, the provincial capital of the Northeastern province of Cambodia where there are plenty of waterfalls and a volcanic lake to enjoy. It'll take me 3 days of overland travel to get there since the roads are sooo bad but I've heard great things about the destination. Internet access will be intermittent so expect fewer blog posts in the near future. After that, I'll be heading into Laos to meet up with some Swedish friends I made during my time here and then Vietnam beyond that (more on them later).

ahhhh sweet sweet unemployment... I'm back!