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Scuba Diving and Bali!!!

It's been along time since the last post and it's hard to remember everything we have done. For starters we spent three days getting our SSI (SCUBA diving) Certification as Open Water Divers. It was wild. The first day we got familiarized with all the equipment, watched some instructional videos, and than headed to the pool where we first went underwater. Our instructor was a Brit named Clive who was super funny. I could ramble about how cool diving is forever, but I will just hit some highlights instead. On our first open water dive, at a reef off the shore of an Island near Nha Trang (whew), the mouthpiece came off my air piece and i sucked water at like 25 feet down. I had to switch to my backup air supply, blow out water, calm my nerves, and fix my mouthpiece. 10 minutes later, and still a little unnerved, the inflator button on my Buoyancy Control Device got stuck down and I began to rocket towards the surface. Bad deal. I responded properly by opening the emergency vents and signaling to Clive that I was about to die (not really) and he swam over and unstuck the button. After that I wasn't sure I liked diving. We were down for 40 minutes and I had 2 incidents and my goggles kept fogging up. I didn't; want to unfog them because it required closing your eyes and letting water in and I was kind of a mess mentally. I just kept breathing and praying that my talk would read 50 Bar so I could signal that I needed to go up and not be a total wimp for calling it early. The next dive was about an hour after we surfaced and it was much better. I got a hold of myself and had a blast looking at all the fish, coral, jellyfish, and starfish that were down there. About 5 minutes in we saw a 5-7 foot tall Jellyfish and Clive gave us the Danger signal and we swam away quickly. It was HUGE and still and eerie looking. The next day we made two more dives and they were wonderful. After getting over the weirdness of it all, there really is a whole big world down there and it's colorful and very alive. That afternoon we took our written tests (John and i both got 86%) and hopped an overnight bus to Saigon.
We arrived at way to early in the morning and walked around until we found a place to stay. We hadn;t intended on spend any time in Saigon, but our flight to Bali was early the next morning and we needed a shower and a place to put our bags so we got a room. That day we went to the War Remnants Museum (I think that's what it was called -not really sure at the moment). It was horrific and very anti-American. There was hundreds of grotesque pictures of deformed, maimed, and dead women and children. It was terrible and I had to leave early. In the evening we watched Soccer on TV and went to bed early.
Next morning we flew to Kuala Lumpu, Malaysia, and than to Denpasar (the biggest city on the island of Bali), Indonesia. We arrived late at night and stayed at a nasty hotel because everywhere else was full. Bali is unbelievable. It has 3.1 million people and they live on a volcanic island that is chalk full of beaches, volcanic peaks, thick jungle, and rice paddies. We SCUBA dived to the shipwreck of a US military ship from WWII (I think) called the Liberty, and saw 10X as much marine life as we did in Vietnam. It was wonderful. We stayed in a tiny town called Our "hotel" room actually was the top two floor of a cottage that was a stones throw from the water and had a big deck where we could watch the sunset. Along the road from us, and visible from our window, was the community playing field (actually it was just dirt, but they didn;t care) as well as a man's goat, chicken, and pig grazing areas. 5 miles from our room was a 10,000 foot volcano that rose right out of the ocean. Really scenic. We got great pictures, but the Internet here is too slow to upload any.
I'm not sure where in time this event occurred because it was nestled in between 5 hour chunks of sleeping, but I remember clearly that at some point John, Tyler, and I got out of bed in the middle of the night and met up with a man who had offered to take us fishing with him for 10USD. We got on his tiny boat and sailed out into the glassy Indian Ocean. We trolled for fish while watching the sun rise over a massive storm to the East of us. It was super cool. The boat was one of those ones that has a tiny canoe type body and arms that extended into the ocean which have long wooden beams on them for balance and buoyancy. The craft was powered by a tiny Honda engine that the man was clearly proud of owning.
On the evening of our last night in Amed we met up with a few local boys and had a cookout on the beach. We lit a fire with bamboo, brush, and coconut husks, and grilled 4 pounds of massive prawns , a 2 foot Barracuda, and 2 Mackerels on bamboo skewers. They brought rice and noodles and we feasted. To cap things off they brought a guitar, a ukulele, and a maraca and we all stayed up singing and eating.
After Amed we headed to a town near the middle of Bali. I don't know it's name, and don't really want to. The town was comprised of two sections, one up on the rim of the massive volcanic crater and one down inside. The crater itself was maybe 3 miles across, and along the Easter side there was a large lake. Directly out of the center of the massive crater rose a 5100 foot Volcano that we climbed at 4AM on our second day in town. The views were unbelievable and the Volcano was still smoking and the ground was hot in parts. In 2002 it blew and killed most the inhabitants of a village near it's base and the destruction was still very evident. When I get a chance I will post pictures - they are really unbelievable.
Time is running out on my Internet so I will wrap up quickly. We spent the next 2 nights in a city called Kuta and rented surfboards. We were awful and got really sunburned and had a blast. On our last evening there we watched Manchester United draw Arsenal 0-0 to secure the Premiership Title - Really disappointing because we were pulling for Liverpool. The morning of the 3rd day we caught a flight to Kuala Lumpur and spent 15 hours waiting for a train to take us to Butterworth. That brings us up to this moment. I am at an Internet cafe and John is watching our bags at the train station. I'm going to pay the lady 80 cents to have used her computer for almost an hour, buy some snakefruit from a street stall out front(mom you've got to see this stuff, it's the craziest fruit. It tastes like an apple/lemon/pear and has the texture of ... I just sat here for a whole 3 minutes trying to decide how to describe this thing and i can't. You should look it up on Google Images.) , and catch a train to Koh Somui, Thailand.
Thanks for reading. Sorry about not Posting Pictures. We are looking forward to getting back to Alaska, but are still having a wonderful time. Much love. Christopher Dunaway.

Goodbye Vietnam

Before you get into the thick of this post we should inform you of the most serious tragedy that has befallen our group yet: Our 175 gram Discraft UltraStar (Frisbee disc- for the non-ultimate players) fell victim to theft while we were swimming on the beach. It was an amazing tool in getting to know locals and other travelers. Whenever we would throw it people would ask to join in. On many many occasions we were flocked by local children who would play with it as long as we would watch them. People with cameras would stop and take film of it flying. They just haven't seen Frisbees here and are totally crazy about them. One day in a park we were throwing around and a group of at least thirty 20-28 year olds came over and were shouting and jumping and grabbing for the disc so we just let them throw it for a while. They were out of their minds with excitement watching it fly. The good news is that we have devised a plan to hook up with Ultimate players in Saigon and get a new one. Anyways...

Before sitting down to type, I read my most recent entry and it was like reading about someonelse's life. It seems like an eternity since I than. Vietnam is a wild place and in the short days we have been here we have experienced some of the most amazing parts of our trip. So right into the thick of things....

We returned from Ha Long Bay and stayed in Hanoi for 2 more nights and 3 full days. Hanoi is a manic city. The traffic and noise are almost unbearable to Alaskan ears. We basically walked around trying not to get hit by motorbikes the entire time because nothing was open due to the Victory Over The USA Celebration Weekend. We managed to get to the Ho Chi Minh Museum 15 minutes before it closed and saw a bunch of cool stuff from the war and Ho's life. It was weird - he's like their Abe Lincoln. We also went to Ho's Mausoleum and walked around the massive grounds. We were the only white people, and locals kept taking pictures of us. A group of young girls even had a man take their picture with us. ...(A brief side note - The BSG stance , or Battlestar Galactica stance , is a pose where a person puts one hand in the shape of a fist next to his temple and the other hand pointing off into the air on the other side of his head, fingers fully outstretched and face stoic and gazing towards the outstretched arm. We have been sneaking into people's photo's and posing in BSG stance for the entire trip, but Ho's Mausoleum was definitely the best ever in the world place for surreptitious BSGing.) ... We departed Hanoi on an overnight "sleeper bus" which was really nice except that the bunks were designed for 5'5" Vietnamese men, not 6' Alaskans. It was rough getting any wink, but we managed, and arrived in Hue in the morning.

We checked-in to a $10/night/person Hotel with a pool, TV, AC, restaurant, and laundry service, and napped. Around Noon we left and rented Motorbikes for the second time this trip. This experience was far different from the last. The roads were pretty crazy and about 10k from the city (we were trying to find a beach) the rain started to fall like Katrina. About 1k from the beach I used my front brake while trying to slow down and it seized on me. I don't know how fast I was going, but it threw me over the handle bars and I ended up pretty roughed up from the concrete (I still have some ugly gashes that i keep reopening). It hurt, but more so I was scared. Motorbikes are serious business, and the roads here are nuts. Anyways, we made the beach and all swam in the pouring rain and the water was warm and there was no one there except us. It was our first time on the ocean this trip and it was wonderful to be in the warm water and float around.

Next day we ran into a 28 year old woman who was traveling alone and needed some comradery, so we agreed to let her ride on Ty's bike while we went to see some of the historical sights around town. Unfortunately there are no maps of the city's here so it's impossible to get anywhere. No kidding. There are no maps of Hue in Hue. About 5k out of town we were hopelessly lost and a local man pulled up beside us and said he was a tour guide. We were skeptical, but paid him 6USD to show us around anyways. Turns out it was a great idea. First we went to an ancient tomb. The architecture was unbelievable. It was like no place I have been in my life. There was moss and vines and ancient Obelisks, as well as the biggest spider we have seen yet. It was in a bathroom stall, and immediately upon finding it John exited the bathroom and finished the job outside. Next sight was a Buddhist Monastery where we chanced upon a chanting session. It was unbelievable. There were old men and children all singing gutturally and banging on large wooden rounds and steel cymbals. We got a video and some pictures. That night we played soccer-tennis and dipped our legs in the pool. Unfortunately the pool was not chlorinated and we forgot to shower afterwards. This led to some nasty bumps that itched so bad we had trouble sleeping for three days.

The next day we went to the Demilitarized Zone from the Vietnam war. Our tour guide was a young Vietnamese man who made the USA sound like the Germans in WWII. The anti-American vibe was pretty strong. At one point we were propositioned by a man selling American Dog-Tags that he had dug up from a local battleground. It was really sad and made me really angry (first time in a while) that he was hawking such sentimental and serious remnants for 2USD. We saw bombs and craters and tanks and choppers and a whole slough of military paraphernalia. The highlight of the day was crawling/walking through 35m deep tunnels from the war that were home to soldiers and civilians. One of our guides was severely mentally handicapped from exposure to Agent Orange and as we were leaving was drawing pictures of American war planes, that had bombed him while he was 6 years old and lived in the cave, in the sand. It was awful. Next to Auschwitz the DMZ was one of the heaviest days of my life.

Traveling on, we were lied to about being able to get a sleeper bus to Nha Trang, and had to spend 18 hours on a bus packed full of locals on terrible seats only to arrive at 6 AM, after getting 3 hours of sleep, with nowhere to stay. Like good backpackers we headed to the beach and spent the day bumming around a chilling before heading to bed early in the afternoon.

The next day we signed up for a Scuba School International course to get certified as open-water divers. I'm going to quit blogging here because SCUBA diving deserves a post of it's own.

We have included another round of pictures. They are of a small boy in a village near the DMZ, a temple in Hue (the one w/ Tyler), the monastery where we saw monks chanting, tunnels where villagers lived during US air raids, and Ho's Mausoleum.

Much love, and Congratulations to Matt Dyal and Macrina on your Graduations!!! We are trying to call but it's not going so well. Also, a little teaser, three hours ago we graduated from Scuba Schools International and are now licensed open water divers. That will be the topic of next post. Very exciting stuff.

Later, Christopher and John

Good Morning Vietnam!!

It has been a wild week since I last posted and it's going to be very difficult to do our experiences justice. Firstly though, John and I would like to thank everyone for reading and posting and sounding so excited. We are having a thrilling time and it is nice to feel like we are able to share it a bit.

Ok, so when I left off a week ago we had just returned from trekking in the Hills of Thailand. Our next stop was Laos, but we liked Chaing Mai so much that we decided to spend an extra day hanging out with our guide Tarzan and seeing the surrounding areas in his friend's-girlfriend's Honda civic. That evening we started to experience some of the troubles that would shape the next few days of our trip. Weldon was having stomach troubles (which were resolved rather quickly), and I was having mental problems (which were not). The worst of my symptoms was fairly severe vertigo, which by itself was not that big a deal. But when coupled with dry mouth, nausea, diarrhea, minute panic episodes (not a fun thing), inability to sleep, loss of appetite, inability to sweat properly, and a very small van seat in a sweltering vehicle headed away from any semblance of modern civilization or medicine it was not a very good deal. I was sick. John and Ty were ok, but it was around 40 Degree C so no one was really doing well.

That night we arrived at a beautiful hotel that was wicked cheap and part of the packaged transportation to the border of Laos, at Chang Kong, that we had arranged. We slept there with the AC cranked and got up early in the morning. I was feeling no better, but there was no turning back. We were through customs and immigrations by late morning, and than boarded a "slow boat" down the Mekong river. In our guidebook it warned that the crews may try to cram as many as 80 people on a boat during the slow season and that this could cause crowding problems and make things very uncomfortable. By the time Ty stopped counting heads he had reached 100. John tells me that the river was beautiful the first day, but I was too busy lying on the deck trying to muster the energy to drink water and stay conscious to notice much except that the floors and benches had no padding and at one time my feet were touching 4 other people at once. To cap things off, the girl across the aisle had a seizure about 1 hour before we arrived at the village we were staying at and no one had any idea what to do. We just floundered around with head head and jaw and were terrified (about an hour later she appeared to be fine). I was sure I was next.

The village had no outside electricity and so the had to run generators for power. This meant that there was no lights and no fan after 2200. It was probably 90 degrees F that night.

Next morning it was back on the boat for 7 more hours. I was feeling all right around mid-day, but was back to awful in the evening. I did get to see the river however, and it deserves some explanation. The Mekong is a big river. It runs from way up in China all the way down to the bottom of Cambodia and Vietnam. It is wide and slowish and the entire population of Laos (around 9 million people) dump their waste and trash and dead bodies into it. Along the banks we would pass two or three hut villages that existed on farming rice and set-netting the river. We waved at the children on the banks and watched them go about life as they have for a couple of Milena. There were water buffalo herds and crazy birds and thick jungle all around us. It was splendid.

After about 15 total hours of boating we arrived in Luang Prabang. It was a really neat city of about 50,000 people and was rich with culture, sights, museums, and nature, or so John tells me. At this point Johnson was on the upswing, but I was still pretty bad off. We arrived in the evening and I went to our hotel after forcing down some food. I stayed there all night and all of the next day and it was decided somewhere in the haze that we would book flights to Hanoi and get me some medical attention ASAP. We had been hypothesizing about why I would be so sick and had come up with the classics, dehydration, food poisoning, exhaustion, heat, etc. but nothing seemed right. In a stroke of genius the day before however, John had mentioned that it may be a reaction to my Malaria medication, Doxycyclin. He said that it gave him minor versions of the symptoms I was experiencing and that would be congruent with what had occurred earlier in Bangkok when I had taken a couple of doxy in a short period of time and ended up in the Hospital. To draw things to a close on the illness portion of this blog, I stopped taking my doxy and stayed in bed for a whole day and than some and was feeling like a new person after around 36 hours. I even ate a meal. While i was in bed, everyone else went to a 60M waterfall just out of town and swam, jumped off things, and generally had a good time. One of the pictures is of John at the waterfall.

Unfortunately, because we had bought plane tickets to get to a doctor in Hanoi we had to leave the next day even though I was feeling much better.

A brief interlude:

It was really awful being really sick in a part of the world with NO medical care. It was scary and the heat was nearly unbearable. This portion of the trip was one of the most miserable experiences I have ever had in my life. Having said that, it was still an experience and I don't look back on it unfavorably. What a ridiculous thing to be doing. I wouldn't have it any other way. Secondly, this is getting long, but we have done so much and I want to do it justice for myself, not just my friends and family (who's subscription I appreciate so much). I imagine that I will reference this later as I am not keeping a proper journal. Maybe You should take a break and read the second half at another sitting so as no to get bored or over saturated.
Continuing:

We arrived in Hanoi by 1 hour plane flight and shortly found a wonderful and cheap hotel. John and I had a room with a shower, ac, tv, fan, and all of the other amenities that you would expect for $7.50 per person per night. Outside, the streets were crazy. In a two lane street (by American standards) there was traffic going both direction as well as traffic on each edge going against the flow next to it. It was made up of bicycles, bicycle-taxis, pedestrians, taxis,people carrying their wares for sale, buses, cars, and backpackers. There were no laws, signs, lines or officials directing traffic. The sound of horns was non-stop and the only rule was to get out of the way of things that were bigger than you. We decided to leave quickly, and booked a touristy trip to Hoa Long Bay (surely this isn't spelled properly - on a map it is almost directly east of Hanoi). We were picked up by mini-bus at out $7.50 nightly hotel and were driven to a bay where we (after some serious confusion and lack of direction) boarded the "Legend Cruiser." It was a medium sized boat that had 3 stories, a dining area, two-bed cabins with bathrooms, a deck with sun chairs, and a wonderful crew. The bay itself is indescribable with words. The brochure says that it has nearly 2000 spires of limestone that jut out of the ocean, but words are one thing and being surrounded in some of the worlds most amazing scenery cannot be described by them properly. That same day we explored a massive cave on one of the larger spire islands and hopped in some kayaks and explored the Eastern Pacific for ourselves. We had a tremendous 7 course dinner of fresh seafood on the boat and slept on the deck until it started raining.

That brings us to today, April 28, 2009, a day that I will never forget. We climbed a 1000ish meter "mountain" in the jungle and than went to a small town called Haiphong on a large island. We rented motor bikes and cruised along the coast on wide roads with little traffic and amazing sights. There were more cows and goats on the road than there were cars. When I get home and you ask how Asia was, this is the day I will describe. Unbelievable. We swam on our own beaches in the warm sunshine. We saw women laboring in rice fields and waves crashing into 200ft rock walls. It is amazing here. We capped off the evening with a terrific meal that came as part of our accommodations package and are now going to bed so we can wake up in the middle of the night and watch Chelsea play Barcelona in the semi-finals of the UEFA Champions League. Tomorrow we will cruise back to the Coast and than to Hanoi. The total cost for 5 meals, two nights, three days, transportation, lodging, and wonderful everything... $83. Unbelievable.

The pictures are of John at the waterfall, John on the "Legend Cruiser", a plate of river crabs we ordered at a restaurant and ate whole, and a Wat (temple) on a hill in Laos.

Thanks for being patient. Things here are still grand. Next we are going down the coast to Hue and are going to try to get our Scuba Diving Licenses or something.

Much love, Christopher and John Dunaway.

Northern Thailand Wilderness

An incident that involved putting our camera memory card into the small plastic bag containing the leaky bottle of soap has prevented this update from containing any pictures, which is terribly unfortunate because it was by far the most scenic and interesting few days that we have had yet. Things started on the first day (because any sense of date or day of the week is lost) when we were picked up by a set of pick-ups outside our hostel along with 18 other people. We were loaded in the backs and driven 2 hours to the edge of a national park, North of Chaing Mai. Tyler and I cruised along on the tailgate at 55 mph and no one cared. There are no traffic cops here (as far as we know). We had to honk the horn to get cows off the road as we got farther from civilization.
I can sense that this is getting a bit detailed so I'm just going to hit a few highlights in bullet form. Our guide, Tarzan, looked like he was 17 and were actually 26. Tarzan and the other guides (Tiger and Jo-Jo) loved smoking opium and were always sneaking off to get high. We hiked through dense foresty areas along fairly small foot trails. Our youngest guide (Tiger) cut a vine off a 40 foot tall tree and made a rope-swing which we all swung on. There were spiders as big as my hand, on the underside of a raised house that belonged to a couple of hill-tribe men who were raising cattle in the middle of nowhere. The village where we slept had dogs, cats, chickens, cows, and pigs, and there were no fences for any of the animals. They just wandered free. We slept in a long hut that was constructed almost entirely of bamboo and leaves - no nails or screws.
The second day John and I were walking ahead of the group and walked within 2 feet of a 5 foot long green snake that our guide informed us (as we were standing on one side of it and he and the rest the group on the other, waiting for it to slither on) kills 50% of the people it bites. Later, Tarzan beat a snake to death because he said that it was very poisonous and was attracted to light and thus the few surrounding huts and villages. That evening we slept in another hut by a nice 40 foot waterfall and swam in the pool below it.
Day three started with a four hour trek, interrupted by a 30 foot rock climb to pool jump that was super sketchy in the sense that the water was shallow and there were very large rocks under parts of the climbim\ng section, that brought us to a small river where we got on some bamboo raftes lashed together with old bicycle tires. Our rafting guide was 10 years old and spoke very little english. There were a bunch of other rafts on the river and it turns out that rafting the river, or sitting along the banks taunting people as there rafts were run aground on the rocks or tipped by other rafters, was a very popular thing to do here. Our ten year old guide would sneak and smoke cigarettes between the populated areas where the adults where, and at one point smoked two at once before diving in the water to avoind getting caught. The water level was really low and so there were a bunch of rocks and bumps and ty and I frequently had to get out and man-handle 25 foot bamboo rafts while John steered with a ten foot bamboo pole. Rafting landed us at some pick-ups and we rode on top of them to an elephant camp where we rode elephants. I regret it now, because these big beautiful animals are walked in circles all day long with tourists on their back, but at the time it was quite the interesting experience. Elephants are huge. We than took a pick-up back to our hostel and immediatly caught a tuk-tuk to Pick-up Ultimate Frisbee. It was super laid back. At night we watched Arsenal lose to Chelsea with about 4 Thai's (Tiger, Tarzan, Jo-Jo and a friend of theirs), 1 American, 2 Finnish boys, and 1 Israeli in our hostel from 1100 - 2100.
Today We woke up late and John, Weldon, Ty, and Tiger (our guide) went bungy-jumping for $50 at a place about an hour by Tarzan's friend's girlfriends's car. I took Pictures. They loved it. This evening we are going to watch Manchester United play Everton in the FA cup Semis.
Tuesday we leave for Laos.
Have a Happy Pascha, Christ is Born!!!
P.S. we are sending a package home soon with shoes for B.
Cheers, Christopher

More Chaing Mai

Since our last post we have been unable to take pictures because on the street corner right outside our hostel (and almost every other corner in the city) there is a little Thai girl and boy who have been splashing us with water as we bike by. They are up around around 0900 and dutifully splash every passing motorist, bicycler, or pedestrian until their family finishes eating, grilling, talking, and drinking at around 2200.

Our second day in Chang Mai we headed to the heart of the water wars and battled for most of the day. In the evening we headed to a large supermarket to try and find a soccer ball and catch some dinner. Unbeknown to us, the mall was the site of 2 very large concerts in the streets. Thousands of Thai people were packed into an area shaped much like 5th or 6th avenue and a pop-rock band was blasting music full volume. We immediately made plans to abandon all our plans, infiltrate the crowd, dance our hearts out, get sprayed by the firehouses that were being blasted from the stage, and meet back at the bikes. John was singing along to songs in Thai at the top of his lungs. Weldon got 6000 Bhat stolen (35 Bhat to the $) along with his iPhone and credit card - very unfortunate but not ruinous. Tyler and I got into the very heart of the dancing area and were jumping and pumping our fists and hollering along with about 4 trillion Asian teenagers and 0 white people. We met up later, got a soccer ball, and went home (yet again through the raging water wars).

On to yesterday. We got up late, around 1100, and had a very slow morning. At noon the Ice Cream man on a tuk-tuk rode by and played a jingle and stared at us. We signaled that we didn't want anything but he sat there awkwardly, with his music playing, and stared at us for another 30 seconds before driving off. (Not to ruin the stream of events, but this morning I was sitting on the exact same seat outside the hostel and he drove by again and played his music for about 3 seconds, gave me a knowing glance, and drove off. It was marvelous.)

In the afternoon we got on our bikes and explored the city's temples and sites. We saw trees that were 100 feet tall and and 7 feet wide. We saw a bunch of the traditionally orange-robe clad monks and visited about 6 really awesome temples. It would have been wonderful to take pictures but it was impossible because of the water. We rode about for about 4 hours and than headed home to meet up with a couple of backpackers who we had arranged to have dinner with. We ate at a very traditional Thai place that had tables outside in their garden of strange tropical plants. It was cool and breezy and the food was wonderful.

Afterwards, John and I went to bed and Ty and Weldon went out with some people from our hostel. We turned in early so that we could wake up in the middle of the night and watch the UEFA Champions League soccer match between Liverpool and Chelsea. We were joined by a young Thai man and a 30 year old traveler from Hawaii and watched from 0200-0400. It was a great game and a really good experience.

Time for Today. We woke up this morning at 0800 and were picked up to go to a cooking class. The owner was super-chill and taught us to make spring rolls, green curry paste (we used mostly fresh ingredients from his home and ground them with a mortar and pestle), pad Thai, garlic-ginger chicken, red curry chicken, and fried bananas. It ran from 0900-1700 and was so wonderful. We cooked and ate all day and left fat and happy. The class, which cost a whopping $30, included all supplies, great instructions, and a 60 page cookbook in full color.

We returned to the Hostel and played Flutter-Guts (a Frisbee game) in the streets outside with 3 young boys who spoke no English. They had a blast and we had a great cultural experience.

This morning we will watch more soccer at 0200.

The pictures are of a small boat in the Hong Kong harbor, Weldon sleeping outside a shrine on the ocean front, John exploring an island, and a wonderful sign.

In summary, we are having a wonderful time. It has been ear to ear smiles and we are tired, dirty, and hungry for more. Thailand is beautiful and the people have shown us bottomless kindness and acceptance. The political drama in Bangkok has had no impact on the North at all. Things are well.

Thanks for reading. I miss snow and the cold. Hope Alaska is as I remember it.

Before I go I think that it's important to mention that no matter how amazing it is here and how cool the people, temples, scenery, and culture are in this part of the world, I have a longing for the peace and beauty of Alaska. We live in the best place on Earth. We aren't homesick, but "distance makes the heart grow fonder" as they say. I keep thinking about the Turnagain Arm. Anyways. Much love - especially to my covy peeps and youths - and to my mom and sister.

A long way away, Christopher

Chaing Mai

We arrived in Chaing Mai today at 0545 on a very nice bus with reclining seats and AC that departed Bangkok yesterday at 1900. We got situated at our guesthouse and hit the town. It's 2000 now and we are going to go out for some dinner. Yesterday was one of the worst of my life (dehydration, overheating, adverse reaction to my antimalarial drug, upset stomach from street food, etc.), and it culminated in a brief visit to a Thai emergency room. Mostly this was precautionary, if I was at home I certainly would have just slept it off, but it all seems very serious when it's 95 degrees and no one speaks english. (mom dont worry I'm just fine, seriously, but I will call you soon. Mostly I was just worried because I had never been out in this kind of heat and I had a hint of vertigo from taking my doxy on an empty stomach.). Today, by contrast, was one of the greatest days ever. 400,000 Thai People flooded to the small city of Chaing Mai and held the first day of the Thai New Year Celebration, a four day water fight with absolutely no hold barred. Grandmas were squirting teenagers, kids were throwing buckets of ice-water on motorcyclists, and we rented bicycles and bought super soakers and swerved through the packed streets blasting with no regard as to age, sex, gender, social class, race, or anything. No joke, we were probably splashed with at least 1,000 Gallons of water each over the course of our 6 hour ride, and returned a few favors in the form of "snipe shots to the ear" as John liked to call them. We couldn't take pictures because EVERYTHING was soaked. The streets were flooding with water-fight water. It was the most socially wild thing I have ever done.
Oh, Time to go get dinner. More Later. Christopher and John.