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.

Hong Kong to Bangkok

On 4/7 we went to a gigantic jade market in Hong Kong where we picked up a little something for Macrina and got a watch that had Mao on it waving his hand as the seconds ticked. It broke before the day was done, but cost about 2 USD and was worth the laughs. In the afternoon we went to a massive sports complex in the downtown Kowloon district and played ping-pong. The people there were wearing jersey's and ping-pong specific shoes and were unbelievable. No one spoke English, but a woman signaled Ty and I to come play with her and her husband. They were really good and pretty much crushed us. Afterward I played there son and it turned into an epic cultural battle. He was like twelve and had a wicked forehand.
Later on we went to a park and saw flamingos, parrots, and a bunch of other weird birds.
A couple of hours before our flight to Bangkok Ty and Weldon went to see an Iranian film about a woman who marries a man and causes trouble in his family because she doesn't follow the Koran as strict as they all are accustomed to. They said it was a touch slow by American standards, but in Iran it was probably really controversial and interesting. Meanwhile, John and I hopped on the rail and headed as far out of town as we could to Sunny Bay. We had purchased some hand held fishing gizmos and some shrimp and were going to try to catch fish. Other people had been doing it all over town and seemed to do ok, but we had a rough time and didn't get a thing.
Ok, too much detail for a blog.
That evening we hopped a plane to Bangkok and slept the entire time. We arrived at 2330 and caught a cab to our hostel, a pretty out of the way building in a poorer district of outer Bangkok. At 0200 we watched Arsenal and Villareal play in the UEFA Champions league, and discussed with a Brazilian guy the sad state of his nations football system (a subject that he got a bit heated about).
The next day we all woke up around 0730 and headed outside. We had arrived in the dark and the streets were quiet so we had no idea what to expect. The streets were hot, crowded, and busy, and we had to walk single file because we were sharing a 1.2 lane road with people pushing their good to market, kids on motorbikes, taxi's, cars, and others on foot.
We were looking for food and Vietnam visas when a man overheard our English and in pretty good English informed us that he knew a place where you could get them cheaply. We were really skeptical because people had been hustling us like crazy, but we had also heard that travel agency's really could get them more quickly and more cheaply than you could by doing it yourself at the embassy. So the man hails us a 3 wheeled taxi (pictured in one of the photos and called a tuk-tuk) and it sped us away. Driving in this thing was insane. Way way way scarier than any roller coaster or theme park or anything. We were weaving through traffic and doing like 35 mph the wrong way on one way streets so we could pass buses. We literally had to keep our hands and feet inside the cab ( a difficult task because we had crammed 4 of us into a cab the size of a small love seat)or we would surely smash them on things that were zooming by. The travel guy turned out to be super cool, and helped us book transportation north by bus, 5 nights lodging in a room with AC and breakfast, a two night trek through the rural hills of Chaing Mai, elephant rides, river floating, and gave us a ton of maps and info about Bangkok, as well as get us our visas. We realized that it was very likely that the man on the street, the cabbie, and the travel agent were "ripping us off" by charging us about 2x the price that we could get all this stuff by ourselves, but at a whopping $200US per person it was worth having someone with some experience organize things for us.
We left feeling good about our plans, and went looking for food. It was about noon and starting to get hot, but we soon found some shade, got some water, and managed a 1.5 pound bag of deep fried bananas for 40 baht (around 35 Bhat to the USD).
Next we hailed another tuk-tuk, and went and saw the "Big Budda", the Royal Palace, a couple of Wats (temples - pictured), and got a bunch more food.
At 1900 Weldon and Ty caught a bus South towards some islands for a couple of days stay ( we will meet-up on Saturday) and John and I hit a massive supermarket, a bunch of street food vendors, and than retired to our hostel.
I will work on making these posts shorter (because no one really cares that we ate bananas), but it is really hard because everything is so different and intense that it is difficult to discern what is actually cool and what is just everyday life around here. Three quick things - The food is amazing. Tuk-Tuks are the scariest things ever (maybe youtube a video or something). And we are having a blast. John and I both wish Ben was here.

PS - Mom, sorry we haven't called, we can't figure out how to use the phones. Dad -we have been using the Internet at our Hostels .

World's longest Escalator

April the 5th we woke up and rode the world's longest escalator system. It ran for about 30 minutes and transported us through the financial district of upper class Hong Kong Island, through the more ghetto parts of town, and finally to within 600m of the "peak," a large hill that overlooks most of Hong Kong. It kind of spit us out in the middle of nowhere on a fairly busy street so we just started walking. 20 minutes later we arrived at a sign that led us towards the local zoological and botanical gardens. At first we were skeptical because there was only flowers and trees, and there was no entrance fee. Soon, however, we were surrounded in monkeys, dog sized rodents, 10 foot long pythons, 3 toed sloths, and a myriad of tropical birds. It was unbelievable.
Next we went to a market.

It would be silly to describe in detail what happened since noon that day and 2100 this evening because it has been so far outside of the spectrum of events that I have tried to use words to describe during my life before now. I will just make a few points and let you imagine.

We took a train to a Buddhist temple that had 40 foot long pieces of incense burning 100 at a time.

We shopped in a jade market that had 400 booths and 100000000 pieces of authentic jade jewelry.

We bought mango for 8 US Cents and they tasted fresh like dirt and sweet like honey.

We lied on the beach in the 24 degree C heat.

We collected half in square tiles that had fallen from a 1950s war monument and washed up along the beach.

We saw old women haggle over live chickens in a market and than watched the man slit their throats and drain them of blood before boiling them and giving them to the customer.

We saw bags of 6 live turtles for sale.

Hong Kong is Unbelievable. Alaska is a fleeting memory (except for my friends and family who I wish could be here to experience all of this unbelievable stuff).

Tomorrow we are going to go fishing on a small Island outside the main harbor. Afterwards we will pack up and leave our hostel and prep for flying to Bangkok.

I hope you enjoy the pictures.

I have been smiling the entire time we have been here.

This makes Euro 2007 look like a joke.

We are the only white people around most of the time.

Words can't do justice how unbelievable it is here.

Thanks for reading and spread the word about our blog. ( dad could you tell alex so he can hit up my covy friends - thanks)

Much love, Christopher Dunaway

P.S. The pictures are of a small temple, a very large cucumber, and a market street.

Settling in.

So I kind of feel like a dork for having a blog.
Yesterday after staying up all night we had some breakfast at a tiny "diner" type restaurant and the menu and waitress didn't do English very well. Weldon managed an omelet and I some fried beef, but John some how ordered the Won Ton soup with celery leaves, a floating fried egg , and two small hot dogs as garnish. After breckie we strolled around for a while, taking in the sites and people, and than went to the airport to get our bags. It was not terribly difficult to reclaim them.
The climax of the day was hooking up with the Ultimate Frisbee crowd here and playing disc in a field surrounded in monolith buildings. We had a great game for about two hours until ,during a five minute stretch, John started cramping from dehydration and I bid for a disc and took around 8 square inches of skin off my knees and left elbow. I had to pick rocks out of my skin for like 15 minutes and then the locals informed me that it was critical to properly dress all your wounds here because the humidity and overcrowding make infection a serious concern.
Fortunately we had our handy-dandy first aid kit and took care of business.
We met Weldon at the arranged time and he told us that he had got us a hostel. Way to go Weldon!! So we stashed our bags, met up with Ty (who had been on the beach) and went out for dinner and a "laser show" looking across the Harbor towards the skyline of Hong Kong. When we finally stumbled towards bed around 2030 we were almost unable to walk from exhaustion and over stimulation. We slept until 0800
This morning the boys are getting breakfast and I am looking into flights and visas. We have decided against Bali and Singapore, but are now seriously considering Laos and Nepal.
The plan for today is to ride the worlds largest elevator, do some fishing in the ocean, and catch some sun on the beach. Thanks for reading and I hope all is well in Alaska.

Day 1 (and 2, and 3)...

Origionally our flight left from Anchorage Alaska on 4/1 at 0230. Unfortunately the volcano was not co-operating and our flight ended up getting canceled. This would have been just a minor setback except that we were meeting tyler in the seatle airport. After three hours on the phone with Alaska Air, Asiana Air, and Orbitz.com we secured a ticket that would land us in Hong Kong on 4/3; only 24 hours later than we origionally planned. Unfortuantly, the flight left from Fairbanks and not Anchorage. So we headed north with Macrina (much love sis) and Nathaniel Ray. We drove through a blizzard (by hich I mean John drove and I slept and read books) and arrived at Tae Freeman's house in the evening. We slept on her floor and caught a plane the next morning at 0700. It was decided, as Tyler's phone battery was dying, that he would take the origionally booked flight and arrive a day before us, and that we would meet at the airport in Hong Kong.
Long story very short, we flew from Fairbanks to Seatle, Seatle to Seoul, and Seoul to Hong Kong. It took more than 48 hours from the time we left home to get to Hong Kong, and we slept in 3-4 hour chunks.
Upon arrival we learned that our bags had not made the airplane switch-over from Seoul to Hong Kong and that we would have to return the next day at 1400 to get them.
Minutes later we hooked up with Tyler who, frantically running about, informed us that the last of the public transit was about to close and we needed to get on the tram pronto. This was really unfortunate because weldon needed to charge his Iphone to get the address to our hostel and we didn't have the time. We tried to call his mom and have her look it up for us but the phone wasn't taking our coins. So we got on the tram with no destination in mind.
After a bit of bickering and travel induced frustration it was decided that Ty and Wldon would go to Ty's hostel and find an Internet Cafe so that we could look up the location of our hostel. It worked, and after a short cab ride of $100HK (about $12US) we ended up outside our hostel - Ty chose to stay at his own place because he had already paid for the night, and decided to meet us at our hostel the following evening. Bad news though; we showed up at our hostel around 0200 and they had sold our rooms already because they didn;t think we were comming.
And so we had a problem. Alone in Hong Kong, no place to stay, no public transit running, no map, no packs, no way to communicate with ty, no nothing.
So what did we do? Like any good americans, we went to McDonalds. The plan was to stay up all night and wait for the morning to find a hostel, get our packs, and hook back up with Ty.
And that leads us to now. We stayed in McDonalds till 0415 and than began to wander. We walked all over the quiet streets, through small gardens, closed markets, dingy alleyways, between skyscrapers, and along the water. At first the task seemed ominous, staying up all night with nothing to do and nowhere to go in a city that is most the way across the world from my life, but within minutes we were laughing and talking and having a merry good time. At 06156 we caught the first puiblic transit back to the main backpackers area and john and weldon are finding a place to stay while I start our blog. We are tired and stinky and dirty and generally a pretty ragged bunch, but our spirits are high and the sun is rising. Now it's off to get our bags and find Ty.