Hi everybody,

Last Sunday we went to a concert at the National Center for the Performing Arts. It's a really cool building nicknamed "the egg." Unfortunately, we weren't in the main opera hall but in a side concert hall, but it was still impressive. We saw an American trio called Newstead. They were really good but the audience was not. After every song at least 150 people got up and left and maybe 100 came in. There was talking and cell phone use. It pretty much ruined the concert for us. Part of the reason is because the tickets were cheap and anybody could get them. I suppose concert etiquette hasn't quite filtered down through the classes. Here are some pics:

A view from far away over the Forbidden City.



Also includes China's largest pipe organ.

Some updates:

We had a great time with Candace's sister and brother in law when they visited last week.

We will be arriving back in Ohio on June 24.

The government sends automated telephone calls telling people not to sell their organs on the black market.

Some recent news opinions from the west have been hugely distorted here.

The upcoming Olympics has everything here in a flurry. Construction everywhere.

This definitely has great potential to be the best Olympics ever.

After Chinese mothers give birth, they stay in bed for thirty or forty days straight.

Getting ready to start a Chinese only diet before heading back to America.

Pretty sure Beijing isn't meeting its blue sky quota for the year.

We still welcome anyone who wants to come have a last minute visit.

We volunteered at an awesome orphanage. We highly recommend supporting them. Here's their website. http://www.newdaycreations.com/foster/

We had a great evening with Dr. and Mrs. Dixon and their friends when they were in town.

We thought this palm three was really cool...

After Koh Chang, we decided to go to another island that was known for it’s scuba diving and snorkeling. We had to head back to Bangkok for one day and then head down towards the southeast of Thailand.

Once we got to Koh Tao we searched for awhile and found a little villa named, “The Simple Life.” That was exactly what we were going for and we moved in right away. Unfortunately, the island was pretty busy so they only had one room for the four of us to share. We had joked the whole trip saying to the other couple, “we really like you guys, but we don’t really need to sleep with you.” …It wasn’t bad, I think we only ended up staying together 3 or 4 nights the entire trip.

The next day we went snorkeling. Neither, Emanuel or I had been before and we loved it! It was a really windy day and on the way out our boat was rocking! A Chinese guy threw up like twenty times and this middle age woman was crying, afraid we would capsize. Since the wind was so strong, we had to skip Shark Island and another cove with sharks. We were sad to miss the sharks but happy we still had a chance to snorkel.

We had a great time, I even saw a shark! It was only about 2 feet long, in which I was glad. The only bad part is that all of us ended up getting sunburned. I think it’s impossible not to get sunburned when snorkeling. Your back is under the water just enough to wash off all the sunscreen but also enough to absorb a lot of sun. What can you do? We stopped at three different coves and then headed back. We were all so tired we took a long nap. That night we walked along the beach looking for new restaurants and saw an incredible sunset.

We only stayed in Koh Tao for a couple days but it was quite enjoyable. The actual island wasn’t as beautiful as Koh Chang but the water was the clearest we’d seen.

Hello! Well Emanuel handed the reigns over to me to cover the remainder of our trip. Therefore, the delay in posting has been my fault not his. :)

My first post will be about Koh Chang an island we stayed at in Thailand, here's a picture of the beach.

So, after we met up with Katie and Joel, we stayed one night in a guest house and then we split up the next morning. The boys left for Cambodia and we took a bus down to an island named Koh Chang. In case you didn’t hear, Katie had a bad case of food poisoning and actually visited three different hospitals in Laos before getting proper treatment. Anyway, we didn’t think she would fair well on the trip to Siem Reap, given that they are the worst roads in S.E. Asia. Besides, we were ready to hit up the beach! We were approaching three weeks into our trip and still were as white as ghosts.

After a 7 hour drive we arrived and had to take a ferry over to the island. The second we arrived on the island these men were ushering everyone onto these taxi-trucks to head to their various hotels/bungalows. Katie and I seemed to be the only ones who had no reservations and no clue where we were staying. We quickly asked an older lady if she knew anything about the various beaches we had seen signs for and she told us the farther down we travel the cheaper it gets. We ended up going down to the last main beach, which was called Lonely Beach. It was pretty small, the main strip was about 100 yards. Therefore, it was cozy and small and we liked it. We found a cheap place to stay and we headed to find something to eat.

Lonely Beach

There were a ton of monkeys in the trees but this one was obviously confused between trees and power lines!

The next day, we woke up to a cool and cloudy weather and were sorely disappointed. What do you do on an island if you don’t go to the beach? The answer? You rent a motorbike! This made perfect sense, since our husbands would want to rent some later on and they would definitely be taking the wheel (okay, handle bars). Although we were a bit nervous, okay really nervous we decided to rent a bike for 24 hours. Katie drove first and we almost died going up this ridiculously steep hill with a sharp switchback. Then, she made me drive and I did okay until we got into a town with some traffic and a lot of people. I almost ran into a group of guys and then forced Katie to drive again. Although we were a little slow to get going we were pros within a few hours. We explored some of the beaches trying to find the best place to stay when the boys arrived.

That night we met up with two of our girl friends that we teach with in China. We had a nice dinner and spent the evening sharing about our various experiences thus far. This was my amazing pineapple rice!!

We left and started the 40 minute drive back to Lonely beach. About 15 minutes into our ride it started to rain, we were laughing at our bad luck with weather and slowed down. Within the next 10 minutes it was pouring down rain and we were low on gas. We were in between two towns and starting to get a little worried. We finally saw a little restaurant that sold gas. We stopped and the guy was nice enough to pull our bike under the awning and fill it up for us. It was raining so hard we couldn’t drive, not to mention we would still have to get past the difficult switchback and coming from the opposite direction it was now down the side of a major hill. There were only three Thai men in the restaurant and they asked where we were headed, when we replied, “Lonely Beach” they all shook their heads and said we should not even consider it in the current weather. We sat there for about 45 minutes waiting for the rain to slow. We decided that we needed to take a taxi back but we had to leave our bike somewhere. We remembered a nice resort with a gated area in the next town and decided that was our best chance. We crawled along the road until we finally reached the next town and found the resort. We left our bike and headed back to the road to find a taxi. We were soaked, it was about midnight and we just wanted to get back to our guest house, dry off, and sleep. The first taxi we stopped refused to take us to Lonely Beach. We were a little nervous that no one would take us. However, after we begged and pleaded with the second taxi he obliged but looked nervous and said he didn’t really want to take us down the difficult switchback. It was a slow and anxious ride back but we finally made it.

When we finally reached Lonely Beach we found out that the whole area was out of power from the storm. It was pitch black as we headed up to our room and realized the boys had both of the flashlights. We used Katie’s alarm clock to change into dry clothes and we went to bed, thankful to be safe and laughing at how ridiculous the night had been.

The boys were supposed to come the next day and we moved to another beach that had power. It rained again and everyone we talked to said it was incredibly rare since it was the dry season. Either way, Katie and I hadn’t been to the beach yet. We waited that night for the boys to come and were really worried when we waited for two hours (in the rain) and never met up with them. We were really worried but found out late that night that they had missed the last ferry to the island and had to ask a neighborhood boy to use his computer to let us know. We were relieved to hear they were safe and went to bed.

The next day the boys came and brought some sun with them. The next few days we went to the beach, rented bikes, met up with some friends, and ate some amazing food. Koh Chang was one of my favorite places on the trip and the island was just breathtaking to look up at when you were in the warm, blue water. Everyone was really kind and we had a good time relaxing…as you should on vacation. :)

This is one of my favorite pictures...

Here are some pictures… and there’s more to come about the trip!

We met up with some of our friends...

Touring the island on our bikes

These were our little bungalows

Candace and I arrived in Bangkok and found a place to stay. We walked around for most of the day and had a wonderful dinner at Burger King; a rare treat. We met Katie and Joel the next morning and found a new place to stay. We walked around some more and decided that Bangkok was a dirty city and we didn't like it very much. At this point Joel and I headed to Cambodia while the girls went to the island of Koh Chang.

Cambodia

There is a "scam" on the road from Bangkok to Siem Reap (Angkor Wat). Part of the scam is that they stop before the border and try and get you got pay extra money for you visa so you don't have to wait in line. We refused to do this and promptly got our visa at the border and made it through as quickly as everyone else and paid about half the price. The other part is that the road from the border to Siem Reap is not paved. Apparently the government is being paid by the airlines. So a distance that would normally take around 2-3 hours in a car takes 6-8 hours in a horrible bus. And it was a bad ride. No sleep, no reading, tons of dust. Then, once you're in town late they drop you off at some guest house they do business with hoping you're too tire to search for another. Granted, the one we were dropped off at only cost 5$ a night with a private bathroom.

We decided to see Angkor Wat in one day so we could go back to our wives. We started at 4:00 AM so we could see the sunrise over the main temple. There are several complexes of temples and then some random one scattered about. We hired a tuk-tuk (motorcycle with a trailer) to drive us around for the whole day. We went really fast through all the temples and we didn't get a guide so we didn't quite get all the nuances and historical meanings but it was still amazing. We were exhausted by the end and ate a wonderful mexican meal.



The horrible dirt road we traveled for hours

Sunrise over the biggest temple



"overgrowth"


Our driver asleep when we came out from a temple

Laos

We decided to take the one hour flight from Hanoi to Luang Prabong, Laos, instead of the thirty-three hour sit-only bus. We found an amazing guest house in Luang Prabong and instantly fell in love with the town. It was sleepy and quiet, and filled the kindest people. We also loved it because it was warm and sunny for the first time on our trip. We relaxed for several days and then took an elephant excursion through the jungle and kayaked down a river for several hours. Then, tragedy struck. We were at an Indian restaurant which might have been a bad choice since I had gotten a stomach ache after kayaking. After eating a little I stood up and almost blacked out and then ran to the restroom but not before I had vomited all over the restaurant and the bathroom. I haven’t had or witnessed such a forced exiting of vomit. Afterwards I felt great and proceeded to eat more only to throw it up later. I had a fever twice but it was mostly gone after twenty-four hours. Unfortunately, as I was getting better Katie and Joel got sick. Katie had to go to the hospital for an IV. After another couple of days we decided we were ready to take an overnight bus to the capital of Vientiane. We were wrong and once we got to the city we had to take Katie straight to the hospital. Candace and I then crossed the border into Thailand to go straight to Bangkok. Our original plan had been to travel through southern Laos, but we thought we might recover better in more modern and temperate Thailand.

Trekking on Elephants

Kayaking down a Mekong tributary

A beautiful sunset from a couple of steps from our guesthouse

A war memorial built with cement donated by the US to build a runway

One of the numerous Buddhist temples

Vietnam

We began our trip with a 28 hour train ride to the southern city of Nanning. From there we bussed to the border and then on to the capital city of Hanoi. As soon as we entered Vietnam we were witness to three traffic accidents. We found a nice little hotel to stay and we toured the city for a day and got to see several things including the preserved Ho Chi Minh. Hanoi was a crowded city without huge skyline, as in most modern cities. It was very compact and definitely had a French feel because of the architecture and western toilets J. We enjoyed the food especially the pastries.

Halong Bay is a World Heritage Site and is described as the place where a dragon jumped into the sea. You can see from the pictures that it is a bunch of islands rising suddenly out of the water. Unfortunately, it was overcast the whole time so the pictures didn’t turn out so well. We explored several caves and got to go kayaking. We spent the night on the boat and went back to Hanoi the next day.

On our journey from Beijing to Hanoi we traveled around 1500 miles and the entire time it was snowing or raining and overcast. The biggest problem with this was that we were anticipating warmer temperatures and only brought one outfit to suit such climates. As a result, we all wore the same clothes for about six days.

Here we are at a traditional house at the Ethnology Museum

These are some fruit sellers in the bay

Vietnam is known for its huge numbers of motorbikes.

This is Halong Bay where the islands rise out of the sea like a dragons back

The architecture of Hanoi is tall and skinny

And here is video of me crossing the street