Monthly Archives: August 2009
The Jungle Revisited
Its become clear throughout this trip, both to ourselves and probably you all, that we have a different idea of fun than most people. Take, for example, our latest foray into the jungle. It started, as usual, with our transportation. Most people are perfectly happy taking the ubiquitous tourist minibuses from destination to destination, as was offered to us direct from the Perhentian Island jetty. We, with our strange sense of adventure, rejected this option to take the “Jungle Railway.” …
Under the Sea: Getting Our SCUBA Certification
I remember as a child watching programs filmed underwater and being overwhelmed with awe. How amazing it seemed to be meters under the oceans surface hovering over coral reefs and watching marine life dart around you. But growing up in Kentucky, I didn’t have much of an opportunity to do things like snorkel or SCUBA. Sure the YMCA offered courses, but learning to SCUBA in a pool and then doing my open water dives in a lake with about 1 …
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We Maybe Fixed It
We’ve been getting a lot of comments lately about the site loading slow. So with a relax day today we took a look and discovered some non-original code sitting in our header – just another way of saying our site got hacked. It’s still not clear to us what this code was doing there, since it didn’t seem to do anything (except call our site “smelly”), but nevertheless, we removed it and as far as we can tell things load …
Carolina on Our Minds
When we embarked on our trip last October, we had in hand a return ticket to Seattle but no real idea where we were going from there. We had handed over the keys to our apartment in Bethesda and resigned from our jobs. We weren’t planning to return to D.C. Our belongings were piled into a Ryder van and moved to my parents home in Kentucky. Our final destination, the place we would call home when our year in the …
More Cookery
I’ve always had an addiction to Pad Thai. It started with my first taste of Thai food, at Sawadty Thai Cuisine on Bainbridge Island and has really only grown since. Which makes being able to eat it on a daily basis a wonderful, wonderful thing (though more than once a day is a little to much for me). Now, at home, we’ve tried all sorts of “pad thai” recipes trying to recreate the deliciousness that comes so easily to asian …
Love and Marriage: A World View
On July 30, Jeff and I celebrated our 4th wedding anniversary. Around the world, the fact that we’ve been married for four years has elicited one response: shock and awe. The reasons for this differ, however. If it’s a Westerner we’re talking to, they want to now just how old we are if we’ve been married for four years already. If it’s a local we’re talking to, they want to know just how it is that we don’t have a …
A Different Way of Getting Around
Finally in its full form, our elephant post! “It’s easy! Just yell ‘song’ so he’ll lift up his leg, step on it, then grab his ear and pull yourself up!” the spry mahout said as he hoisted himself easily up on top of the elephant. Easy for him to say as he may have been a hundred pounds dripping wet. So began our mahout experience, a one day hands on elephant riding and driving experience at Elephant Village, an elephant …
Southern Laos by Moto: Part Two
The first four days of our motorbike tour through Laos were smooth riding. No bad weather, no flat tires, no getting lost. Our biggest difficulty was finding somewhere to eat along the way, which wasn’t a problem we had anticipated thanks to the abundance of roadside food stalls. Apparently, however, most of the ones in southern Laos aren’t used to serving white people. We knew there would be a language barrier, but we figured that a little sign language would …
Hello Moto
Inspired by our friends at One Year On Earth, we decided to free ourselves from the burden of buses (who in our limited Laos experience, had a nasty habit of deliberately forgetting passengers) and rent a motorbike for a few days to tour southern Laos. To put our parents at ease, by motorbike, I do mean more of a motorscooter; it’s not exactly a Harley. But we certainly did put some mileage on it. Our first day, we headed south …
Left Behind at the Border
“Hurry up,” the bus driver who would later claim not to speak English yelled at us from behind the wheel of the Sepon Travel “tourist” bus we were taking from Dong Ha, Vietnam to Savannahket, Laos. The six of us Westerners, the only actual tourists on the bus, turned toward the bus, gave the driver a long look, and told him that we were doing the best we could. Jeff and I, along with four British tourists, were standing at …
8 responses to “Left Behind at the Border”
