Author Archives: Jeff
First Impressions of India
It’s hard to believe its come to this, but we now have less than one month left on our journey. We are spending most of that time in India, having arrived here last night. So far, here are our first impressions. We have this habit of overpreparing. This is sometimes good and useful, and other times pretty much counterproductive. For the last four days of our time in Malaysia, we poured over websites and through our guidebook, absorbing every tidbit …
Pictures from the River
We’ve been starving you of a picture heavy post for a while now. Since we’re best inspired by wildlife, I suppose that’s because we haven’t been in nature for a while. Sungai Kinabatangan, a long river on Borneo cutting through long tracts of primary jungle, provided a great way to get back into it. And two river cruises from the village of Sukau through the Sukau B&B were a great way of seeing it. The first was a sunset cruise, …
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.” …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
Historical Hue
Hue really reminds me of Luxor in Egypt, only not as magnificent (not to mention 3000 years late). As the former imperial capital of Vietnam, a whole succession of kings ruled from and died here, leaving behind a whole lot of beautiful ruins. To see as much as we could in one day (really, one afternoon after we had to spend the morning getting the computer’s power cord repaired), we hired two moto drivers and set off. Our first moto …
Halong Bay is Beautiful
There’s a good reason Halong Bay is one of Vietnam’s greatest tourist attractions. The natural scenic beauty makes you feel like you’ve jumped into Lord of the Rings or King Kong. A tour takes you to various places (we went with Kangaroo Cafe, who did a nice job), like a cave and a beach, but the real experience is simply sitting on a boat passing through the myriad of islands, taking in each new kaleidoscopic view. So with that, I’ll …
History is Written by the Victors
As I’m pretty sure everyone is familiar with, the US has a fairly sordid history in Vietnam that we as Americans don’t particularly enjoy talking about. There is no doubt about the fact that the US did some pretty evil things in Vietnam – for example, napalm and agent orange were used to defoliate the thick vegetation where there just so happened to be people living. Not to mention the basic act of the US imposing its will unilaterally. Guess …
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