Rain Drops On Roses

Dana: Wow...home in less than a week...kiiindaaa freakin out! Everyone is asking, "so how you feeling about coming home?" I'm feeling a medley of emotions, some nervousness, mixed with excitement, sprinkled with happiness. Half of me feels like it was only yesterday that I was packing up my house at the "commune" and saying goodbyes, while the other half feels like Thailand and the yoga program was forever ago! I feel like I've been in a time warp of sorts...time passes so differently when you're on the road...I've created new routines, set new goals for what I want in life and I hope to not lose momentum. In the words of Matthew Wilder:

Ain't nothing gonna break my stride
Nobody gonna slow me down, oh no
I got to keep on moving
Ain't nothing gonna break my stride
I'm running in a one touch ground, oh no
I got to keep on moving



Here are a bunch of photos to add to Mary's previous post and to catch you up:



Chicks, chicks and more chicks...our wild 3-hour "bus" ride to 4,000 Islands


The thunderous waterfalls/rapids of the Mekong Delta on Don Det


sweeeeeeet...we found a private beach of our own!


yup...just building some drip castles...what a cutie!


Now onto Cambodia and the magnificant wonder of Angkor Wat:

Yeha, we woke up at 3:30AM to catch the infamous sunrise...well worth it!


sun salutations anyone?


prize for the best comment suggestion here:


unreal


beauty in the palm of your hand


our 2010 Christmas card

I'm kind of freakin out about splitting up with Mary...I'm going to miss this girl!! Mary will be summering in the lush greens of Vermont this summer. For those of you who don't know Mary, let me just tell you what an amazing woman I have been blessed to share these past few months with. I'm a better person for knowing Miss Captain Mann Pants and inspired by her every day of our adventure. I loved Mary before our travels, but can say I've discovered a whole new meaning of this love and will never forget these memories we've created together. Mary you're stuck with me for a life time my friend!

Singing in the Rain, Siem Reap

Thunder is roaring as I type this, buckets of rain soaking the street food vendors to the skin. Girls on motorbikes squeal as they ride by, lashed by the water. Tuk tuk drivers seek shelter under the carriages attached to their bikes, calling out to the people dashing for shelter, "you want tuk tuk, or you want get wet?"

I wanted neither actually, as this day is a break in the middle of three days cycling around the temples of Angkor with my sweet D, which means a days respite from the sing-song pleas of tuk tuk drivers, kids selling bracelets, handsome young students selling books, and women trying to get me to buy cold drinks even while a very large quantity of "cold drink" is pouring from the sky. At this point in our temple self-tour yesterday, Dana and I were drenched, taking shelter under an awning across from an ancient temple, staring at it's grandeur while waiting for the deluge to stop. "You should say 'hot drinks' instead" advised Dana. The woman laughed, and stopped hassling us.

But when it began to rain today, I was much better situated, reading by Siem Reap River, and was able to run to the nearest awning which, la dee da, just happened to be an internet cafe. Yes, fate has brought me to you, people.

We arrived in Cambodia from Laos a few days ago, on an all day bus ride and interminable wait at the border crossing, where I drank a Cambodian coffee that made me feel all loopy. Jeff, our cross-the-aisle bus friend, let me in on the tip that there is often lithium in the Cambodian water. Hmm...

Laos was truly beautiful, and went by much to fast. From the slow, sweet neighborhood feel of Luang Prabang, where it seemed that we ran into every traveller we'd met on the road (incredible how unlonely the world is for those of us using the same Lonely Planet guidebook - or as we say, the Bible), we went to Vientienne, where there was nothing much to do. So we hopped the next flight down to Paxse, from which we squeezed into a tuk-tuk with a load of locals, three other tourists, two bags of live fish and three crates of ducklings for a three hour ride to a little village on the Mekong. We bought tickets to cross on a slender, tippy wooden boat, and landed on Don Det, an island at the south of a chain of 4,000 tiny islands.

Don Det and it's neighbor Don Khon were beautiful and peaceful, idyllic, and we slowed down our pace to cycle around the islands, stopping at waterfalls, swimming at beaches we had all to ourselves, watching the local kids play a weird sandal-throwing game we never figured out, eating incredible Indian meals served by mincing ladyboys, and talking about our plans. After months of trying to be in the present, and mostly succeding largely because we're seeing so many new and wild things, we're both having to make plans for the future.

Yup, Sweet D & I are coming home. We have only a few more days here in Siem Reap and then Bangkok, and, by the magic of time zones, we leave here, and arrive in LA, the night of the 30th.

So we'll see you all soon! Thanks for reading and being a part of our trip. We love you all.

Utopia with My Mann

Dana: Hello dear ones! I write to from Laos, it has been a while since I last wrote, so I'll catch you up on some of the latest.

We traveled from the south of Vietnam to the north. Vietnam is an exciting country full of culture, beautiful sights, delicious food and lots to do. We just spent the past 1.5 weeks traveling around Hanoi (the capital of Vietnam), touring Halong Bay on a junk (a junk is Chinese style sailboat with big beautiful sails designed in ancient times), trekking around Sapa and exploring the quiet city of Luang Prabang (Laos) for a few days. Tonight board a bus heading to Vientiene (capital of Laos) for 9 hours.


Deep thoughts with Captain Mann Pants


Sun setting in Halong Bay


Vietnam Crack...we are sooo hooked...(daily breakfast)


Dinner tonight is the best pho you've had in your life...coming right up!


...and for dessert, exotic fruit you can imagine with chilled coconut milk...yum!


Leaving Vietnam...you've been good to us! Here we come Laos!


Beautiful temples in Laos

Yesterday we rented a motorbike and explored some beautiful waterfalls. It is pretty damn hot here in Laos, the cool refreshing water of the falls was magestic to say the least! Traveling with Mary is always an adventure...and of course we had one on the way to the waterfalls. One of the down sides to not taking a tuk-tuk (a taxi of sorts) is that you don't know where you're going 100%, but there are so many upsides to renting your own bike that it was of no question to us once we found out how cheap it was.

Excited to be on bikes again!!

Just our luck we took one wrong turn (the sign did have an arrow pointing saying this way to the falls) and found ourselves off-roading on the motorbike. It was pretty funny! We ditched the bike and decided we'd be better off walking the "rest" of the road. We were so excited when we caught sight of a human being coming our way. He confirmed that we were going in the right direction, with no use of english. After not finding any waterfalls and only getting more and more hot we decided to head back out the road, where we found the main entrance only 1 minute up the road...

On our walk in the wild we came across some beautiful cows...but no waterfall



The majestic falls...worth it all!


Swim spot


nature and all its beauty...


Since Mary and I don't mess around when it comes to food and eating proper...we found some local goat cheese from a farm in Vang Vieng and fresh baguettes and made ourselves a little picnic out all the falls. A special shout-out goes to you Penny...you worked on a goat farm in Vang Vieng right?? And Paul...Mary said eating the cheese and bread with fruit made her think of you.

Gotta run now...heading to Utopia with my Mann

Mt. Fancypants, I presume?

Mary: Two Irishmen, two Koreans, two Americans (the only females), one Chilean, all in their twenties; four Vietnamese men in their seventies, three in their twenties (guides, the young ones, explorers, the old) - all shared a cabin below the summit of Mt. Fansipan. The cabin in question was actually a tin shack, around which the wind blew tremendously, clattering the metal doors and howling to get in, whistling when it could through cracks in the walls. Shocked by the first experience of cold in months, Dana and I spooned for warmth, listening to rustling that was revealed, by the light of our 5:30 am wake-up, to be the sound of a mouse eating Dana's supply of trail snacks. Sweet D was a champ about it, marvelling "it wanted the wasabi peas" in an astonished vioce, tinged almost with awe. This was after about, oh 10 minutes of sleep total for the evening.

The next morning, after tea and noodles around a fire (on which our H'Mong porter, an amazing man named Lee, cooked us a six-course meal the night before with two pots and a fry pan), we summited Fansipan, the highest point in Indochina (Vietnam, Laos & Cambodia). The wind threatened to blow us right off the top, but if mountains had asses, we would have kicked Fansipan's. On the way back down, following our guide, Dong, we would see Lee materialize from the woods with, say, a bag of bamboo shoots. He'd disappear again, off into a thicket of bamboo, and reappear 500 feet up the trail, waiting for us as though he'd been there all along. He reminded me of nothing so much as an Oompa Loompa, but with cooler clothes.


We had only a few hours in Sapa before hopping on a sleeping train to Hanoi, then a plane to Laos, where we arrived last night and are now just getting used to - Laos, so far, is slower, cleaner, more rural, and calmer in general. The people have been wonderfully nice, and we've already learned saibaidee (hello) and kop chai (thank you).

In our last minutes left in Northern Vietnam, in the shadow of the mountains, we had just enough time to sit on the terrace, drink a glass of wine and split a pastry, and marvel at the unbelievable expanse of rumpled mountains, tiered rice paddies ringing their feet. It was a beautiful way to say goodbye.

Are you sure you weren't on team Everest?

Surprisingly awesome Jazz club. Dana: "Is going to see Jazz in Vietnam like seeing Opera in Jamaica?" If it is, I'm impressed.


Our friend Fa and her mom, who took us to a beautiful pagoda on the Perfume River, where we saw monks in training as old as 3, and walked beneath pine trees that smelled of home.


Dana, master bargainer, surrounded by H'Mong women selling bracelets and anything/everything else.


Street pho and a journal - pretty much sums it up.


Famous Vietnamese coffee... and a journal. This is what we do. This is at an unmarked cafe in Hanoi that is only accessible through a storefront, where, when asked "cafe?", the shopgirls playing cards just point to a shadowy back alley. It opens up into a balcony with an incredible view of Hoan Kiem lake in the Old Quarter.


Mary: Too much has been happening to really catch you all up effectively - we slept on a boat amidst rock islands and floating villages, made friends, ate lots of street food (natch), drank beers from an old lady with a keg on the street (25 cents a glass), and much more, experiences too rich and numerous to summarize. Most of it has been facilitated by very strong Vietnamese coffee, served local style with condensed milk. Did you know that Vietnam is the worlds second-largest coffee producer, after Brazil? We do now! Yes yes, we do!

Oh man, ok, we are currently in Sapa, sitting still amidst a fluttering horde of porters packing bananas and baguettes into bamboo packs and listening to a rain storm that woke us up in the night with its force. In 5 minutes, we leave with our lovely porters, looking a bit like old fashioned court pages in their traditional H'Mong coats, on a two day trek to Mt. Fanispan. At 3,143 meters, it is the highest mountain in Vietnam. 15 days ago (about that, sort of fuzzy with my dates these days) we were in the Mekong Delta, probably the lowest point in Vietnam, with all the houses on stilts and the markets floating on the water. I feel like this final Vietnamese journey, to the summit of Fanispan, brings us full circle. 'Nam, it's been real.

When we return, it's off immediately to Luang Prabang, in Laos, where we will start from scratch: learning a new language (or at least how to say "how much", "too expensive", "beautiful" and "thank you"), trying new foods (bamboo dip? spicy salad? yes please!), and, of course, experiencing a new kind of massage. We must be thorough, eh?.

Wish us luck that the rain abates, our trip is not canceled, and we are able to rock out the way god and nature intended - with wet feet and smiling faces. We love and miss you guys!

(Special love goes out to Madie and her car hunt. I am thinking of you, sweet one.)

Who's got my heady Banh Mi?

Mary: This morning Sweet D & I prepare to leave Hanoi after three days, and three hotels (first one kicked us out, second one was filthy, third one was - well, if not just right, good enough, though occupied on the first floor by a shifting number of middle-eastern teen gangsters who may or may not have exploded something in the middle of the night). Despite lodging frustrations, I love this city. It is beautiful, peaceful for a city, and we are well situated in the old quarter, right off of a nice lake where the youngsters come to be romantic and the old ladies come to practice dance routines in satin pajamas.

We've been doing it right - we went to the temple of literature, the Ho Chi Minh mausoleum (but only saw the outside, due to the mile-long line of devoted Vietnamese waiting to view the corpse of Uncle Ho), a water puppet show (which made me feel like I finally understood where weird Asian cartoons come from), a surprisingly good jazz club, a famous corner where you can sit on rickety stools and watch the madness of a five-way intersection while sipping 4,000dong beer (about 25 cents)and eating 1,000dong glutinous rice balls (a bit like doughnut holes,filled with a sweet mung bean paste and crusted with sugar glaze and sesame seeds - oh lord, the goodness). We've also eaten food from countless street vendors, and women wandering around with giant baskets of fruit balanced over their shoulders as though they were oxen.

We leave now for Halong Bay, where we will stay on a houseboat for a night and have a chance to kayak around, sail the bay, eat lots of seafood, trek through some caves (or so they say) and in general be spoiled for a few days. Don't worry, only for two, then back to Hanoi for a night to sort things out for the last Vietnamese journey - a trip up north to Sapa, where the H'Mong people live, and where the tiered mountains are famous for trekking and (yes!) cooler weather.

After Sapa, we head into Laos - options abound for the best way to cross the border, and it's hard to know who to trust. Our best bet is other travelers, which also means you - any suggestions?

Me and My Mann and the China Sea

I'd say this was a bus ride from hell, if it wasn't for the beautiful gushing waterfalls flowing only feet from the road and the lush green trees blanketing the mountains...thank god for charging the ipod!! I love you p-groove!


Dana: Just arrived in the Capital of Vietnam, Hanoi!! We took a 12-hour sleeper train from Hue (once again, thank god for those purple sleeping pills =)and will now spend a few days here in Hanoi. We got here at 4:30AM and no hostels would let us check in at that hour, but we finally found one that allowed us to chill in their lobby and use the internet until 7AM when a room would be available...I figured this would be the perfect time to post some pictures and catch you up on our whereabouts.

We've made it to the north! We explored the south, traveled to the mountains in the southern highlands, bounced around central Vietnam for a few days and are now getting ready to conquer the north. We've been very lucky along the way, meeting kind people and seeing beautiful sights. Part of our daily adventure is to find a vegetarian restaurant in each town we stop in, which has been successful and quite the experience.

It's super early and I'm still a little out of it from those purple little pills, so here is where my writing stops and my photo-journaling takes over =)


Gotta have fun on a 5-hour on/off-road bus ride through the mountains...


If Mary was a singer, this would be her album cover


I was in heaven in Da Lat, this place is known for their artichokes and avocados!! We drank artichoke tea all day long...thinking of my family...I bought some for you!!


Killer bite combo: fresh strawberries, ripe avocado and fluffy french baguette...tbo


This is called "Crazy House" in Da Lat, it was designed by the architect Hang Nga.


It's a wild Alice in Wonderland-like tree house in a fantastic folly of twisting, tree-trunk-like concrete and artificial caverns, winding flights of stairs and irregular windows, flowering purple vines, and an over-sized sculpture of a giraffe, kangaroo and eagle.




View of the city of Da Lat from the top of the tree house.


Hoi An is known for getting everything tailor-made from dresses, suits, jackets, shoes and purses...this town is WILD! Thank god I'm traveling with a backpack, cause I could have done some serious damage here!


And of course we did so some damage. Mary got a beautiful cashmere suit tailor-made for her at the classy Yaly (thanks Sunshine for the recommendation) and I got a sweet blazer. And of course I got a few other things in the town, shipping it all home cost $100...ouch!


Swimming in the China Sea


My Son are the abandoned and partially ruined Hindu temples constructed between the 4th and the 14th century A.D.

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The temples are dedicated to the worship of the god Shiva, which was really cool to see after learning so much about Shiva at Agama.

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