Out of college, money spent, see no future, pay no rent...

So some of you more observant types may have noticed that I've added a "donate now" button to this webpage. Hadn't noticed? Look to the right.... can you see it now? This is something I've struggled with a little, but after some interest on the part of a few of you, and some financial need on the part of me, I've decided to provide an easy way for you to contribute to my trip fund if you are so inclined. Please know that I don't put it up there to pressure you in any way, and while any contribution will be massively appreciated, certainly none is expected! It's pretty straightforward, but if you're interested in making a donation and have any questions, just shoot me an email. All the transactions are handled by PayPal, it's all secure and all that good stuff. I have run into a couple of unexpected expenses, and while I'm doing fine right now, I'm guessing things are going to get pretty interesting in the next few months. So, if you're struck by the desire to help me continue this journey as long as is possible, then by all means donate away. Just FYI... regardless of the amount donated, I don't intend to stay away longer than I had originally planned, so I will be back by August 2008 (if not before!) regardless. I further promise to not use your donations to buy large buckets of vodka & tonic (unless of course you'd like me to...).

Thanks so much all.

In other news... I'm leaving Laos tomorrow to head back to Thailand. I have really enjoyed having some time to relax and appreciated the low-key atmosphere in Laos after the "busy"ness of Vietnam. It's really been interesting to experience the different atmospheres in these two countries. I have (finally) posted the rest of my pictures from Hoi An, Hanoi, Halong Bay and the past week or so in Laos. I've tried to elaborate on some of the pictures, but I know there is still much to tell. I will say this... Vietnam is a beautiful country. I was amazed by the incredible scenery I saw there, and honestly surprised by how little animosity or bitterness I encountered given the history between our country and Vietnam. I was at times overwhelmed by the constant need to bargain for everything, and can't say I will ever look back fondly at the traffic, but I am so glad I went.

As a side note, I read a couple of great books while I was in Vietnam, both dealing with the war. If you're interested, check them out.... When Heaven and Earth Changed Places by Le Ly Hayslip and The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien. I would also recommend The Vietnam Reader edited by Stuart O'Nan.

More soon... I'll be on a slow boat to Thailand for the next two days.

Lonely and dreaming of the west coast...

I'm in Luang Prabang, Laos. It's pouring down rain and reminding me so much of home and all of the people I love there. This is a beautiful little city... scattered with temples and set along the banks of the Mekong River. There are gorgeous markets and groups of monks everywhere. Last night I walked past an internet cafe and saw 3 monks in their orange robes clustered around a computer screen. I plan to spend a couple of days here before taking the slow boat back to Thailand where I'll meet up with Stacia and another friend of mine, Tracey, and head up to the school at Kiew Sua. I will write more soon and hopefully update pictures too!

And I never lost one minute of sleeping, worrying about the way things might have been...

It's been awhile since I've posted. I will have to write a bit to "wrap up" Vietnam, but I do want to tell you more about that. I left for Laos on Monday evening and am in Vang Vieng after spending two days in Vientiane. I met a group of very nice people on the bus crossing from Vietnam to Laos and have been spending the past several days with them. We are off to go tubing down the river. Pictures and stories to come!

Then peace will guide the planet and love will steer the stars...

I was thinking there were quite a few birthdays coming up in the next few weeks, and suddenly realized a whole big bunch of my best girls are Aquarians. Sandy, Shelbie, Amie, Tracy, Eboli, Kristin, and my cousins Jodie and little Sammie Annie... happy happy birthday to all of you. I'm sad that I won't be toasting your special days with you, or watching you blow out the candles on your first birthday cake, or "slipping" on the dance floor at your birthday party, but please know that I'm thinking of you. To quote the prolific Dave Matthews, the always poetic 50 Cent, and the inimitable Olympia Dukakis (as Clairee Belcher in Steel Magnolias) respectively:

I love you oh so well, like a kid loves candy and fresh snow.
I love you like a fat kid loves cake.
And you know I love you more than my luggage.

Cheers!

Happy B-day to you Aquarian boys too... (Adam? Paul? Are you reading this?)

Lookin' for adventure, and whatever comes our way...

I arrived safely in Hoi An this afternoon, having survived my 5 day journey by motorbike. What an amazing experience. Much less scary than I thought it might be, but not without its nervewracking moments; I was definitely glad I wasn't the one driving. I was accompanied by Vui aka "Happy" who fully lived up to his nickname. I don't think there was a moment when he wasn't smiling. We were also joined by a Swiss guy who rode a rented bike and tagged along. This wasn't part of the original agreement and I was initially pretty irritated by it, but he was friendly enough, lackluster personality not withstanding, and I decided I needed to just get over it. There are tons of new pictures up on Flickr, so you can get a glimpse of what I saw along the way.

As usual though, I find the pictures don't really capture it, and I think it's something I'll probably have to write more about later. There was so much to see. I had so many of those "I can't believe I'm doing this!" moments. Some highlights: drinking rice wine with a local family, having my palm and face?! read (FYI- my face is 90% OK; good eyes, good ears, good mouth, nose... not so much), visiting small minority villages, taking in some of the most spectacular scenery I have ever seen, hiking down to swim in an old volcano crater, and drinking and laughing hysterically with some of the other guides and the Canadian and Australian travelers they were carting around. My guide tried to convince me to marry him, but I politely declined. I will have lots of stories about this trip... you'll all get sick of hearing about it. :)

Hoi An is a beautiful little city; I can think of a number of you who would go nuts here... it seems that every other shop is a tailor's and you can get anything you'd like hand-sewn in about 24 hours, along with made-to-order shoes! I overheard an Australian girl telling her mom over the phone that she'd had 2 dresses, a suit, 3 skirts, a pair of leather boots and 3 pairs of high heels made today.

Hope you are all well. More soon!

If you go straight long enough, you end up where you were...

Tomorrow will be four months exactly since I left Seattle. It's hard for me to believe. In that time I have visited more than 15 different countries (18 to be precise, if precise means counting Canada & Hong Kong, and really, why wouldn't it?) in hmmm... I guess 3 "major regions" of the world. This marks the "half-way" point of the trip, at least as far as the stipulations of the fellowship are concerned. Well, I suppose looking at it that way, it's the "two-thirds" points having already more than covered the requisite number of countries and continents.

By this point in the trip, I've had to do some re-assessment, some re-arranging, and and some decision making about how I want to continue. You may recall that my original itinerary had me flying to New Delhi from Bangkok a week from today. That's certainly not going to happen. I've postponed my flight until the 1st of April and I'm thinking India may well be one of the last countries on my list. It's looking like I was a bit overambitious trying to squeeze Africa into this trip, and I definitely don't want to cut anything short. I hope to spend the next couple weeks in Vietnam before heading through Laos back to Thailand. At that point, I'll spend about 6 weeks up in Kiew Sua volunteering in the school I visited there, before heading off to India my "grand tour" there. If I'm lucky, I'll squeeze in a little beach time in the south of Thailand before I fly out of Bangkok.

As for what I've been up to the past few days... took a quick (2-day) trip down to the Mekong Delta before returning to Saigon for a night and then catching a bus to Dalat today. It was a fun trip, with a good group of people (about 12). Myself and another "lonely solo" were sort of adopted by a nice Kiwi family (a couple and their teenaged son). Two days full of boat trips up and down the river, a nice bike ride, and some really beautiful scenery.

In Dalat now. It's a nice change from Saigon, much quieter, prettier, and less expensive (expensive here being a relative term). It's in the central highlands, so much cooler than further south, lots of beautiful mountains surrounding, with lakes and waterfalls near by. This evening I hired an "Easy Rider" guide who will drive me from here up through south/central Vietnam and into Hoi An on the back of his motorbike. The trip will take about 5 days. I had to think long and hard about whether I wanted to do something like this (as far as travel in SE Asia goes, this is an expensive little jaunt) but I just know it's one of those things that I would kick myself for not doing later. And who knows when (or more realistically, if) I will ever get back to Vietnam. I know traveling this way, with a local, on a bike, will afford me opportunities I would never have sitting on a tour bus. I'll stay in homes rather than hotels/guesthouses and I'm sure get a more "real" experience. Before you get all worried, you should know that these "Easy Riders" come highly recommended by everyone from the New York Times to The Lonely Planet, not to mention pretty much every solo traveler you meet on the road. This guy (Ho "Happy" Vui) had several books with him with written testimonials raving about everything from his personality, to his tour guide skills, to his safe driving. :) Should be quite an adventure... I will, of course, keep you posted.

Some funny ha-ha/funny strange things that have happened in the past few days:

- Being slapped on the arm (and harder than was necessary, I'd say) by a little old lady carrying a don gahn (one of those yokes with the large baskets on either side) because I was in her way on the sidewalk.
- Falling off a bicycle with a MUCH too high seat (and luckily not getting hurt!) when the person in front of me started swerving wildly because she got scared by a passing motorbike.
-Having Vui, the motorbike guide say, "Oh, you look like the daughter of President Clinton"? Ummm... sorry? This was after I told him my name, so I think he was actually referring to that similarity (Josie vs. Chelsea). Gotta love the language differences...
- Realizing I've been spending far too much time with speakers of British English when I heard myself tell one of the guys on the Mekong Delta tour to "give us a knock" when he was ready to go get a beer.
- Being pushed (pulled?) into a discussion about American foreign policy, which started out harmlessly enough (I don't think it's any secret that I'm not a big fan of the current administration's FP) but escalated to the point where I truly felt I was being baited, and the whole thing turned so rabidly anti-American that I sort of snapped and went off on a rant that veered dangerously close to Jack Nicholson's Colonel Nathan Jessup (from "A Few Good Men"... you know the "I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a man who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very freedom I provide, then questions the manner in which I provide it! I'd rather you just said thank you and went on your way.") I didn't say *that* exactly, but it was certainly the gist. And actually, the other (non-Americans) present nodded in agreement, but my reaction surprised me, and I can think of a few of you who will be as delighted as others of you are horrified by this. I think I have grown more weary than I had realized of the scrutiny and criticism so often leveled at me (directly or indirectly) regarding my nationality. Ahhh... I suppose everyone's entitled to a little outburst every once in awhile.

I've got a mountain to climb
'fore I get over this hill.
I've got the world to unwind,
'fore I ever sit still.
I've got a hard row to hoe
before my seed is sown.
I've got a long way to get
before I get back home.

Well, I've got so much to put down
before that's all she wrote.
I got so much to give
'fore my heart ain't so broke.
I gotta find myself
or I can never be alone.
I've got a long way to get
before I get back home.

-Bob Schneider
"A Long Way to Get"

Put down your books and pick up a gun, we're gonna have a whole lotta fun...

I have to say that the highlight of my day today was when none of the 30+ people in my tour group at the Cu Chi tunnels elected to fire an AK-47 when given the opportunity. It might have had something to do with the cost of the bullets, but at any rate, there were no takers, and I was glad. I could hear shooting when we first arrived at the site. There's something decidedly unsettling about visiting these tunnels, and the not-so-distant sounds of an assault rifle being fired only added to my sense of unease. Our tour-guide, Minh, gave a really thorough explanation of the tunnels' importance and significance during the Vietnam conflict. If you're interested, you can read more here. Minh was a soldier in the South Vietnamese Army and fought alongside the 101st Airborne Division from 1965-1972. He explained that he wanted to be a Catholic priest, and had actually started seminary, before being forced to join the army in 1965.

I suppose I'd have to add the Cu Chi tunnels, along with the Killing Fields of Cheoung Ek, to that list of places I'm not sure why I wanted to visit. I will say this, I have never felt so claustrophobic as I did this afternoon, hunched over and creeping through 40 meters of reconstructed tunnel, before I made it to the promised "early exit" presumably added for other scaredy-cats like myself. I waited so that I could be the last through the tunnel, in case I just had to turn right back around, and was actually suprised I made it the 40 meters. It was hot and humid and dark and tiny (although the guide explained that these reconstructed tunnels were actually about 20 centimeters taller and wider than the originals). I started to panic about 20 feet before I saw the red light indicating the exit, and could not have been happier to climb the steep ladder that awaited me. I cannot begin to imagine how people spent days or weeks in these tunnels, and further cannot imagine the terror that was involved for the US soldiers charged with climbing in having no idea what was waiting for them. I can feel my chest tightening up just writing this, and all I did was follow a bunch of camera-toting tourists.

Both today, at the tunnels, and yesterday, at the War Remnants Museum, it has been interesting for me to see a glimpse of the Vietnam War through the lense of the experience of the Vietnamese. The museum was incredibly hard to take in, room after room of photos, many outlining atrocities commited by US forces in Vietnam (e.g. the My Lai massacre) and the aftermath of the "Agent Orange" sprayed throughout the country. The photos are heartbreaking, and I found myself growing uncomfortable, and, I'll admit it, defensive. Today during the tour, Minh asked if any of us had visited the museum. Most of us had. He said, "This is one part of the story. One side. Other side just as bad. Maybe worse." I thought back to that war photo exhibit I saw in Croatia, that showed the photos from Israel and Lebanon, and the reminder that war is terrible, for both sides. For everyone. Always.

Would you not like to be, sitting on top of the world with your legs hanging free...

I arrived in Saigon (or Ho Chi Minh City as it's called now) last night. I'm sort of wishing I would have stayed longer in Cambodia; I think I probably could have spent a few more days walking around looking at those amazing temples. I find that sometimes I feel like I've put myself on a schedule, and have this sense that I need to move on even when it's not really necessary. Live and learn I suppose, and this way I have more time in Vietnam. And maybe a reason to return to Cambodia someday? Did I tell you about the guy I met from Germany that purposely skips one important landmark/temple/museum in every place that he visits so that he will have a reason to go back?

Feeling a little sick today which I think is a combination of not getting enough sleep and the ridiculous amount of dust I have been breathing in lately. Cambodia was dirty and dusty like no place I have ever been. It's another of the places that I feel like I was completely unable to capture in photos, and I don't know if I'll ever be able to adequately describe my experience there. So many contrasts there... the awful history of the Khmer Rouge, the incredible temples near Siem Reap, the friendly people, the poor children carrying huge baskets of photocopied books to sell to tourists, or begging for money along the tourist strip along the river in Phnom Penh. There are so many people with so little there... it's truly overwhelming. And I don't think I've mentioned the traffic. I'm not sure how to describe it. "Organized chaos" maybe. There are cars and buses and motorcycles and tuk-tuks moving in what seems every direction at once. Traffic lights seem to be a suggestion at best, as do the lane lines painted in the road. One of the scarier experiences in my life has to be riding on the back of a motorcycle through the streets of PP. Forget about helmets, the drivers don't wear them and they don't have them for their passengers either. And yet the traffic doesn't move at the frantic pace that it does in say Shanghai. You rarely see anyone get angry and despite people driving the wrong way down the road to merge into traffic, pedestrians wading through lanes and lanes of traffic, things seem to move pretty smoothly. I can't imagine having to drive there! The traffic situation in HCMC actually seems a little worse. The guidebooks, fellow travelers, and hotel clerks all advise you that in order to cross the street, you should just start walking slowly and the myriad motorbike riders will just weave around you. It sounds crazy, and it's pretty scary, but it does seem to work.

OK, just wanted to write a quick update. Not able to upload pictures yet, but hopefully soon!

Updated to add: New pictures up on Flickr!

So this is the new year...

Hello from Siem Reap, Cambodia. I want to wish all of you a very Happy New Year. I hope that 2008 will be full of exciting opportunities, great adventures, and much, much love.

I spent last night drinking a bucket of vodka & tonic (yes, sad but true) and today exploring the ruins near Angkor Wat. The former had surprisingly little effect on the latter, something I am most thankful for.

Another day of temples tomorrow, and then off to Vietnam on Thursday.

More soon!