See our photos on Flickr. We got newbies:

I suppose you are all wondering what happened to us. Well, plenty, but nothing bad. Except that for a while China decided I couldn't post to a blog. Now I guess we can. We are in Beijing and leave tomorrow on the trans-Mongolian train. I'm extremely happy to be leaving this country of what, a billion or so people, and going to one with only 2 million. Apparently I have that phobia of too many people. Here in China we spent a far amount of time in Yunnan they have an amazing gorge called Tiger Leaping Gorge that we hiked for two days before heading to Shangri La. In the gorge we stayed at a guest house up the hill which had an amazing view of the mountains, plus probably the best breakfast I've had in China, though Colin's looked better. Oh, your thinking, they didn't go to ShangriLa because it doesn't exist. Well it does, it's other name is Zhongdian, it's close to Tibet and has a Tibetan vibe, plus a foreigner vibe of "oh I wish I could go to Tibet, but it's hard to do, and expensive." We weren't into it the first day when we went to see a lake that's actually just a plain, but by the second day we were just looking at hills and going to climb up them. Ah but we were far from Beijing and had to get a move on so it was off to Chengdu. Chengdu is famous for Pandas who are very cute, but rather lazy and as a sign in the research center said "we are national treasures and we hate noise." We also met up with a friend of ours working in the peacecore who has become hilariously skeptical of the who China deal. Hard not to agree, like I said, I'm ready to go.

I still haven't said anything about Laos though it's been my favorite place so far, when you see us, you might get us talking about it by mentioning:
Teaching monks English by candlelight
boat rides down the Mekong
seeing dinner alive
jumping leaches and hiking though lots of red mud.
If you are sad that we haven't done a better job here, don't worry, I'm keeping a lovely journal/scrapbook/sketchbook that I'd me more than happy to share.

Photos up on Flickr.


To Laos today. No medical facilities, but beautiful ruged mountains and run down French Colonial towns. Yeah!

One more day in Chiang Mai. We've decided to get out on the town with a motorscooter today instead of a bike.

Yesterday was our cooking class. We made curry with a stone mortar among many other yummy things. If we can find the ingredients in the US you, our friends and family, are going to be very lucky. We considered taking a Thai massage course today but opted not to so you are not going to be that lucky.

Our class was taught by a hilarious, fiery Thai woman Gan. She teased everyone and explained the art of Thai cooking with such informative phrases as "The little chilies are spicier, like Thai people, small but dangerous. Big chilies are like you, foreigners, big and mild." Besides eating our weight in wonderful food we had made ourselves, the class also gave us the chance to talk to some other travelers form all over the place. We ended up going out in the evening with our Thai teacher, a Dutch couple and an American on a Watson that they had met.

Gan took us to a Thai club attached to a hotel. It was a strange crowd and a stranger act. The crowd was a mix of young Thais pumping their arms in the air to the music, older foriengers with Thai ?escorts? and a mix of young foreigners who rolled in baffled off the street and older foreigners from the attached hotel.

The act was a live band with probably 5 different singers who took turns. I thought I was seeing something else when one of the male singers came out in full 80s gear with a jean jacket and a curly wig, but then the 3 almost nude female singers came out accompanied my guy dancers who looked like they had failed to pass into Brittany Spears' group. Later the jean jacket guy returned with a new getup. On his chest he had painted some sort of super hero emblem. He had a cape and long tan long Johns (meant to look like skin) with a skimpy thong over them. The kicker though was he aptly formed sock stuck sideways in the long johns. I don't even know.

What kind of music accompanied this you want to know? Well everything from the macarena to the Cranberries to a techno version of "I'm going o San Francisco"

I spent the evening drinking a very Thai drink, whiskey with soda water and a dash of coke, listening to our Thai teacher tell me how drunk she was and that she had to work in the morning (did she teach our class hung over?)and just being baffled.

I am so happy to be out of Bangkok that I'm not really sure how to express myself. We are currently in Chiang Mai, but getting here was a bit of a challenge. On the first day in Bangkok we were brought to a legitimate travel agent as part of the useful scam(Colin got a suit and that's what we were looking for, plus we got our Chinese visa without having to go to an embassy). We got overnight train tickets there that left in the evening and were to arrive in the morning, we wish.

The train was fine until 4 in the morning, when everyone started making a bunch of noise. I tried to ignore it until someone woke me up and said "Wake up, we got to get off, the train don't go no more." I think the problem was flooding but I never found out. We were all shuttled on to buses to the various places we were going and we were on the German and French filled bus to Chiang Mai. I can't say the bus was as comfortable, but they did turn off the fluorescent lights, a change from the train.

Our first day we wandered about, wandering. There are beautiful temples and the architecture is all intricately carved teak wood. The real adventure however didn't seem to start until today.

A main activity in Chiang Mai is too go on treks. We opted out on this one not wanting to take a 3 hour drive to ride on an elephant in circle and then see the elephant get bathed and then sit on a bamboo raft and then walk 20 minutes before getting back in the car. Oh and yes, all the treks include visits to hilltribe villages. I asked one travel agent what one does in these villages and she said "you walk around and look and some people sell some stuff." As much as I love staring at natives, this one didn't do it for me.

Instead we rented bicycles and decided to just ride out of town. When I rent bicycles I don't expect much, but the bike I got was rough. I had to lean forward at every turn of the peddle to get the thing to move and then on top of that one of the peddles was horribly warped. I'm strong though and I rode on until we reached the city limit. Sweat was pouring down my back and my face was bright red. Colin looked fine and I thought myself to be the real weakling. He graciously offered to switch bikes with me, got on mine and instantly deemed it unridable. We tried to fix the peddle then opted instead to catch a ride back into town and switch bikes. Out we rode again (our destination was some "craft villages" about 10 km from town). We intended to go to the farthest village and then stop at others on the way back. It never really seemed like we got into the countryside that I was expecting, and we didn't make it to the furthest town. I got a flat tire.

That seemed to be a sign that we should get something to eat so we went to an openair roadside cafe 10 paces from where I got the flat. Although we have been going primarily to restaurants without English on the menu, this time there was no one to help and we didn't want to get noodle soup with fishballs again. We both gesticulated wildly and when I saw the cook through a bunch of green vegetables into a wok I pointed and jumped- we got two of those, plus tons of stares. If I had come straight from America I would probably be uncomfortable with that, but having been stared at plenty in Taiwan I smiled at every stare and got very warm smiles back.

We thought we would have to walk 10 km back to town or hitch a ride, but ended up finding a shop where a 13 year old boy expertly fixed the tire for about 50 cents. I would have happily given $10 to be able to get back into town. As it was we got a chance to stop at a few of the handicraft stops. All but one were disappointing. Most sold paper umbrellas (I considered getting a bunch to decorate my house and then realized I have no house to decorate) along with really tacky touristy stuff. They had people making the umbrellas, which was cool at the first place and quite amazing, though a big stop for the tour buses. The only place that was really amazing was a pottery factory where they had long stemmed vases and very beautiful dishes. Again I considered buying- for my mom a huge black and white vase, for Colin's mom a cool sushi plate set, and for us a set of dishes , but opted against more extraneous shipping.

By the time we got into town again I was so tired I felt like going to sleep right there. Instead we got Thai massages for $5. The massage style is really interesting. It was a combination of a person stretching your limbs for you and the motions a kitten makes with it's paws when dreaming of its mother's milk. Tomorrow is a cooking class but we may go back to the same massage place (it's also a school) Monday for a class.