Japan: Tokyo

We arrived in Tokyo, took a one hour train to our hotel and relaxed over a sushi dinner at the Hilton hotel. The next two days we did tours around the city, checking out the temples and major landmarks. Finding a trash can in the city is almost impossible. There are literally no trash can's on the street and maybe one per subway station and each station is the size of a shopping mall (and often is a shopping mall). After two days in Tokyo, we caught the train to Kyoto.

Hong Kong

After spending one last night in HCMC, I caught a one way flight to Hong Kong to spend the next 4 nights. Right as I arrived I had to go visit the HKU office to pick up some paperwork and fill out some forms to get a HK ID. I rushed over to the office and got there just in time to pick up the paperwork I needed for traveling to China. Lan Kwai Fong is the main bar district in Central Hong Kong where all the expats go to drink after work. Beer's range in price between $7-15 with the cheapest beer being Corona....the opposite of what you would expect. My first night I met up with a friend of a friend for dinner and drinks to celebrate her birthday. She was staying at the Hotel LKF which has an amazing roof top bar which is where we spent most of the night people watching. The next day I opened a bank account at HSBC and went to check in at the Mandarin Oriental hotel to meet my dad. 45 years ago my dad visited Hong Kong with his dad and stayed at the exact same hotel. Once my dad arrived we enjoyed a nice dinner in the hotel restaurant, then I went out for the night to cheer on team USA in the world cup who played at 3am HK time. The following day we left for Japan

Thailand: Chiang Mai

We decided to spend 3 days in Chiang Mai after speaking with a British couple who spent three weeks there and loved it. Chiang Mai is located in the northern part of Thailand, near the southern part of the Himalayas. We finally got free from the street hecklers and met some nice Thai people who don't view you as a big dollar sign. The food here is fantastic. We've eaten nothing but Pad Thai, Green and Red curries and Spicy chicken with basil for each meal (around $2 for each). Our first day in the city we explored on foot, saw some temples, found some good restaurants and booked tours for our next 2 days. On day 2, we hired a driver to take us around the outside of the city for a half day tour ($20). We went to an elephant zoo where we fed, rode and played with the elephants. We also saw the elephants paint several paintings and play soccer. Next, we went to a monkey zoo where we watched monkeys ride around on tricycles and dunk basketballs. Lastly, we visited a tiger zoo where we got in the cage with the tiger and got pictures petting it and laying on top of it. After our half day tour of the zoo's we took a nap, grabbed dinner and starting drinking some of the local Chang beer. On day 3 we slept in, then did a half day zipline tour through the jungle. We finished our tour just in time to get under shelter as the rain came pouring down. Tomorrow we will fly to Ho Chi Minh city for one last night, then I will fly to Hong Kong.

Thailand: Bangkok

We caught a flight from HCMC to Bangkok and hopped a cab to the backpacker part of town to find a hotel. Our cab driver took a quick bathroom break on the way into the city, stopping on the side of the highway to go #1 in the bushes....anyways, we found a good cheap hotel for around $17 per night and set out to walk around the city. The city is much more developed than Vietnam, most people have cars instead of motorbikes, they have a tourist police, and most places are relatively well maintained. We quickly learned that Bangkok is much worse than Vietnam with the heckling and harassing from cab drivers, tuk tuk drivers and anyone trying to sell something. As soon as you step out of your hotel there is a non-stop hoard of people trying to sell you on eating at their restaurant, sex shows, clothes, useless carved wooden objects etc... If you stop to look at a map, the salesman swarm you saying "what are you looking for? Where are you going? Let me show you the city". After several hours of this we started crafting more entertaining responses to their questions like "we are going to Mexico, take us there" or "we are looking for the holy grail". We did eventually get to do a walking tour of the city which was extremely challenging since most roads are not labeled, most maps are not accurate and the roads that are labeled are often only labeled in the Thai language. We did see a mother holding a plastic bag for her son who was probably around 8 years old, peeing into the plastic bag...on the side of the street, not covering up, not facing the wall, just out in the open peeing into a bag...not sure what thats all about. The food is quite good in Bangkok and the pad thai here is almost the exact same as in the States, only here it costs around $1. We enjoyed several meals of street food for very cheap. Apparently, Seven Eleven's are very profitable in Thailand. There is a 7/11 on almost every block in the city and on the busy streets, sometimes even more. We saw several places where there would be two 7/11's staring right across the street from each other. They provide the cheapest beer in town and a nice air-conditioned relief from the heat. Our last night in Bangkok we met a nice group from Chile in South America and spent most of the night shooting pool and hearing about life in Chile. Lady boys are all over Bangkok and are quite disturbing to look at... After a good breakfast at Dunking Doughnuts in the Bangkok airport, we caught a flight to Chiang Mi which is north of Bangkok and home to many outdoor activities such as riding elephants, playing with tigers and monkeys, and bungee jumping.

Vietnam: HCMC and Nha Trang

Morgan and I decided to fly back to Ho Chi Minh City from Hoi An rather than suffer through another sleeper bus. Our second night back in HCMC we met up with two of Will Akridge's (Morgan's friend who lives in Hanoi) friends for a night on the town. Shane was from Australia and Arnauld from Paris (as he would say "I am from Paris, not France, Paris"). They took us to their favorite bar to shoot pool called the Drunken Duck. This particular bar also has a shot contest where if you participate, you get a plaque with your name on it, a quote from you and the time it took you to finish the shots. The amount of shots to finish...15. The Frenchman (or Parisian) held the record for a few weeks with taking all 15 shots in 38 seconds. As Arnauld explained to us, he was in the bar when his record was broken. The person who broke his record was one of the female bartenders at the bar who was celebrating her birthday (35 seconds was her record). Her plaque on the wall read "I beat Arnauld". Upon witnessing this, Arnauld immediately ordered the 15 shots and took them in 33 seconds to regain his title. His new and second plaque on the wall read "Even I kneel before myself". A moment later our friend Will Akridge took 15 shots in 27 seconds to break Arnauld's record. His plaque on the wall read "Beat that bitches, BORN IN THE USA". The Parisian decided that since he couldn't have the fastest shot record, he would take the most shots. A few nights after his record was broken, he took 45 consecutive shots in 5 minutes and 50 seconds (1.5 liters of liquor), took a cigarette break, then kept drinking the rest of the night as normal. He received a plaque for this as well. In fact, his name is on the record board 6 times, 4 times from him breaking or setting records, and 2 times from others writing something about him in their quote.

I hope you now understand what we were up against going out with these guys. We had a fun night, took way too many shots and made it home safely.

Nha Trang
We caught a flight to Nha Trang, the most developed beach in Vietnam, to meet Will Akridge and celebrate his 29th birthday. Our new French and Australian friend came as well and we had a good time getting sunburned, eating pizza, pasta and omlettes, and walking the city. Morgan got some fresh cooked lobster on the beach where they cook the lobster right in front of you and coat it in hot sauce...very tasty for only $4 a lobster. Our hotel called "Nice Hotel" was conveniently located right next to a Bia Hoi where they served $0.75 pitchers of beer. The beach was nice but I will probably never go back. Reminded me of going to a Georgia beach with the same water color only there is also constant heckling from the locals to buy useless things. We got very tired of these hecklers and thus started talking to them in either Spanish (which we knew they wouldn't understand) or simply tried to sell something we had to them. At one point, Shane the Australian, borrowed one of the Vietnamese girls basket of goods and walked up to a group of white girls trying to sell them something...no takers. We enjoyed a nice birthday dinner and went out for drinks. Our flight back to HCMC before leaving to go to Bangkok was terrible. The 40 minute flight was so rough that roughly 20% of the passengers took the liberty of using their vomit bags. Today we are in Bangkok, not wearing any red, and will tour the city before planning our next destination in Thailand.

Vietnam: Hoi An

From Hanoi we took a sleeper bus to Hoi An using Camel Travel. I only mention the name of the bus company so that everyone reading this will never use it because it was terrible. The sleeper bunks they had on the bus were designed for Vietnamese (little people) and were about 8 inches too short for any westerner. Also, the guardrail to prevent you from rolling out of your bunk during the bumpy ride was non-existent. The pillow was a stained pillow case with about a dozen feathers in it. We tried to sleep as the bus driver swerved all over the road, honked his horn non-stop and smoked cigarettes. Next thing we know, we are being told to get off the bus because we need to transfer to a new bus...only the new bus is around 2km away (but accordingly to all the locals, it was only a 5-10min walk). After hopping a cab over there, we were dumbfounded to learn that our bus actually arrived 2 hours late so we missed our connecting bus. We had to kill 5 hours in Hue Vietnam before the next bus would depart. We finally made it to Ha Noi, albeit 8 hours later than expected, and promptly went to the clothing shops to get fitted for suits. Morgan's friend Will Akridge had a shop he recommended to us to buy all our custom made clothing. I purchased a black Tuxedo, a dark pin striped suit, a gray suit, a white linen suit, 5 button down shirts and a pair of custom made tux shoes for a total of $425. Morgan and I grabbed a few meals on the street for anywhere between $0.25-$0.60 a meal. We spent so much time at the clothing shop that we made good friends with the girls working there. Our last night in Hoi An we took the girls out for a drink where we learned that one of them makes $5 a day and the other makes $10 a day working 12 hour days, 29 days a month. This low salary works out well for them though because rent is only around $20 per month, and food is around $1.50 per day. One of the girls we met named Viet said she saved money for 6 years to buy her motorbike. After spending 2 nights in Hoi An, we caught a flight to Ho Chi Minh city where we will spend a few days before flying to Nha Trang (beach city) for Will Akridge's birthday.

During our first meal in Ho Chi Minh today, Morgan and I met a nice old guy from North Carolina. He said that he was 68 years and had just retired from UPS. Randomly we asked him if he had heard of Akers Motor Lines, his answer "I worked for Akers Motor lines for 9 years, best job I ever had". Small world...

Vietnam: Hanoi and Halong Bay

Morgan and I caught a quick flight over to Hanoi, the capital of Vietnam, from Siem Reap to explore for a few days. We booked a hotel online for $12 per night and I guess you get what you pay for which in this case was a shower duct taped together, bugs and a nice smell of mildew. Morgan's friend from EHS, Will Akridge, lives in Hanoi and we met up with him our first 2 nights. He introduced us to the $0.25 draft beers on the side of the road which was brewed fresh everyday. Our next day we did a walking tour of the city of which there are almost no sidewalks. The sidewalk is covered up by parked motorbikes which forces you to walk in the road and dodge the oncoming motor bikes and cars, not very safe at all. Fresh pineapple on the street costs around $0.50-1.00. After walking the city, we decided to book the Halong bay tour for the following day. Knowing that all prices are negotiable, we walked to several travel agents and gave them the "we just aren't sure, this price seems expensive". After 3 travel agents, we found one who lowered his price by 15% so we signed up for the deluxe 2 days one night on a junk boat in Halong Bay ($59 per person). We spent one more night in the town with Morgan's friend and this time we saw quite an interesting fight. There was a scuffle at the street restaurant we were at and we watched one man chase another swinging two machetes at him. After hearing people's screams around the corner and only the man with machetes run away, we did what anyone would do, we put down our drinks and got the hell out of there. The next morning we caught a bus to Halong bay to board our boat. Halong bay is the area with almost 2000 islands sticking straight out of the water with 50-100 meter cliffs. We were able to explore a huge cave and do some kayaking in between the islands as part of our tour. Also, you sleep on one of the old fashioned junk boats at night which was actually quite nice since we had a really powerful AC unit. There were people who lived on house boats who would paddle up to your boat and try to sell you pringles, soft drinks and other food/drink. There were also tons of people selling pearls (or fake pearls). The price...only $20 for a pair of pearl earrings (gotta be fake). Today we took the bus back to Hanoi where we will spend another night before leaving to go to either Hoi An or Phuket.