Vientiane, Laos

Aside from touring around the area on scooters, that sums up my time in Vientiane. One evening we all went bowling and that was a lot of fun. When you do things like bowling, it kind of makes you miss home a little bit. I am excited to head on from S.E Asia and head to India and Nepal. As I leave Asia I have under 5 of 17 months remaining in my trip. Nepal is the one country I have been looking forward to the most so I hope it meets my expectations!

Veng Viene, Laos

Veng Viene is probably the most popular place among travelers for all of S.E. Asia. There are bars that line a river with some extreme rope swings and slides that dump you into the river. It is a complete blast and some of the people you meet here, just never leave. They pump music and offer drinks by the bucket as people are dropping off rope swings from 30-40 ft high. Unfortunately this activity and drinking don't mix well and everyone you meet through Asia with a cast will almost say.....Veng Viene. Two weeks before I was there a young girl broke her neck and died going off one of the slides. While I was there a guy dislocated his shoulder and quite a few people really slapped the water hard and hurt themselves. It was a blast, glad I didn't get hurt, and despite everything, I'd recommend it! This area also has a lot more to offer as we went caving one day and rented scooters for 5 dollars and toured around the out lying villages.

Luang Prabang, Laos

Up to a few years back Laos was a very hard place to travel in. Currently they are building roads that connect the bottom of the country to China. The way we traveled into Laos was 18 hours in a river boat. From the 100+ people that were on our boat I seemed to run into all of them as we worked our way south from Northern Laos. In Luang Prabang I just did the standard, take a self guided bike tour, watched a nice sun set, and went swimming at a beautiful waterfall.

Chang Mai, Thailand (Northern Thailand)

This is a little hut that we stayed in on top of a small mountain.




Traveling by yourself is always very interesting. When you sign up for multi day tours you are forced to meet people and it always seems like you make a ton of new friends in the process.







On this one trip we went for a ride on elephants, hiked an easy 2 day hike, stayed in a local village that doesn't have access by road, and finished the trip white water rafting back to where we started. For the whole 3 days it cost around $40usd and that covers all the costs. Sometimes I think I am going to go home freak out on what everything costs since you can do so much for so little money.

Bagan, Myanmar

Some faces I don't think I will ever forget. There are times when people really don't want you to take their picture and I have asked so many times and got no for an answer. On the other hand this guy was just as happy as could be that I wanted to take his!



One of my favorite mornings of my whole trip was when I took this photo. The less modern the place you visit the earlier you find yourself in bed. On this morning I got up at 5am and climbed up one of the temples to see the horizon full of temples. I laugh still that I am so adjusted to going to bed every night around 8-8:30 and getting up with the sun.



The people in this country have so little and yet they they are willing to spend the little bit of the money they have on building a new temple. There are so many temples in Myanmar in certain areas you couldn't see all of them in a week.



The locals paint their faces with a mud compound and if you ask them why they say its for protection from the sun. I think they just like the way it looks but I found it interesting.

They are all so friendly yet scared to say the wrong thing too. You really get an eerie feeling when you talk to people and they are too scared to voice their opinion about things. I also heard many of rumors that as you travel in Myanmar they have a lot of spies the watch you and follow the things that you talk about. Out of the countries in S.E. Asia Myanmar left a the biggest impression on me.

Mandelay, Myanmar

Yangoon, Myanmar (Burma)

The whole city look like this building. It's in rotting over drive.




They were celebrating their New Year while I was here. To celebrate they have what is called a water festival. During the festival they have a 4 day water fight and it gets really intense. As a foreigner everyone wanted me to come partake in their group and you almost feel like a celebrity here. It made traveling in a difficult country more difficult since it was hard to find transportation. On top of that if you wanted to go anywhere they would all be trying to dump buckets of water on you. It would make you nervous when your packing around a camera and little laptop computer.







This is just one of the lovely transportation options.





It seemed like a fitting place to put in a pool hall. (Pool tables)



Who wants to go for a bus ride in this stink monster? It seems like every bus here smokes really bad and they sell you tickets saying they have AC. They do for like the first 30 min of the trip until they all start to overheat. Then we pull over every hour to let the bus cool down. It's funny but they have stations all along the highway where they spray water on the radiations of all the buses to cool them down. I didn't go on one bus here that didn't have problems with overheating. I am pretty adjusted to riding on buses, but on one bus ride back I was crammed on the bus for 15 hours in a very uncomfortable spot and nearly had a mental break down. I couldn't see because of the sweat in my eyes, the seat was horrible and I was packed between locals so tight I couldn't move! It was one time in my trip where I actually started to think...I have had enough of this! Then I got off the bus, relaxed and though, NAH!



Before I left on my trip and when I thought of S.E. Asia, Burma is what I pictured most places to be like. It's like a flash to the past with poverty everywhere. All the cars are so old, transportation options are not good, and there are 5% of the travelers here compared to the other places I have been in Asia. Like China every other Internet site is blocked and unless your email is GMail, no Internet for you. I couldn't even go to my web site as it was blocked too. As most of you know this military run country is undergoing major problems with their political situation and as they have suffered some catastrophes in epoch proportions. With the refusal of foreign aid, the real losers here are the people. If you want to travel somewhere where the people will really leave a lasting impression on you, go to Burma. There are many places in the country that they will not allow you to go, and you hear devastating stories of hardships, corruption, as well as ethnic cleansing.