1 YEAR

Haven't really been good about updating the blog here but I will get to it soon. A quick update here. After Cambodia I went to Thailand. From Thailand I headed into Singapore and worked my way up through Malaysia and back into Southern Thailand. Following that I headed into Burma and currently in Laos. I am proud to say....I made it a full year! In 2 weeks I will be headed into India and Nepal for 70 days. Then I have 2 months for Europe and then home! Hope all of you are doing well back home and I promise I will update here soon!
Lucas

Siam Reap, Cambodia

Angkor Wat and the surrounding temples were AMAZING. This is one of my favorite sites I have seen in my whole trip and consider it an equal to Machu Pichu. I am lately finding it hard to find things to write about and don't feel like I have had too much on my mind to really write about. I have currently been thinking about the fact that I am coming up on a year of traveling and what a crazy thought that is. Sometimes I am excited about traveling and other times I am very numb to how much I have seen and done. I hate it when I loose the appreciation for what I am doing. Some days I wake up stressed about the thought of going home and being stuck back in that routine of life. Then the next day I will feel excited to return back to that which stressed me yesterday. Some days I have more friends then I know what to do with, and others I have no friends at all. It's a roller coaster and I just try to hold on for the ride. I am glad that I left during this "crisis,"and I didn't have to stick around and worry all the time. There are times I wonder where I would be if I would have chosen a different path. I am sure of one thing and that is I feel good about what I am doing and I kn0w when I get home, I will be ready to be there! I miss my family and friends and look forward to seeing you all in October, for now I just going to keep on keeping on, on my journey around the world!

Phnom Penh, Cambodia

The capital of Cambodia, Phnom Phen is an interesting yet slightly depressing place with a list of sights to see that include sad stories of war and tragedies. The place is packed with touts and tuc-tuc drivers wanting to take you anywhere and everywhere. While here we went to the shooting range to fire off a few fully automatic weapons, and followed that by going to the Killing fields. After that we went to a school (M21) where it was converted to a camp where the people were massacred by the thousands. For the next 3 days I felt horrible for going to the range and playing with weapons and really felt like it didn't belong here.

Nha Trang- Ho Chi Minh- Mekong Delta, Vietnam

I really don't know how they did it!

Working my way south I stopped for some more beach time in Nha Trang. This place has an amazing beach with a fun night life to go along with. From here I work my way into Hoi Chi Minh City. Tons of history here, sad sights to see and crawling through the small tunnels that the Vietnamese people practically lived in during the war made me wonder how they did it. I was glad to leave here since everything is so depressing but, I learned a lot and I was glad I stopped here. On little side trip I did while I was here was take a trip to the Mekong delta and go up the river. Great little spot in the world and I'm really enjoying S.E Asia.

Hue and Hoi An, Vietnam

If you want to talk about miserable lets talk about traveling on the sleeper buses for a guy my size in Vietnam. The beds on the bus are so small and I felt so cramped, I tried to take sleeping pills but that didn't do the trick. I can actually say that in this sense, I miss the transportation in China. On the way to Hoi An I met a couple of Swedish girls and for the one evening we celebrated Evelina's 30th birthday, which I could really relate with! What I really like about Vietnam is the people and the food. Didn't do anything overly special here but checked out the old city, ate a lot, spent a day at the beach, and enjoyed a bike trip to the outlying villages to see the people. As I work my way south it is getting warm very quickly and it's time to say goodbye to cold weather clothes for now! Another small stop for me in Vietnam was in Hue. A few hundred years ago this was the capital of Vietnam and they have something similar to the Forbidden City in China. The Purple Forbidden City was not as glamorous but it is definitely worth a visit.

Hanoi - Halong Bay, Vietnam

Most travelers I talk to don't rave about this capital of Vietnam. In Hanoi it is semi chaotic to get around, but the city has quite a few things to check out if you like history. My favorite experience was a conversation with a student in a museum about Communism and the history of Vietnam. Hearing history in Vietnam although some of it is not really true, makes you really wonder how people feel about the rest of the world and how most of the world is wearing a very dark pair of sunglasses to even their own history. Another thing I really enjoyed was taking a tour through the prison which Senator John Mc Cain spent 5 years in. I really got a kick out of how the tours make it seem like American POW's were at nothing more then a summer camp. This was a very educational stop for me and next I have decided to take a 3 day trip to Halong bay for some fun in the sun, kayaking, caving, and the best part.....Everything is included for 40 USD. Unfortunately the weather was not as nice as I was hoping but it was like a 3 day party with a ton of activities. The people on the trip were great, scenery was beautiful, and I had a lot of fun so that's all that really important! While we were on a hike, a girl twisted her ankle and she was freaking out because she didn't know how she was going to get back. Lucky for her I am like a pack mule and I carried her a couple of miles. I was actually surprised that I wasn't even tired or sore from this thanks to South America.

Sapa, Vietnam

I left Yichang China on a 5 hour train to end up in Wuhan China. That evening I took a night train which I expected to be there sometime that next morning. I didn't realize that train ride was going to take 32 hours and I didn't account for the extra day of traveling. When I arrived in Kunming China I had to immediately hop on a bus and exit the country otherwise my visa would have expired and I would have got a 110 USD fine for each day I overstayed. After being in motion for around 40 hours now and immediately getting on a night bus which for a guy my size you could say a nightmare bus for 16 hours, it didn't seem too appealing. I decided to grin and bear it and by the time I arrived in Vietnam from 3 solid days of trains and buses, I was exhausted. My first stop in Vietnam was a really cool mountain village called Sapa. My first though was, "Holy cow there are a lot of tourist in Vietnam." As far as Sapa goes the place is beautiful and a visit to the local tribes (Black Mong) will really amaze you with their colorful outfits and interesting habits. One really sad thing about the people in this area is they have a bad addiction problems with drugs (Heroin) and while talking to some of the locals around, many of the children are addicted to drugs and Aids is running rampant through out the tribe. I met a guy from Germany who was trying to adopt a little girl who has a bad addiction to heroin at the age of 7 and both of her parents are dying of Aids. He is trying desperately to get her from them before she contract aids from her parents since they are all drug users. Outside of the local tribes the Vietnamese people definitely seem very different from the Chinese. Before I left I would have had no clue on how to tell the difference and I really can't describe it in words, but it is very noticeable. For my time in Sapa, I met a couple of friends to hang out with within an hour of arrival and for the most part walked around or rented a scooter to go see the out lying villages.