China. Its happening now!

Olympics are awesome. Summer is awesome. My birthday is awesome.  And China, so far, so awesome. :)


That line was written about a month and a half ago and it is still completely true, although the Olympics are over and my birthday is another 10 months away.  Summer is still strong here in beautiful Dongguan, China but that is even starting to fade away with slightly cooler temperatures.

As my last post alluded, I am now living and teaching in China! I know that I kept mentioning DC or New York but this just worked out in so many ways.  I applied to quite a few places, interviewed with some and found my home with International School Dongguan.  Dongguan is a pretty big city (average size in China) and is about an hours drive outside of Hong Kong.  It is a factory-based city with a large immigrant and foreign population so it doesnt always feel authentically China but there are still aspects to my life where I think "oh my, I'm in China" (because I am).

I didnt really have a long chance to digest or ponder or rethink my choice, I was interviewed on July 24th and flew out on August 4th, arrived on the night of the 5th and started working at 7am the morning of the 6th.  So out the window went jet lag, nerves, and even thinking really.  It was just go-go-go and I think that worked out for the best.  When you cant think to be nervous or scared or worried, you arent.

My life so far has been work, work, and more work.  I have joined a team of 15 or so teachers in a brand new international school.  Because it is brand new, we have had to do a lot more work than the average beginning of the school year, i.e. get everything from desks and bookshelves to pencils and paper to curriculum materials and books.  It has been a lot of extra work and a lot of running around but it has been so rewarding and so worth it!  School started on August 16th with a bang and has been non stop ever since! It feels great to throw yourself in to a project and because this school, the people I work with, and the resources are available, I am really only limited by myself.

Enough about school for now, I want to explain more of my time here.  My coworkers are awesome and such a mix of people- families to single people, the ages and backgrounds are very diverse- but we all come together with a focus on the school and work towards that! It is a lot of fun and I know I made the right decision to come to China!  They also celebrated my birthday with me and made me feel special, which is of course the true test of friendship! Hehe. I half kid, half am serious about that!  It was memorable to say the least and this makes the last 6 birthdays out of the country.   Belize-23, Barcelona 24, Armenia- 25, 26 and 27, China 28.  On my long bucket list is "spend my birthday in a new country." It might need to be amended and say "spend my birthday in a country other than America." So far, so great!

I will be honest here and say that it has been a little weird living abroad and not living the Peace Corps life.  I mean the school I work for set up my apartment and it is nice.  Check out pictures: My Apartment.  I am definitely not in Peace Corps anymore and this has kind of given me a complex.  Its like I keep expecting my water to turn off or to have to struggle to get things done.  It hasnt happened yet.  Sure I have had challenges and my water wasnt *as* hot as I wanted it to be, but none of them compare to walking up and down 5 flights of stairs to get enough water to flush your toilet... perspective. But I cant continue to compare my life in Dongguan to my life in Armenia (although it is very hard not to).

My life in China hasnt been the rough and tough life that I kind of thought it would be but instead it is kind of posh and fancy.  There are 3 major supermarkets within a 10 minute walking distance, a Starbucks, 2 McDonalds, a KFC, Pizza Hut, Papa Johns, and quite a few others that I cant think of.  I have found just about everything I need.  There might be brands I would prefer but really cant get picky about that stuff.  The main thing I have been "limited" on are my spices and I couldnt even get all of those in America so it is not a China thing, it is a not-being-in-Malaysia thing.  And then with American products, I can just pay a little extra and I can get Cinnamon Toast Crunch if I wanted (I havent yet, but it is an option).  I try to buy mostly Chinese products but it doesnt always work out like that.

I have had a few adventures in cooking and eating! On my birthday we had a dumpling making cooking lesson! It wasnt specifically for my birthday but I dont let those facts determine my beliefs.  It was a lot of fun and an experience for all of the staff.  I wasnt too bad at folding the dumplings but it took me probably three minutes to make a dumpling look presentable.  In that same time, the person who was showing me how to make them had completed probably 10-12....

Another adventure was at this hotel/banquet place.  The school bosses wanted to give the teachers and staff a thank you because of Teacher Appreciation Day in China.  They took us to a dinner where it was family style eating and they kept bringing food.  It was great and I enjoyed most of the food! The unusual food I tried was fried pig ears, chicken feet, a seafood dish and this tofu dessert thing.  The dessert thing wasnt my favorite but that was mainly texture.  They had the best pork buns though! Oh my goodness, I need to learn how to make those!  I have yet to find the food stalls I imagined China to have and it is surprisingly difficult to find the 'local' cuisine.  I will make it work though.  I also have wanted to take cooking classes but havent found any yet.  I have made a few friends on staff who are locals and we have discussed cooking together so we will see if something comes from that!

I think that is it for now.  There are many other experiences and fun times to write about but for now that will be it.  Im not sure how this blog will play in to my life in Dongguan but for now it will be a forum to share a few of the things I have experienced and a way to keep family and friends updated about my life.

I hope you have enjoyed!
Love.

Big Cities

This summer I was fortunate enough to work for an organization that works half in DC and half in NYC!  The company is called Envision EMI and I worked for the Global Young Leaders Conference.  It is where high school students from around the world come to DC and NYC to learn about cross cultural skills, leadership, do a little model United Nations and visit a ton of places!  I was a Faculty Advisor, which meant I taught some cross-culture skills, some leadership and facilitated some MUN simulations.

Talk about an inspiring summer! Wow! These kids, or scholars as we called them, are amazing! They were literally the next leaders of our world, the next policy makers, prime ministers, Secretary General, diplomats, presidents, etc.  For only being on average 16 years old, they have accomplished things people in their 60s havent even thought of trying.  The amount of projects they are involved in, the charity/humanitarian work, the experiences they have had, the places they have visited/lived was astounding.  They really inspired me to apply to international schools and I have thus refocused my career plans.  But I will get back to that later.

Without doting on my scholars for too much longer, let me tell you what I was able to do and see!  Through this work I was able to hear from various speakers talking about their different projects.  A few of the speakers were 20 somethings who founded an NGO and are working with big name NGOs to solve some of the world's problems.  Talk about making me take a look at my life.  I also was able to go to the State Department and hear from a few speakers about various topics from Middle Eastern affairs to antisemitism to the diplomatic community.  I also was able to go to the Czech Republic, Lithuania and Australian embassy.  Also, while in DC I went to the Smithsonian museums, the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, the White House, Thomas Jefferson Memorial, MLK Jr Memorial, FDR Memorial, Vietnam War Memorial, Lincoln Memorial, World War II Memorial, the Korean Memorial and got to hang out on the National Mall... all while being paid!  AND that was just in DC.  In New York, the program stayed on St Johns campus in Queens. Through the program I went to Times Square, Mary Poppins on Broadway, 5th Avenue, Rockefeller Center, Ellis Island, Statue of Liberty, Chinatown and Little Italy, the United Nations, Columbia University, New York University, Empire State Building, SoHo, South Side Piers, and a few other places I cant even remember. 

There were a few highlights of the trip that arent connected to the program itself but just connected to an experience.  I fell in love with New York.  It is everything you want it to be, it doesnt exceed expectations but it delivers what you expected. There are so many movies where NYC is featured so you feel that it cant actually be real or look like that, but it does.  It looks exactly like it does in the movies or tv shows.  For some reason this surprised me more than anything else.  Even Times Square is everything you think it would be.  One of my favorite moments of my summer was getting Halal food from a food cart (chicken and rice) and taking it to the middle of Times Square.  I just sat in the middle of everything and people watched.  It was awesome! I saw the naked cowboy, Good Morning America's newsroom, the New Years ball, all of the news tickers, the lights, NYPD, the yellow cabs, tourists, business people, all of it.  I even saw Tim Gunn of Project Runway and I totally turned in to the tourist that freaks out when you see a famous person. 

Another memory from this summer was on one of the breaks from working.  I met up with two travel friends who live in New York.  They are also foodies, so they showed me a whole different side of New York.  One lives in Brooklyn and so I saw a little more of Brooklyn.  She also showed me around a few of the neighborhoods around Manhattan.  The first night I hung out with them was on the Fourth of July.  We decided to go to Coney Island and go to a baseball game there!  How American is that? Baseball, Fourth of July, Coney Island, fireworks, Nathan's hotdogs, fairgrounds, beach... it all made the perfect 4th!

One of the most delicious places she showed me was Xi'an Famous Foods.  We shared the cold noodle dish and it was AMAZING! Seriously I cant talk about this dish enough.  It was amazing and perfect for the hot weather.  If you ever are in NYC, go here and eat this! Wow.  She also taught me how to order a bagel and the fact that you need to ask which ones are warm so that you know which one is the freshest.  Also, and even more important, Never, Ever order your bagel toasted.  They dont do that and they will judge you for it.  So just order the warm ones and you will be good to go! 

There were so many other awesome things I did this summer but I am tired of writing this blog.  I have so much on my mind right now.  As I mentioned earlier, these scholars inspired me.  They made me really rethink a few things, the main one being how badly I want to live abroad again and how I really want to start working in international schools.  So when I came home from this job, I applied like crazy to lots of places.  I heard back from a few but I think I have found my home.  I will update later once I have more concrete information.  :)

Jobs and Applications, Mother's Day!

I hate cover letters.  I really, sincerely do not like cover letters and dont see the need for them.  I also hate asking and re-asking for references, it feels like I am bothering people.  I know linkedin is supposed to be the place where you can put your resume online and then get jobs based on that, but it doesnt quite work for the education field as well as it does for the business field.  I am just so tired of applying to places.  It also doesnt help that the job-getting process is a whole waiting game.  Most schools dont know who they can hire until June so I wont know anything until probably July!  Patience is a virtue that I am not that strong in. :)

However, I did get a permanent substitute position working at my Mom's school.  It has been a lot of fun and re-affirmed that teaching is what I want to do for the foreseeable future. 7- and 8-year olds are ridiculous and tell the most random stories.  They also make very honest and innocent mistakes like abbreviating assistant to ass without realizing what they did.  Or writing "Im doing it in slow motion" as a sentence for their spelling word 'motion.'  You know, completely innocent things like that, where as my adult-twisted mind transforms it into something hilarious.

It has been wonderful to work and back on to a schedule.  I definitely had too much thinking time on my hands when I came back from traveling.  Although, I feel as though I have aged 10 years being back to work in the classroom.  I happily go to bed at 830 or 9 because I am so exhausted from working.  I use my Sundays to lesson plan and prepare for the work week ahead.  I mentally plan out my clothes because I have more than one pair of pants to choose from.  I make leftovers or sandwiches for lunch and make sure to have my bag packed the night before.  I drink coffee in the morning and not for the joy of coffee but because I am not sure how I would function without it.  Yes, I have become that person. I am working now and as hesitant as I was to fall back in to a routine, I am liking the stability.  I am also liking the paycheck and actually making money instead of just spending savings.  But this will only last until the beginning of June and then I need to figure out my next paychecks. 

I am still looking forward to my next adventure and my next step.  I wish I knew when or where that was to but time will tell.  I will find out soon enough.  I have enjoyed living with my parents but I am ready to move on my own again.  The next place I move will be where I start my own home, which is very weird to think about.  Every time I have 'flown' from the nest, I always had a room/storage place at my parents house.  I also knew that I would probably be back home, either as a layover or a place to regroup and go out again.  Leaving for college, I knew I would be back before I went in to Peace Corps.  After Peace Corps, I knew I would use home as a place to regroup before leaving again.  Now, the next time I leave it will be because I have a job, a life to start and if I come home again it will be because something didnt work out.  I wont use home as a base anymore, I will be making my base somewhere else. It is overwhelming, scary and intimidating.  At the same time, it is exciting, challenging and I am ready for it!

I feel like most people do this at the age of 20 or so, but I am doing it at the wonderful age of 27 and I dont feel wrong about it.  I dont feel old or like I am off the path.  This is the way my life has worked out and I am happy to be where I am.  :)

With that, I want to write a little about my amazing mother!  It is Mother's Day after all!  She is probably one of the only people that reads this thing anyways...

I want to thank you, Mom, for helping me, listening to me, comforting me, pushing me, challenging me, cooking with me, and above all consistently loving me for who I am even when I might not have deserved all of it!  You are an inspiring role model and one of the most understanding and accepting people I know.  If more people were like you, this world would be a lot better!  Keep being amazing!  Thanks for being the best friend anyone could ask for!

And to all those Mom-like figures out there, my Aunts, Grandmothers, Friends, and my friend's Moms, you all have done something amazing! You inspire, you support, you teach, and you unconditionally love those in your life.  Thank you!

I hope you all have a wonderful Mother's Day and make sure you send your thanks to your own Mom and to those Moms in your life!

Love.

Home again, home again.

So I am home. And my family has been great, incredibly supportive and patient. Before I get to that, let me finish up my travel adventures. Malaysia was great one last time before heading home.  I was able to see family and spend more time with everyone before I left.  From cousins to grandparents to babies, I had a blast.  I am hoping to find a job that will place me closer to my Malaysian family because I would love to get to know them better!  We shall see how this all works out...

Now I have been home for a little less than a month.  The weirdest feeling happened when I got on the plane to start my 30+ hours adventure home... it was like the last two years and eight months had been a dream.  Gone... poof... out of the window. It was like it vanished.  Yet, all I can do is think to how things in Armenia were or how cheap the food in Laos was.  Its like my brain got stuck in this one specific area of my life and I cant think of anything else.

I went in to Peace Corps when I was 24, almost 25. I left when I was 27.  There were a solid 24 years of life before Peace Corps, yet the only ones I can think of are the last two.  The only things I can compare things to are the last two.  I compare prices of food to how much meals were in Thailand.  I compare clothes prices to how much they were in India.  I compare public transportation to that found in Armenia.  I talk about how I was certified in diving while in Turkey. I am kind of a jerk.  Who else talks like this? Yet, this is all I can seem to talk about.

For a coming home/ welcome home thing, my family had a little get together.  I invited two friends, one is another Returned Peace Corps volunteer from Cape Verde and also did a 3 month trip after service through Africa and the other is a teacher who worked in Spain for two years and took weekend trips to cities in Europe people would kill to visit.  While at this dinner party, we kept stopping ourselves and checking what we said or how much we would say. Thank goodness they were there so they could take some of the attention off of me and they could also talk about their experiences. 

Before leaving PC, we had a Close of Service conference where we talked about how to talk to people when you get back from PC.  While that may sound stupid or redundant, it was pretty interesting. People on the whole cant relate to what we, as returned volunteers, have been through.  We talk casually about things that people drop their jaws about.  The culture shock that surprised me when I went to Armenia became common place and I am having more culture shock about people not understanding it than the shock I had when I experienced it.  For example, outhouses.  Using the bathroom outside.  For me, it became normal.  When I was first in Armenia, I was skittish about using it and wasnt comfortable with it but it became normal and not a big deal.  Now when I talk about it to people who arent volunteers or dont have that experience, I am almost more shocked by their reaction to such things.

Another example that isnt PC related is the backpacking world.  Oh my gosh, the backpacking world.  I miss it sooo much!!!!  In this world, you are surrounded by like minded people doing similar things.  Especially in SE Asia, and I mentioned this before, but you are meeting the same people on a similar route.  The vibes with everyone is so relaxed and adventurous that you get caught up in it and you think that everyone in the world is like this and that everyone in the world wants to be like this... and then you come home and talk about how you carried 15 kilos (about 40 lbs) of all of your belongings and felt like you had too much stuff.  Then they look at you like you have a third eye because you wore the same shirt for a week and scoff at you for only owning flip flops and chacos!  It is such a difference!

I think I am experiencing reverse culture shock and the most frustrating thing is I dont know what it is that I am being shocked from.  When in Armenia, I could point to something and say, wow, that is different.  And I would know what it was, even if it was a cultural thing, I could still pick it out.  Here, I am familiar and unfamiliar to things in my own culture that I cant pick out what it is that surprises me or what it is that I am frustrated by...  who knows, maybe I will figure it out, maybe I wont.

It also doesnt help that I dont have a job yet.  I will begin substitute teaching once I take the sub class and that will be after March 6th.  Being back in a routine and doing something will be helpful.  I am also applying to quite a few places and now I get to play the waiting game... we will see.  I am sure other volunteers can empathize with how I am feeling. And for my family that reads this, maybe it will explain some of my mood swings. :) 

I am happy to be home. I am happy where I am in life, I am just trying to figure out how to blend what I have experienced with where I am at now.  Not always the easiest.

Thailand to Malaysia... Same Same but ending not beginning.

I have to hurry up and post about the rest of my trip before I get home, otherwise I will be really behind...

So from Laos, after the worst bus ride of the trip, we made it to Chiang Mai, Northern Thailand. It is a beautiful city, beautiful people, and really good food!  It is way different than southern Thailand because northern Thailand is all hilly and lusher.  Southern Thailand, at least the part that I saw, was beach and tropical. Both are beautiful and have so much to offer.  I loved Chiang Mai and would go back in a heart beat!

We didnt have a lot of time there because we were chasing the moon to make it to Koh Pah-Ngan for the Full Moon Party.  It wasnt something I was particularly interested in going but my travel partners were.  So with only a few days in Chiang Mai, we spent one day walking around at night, one day walking around during the day and taking a taxi out to see the temple on a hill for sunset.  Then the last day before our evening train ride, I took a cooking class and the others went ziplining.  I would have liked to do zip lining but I needed to learn Thai cooking and this was about the last time I would have the chance.

It was delicious and a lot of fun! Learned 6 dishes but got the recipes for about 18.  Full day course, including a tour through the market, and a grand total of 20 dollars!  Ridiculously cheap for the amount of food we had! It was a lot of fun and I made a few friends.  Some of them were at the beginning of their trip and were asking me questions about what I have done and seen.  It surprised myself how much I knew and how much I have done! Whew, I have seen a lot in this short time!

After the cooking and zipping, we met at the hostel, packed up and took the train to Bangkok.  Once there we figured out how to get a bus to the harbor, spent the night in the harbor, took the morning ferry to the island and took a truck to Haad Rin.  We jumped out of there, found a wonderful guesthouse behind a delicious restaurant and dropped our stuff off.  It was about 24 hours of traveling for a party... the most I have ever done!  But it was fun, a bit ridiculous but pretty fun.  I am not sure it was worth the 24 hours and maybe we hyped it up too much, but it was good.  I also went to bed too soon and apparently missed a lot but oh well.

The island of Koh Pah-Ngan gets a lot of crap because of the full moon party but it actually is a beautiful island if you go away from Haad Rin.  ze German convinced us to go on a death defying day of scootering around the island.  I was terrified but after about the first three mountains I went up and down over, it actually was fun.  We went around to the waterfalls and a few other beaches on the island.  It was a lot of fun and I really enjoyed myself.  I didnt die, didnt crash, and enjoyed the mountains on the way back. I am glad I did it and glad that ze German talked me into it.

From there, we went to Krabi town to get a ferry to Ton Sai, little sister to Hat Rai Lea.  Beautiful, beautiful! It is a place for rock climbers so it wasnt completely my scene, but we went kayaking and swimming and got really really tan! Hehe.  Its already fading, so dont get too mad at me.  We had some delicious food and ate at Mama's Fried Chicken more times than I want to say.  But the green curry for breakfast canceled out the chicken burgers we were eating at night.  It was such a laid back time and a really nice way to part ways with all of our friends.  ze German and Tobye left us to fly out of Bangkok and Parksie and I went south to Malaysia.  We took our last ferry/van/train to arrive in Kuala Lumpur at 6 in the morning!  Taking the train, I realized this was my last one for a while.  Whereas Parksie will continually galavanting the world for a while, I will be flying home in 5 days to America land. Wow!

About 161 days we have spent together and it all comes to an end tonight.

I am not so sure how much I will blog after this or until maybe my next adventure.  I still have some earlier adventures through Europe and Central America that I want to blog about so we will see...

See you when you see me! :)

Final Countdown!

So it is ending. About 20 days left on this wonderful adventure of mine and then it will be on to America to start a new adventure.  Getting settled back home, moving in with the parents, adjusting to America, living out of a house instead of a suitcase, options on menus, driving, everyone understanding what I am saying, using English all the time… all the small things that I will have to readjust to while getting a job and starting to make some of that money! Whew. As overwhelming as that seems and will be, I am ready for it.  Well, half of me is ready, the other half is really, REALLY sad that I have to leave this lifestyle.  And yes, traveling is a lifestyle.  Wearing the same three shirts over and over, smelling, sharing bathrooms with 20 other strangers, learning to try and sleep on buses, planning your next few days, crossing borders, meeting new people constantly, being in situations where you don’t know what is going on but you need to understand.  It is a lifestyle.  It is a crazy and wonderful lifestyle that I will miss sincerely. 

But enough of that, more of what I have planned and what I have seen and done.  That is what this blog is all about: updating on my adventures.  Last I left you, I finished touring Siam Reap and the Angkor Wat temples, which are still amazing and one of the coolest things I have seen.  We headed from there to Battambang, Cambodia.  It is supposed to be the second largest city in Cambodia and I am not sure how. It was completely dead at night, not to say it wasn’t interesting or worthwhile, just not what you expect the second largest city in a country to be like.  We arrived fairly early in the day, dropped our stuff off, and walked around the city.  We basically saw everything there was to see within the city that afternoon.  The next day we booked a tuk tuk to take us around the city to the temples that were about 40 or so kilometers outside.  They were really interesting.  We went to the Killing Caves, which has a horrible background story from the Khmer Rouge.  It is such juxtaposition because the cave itself is beautiful but the history of what happened there is brutal.  We also saw a few temples around the area which were really pretty and one of them is supposedly what the main temple at Angkor Wat is modeled after.  We also drove through some rice fields and got to see a little of village life.  The kids are so friendly and they always smile and wave at you.  It is a lot of fun and really shows the happiness and simplicity in children all over the world.  Children are children no matter where you are and they all want the same things in life: to play and laugh. 

The next stop on our trip was supposed to be a fishing village outside of Phnom Penh and on the way to the border with Laos but our bus just kind of flew right by our stop and we ended up in Phnom Penh AGAIN! Ah.  While the city is great and I really do enjoy it, we have been there three times and only have planned to go there once! But it turned out for the better because we were able to book bus tickets to Don Det and the 4000 Islands in southern Laos and also arranged our visas ahead of time.  We probably should have just gotten our visas at the border but with so much conflicting information about the border crossing and visa on arrival availability, we just got it in advance.  The first night in Phnom Penh, I checked out couchsurfing.org and saw that they had a CS weekly meet up so we headed to there to meet some fellow travelers and also some people who live in Phnom Penh.  It was pretty cool and we met some interesting people who were doing short volunteer stints in Cambodia through various programs and organizations. They had some interesting view points about the city and I think it is wonderful to meet ‘expats’ because you are able to get an outsiders view of the inside. 

The next day we walked around Phnom Penh and saw more of the temples and museums in the area.  Southeast Asia is such a small area and there is such a backpackers trail that people we saw in Battambang, we met randomly again in a museum that afternoon.  This has happened repeatedly and is always fun because we are able to give and receive pointers and tips about the places we are traveling to.  It’s a great community (and another reason why I will be sad to leave). 

With our last night in Cambodia, we went out and ate dinner along the river and enjoyed the people watching that came along with it.  There really is a strange mix within Phnom Penh of locals, expats, wealthy, poor, ladyboy, and tourists culture that all works together to create a really good mix and vibe.  I did really enjoy the city, even if we only planned to go there once.

The next morning at the ungodly hour of 7, we were up and ready for our bus ride.  We were told the bus would leave at 7:30 but didn’t actually end up leaving until 9.  But it wasn’t too bad of a bus ride and we were stopping a little on the way to pick up more people.  Our first stop in Laos was Don Det which is a part of the 4000 Islands (Si Pan Don) in the very southern part.  It is part of the Mekong River and there are all of these little islands throughout.  A few of them are inhabited and some are too small to really be considered an island.  We went in low season so there were plenty of rooms available and we found a pretty affordable bungalow close to the main street.  We had to take a small boat over to the island and arrived pretty late at night.  One of the things we didn’t really take in to consideration was that Laos has an 11:00 curfew for business, including bars and restaurants.  We arrived at 9 and figured we would have time to organize ourselves.  But we ended up rushing through and found an Indian restaurant along the river that was pretty decent.

The next day we rented bikes and rode around the island, through the local area of the island and to the bridge that connected to another island.  It was a pretty decent ride.  We made plans to meet up with one of ze Germans in central Laos so we weren’t able to stay long on the island.  The next day we were on a bus up to Tha Kheak for two evenings before we met the German at the border.  The whole time the plan was to meet at the border and then go to Kong Lor Cave, which has been described as the creepiest cave you have ever seen.  German was coming from Vietnam and so we met up earlier than planned and headed to Ban Na Hin, the small city that you can base your cave adventure out of.  We spent the night there and the next morning woke up to head out to the cave.  Well our timing was HORRIBLE and we showed up in the middle of a village celebration that essentially shut down the cave.  It was really our only chance to go there and we had booked our tickets and trip for the next town already! So after all of that planning and traveling, we didn’t end up seeing the cave.  We explored the outside of it but never made it in!  Ah! So this just means that I will need to come back to Laos in the future, which I fully intend on doing because it is a wonderful country!

So night bus up to the capital, Vientiane, spent a few days sight-seeing around there, before heading to Vang Vieng, our Christmas destination! And oh my, what a Christmas it was! Vang Vieng is an interesting area.  It is basically a co-op of families that have decided by making money off of tourists and really boosting their economy and education system.  Pretty damn cool if you ask me.  We went to the tubing area for Christmas and mainly just hung around the first bar area and had a wonderful time and met lots of super cool people.  The area is a great place to meet others and just hang out and dance a bit.  We spent the next few days relaxing, tubing, people watching, and meeting people.  It was also Mr. Lee’s birthday during that time and we had a good time just tubing and relaxing.  Relaxing from what, I don’t know, but it was fun nonetheless. 

From Vang Vieng, we headed up to Luang Prabang where we would spend New Year.  We stayed at Spicy Laos Backpackers which is another hostel we have been recommended throughout our travels.  And I completely understand why, it was a great place to meet others.  We went to a waterfall on the day of New Years Eve and it was beautiful. I was a little skeptical of it at first but it turned out to be totally worth it.  So beautiful and a little bit of a hike up to the top but great view of the area. Laos is a beautiful country and I would love to come back and explore a lot more. It just looks like a place that is authentic and true to itself.  The people are so incredibly friendly and welcoming.  Beautiful people, beautiful country. 

We have been hearing about how amazing Laos is since Armenia.  We met a few backpackers that have done our trip in the opposite direction and all of them talk about the amazingness of Laos and I see why.  It’s not so much what you see or what you do but it is about the atmosphere and the people firstly and then secondly what you do and see.  I don’t know how else to describe it besides the fact that it is more of a feeling than an experience.  Hopefully that makes a little sense?

Well that is all from Laos.  Except the bus ride from Luang Prabang to the border of Thailand was by far the WORST bus I have ever taken in my entire life. It was about 17 hours of pure hell and NEVER again will I take that bus route.  And yes, I do plan on visiting Laos again. It was amazing!