Tokyo!!

After managing to sleep a couple hours on the flight from Kuala Lumpur to Tokyo, we braved the cold and headed into the city. It was quite a switch from 80-90 degrees to 40 degrees, and to top it off, it was raining. First purchase, an umbrella. Then we just ran (literally since we only had 6 hours before heading back to the airport) through the city to keep warm and had a fantastic time. We went to the Senso-ji Temple, saw the huge pagoda, and walked through stalls and stalls of fans, swords, dolls, tea sets, etc. In order to escape the cold, we found a museum and amused ourselves playing any kind of drum you could imagine. Most of our time though was spent eating (no surprise there). The best was a sushi restaurant that we were pulled into by a man yelling at us from across the street in Japanese. As soon as we got in the door, there were waiters/waitresses everywhere also yelling at us. We couldn't stop laughing since they could have been yelling absolutely anything at us, and somehow managed to figure out the computer at our table to order our meal. It was delicious! We also found these crazy desserts which look like tiny billiard balls, but were flavored like green tea, red bean, coffee, etc. Despite the weather and our short time there, it was one of our favorite days of the trip. Tokyo is definitely worth another trip.

A few more random photos...

Ko Tarutao











Krabi











Overlooking Phang Nga

Heading out to the fishing village island

Kuala Lumpur (again)

Our plan was to head south to Kuala Selangor from Pulau Pangkor, but once again we were thwarted by mobs of people trying to travel during a Malaysian holiday. So instead we returned to KL and see if we could see a new side of it. Somehow we couldn't avoid the mega-malls, but we also were able to explore some new markets, watch a battle of the bands (Xmas style), and have our feet nibbled on by pedicure fish (this was wierd! believe us). Then we headed north to a Hindu temple situated in a set of huge limestone caves. The temple was crawling with monkeys who could care less that humans were around, except for the fact that they could steal their food....Got Milk?

Sadly, we did not luck out as much on food in KL, which is surprising given its size. However, we did stumble upon the best breakfast ever and plan on bringing it back to the US for the State Fair. Here it is just french toast, but we'll sell it as "fry bread" and make a killing. It's three pieces of white bread with the crust cut off, layered with peanut butter in between, battered with egg and fried. Then, it is topped with sweetened condensed milk. If you've never tasted heaven, this is it.

One last stop in Malaysia before flying out on Tuesday....seems like we've been here forever and no time at all simultaneously, strange!

See you soon,

TeamWander

The promised photo as well as some other food photos

ABC

Laksa and Beef Curry

Dim Sum

The best fish dinner we had

Our Thanksgiving dinner

Whirlwind through Malaysia

So only a week has past, but we're another country and four stops later which might make for a lengthy blog post, but we'll do our best to keep it short. Our first stop was the island of Langkawi. This is the duty-free beach haven of Malaysia, a long cry from our last island stop...about as far as it could possibly be actually. The Lonely Planted touted beaches so bright that you would need shades and they weren't kidding. Accompanying that was every ounce of tourist economy you could manage so we didn't stick around long. The guesthouse we stayed at was adorable though, and run by a Japanese women who had lived all over the world. When she found out we had just gotten married, she made every person who passed by wish us well in their native language. She handed out beer at the same time so quickly we amassed a table of people from all over the world and spent the night in great conversations, only interrupted by her playing the wedding march to keep everyone in the spirit.

The next stop was Pulau Penang, another one of those legendary places that you hear about, but would never imagine going to. It was much much more of a city than we imagined, however that turned out to be for the best, since it made for more places to eat. The cuisine in Penang is where the legend comes from and the food we got to eat certainly lived up to it. Yeah, we did some other stuff too, including hiking through a national park to monkey beach and dropping in to an icy theater to watch "Bolt" and the new James Bond movie... both of which we put on the recommended list for anyone who hasn't seen them yet.

After that we cruised up to the Cameron Highlands in the interior of Malaysia and spent a couple of days shivering. It's amazing how much the temperature can change over a five hour bus ride (the pitch of the road should have given it away). We didn't stick around too long as the weather was pretty wet, but we did take the time to tour a local tea plantation and have a pot of strawberry tea on the veranda.

The last stop in this post is another Malaysian island: Pangkor. It is much different - again - from any of the islands we've seen thus far. The biggest thing here is that there are very very few caucasian tourists. Apparently Pangkor is the Malaysian tourist getaway, and as we decided to come here during a school holiday, we got to meet that fact head on. It's been wonderful though, with some island side snorkeling and a decent collection of Malay food stalls to keep us fed. Ooh... a good story about that actually. In Malaysia they have two deserts that we have never come across before and will certainly be doing our best to bring home with us (in some way, shape or form): Cendol (pronounced chin-dool) and ABC (hopefully you can figure that one out). Both of them are basically like a big snow cone covered in anything syrupy you can imagine - in all combinations. We've had them both covered in molasses, sweetened condensed milk, cherry flavoring, gummy bears, peanuts, pinto beans, black beans and the piece-de-resistance green jelly-wormy-noodles. If it sounds intense, it is, but it's also perfect on a super hot day. We'll eat another one tonight and post a picture.

Much love, don't freeze!
TeamWander

P.S. We heard a rumor that NC State is in a bowl game!!! Party time at Mama Wander's house....

Last Hurrah in Thailand

So we finally made it away from the hordes of people who travel to the beaches and islands in the south of Thailand by heading to Koh Tarutao national park - it is the lonely, blue/green watered island that you would imagine when you think of the perfect place!! To get there, we first had to stop in the port town of Pak Bara for the night before catching a ferry to the islands. The town was not much to speak of, but we had one of the best dinners of the trip in a little bungalow on the beach at sunset. Almost too perfect, but the mosquitos came out in a fury to remind us of reality. They also found a way to infiltrate where we were staying the night, so needless to say between them and the mouse (yup a mouse) also sharing the room, we didn't get much sleep.

Once on the island though, we couldn't have asked for more. We had a cute, clean bungalow, a set of half a dozen new friends that we had met en-route, and stretches of unpopulated, beautiful, white-sandy beaches. We spent a day riding around the island on a long-tail boat (basically a canoe with an 8-cylinder diesel engine strapped to the back) and our new friends, stopping off to explore vacant coves and try to do a bit of snorkeling. Other than that, we took our sweet time doing nothing - we finished books, laid on the beach, and had a blast for our last hurrah in thailand.

Next stop - Langkawi island in Malaysia, possibly the direct opposite of Tarutao... we'll report back soon.

Heard the wolfpack might make a bowl, yessssssssssssssssssssss!!

Go Pack,
TeamWander

Krabi - an unexpected adventure

Our next stop was a small town in the southern-most part of thailand called Krabi (gra-bee). It sits just outside the common tourist path and is well in to the part of thailand where Islam is more common than Buddhism. You can definitely notice the difference, most namely in the availability of alcohol (or lack thereof), but also in the fact that Mosques now outnumber the Wats.

Krabi was a wonderful surprise to us, we spent the very first night at a beach just outside of Krabi and to waste no time beating around the bush, it sucked. it was 100% a tourist economy and not the yummy interesting kind, the yucky kind instead. So, needless to say, we hopped a shared taxi back to Krabi the next morning and found different accomodations to spend the next couple of days. Krabi had so much to offer, both expected and unexpected. We ate most of our meals at a bustling night-market (the very best way to eat in Thailand) where you can walk from stall to stall and give everything a shot. One night we ended up drinking a couple of towers (not to be confused with a couple teen) at an expat bar that was running a few english movies and spent most of the night talking with the bar owner and a few of his friends.

The next day, we recovered from our minor hangovers and went to a buddhist temple here that is about 8 km out of town. the temple exists half at the base of a mountain and half up a flight of 1,283 steps. The view and serenity that we earned at the top was worth every bead of sweat on the way up. Plus we made some amazing new friends. One of our most unexpectedly amazing nights here in thailand, we joined up with a pair of Scottish expats, took a taxi to the wrong town, feasted on tons of indian food and countless carafes of wine and drank the rest of the night away at an irish pub. Ian and Stella we hope to cross paths with you again someday - look us up in Costa Rica.

We've since headed even further south, we're now a stone's throw away from the malaysian border. There's a national park down here that consists of about 91 islands and we're going to go camp on one of them for a few nights. should be beautiful, we'll let you all know.

Hugs to everyone,
TeamWander

PS. We sent half of our stuff home (quite literally) with Mama Wander and are now living out of one (the smaller of our two suitcases). It's proving to be an amazing lesson in how little stuff you actually need, and hopefully we can carry it over to packing for Costa Rica.

Sorry we're slow...

All our company in the past week and a half has distracted us from blog writing, so you can blame them. ;) Just kidding, it was fantastic to see some familiar faces and we had a great time. Miah's mom arrived first, followed a couple days later by Michelle and Jaime. We decided to celebrate Thanksgiving once they all arrived since we'd be back on our own for the official celebration. (Actually, that's today, so HAPPY THANKSGIVING everyone!) We made a pretty impressive spread if we do say so ourselves, so each of you should tell us yours so we can compare. We managed to make chicken and sweet potato coconut curry, glass noodle salad, spring rolls, pork with holy basil, pad thai, coconut rice, and a "birthday cake" to celebrate the ones we'd missed. Our cooking class apparently paid off.

Once leaving the resort, we all headed down to Phuket Town and took a boat trip out to Phi Phi Island which was destroyed by the tsunami a few years ago. Thanks (kindof) to big tourist dollars, the island bounced back almost immediately. At least this time around there's a little more thought about sustainability. There was a coral reef along the island which was great for snorkeling, and otherwise we just enjoyed the sunshine and blue seas. Our last night in Phuket, we had one of our best meals of the trip, at this out of the way seafood place right on the water. Everyone was a bit taken aback when the food arrived (lots of animal eyes staring back up at us), but it was delicious! Even better, Michelle was almost scared to death by a lobster the size of your torso (she'll have to post the picture).

After Phuket, we headed north to Phang Nga, to a sleepy town surrounded by cliffs and mountains. What seemed like a relaxing night turned quite interesting when we returned to the guesthouse to find muddy footprints on Jaime's bed and up the wall. The guesthouse owners (who didn't speak English) came to the same conclusion we did that someone had broken in to the room, but they did not seem concerned at all. It seemed as if the guy next door had crawled into the ceiling, over the wall, and down through their drop ceiling to get into the room, but was scared off before he could take anything. Finally (after much hand waving and arguing), we were able to convince them we did not want to stay there and moved to another hotel down the street.

Strange things continued the next morning when we decided to visit a nearby cave. When the tuk-tuk dropped us off though, it looked like we had stepped into the Thai version of South of the Border. The place was deserted but there were odd animal statues all over. We wandered farther back and were greeted by dozens and dozens of monkeys climbing over these animal statues and up the rock cliff behind them. We were dumbfounded watching them all and then a monk showed up with food and they quickly surrounded him and were trying to tear the bag from his hands. The larger ones would run in screaming trying to scare the others off and it was complete mayhem. If this monkey colony wasn't strange enough, we then entered this giant dragon's mouth and started following a dark, creepy passage through his body to reach the cave we were trying to find. Reaching the other side, there is a garden of statues that are portraying hell, tortured in any variety of ways. The cave itself was beautiful though - huge with a wandering stream down the middle. The monks had constructed bridges back and forth across the stream until you reached a shrine in the back. The whole experience was just bizarre, no description can do it justice. We'll try to get some photos up next time we get to an internet cafe with our camera.

No sooner did we finish this, that we started on another - though slightly less awesome at the outset - adventure. We took a boat tour of the bays around Phang Nga. This included going around the mangrove forests as well as out in to the bay and to see the illustrious James Bond island (from "The Man With The Golden Gun" for those of you watching along at home). Turns out the "boat" was barely big enough for the six of us and putzed around at just under snail pace and James Bond island paled in comparison to the limestone monsters that filled the rest of the bay, but all things considered, once the rain stopped we had a blast. The last part of the trip was really the most notable. We spent the night in a Muslim fishing village at the mouth of the bay. Established (officially) about 15 years ago the village is basically a random collection of huts that all sit up on stilts at the base of a big limestone rock that pops up out of the sea. The centerpoint of our time in this village was dinner. It was amazing. Plate after plate of yummy thai seafood dishes came out from the kitchen and the 12 people at the table (all of us were part of the same tour) ate every scrap of the food on the table.

We've just come across a small mosquito emergency here in the computer lab, so we're going to disappear for now. Hope everything is wonderful and don't forget, we want to hear your thanksgiving stories!

Eat up!
TeamWander

Chiang Mai (An Addendum)

I can't believe we forgot this in the other post. It must have been long enough already, but this is news that's simply worth posting, so it deserves it's own special note. While we were in Chiang Mai, we also decided that we would make a voyage to the nearest town to the north (about 15km) in the back of a pickup truck to go pet baby tigers... yes, that's what I said: pet baby tigers. What an incredible experience. There's a rehab/breeding center/tourist attraction in this town that affords visitors the ability to be a part of the recreation of young tigers. We spent 15 or so minutes in a big cage with 5 4-6 month old tigers. We'll have some more pictures up on flickr soon if you want to see them. What an experience!!

Hugs and go Wolfpack,
TeamWander

Heading South

From Chiang Mai we took a night train to Bangkok and then flew down to Phuket. We'll leave out our day spent in Bangkok since it was probably our least favorite place we've been to so far. Once in Phuket we had another week at a resort that was given to us as well. We had no idea how amazing it would be though. We pulled into a driveway lined with huge torches of fire and were greeted with leis and mojitos to check-in. They took us to our villa which had 2 bedrooms, 2 baths, kitchen, living room, deck...everything set in the jungle. The pools are huge with turtles and elephants shooting water, slides, etc. and it is all set on these gorgeous white sandy beaches with crystal blue water. We never stayed anywhere so nice in our lives, but could definitely get used to the high life here. :) Our backpacker nature came out quickly though, and we had to rent a motorcycle to get to town 40km away so we could buy and cook our own food. Let's just say that two people and 40 pounds of food is no easy task to drive back on a bike. We wake up in the morning to yoga and pilates classes and then enjoy a day in the sun. Sorry for all of you in winter weather at the moment! Company comes later this week as Miah's mom, Michelle, and Jaime come to join us here.

Love and sunshine to all,
TeamWander

Chiang Mai (part sorng)

Wow! What a couple of days! Chiang Mai is reputed to be one of those places that backpackers/travelers will find themselves staying in for longer than they expected. We were no exception at all to this rule. Chiang Mai is fantastic. Slightly bigger than we expected, but we would say Raleigh-ish in it's healthy cross between availability of everything you could ask for and lack of big-city feel.

We spent a few more days here and got ourselves in to some great adventures along the way.

First, we decided to splurge on a cooking class (liza, you would have loved it!!). It was an all day affair, and began with us being hustled in to the back of a pickup truck with 8 other sleepy looking westerners. Once everyone was gathered up from their various guesthouses we headed off to the market. Our guide gave us a full lesson on all the various ingredients we'd be using for the day (there are 4 types of basil used in cooking, did you know that?) and then set us free to explore the market on our own for a few minutes while he did the day's shopping. A bag of dried kiwi, rolls of huge sausage and one dead rat later, it was time to go.

Back at the kitchen, we started cooking like crazy and didn't stop (except to get tipsy) until late afternoon. It was incredible to learn to cook all the dishes that we've been eating on our trip. We cooked and ate (I know we'll forget something): red curry, green curry, pad thai, coconut soup, HOT and sour soup (the guide was out to get miah on this one), tiger's tear chicken salad, holy basil stir fry, spicy glass noodle salad, spring rolls, sticky rice and baby coconut dessert and coconut milk with bananas. yummmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

To be honest, it's pretty hard not to make friends with the folks working around you in something like this - you're working side by side all day together, laughing at each others mistakes, and lending a hand here and there. So we got to know a few of the people in our cooking class, and decided to try to meet at the big loi kratong festival that was happening in chiang mai. [enter sinister theme music]. Little did we know the grave danger we put everyone in with that innocent gesture.

Loi Kratong is sort of like a war zone. with out the 'sort of'. Think of the fourth of july with about 25 times more adolescence fueling everyone's actions and no real control as to the 'variety' of fireworks sold and combusted. The advertisements for the festival show smiling people sending their Kratong (a little boat with flowers and your hopes for the year) down river, but the reality of the situation was more like Michelle and Leslie running to the riverside, trying not to lose a shoe in the mud to drop their boat as quickly as they could. All this to avoid the four year old that was throwing lit fire-works at their feet (much to his glee). It seemed as if the entire city had congregated on the riverside and everyone was trying to send off as many fireworks as possible in any direction they could find space. Part of their amusement must be watching the Westerners covering their heads and practically running for their lives. There were thousands of meter in diameter hot-air balloons that everyone was launching in to the sky that were so beautiful and filled the evening with what looked like a new set of stars... those that weren't shot down by bottle rockets. Michelle put it best, Loi Kratong is a PTSD nightmare. To anyone in our cooking class out there that tried to find us at the bridge and lost a limb in doing so, we're deeply sorry.

Don't get us wrong, though, death-defying excitement aside, Chiang Mai was a wonderful place, and we had a blast while we were there.

Hope everyone's well,
TeamWander

Leaving the Lonely Planet Behind

Travelling through Asia we have found that people tend to regard the Lonely Planet book as the end all and be all of travel guides. We're not sure if the dependence is stronger due to the extreme communication difficulties, but it was time for us to break away and see what happened.

Before we begin this story though, a little moment of thanks to Michelle Marlowe, our island of NC here in thailand. We met up with her in Chiang Mai (she's living there, working two jobs as a social worker - very interesting, but you'll have to convince her to start a blog for all the details). She was nice enough to be our tour guide for a couple of days and let us leave our big bags at her place (the detail that made the following adventure at all possible). Thanks michelle!

So, we left 90% of our "stuff" at madame marlowe's and hopped on a bus headed north out of chiang mai to a tiny town called chiang dao. The claim to fame of this town is that it's settled at the base of the tallest limestone mountain in Thailand (2700 or so meters) and home to an extensive network of caves that have been somewhat of a Buddhist gathering/worshipping ground for the past 300-500 years.

We were headed north on the bus, pretty much unable to tell where we were at all, and thankfully the driver took pity on us and stopped the bus to kick us off in Chiang Dao. Thus we started our search for a place to stay for the night. easier said than done. 6 km of walking out of town and back in later, we finally found a place; a cute bungalow with a couple of friendly dogs to greet us. And finally, Miah convinced Leslie that renting some powered transportation might be in order (enter the 125 cc mega-scooter!). We spent the next couple of days tooling around the Chiang Dao area (heading to the caves, bathing in a sulfuric hot spring, and feeding bananas to elephants) in pure style. It was the best 12 dollars ever spent (in miah's opinion, at least).

Hope everything's going well back home, Ryan, don't work too hard in St. Jo,
TeamWander

Yet another cross country adventure

Our last stop in Laos was Luang Prabang, a beautiful city along the Mekong River. More than anything, we used this city as a epicurian adventure. We started out upscale to celebrate our one month anniversary, including a great wine bar with big beanbag chairs and comfy couches. Every other day, we decided to eat as cheaply as possible and find foods that we'd never tried before. This included a great vegetarian buffett where for 50cents we filled a plate with pickled cabbage noodle dishes, green papaya salad, mixed veggies, fruits, and the standard fried rice. We also tried this chewy dough that was grilled on a stick that somehow managed to taste like seafood. More importantly, we ate these yummy deserts: tiny pancakes that tasted like a breaded tapioca pudding, gooey green balls that were covered in coconut (suprisingly delicious), fried bananas, carmelized sweet rice with pineapple/banana, etc. Almost everything we tried was really good, but our luck ran out when we tried escaping from an afternoon rainshower into this tiny restaurant that was attached to a motorcycle repair shop (maybe this should have been clue number one). No one spoke English so we pantomimed until the waiter understood that we would like to eat. He came out with two steaming bowls of noodle soup that on first glance looked to be delicous. Turns out, it was random meat bits including intenstine and some unidentifiable, blueish organ and fish balls in a bland broth. We ate what we could and considered ourselves lucky for all the other great dishes we have stumbled upon.

Our plan was to fly out of Luang Prabang at 4pm Friday to meet a friend in Chiang Mai, Thailand and had bought tickets a week before. However, when we arrived at the airport at 1:30pm, a very distressed employee told us the flight had taken off 30 minutes ago. Apparently we bought tickets to a flight that didn't exist, even though it was on the airline's website and the travel agent had booked it. Ooops! We were disappointed to mess up our fun weekend plans with Michelle, but headed back to town to spend another night. The next day we got to the airport at 11am so we'd be there plenty early. However, our 1pm departure time came and went with no word from the airline. Eventually they came around with a little lunchbox and told us the flight would leave at 3pm. Once again 3pm came and went. The next estimate was 5:30pm, but since the maintenance crews were still straddling the top of the plane, this didn't look hopeful either. We were going crazy in this little two-room airport, so we headed back outside and found a tiny dirt road to follow. We were first met by a group of bison, and then found a little village behind the airport. Apparently this was not a place that "falang" (foreigners) ever made it to because the first little girl we saw started pointing and screaming. We walked through and found a restaurant to drink a beer at before returning to the airport. Our plane finally left at 7:30pm and we made it to Michelle's house, only 30 hours later than expected. Still quicker than our alternative transportation, which was a 2 day boat trip up the river, but needless to say we're extremely happy to be back in Thailand.

Hope everyone had a great weekend!
Team Wander

A new business model

So we have a plan, we all need a find a river somewhere in the southeastern US (somewhere that it gets hot enough that tubing down the river is a good plan) and we all need to construct float-by river side bars with 40 ft tall swings, slides and zip lines in to the river water. If we add enough mud, loud music and falangs (thai/laotian for westerners) you'll have pretty much exactly what we got to experience in our latest town. Believe me, it was awesome. If we build it, they will come.

Vang Vieng is a sort of backpackers hedonist mecca that has sprung up in northern Loas (a country that brings in much more backpackers and upscale travelers than one would expect). It is something that can't really be adequately described, but is somehow simultaneously a wonderful and terrible place to be.

Imagine a small college town. Very small. With a big, easy college. Now leave all the students, and subtract all the classes, textbooks and professors leaving cheap beer in place to fill the void. Plop this town down in the middle of Laos and you have Vang Vieng. It was outrageous. We couldn't stay too long, for fear of never leaving, but the time we had there was incredible. We spent a day hiking, climbing and tubing through a handful of caves, walking through some amazing traditional villages an, of course, tubing down the river.

Though we didn't have as much time to invest in to the last activity as we would have liked (thanks to our icky tour guide) it definitely took the cake as the most memorable. We were hauled off of our tubes, and in to one of the river-side bars by a 18 year-old crossdressing laotian guy, where we met up with a throng of bathing-suit clad backpackers, all in various stages of drunkeness. Like we said above, this bar had all sorts of exciting swings and slides you could play on (between shots of lao-lao whisky, of course). It was incredible, we only wish this computer had a way to let us upload a few of the pictures (dad, thanks again for the loaner waterproof camera!).

Alas, all good things had to come to an end and our time in Vang Vieng was capped off with a 7 hour minibus (basically a full-size van) ride north to Luang Prabang. The ride was breathtaking, up and down a steep, switchback laced mountain with rural rice villages scattered the whole way through. we'll definitely have a picture to post for this one.

Hope everybody is doing great,
TeamWander

Yay Obama!

Woooooooohooooooooooooo!

First things first..... OBAMA WON!!!!!!!!! Yay! We spent our morning in a bar in Luang Prabong, Laos cheering with people from around the world as more and more states popped up as blue on the map. Super bonus points to all of you who voted. It's great to see North Carolina turning blue as well. The bar owner handed everyone free champagne as Obama was announced president. We have constantly been asked about the election over here...it's really interesting how involved the world is in our political system and is yet another wake up call for us to know more about the rest of the world.

Anyway, enough political stuff, time to catch up on what's been happening. So our last stop in Thailand was a border town called Nong Khai. We took a night train there from the jungle and arrived at six in the morning. We got a tuk-tuk to a hostel that we immediately fell in love with. If we weren't heading to Costa Rica, we would have taken them up on a job offer and stayed for a few months.

We rented bikes and toured around the town and surrounding countryside. There was an amazing sculpture garden nearby that had tremendous statues and depiction of the wheel of life that was really interesting (photos to follow since we can't upload them here). We also had our second taste at Thai massages (they are only $4 an hour here, but it feels like such a splurge based on how much we spend on a daily basis), which leave you feeling like jello for the next couple hours.

Our favorite part of Nong Khai however, was a place called the ISARA learning center. We spent one evening teaching English to people from elementary school age up to adults and it was an incredible experience. Much more difficult than expected, especially with the young kids who only repeat what you say. It is so hard to convey that you are asking a question and trying to get them to respond with a different statement. It ended with all of us singing head, shoulders, knees, and toes though, which was adorable. The organization ISARA was founded by a guy who used to work for Microsoft and moved to Thailand five years ago or so and started this group. They are funded by use of their website (www.isara.org) so all you have to do to help out is to make this your homepage. The page has a google search bar and links to gmail, hotmail, facebook, etc. right up top, so it is only one click to get to anything else you need. Such an easy (and free!) way to help and then these students get free English lessons, free computer lessons, health/safety information (i.e. helmets to wear when riding a motorcycle since that is the main form of transportation here), etc. We wish we could have helped out more at the learning center but we had to head on to Laos. You can also check out the group ISARA on Facebook to learn more information. New post for a new country.....

Yay for you if you voted,
TeamWander

Snakes and Leeches and Scorpions, Oh my!

What a day! We spent 12 hours on a jungle trek in Khao Yai national forest. Reading through our guidebooks, they "strongly suggest" taking a guided tour through Khao Yai as tourists guiding themselves have a tendency of getting lost in the 800 square mile forest and needing to be rescued. After our tour, we have to agree that this is sound advice.

The trek itself was amazing though. We saw fields of monkeys by the side of the road, a few hornbill birds (as neat as birds could be, though they were still birds), and barking deer.

The forest had its host of dangers though. During the course of the day, we had to dodge a zillion leeches (really, a zillion, no exaggeration), a white-lipped pit viper, a pissed-off burmese python (our guide ended up picking this guy up by his head and tossing him away from the trail), a giant spider, and the piece-de-resistance, an 8 inch scorpion that somehow (thanks to our clever guide) ended up on Miah's shoulder.

We can't really do the experience justice in any way other than the photos, so we've posted a few here and there are some up on flickr as well. However, if you ever make it to central thailand, we can recommend a tour guide.

Hugs!

TeamWander

(http://www.flickr.com/photos/31348233@N05/)

Geez, 5 days...

We're sorry, Thailand is just amazing, and we haven't been as diligent about blogging duties. So we'll try to post two or three tonight to get everyone back up to speed.

First things first, after we got to the end of our harrying travel adventure in to thailand, we somehow stumbled on one of the most fantastic places that we have seen so far on this trip: Ayutthaya, Thailand. It's the former capitol of thailand and super rich with cultural history (lots and lots and lots of temples). It is a manufactured island of maybe 8 sq miles that sits at the confluence of 3 rivers. Everywhere you turn there are ruins of ancient temples and fortresses as well as all of the modern day ones that have been built alongside. One of our favorite places had a tree that had grown around the head of an old Buddha statue. We were able to climb down to the crypt and up to the top of these ancient structures. One of the modern temples had a tremendous Buddha (6+ stories tall) seated inside. He filled most of the main sanctuary of the temple and it was evident that the room had been built around him.

This was our first foray in to local thai food. and it's incredible. with few exceptions, everything we have eaten has been fantastic, and cheeeeeeeeeeap. One of the food pics we actually remembered to take before devouring our meal was from our favorite restaurant so far on the trip... Liza this one's for you:

A funny story about this meal is that for the most part, the portion sizes in Southeast Asia have been much smaller than everyone in the states is used to. It's kindof refreshing actually to leave a meal and not be completely stuffed. However for this meal, everything looked so good and we were so very hungry that we decided to order three dishes. Coincidentally, this is the one restaurant we've been to where the portion sizing rule didn't apply. Needless to say, we ended up with mountains of food on our table and "had" to force our way through every bit of it. Rough life.

We've posted a bunch of the pics related to this post that can't fit in the blog on our flickr site.

Hope everyone is great!
TeamWander

And We've Made It To Thailand (easier said than done)

We commented back to you guys to answer some of the questions we got from the last post (keep them coming, it's awesome).

But to the story... Yesterday we managed to crawl out of bed super early to try to catch the bus from Kuantan to Kuala Lumpur. Little did we know that it was the Sultan's birthday, which is apparently quite a big deal, and a four-day weekend for everyone. So they were all at the bus station trying to head somewhere else, there was not a single bus seat to KL (five hours away), and we had a flight to catch that afternoon.

As is customary, we were mobbed by the taxi drivers as we left the station and when they asked if we wanted a taxi and we responded, "yes, across the country," they didn't look at us like we were crazy. They just said, "I Know a guy..." and proceeded to drive us to the taxi driver hangout and invited us to join them for breakfast. (By the way, the Malaysians make the most incredible coffee we've ever tasted). Their "guy" then drove us on windy back roads through the jungle (which has sadly now been mostly turned into palm tree plantations) at 90+mph. Needless to say, we made the trip in 3.5 hours and were plenty early for the flight.

We thought that might be the end of the adventure, but of course not. Apparently they don't book seats on AirAsia flights so there was just a mob of people, in what used to be a cargo terminal, trying to fight to be first in line so they can sit where they want in an extremely hot plane. We were definitely ill-equipped for the struggle.

Anyway, upon reaching Bangkok, we somehow managed to get a bus across town (which also takes a couple hours since the traffic rivals NYC at rush hour), catch a train from a station where we could not understand any signs or anyone, and make it to the town of Ayutthaya where we are staying. The best part of the trip was the last five minutes where we got to ride in a tuk-tuk to the hostel, which is a little three- wheeled truck that you climbed in the back of...looking a lot like a cross between a tricycle and an open-topped VW van. But we're here and so excited!!

The Camera Works Underwater (Leslie's new do)

Yay! The camera that my dad loaned us for the trip is actually waterproof. At first, we couldn't believe that it was true. But apparently, it is (it still turns on at least). This is a cool, cool thing. Team wander gives two thumbs up for things that work underwater, especially since that's where we spent most of this past week.

This is the pool at the resort, a comfy swimming temperature. We don't however have any pictures of us in the ocean because we're pretty sure the ocean water is boiling. It's a solid 85-90 degrees in the ocean. It's the craziest thing ever, but needless to say, when it's 100 degrees outside of the ocean and 90 inside the ocean, the ocean doesn't turn out to be all that refreshing.

The resort is set about 15km from the nearest town, but the restaurants inside are very boring (and expensive), so each night we've been trekking down the road to find these tiny restaurants whose menus (and owners) we cannot understand at all. So far, this plan has not failed us at all, although we have ended up with some crazy dishes (we'll start taking pictures for you Liza, that's a great idea.) One icy dessert that's worth noting is called cendol and at first glance looks like a regular snow cone, but as you start getting into it, you find black beans and strange green noodles. Delicious though!

We braved the bus this morning just so we could get to the internet cafe and write a message to everyone. The comments waiting for us made us sooooooo happy. Somehow we got lucky and only had to wait half an hour, apparently they only come by 2 or 3 times a day. The driver just slows down and as you are climbing in, he starts going again. It was so full we were standing on the steps driving down the road.

Aaaaand, for those of you asking about the new travel 'do, here you go....


We hope everybody has a great next couple of days, we miss you all!!

Love,
TeamWander

Post Flood

Finally a chance to write a little bit when we're not fighting back sleep or sketchy, slow computer labs. We spent one more day in Kuala Lumpur, more than enough time in such a big city for us. We hit the proper tourist center of the city and went up in the Petronas Towers for a birds-eye view of the city, 170m or so up in the tallest set of double towers in the world, complete with an 8minute glorification of the oil company who built them. Then we headed to an amazing market and just got lost in rows and rows of fruits, veggies, and whole animals (think splayed chicken legs and bulging fish eyes). Eat your heart out Anthony Bourdain. We ended up with some unknown curry food for lunch that was excellent.
Yesterday morning we made a cross country trek to Kuantan on the east coast. Here we're having our "proper honeymoon" aka, not having to straddle a toilet in order to take a shower. We're staying at a nice resort on the beach (thanks Mom!) and plan on having a very relaxing week. Might be another week (and on to a new country) before you hear from us again. Jumpa lagi!

Flooding in Kuala Lumpur

We made it to KL (yay!). It's a crazy melting-pot of a city and though we've only really seen about 6 hours of what it has to offer we've been lost at least once in each of those six hours.

It's late and we've been chugging away at a computer for 1.5 hours trying to tickets up to thailand booked, so we won't be too verbose here, but here are a few of the highlights...

We spent a few wonderful days hanging out in Chinatown in Melaka, Malaysia, eating all kinds of crazy food and hanging out in life-sized pirate ship replica museums (pictures to come in the next picture post). It was hot there. Verrrry hot, and sweaty. And our hostel, though run by the most gregarious of people (we'll call him Howard, for the sake of brevity) we have met here to date, did not have any A/C. So we had three sweaty days of awesomeness. From the first moment we were there, he insisted that we (along with every other hostel guest he ran across) join him for a food adventure that evening. Picture seven westerners (and howard) having fondue... except the fondue is actually a boiling pot of satay sauce, and the items put in the satay sauce are gathered from a giant buffet full of skewered (and sometimes unidentifiable)goodies, including, but not limited to the biggest shrimp we have ever seen. Again awesome, and amazing that we escaped food-poisoning free.

On our first day in KL we met up with the Rain. I thought I had seen rain before, down in florida, on a muggy summer night. But compared to this, that floridian rain was a sprinkle. We were standing at a corner, waiting for a break in cars to cross a street (dry, at this point). We made it half-way across the street and stopped in the median to wait for a break in the cars coming the other direction (a mild sprinkle at this point). By the time we got to the far side of the road, we were both soaked to the bone... completely. Somehow in the amount of time that it took us to wait for a break in the cars and cross the road, the bladder of heaven opened up and we were caught in the deluge. It was ridiculous.

Last note, before we turn in for the night (and we apologize for the lack of editing and coherence in this post, we're sleepy). Today we went to a mall. It was ten stories tall and had a theme park included inside. Within the theme park was a roller coaster that stretched over at least 5 of the interior stories and did a loop-de-loop. Mall of America, look out.

Hugs,
Team Wander

PS. Miah convinced Leslie to chop all her hair off. He has a hot wife.

Flickr

We started a flickr site to satiate your curiosity. The entry for today is a pictures only entry, mostly because it's 80 zillion degrees and we're sweaty and lazy. A lot of them are from the ones my dad took at the wedding. Dad, hopefully I took out the ones you weren't as proud of. Everybody, have fun!! (http://www.flickr.com/photos/31348233@N05/)

No 2

We're on our last day in Singapore. We think it might be too overwhelming to try and pack all the stories from the past few days in to a single blog entry, so instead we're going to choose a select few.

... Meant to be ...
We were about 22 hours in to our 24 hour journey to Singapore (hooray for Ambien), curled in to tight little balls of sleepiness and restless energy on the back of the plane. All of the sudden the stewardess materialized right in front of the two of us with a tray carrying two glasses of champagne, two pieces of cheesecake, and a card saying happy wedding day. Awesome. We don't even like champagne, but it was still uber cool. When we asked how she knew she leaned in and replied, "I know everything about you." After that we thought it best to quit with the questions and just enjoy the champagne and goodies.

... Lunch ...
Our first meal in signapore, we set off, sweaty already (90 degrees-ish and as humid as possible) in to little india. Little did we know we were about to embark on an epicurian adventure of fantastic proportions. After letting a few restaurants fall to the wayside for various reasons, we found a place in a small, unidentifiable, lunch spot. We sat down, a little confused as to what we'd need to do to get food and then all of the sudden it appeared. Mounds of rice, curried veggies, chicken, lamb, all served to us sans utensils (right hand only, zeke) on a giant palm leaf. Also awesome. The food was incredible, and just kept on coming. The total, with drinks, was a pittance for what we got. Best of all, neither of us got food poisoning.

... Aminals, so many aminals ...
Yesterday, we decided to brave the singaporean public transport system and make our way up to the Zoo. Best decision ever, until the thunderstorm. And even with that, it was only relegated to possibly the second or third best decision ever. We have mixed feelings about zoos, kindof like pancakes. Here's why: when you receive the promise of pancakes, you're absolutely stoked. Ready for the stack to come your way. The first bite is like heaven. By the time you get halfway through the triple-stack of flapjack goodness, you've realized that maybe a plate full of pancakes has it's downsides as well. The downsides of pancakes being that they just get boring; the downside of zoos being that sometimes it's pretty easy to feel bad for the animals. Here's where the true awesomeness of the Singapore Zoo comes in. These were the happiest zoo animals I have ever seen. They had tons of room and we're all energetic and entertained. We watched a young elephant spend 30 minutes playing with a giant bouncy ball and a log the size of leslie. They also had one hell of a collection at the zoo. Monster snakes, asian otters, the biggest tortoise we've ever seen, and three white tigers (funny note about this one: 1 in 10,000 tigers is a white tiger. there are 7,000 tigers in the world. we were looking at 3 white tigers yesterday, can anybody help with that one?). At any rate it was killer. ... Only downside is that I forgot the cable connecting my camera to the computer, so until we can find a sophisticated internet cafe (with a card-reader for xD cards) your imagination will have to suffice.

We hope everybody is doing great, we miss you all!

The most amazing day ever

Sounds trite, doesn't it? But it's not an exaggeration, we promise you. Every single person, every vendor, every friend, every family member involved in last weekend deserves the largest possible thank you we could muster. The presents all went the wrong way. From setup of the barn in the morning, to the biggest cry-fest we've ever been a part of, last saturday was the most memorable experience of our lives. We want to send you all a million thank yous, followed by a million invitations to whatever country we might be in at the time you want to visit.


There's no rest for the weary though, so true to TeamWander form we are on our way. The flight to Singapore leaves in about 18 hours, and for the most part (complete lie) we're packed. We're going to do our very best to update this blog, but I'm going to tell you kiddies how you can get us updating it more often than not.... ready for it? comment back. make fun of us. tell us (and everybody else) about your most recent booboo. anything. We promise that we'll miss you guys more than you could miss us and we want to hear from you too!

With love, may the road rise to meet you,
Team Wander

Coming soon

Team Wander blog entries coming soon. We're still holding tryouts for the team, but we should have the line-up set by early October.