Elephant Camp

The second day in Chiang Mai we went about an hour or so out of town to elephant camp. We spent the day learning how to ride, command and bathe our elephants. They gave us these awesome blue outfits to wear, which was good because the bath was more of us swimming in a river of elephant poo. Luckily that was at the end of the day and we could change into our normal clothes quickly after that. We got them all laundered anyway.

Me and Meg on our elephants

super cute baby elephant and his mama

baby elephant looking cute, just moments before whacking Jess in the head with his trunk b/c she wouldn't give him more food

Jess on top of the most giantest elephant ever

me and my mahout (elephant trainer)

Meghan, Jess, me, and Missy

I HEART THAILAND

Bangkok, Day 1

We left Saigon in the morning to head for Bangkok. We just had time for a breakfast of runny eggs and bread, lots and lots of delicious crusty bread. In China, the bread is all sweet so I made it my mission to consume as many rolls of bread as I could while on vacation. I was very successful. yum.

We had only been in Thailand for an hour, when I came to the conclusion that I LOVE THAILAND!! It's warm, the people are very friendly, it's easy to get around, and the food is phenomenal. We got into Bangkok in the early afternoon and checked into our hotel, Villa Cha-Cha, which was pretty cute. It also came with an itemized list of how much everything in the hotel room would cost if we stole it. We were trying to figure out exactly how they thought someone would make it out of there with the chaise lounge, and figured it probably wouldn't be worth it. We stayed in the Khao San District, which is where a lot of the backpacking foreigners stay. We saw lots of them. It was a good spot though.

Since we only had a day there, we pretty much dropped our stuff and headed out. We went first to the Wat Pho, and were truly amazed. Everything is so ornate and beautiful. The coolest thing we saw that day, and in Bangkok altogether, was the Reclining Buddha. It's huge!! It's hard to even describe it without actually seeing it there. There were a lot of tourists, but there were also a lot of people praying as well. I felt like sort of an intruder in their lives, taking a picture and all, like they were some sort of novelty. After spending awhile there, we left to go to the Grand Palace and Wat Phra Kaew. However, it closes at 3:30 and we were about an hour too late. We decided to wake up real early the next morning to see it before we had to catch our plane. We did find that there was an Au Bon Pain across the street, where I was VERY excited to get a bagel and cream cheese for breakfast the next morning. We ended up just walking around the area, shopping and eating. Which is clearly emerging as a theme for my life. The evening was spent in our little neighborhood, eating, drinking and people watching.

The next morning we took a tuk tuk to Wat Phra Kaew and the Grand Palace and tried to see as much as we could in about an hour and a half or so. Again, huge, ornate, and very shiny. Missy forgot to wear sleeves and was given the super sweet standard issue short sleeve button up teal shirt. The hour and a half went very quick, consumed mostly by running around and taking 30,000 pictures. Roughly. We said we would go back to it at the tail end of our trip, but never made it.

From there we picked up our stuff, hopped on the bus, and were off to meet Meghan and Jessica in the Bangkok airport to head north to Chiang Mai.

My Vietnam Vacation

I think the title is fair enough warning of what is about to come. This way if you don't want to scroll through someone else's blog, reading about their adventures while you yourself had been stuck trudging through another, and from what I heard, brutal, Chicago winter, you can go ahead and skip this post altogether. I figured I would finally write a bit about my vacation, since I am now using a computer I can upload photos to.

I suppose I will just pick up from where I left off, I will try to be brief :)

From Hanoi (which now seems like an entire lifetime ago, as I'm watching the snow fall outside my window), we took a short flight to Hoi An. It's a small town with a couple touristy temple like things to see, but it seems its biggest draw are the tailor shops. There are literally over 500 of them. No matter how strong the resolve is to not have something made, it's no match for Hoi An. Missy and I started off slow, but by the end of our stay there we walked away with 3 pairs of pants, 2 coats (matching of course), 2 pillowcases, and a dress. That doesn't include the 4 scarves, 3 tee shirts, 2 ties, and 1 vegetable peeler that we didn't actually have made, but purchased regardless. We were only there 2 days. We spent the rest of our time, eating, taking a cooking class, walking around on the only day of the entire vacation that it sort of not really rained, avoiding the motorbike people who we promised we would rent bikes from and getting our nails done. That pretty much sums it up. It may not sound like much of an endorsement, but we both really liked Hoi An and I would confidently recommend it to anyone who happens to find themselves touring through Vietnam. We also stayed in a super cute room overlooking some paddy fields.

After our two days in Hoi An we got back on a plane and headed to Nha Trang. We were told that Nha Trang is a bit too touristy and that we should go to Mui Ne, which is a "quick" 5hr bus ride. We got to Nha Trang in the early afternoon and didn't book our bus until 8pm or so. Which gave us the whole afternoon lay on the beach, roam around, and eat. This was the first place that was really very warm. We both fried ourselves relatively early and just bummed around for awhile. Not all the interesting. We got on our bus, which was "slepping bus" (seriously - there are so many people speaking English, could that not be corrected??), popped some Dramamine and fell asleep before the bus left the town. We got to Mui Ne around 1am or so and just crashed, on possibly one of the most comfortable beds I've ever had the pleasure of sleeping in.

We stayed at the Mui Ne Sailing Club and it was amazing. We didn't always have hot water to shower, but that was only a minor detail. The place was beautiful and the staff were all very nice. We literally did nothing. We started each morning with breakfast on the beach (a Mai Tai for Missy and a Mojito for me) and pretty much settled in until mid afternoon when we toured the one street, stopping for snacks and beverages. It was perfect and relaxing and I would like to spend the rest of my days there. Well, so I thought until I got to Thailand, but that's for later. It seemed that most people did exactly what we did, except for the immense amount of kite boarding. I really wanted to try, but in order to actually get in the water it takes several lessons and a whole bunch of money, so I opted out. Looked cool though. I think there may have been a couple sights to see, but Missy and I couldn't really be bothered. The only negative was trying to mail all the crap we bought home. It involved several wrong post offices, several different cab rides, 1 to the farthest ATM the cabbie could find, and a language barrier. Plus Missy was feeling like total crap at that point. BUT it was a great part of our trip.

From Mui Ne we took another bus to Saigon, this time not a "slepping" bus, and sort of more annoying. We got to Saigon, which is crazy busy, found our hotel and headed out to explore. By this time it was already 9pm or so. Missy was feeling worse so we got some food, not so delicious food, and sought out the Western type foreign hospital. I have now been to hospitals in Korea, China, and Vietnam. They gave her some stuff, and she began feeling better relatively quickly. I was not so lucky on the other hand. I woke up the next morning with some sort of stomach thing and could not really leave the hotel room. At one point I tried, when we went to book our airline tickets for the next day, but barely made it back before more puking ensued. It didn't help that it was about a billion degrees and super humid. Missy took off by herself that day and I stayed in the airconditioned hotel room, watching recaps of the inaugauration and a rerun of Ellen. By the time she got back she was hot and sweaty and slightly crabby. Plus she showed me all her pictures so I pretended like I went along as well. We met her friend Erin for dinner, I was feeling slightly better by this point, and drinks (I stuck with Coke). We were only there one day, but Saigon was not my city.

The next morning we got on a flight to Bangkok, but I will tell those stories another day. This is getting a bit lengthy for one post, and frankly I'm getting a bit tired of writing.

Back to Reality

Well, my reality anyway.

After 11 airplane rides, 10 cities, 9 airports, 3 countries, 2 long bus rides and 0 lost bags, i've returned to China. I got back a couple days ago. My flight was delayed 8 hours in Beijing, so I now am extremely familiar with that airport as well. And when I got back to my apartment I of course had no power and a very moldy fridge. Always an adventure here in China. The power is back on, although it was no small feat, but I still have no internet. Oh well.

Vacation was truly amazing. I had so much fun, saw so many different things, and got to do it all with my best friend. There is nothing I would have changed. Parts of it were exhausting for sure, but I'm glad we got to see so many different parts of the countries.

I will write more about my adventures in my next couple posts. I am on the school computer right now and with the lack of heat it's starting to get a bit chilly.