It's been a while...

So i am really lazy when it comes to updating, what are you gonna do about it???

I am now sitting in a nice internet cafe in Singapore, but i first must attempt to recount my last days in Vietnam....blkjlfddjfnsjkd(travelling back in time....)

I travelled down to Hoi An, a really nice beach town - with lots of good food - with the two people that i met. I t was such a great stay. I went to the beach and was watching some locals fish, when the beckoned me over...little did i know what they wanted. FREE LABOR!! SO i helped them bring in the nets and go set them again before i left their service (about an hour or two later). They tried to shove some of there catch in my pocket as payment, but i politley declined and went on my way. I didn't get too far before i started to help some 12 year old kid catch crabs on the beach. I wasn't quite as successful as he was but it was still fun. That was about the best experience that i have had so far, a well desereved moring of WORK!

Let's see, after that, one of the two (John)departed, and went back to Han Oi. The other one (Amber, and I, both left Hoi An and continued Southward, after a quick stop in Nha Trang for some awesome food...and a lame one night stay in Mui Ne (don't go, it's boring with no good food), i found myself in Saigon. WHat an interesting place. It was a nice mix of western and eastern. what's more is that there was such a variety of cheap and amazing food. MMMMM

Intermission: Strange Food
So far i have had... Coagulated pig's blood
a duck egg with a almost fully formed baby duck..i have pictures
Spare parts gruel: pig's heart, liver, kidney, intestine etc mmm

Sinagpore
Okay a quick update on Singapore, then i'm outty. It's not bad, but i liked Vietnam better. There is lots of shopping and food, but i am not a shopper, and most of the food is fast food. DOn't get me wrong, there's good food to be had, but you have to look for it (unlike in Vietname where it is on every street coner and allyway). If you can't already tell, food and culture motivate me more than anything.

SO i have seen many sights here, lots of shopping places and the botanical gardens... thank you Eva for the suggestion, it was very very nice and relaxing. OOOHHH and i wen to Little India for dinner and had some amazing SPICY indian food (can't remember the name, sorry) that i got to eat with my hands and everything. My kind of meal!!

Let me just finish by saying, i think singapore is a little too motivated by money, but maybe i just need to experience a little more, the next few days will tell. AND I promise pictures will come soon!

Ha Long Bay +

This is the Ha Long Bay update. So i packed it up and headed out to Ha Long for a 2 day 1 night excursion. It was so beautiful. There are such great rock formations, and if you're in the right spot, the water is actually clean enough (and warm enough).



Basically, you go on like this 3 hour boat ride where they feed you crappy "Vietnamese" food for tourists. Then you do some kayaking, and swimming, and end up near Cat Ba island. Which is the vacation island for both tourists and vietnamese. I finally got to do some rock climbing!! Just some bouldering in Ha Long Bay. I would say i was climing on like a V3, and i have a witness and a nasty cut on my foot from the limestone to prove it!

I didn't actually go onto Cat Ba the island because i chose to sleep on the boat. The weather was great and i met tons of cool people. There was both a couple and a guy travelling by himself from Israel, that were so funny. The couple actually picked me out as being Jewish...it's like they could smell me or something, they said i looked like an Israeli native.

It was nice to get out of the city for a day, even though I did get a little ill/tired on the boat ride back because i was riding up top in the sun.



So that's it for Ha Long. I have some great pictures, but i am too lazy to upload as of yet.

NEXT SUBJECT:) I met this awesome IT guy from Singapore, through a person i met on the boat ride to/from Ha Long. Now i am gonna have to make some plans to hit up Singapore sometime soon. And i am heading out to Hoi An in about three hours. I hear great things about the place. And i have decided i will continue to travel south until i A. get sick of my new travel companions or B. it gets close my departure date. I wonder if i can make it to Ho Chi Minh city.....

Anyway, back to packing my bags and off to the "water puppet" show??? Enjoy!

...pic of Jeremy packing :(


I appologize for any spelling/grammar errors in this blog, any previous blogs, and all future blogs!

越南！！

Here goes my first post from Viet Nam. It's gonna be short beacause at this point i have better things to do than sit it a lame-ass internet cafe.

So i have just been hitting up Ha Noi so far for the first few days. Walking around aimlessly, checkling put all the stuff i can't buy because i can't carry anyhting with me...except for the 2 pairs of script glasses i bought for a grand total of $40.

The food is awesome. There is literally great food anywhere anytime. The best places are just random street vendors for Pho and such. It's ssooo good, and so cheap. AND...I can spice it to taste, so it gets nice and spicy for me.

I just got back from a side trip to Ha long bay today which will be the subject of my next post...look for it soon. To make a long, awesome story short, i met some peole that i will travel south with for the next few days. I am really looking foward to it now. I should be interesting to travel with some random people. Plus, they can help me practice my chinese, cause guess where they're from, China. The only people who want to spend as little money as me :) (no offense to anyone out there...just the facts)

So another adventure begins in two days. Look for pictures and the halong bay post, and a post on Ha Noi at 4:30am, my wake up time, soon!!

波士顿 - beantown

This is officially the last update before my adventure begins! I kind of wish i had done a little more planning.

Anyway, I went in to Boston yesterday becuase all the relatives i came to visit were working all day, with the exceptions of my two little cousins. As usual, i had quite an interesteing city excursion. starting and ending at the wollaston T stop in Quincy.

First i went to the metrorock rock gym in everett, and got my last climbing in before the trip. It was a blast. I met three really cool climbers - one of which had been climbing for more the 35 years - and i got all sorts of little tips for lead climbing. I climbed for like 3.5 hrs and finished up leading a 5.10b. Not necessarly that hard, but to date that makes the hardest lead route i've ever done. The only thing that sucked was that i didn't take any nice falls... after all, what's a good day climbing without anything less than a 12M free fall??

Then it was on to meet some high school friends at Harvard. Yes, i now feel smarter just from having been there. All i will say about this is that great company makes for a great day, and the world is such a damn-tiny place.

A good crêpe dinner, hours of more good conversation in Brookline, and a chugged beer in Allston later, i was off and running (literally running... for the second time that eveing to catch the T back to wollaston. Where, to my surprise i had to wait 30 more minutes for my uncle to pick me up because he was still updating the computer systems at work. My timing was just a hair off, and i paid dearly waiting outside the closed station in Boston's beautiful weather...please refer to the sateliite image below.

I am sure i have forgotten things, but deal with it, i have.

And finally, I would like to thank everyone for an awesomely enjoyable second-to-last day in the U.S.!!

The First Flight

 

Well, I hopped on the first flight of my journey today... to Boston. Scheduled to leave at 1:35pm, it actually left at hmm.... 3:30ish. Yay for jetblue. I guess i should actually say "yay" for Boston's Sh*tty weather.

We started to taxi out, and the the pilot was like "psych, fake-out, gottcha," and we turned around and waited at the gate for a another hour or so. Turns out the weather was so bad in Boston that air traffic was really backed up, thus it was more effecient for us to wait in West Palm, than to fly up to Boston and circle the airport wasting fuel - although we took on an extra 2000lbs of fuel just in case.

Other than that, i made it with no hassles. My backpack seems lighter than i though it is only like 12.6kg...haha only. I can hack it though. I just hope that the rest of my flights aren't so crazy. I want some stress-free travel!

A Small Pre-adventure

Yeah, so I wasn't supposed to start writing until i left for my adventure...but i think this warrants retelling for my own memory and piece of mind.

So i went to miami with my sister, and her roomate from Hungary. They went to a belly-dancing workshop and i just tagged along for the ride. Anyway, i ditched them, and drove to Coconut Grove where i ditched my the car and walked around a bit. THEN i decided that i wanted to go to South Beach via Miami's incredible public transit system. After being asked for money three times and telling my "sob story" about how my sister stranded me to a guy, i found my way on a bus leading to the metro-rail.

After i figured out how to get through the gate at the metro-rail i ended up in Downtown Miami...and Little Havana, and i decided that i only wanted to stay downtown, and not go to South Beach. So, i made my way to the bay, sat down and ate lunch. And in the true Miami spirit took an hour siesta at the bay.

After some more walking and a 45 minute bus ride that actually took about 1.5hrs, i made it back to my car and then back to my sister and we headed back to Coconut Grove. We walked along the Marinas and i found $400 which i directed my sister to give back to the prick that dropped it... the f*cker didn't even say "thank you." He didn't even need the money anyway, i should have kept it.

After some more driving, we ended up on calle ocho trying to go to a good Vietnamese restaurant called Vy Hoang, but we ended up at Cafe Versailles across the street - eating a meal that made all three of us sick. Then, finally we drove to South Beach where we coundn't find parking and my sister got super pissed, and we just went home. We probably could have found something if i was driving but i can't see at night...i have since been prescibed glasses to rectify the problem.

The End

An update

It is now 6 days before i leave for Boston and 9 days before the adventure starts. I can't wait! I started to pack my bag already, i swear that backpack was bigger. who needs that much crap anyway?

The Description

 

So... I have created a blog. Useless you say? Well, maybe for you it is. In actuallity this is going to be more like a journal of...you guessed it... my "grand adventure." I anticipate that it will be like a memory log, for me, during my travels more than anything else. But hey, who knows... you just may find it interesting/funny/stupid/retarded/lame/cool enough to read it.

I am not actually going to start this until I leave... but here is the tentative plan:
May 15th - leave for Vietnam via Hong Kong: stay for 1-2 weeks
June ?? - Head to Hong Kong: Stay 2-3 weeks
June ?? - Head to Shanghai or Hangzhou: play a while and start school in Hangzhou on July 1st
Sept. 1st - Start school in Jilin
Feb. ?? - Start school in Shanghai
Gear: I 3800in3 Deuter Backpack...total weight <20kg.>