In advance, I must apologize for waiting so long to update and because this is going to be short...some may thank me. Whatever, so here's a little ditty and a brief catch-up. Right now we are in Hanoi, Vietnam. At this very second it is midnight and the street patrols are calling out the curfew on loud speakers mounted to a car. One droning and repetitive constant in a cacophony of scooters, their horns and the jabber of the last shop owners shutting them down. A quick word on the use of the Hanoi car horn. At home in the states the horn is used most often as an audible slap to the recipient, like "Hey! What the shit?", but louder and more concise. Here, in Hanoi it has developed into a language of its own. You have short, short spurts, long, really long and my favorite...constant. And from what I've picked up they're saying (horning) here I come, I'm right behind you, I'm right beside you, hello, thank you, there I go, here I come, I'm right behind you, I'm right beside you...madness I tell you.
OK. Moving on. So from Bangkok we went to Chang Mai for New Years and it was unreal! We ran into a good friend of mine, Sydney, who was also Emily's neighbor growing up. Just ran right into her on some little back street. So we partied the end of '09 away together and stumbled cheerfully into 2010.
From there we parted ways and headed off towards Laos first stopping in Chang Rai for a night and gorged ourselves on green curry and sticky rice in preparation for the long travels ahead. Through another border crossing and POW! new country. Lazy ol' Laos, I loved it and we plan on heading back for a longer stint. So we took this rad long slow boat for two days down the Mekong river to the city of Luang Prabang. Cool place, heavy in its colonial French flavor and beautiful Buddhist wats...and bread.
Yeah the other stuff was cool, but my diet craved good bread like a heart craves blood. Emily and I ate approximately 30 baguette sandwiches apiece in the week we were there.
And you know what? I'd do it again right now. Yup...hungry. We went to this beautiful bread-stuffed city to surprise Jan and Melinda (Emily's rents) who thought we were going to meet them in Hanoi. That was fun and on we rambled to this chaotic noise stuffed wonder of a city- Hanoi. By rambled I mean took a 40+ hour bus adventure across the border. Not Jan and Melinda, they flew....1hour. Deep down I really like this place. Your sensory meter is always maxed out. Noise, color, fast-moving motorized objects of all sizes coming from all directions...madness I tell you. Oh, and let me tell you! Carnival freak shows ain't got nothin' on what the street vendors put out for your gander. About every living thing you could put in a cage and every dead thing you could pickle. Yup, saw some cooked k9 today... won't forget that one. Speaking of k9s and weird pickled beasts, yesterday Jan points out something fermenting in what must have been a 10 gallon corked glass jar. So upon closer examination I realize I'm looking at what I think is a Komodo dragon folded in half in some amber looking liquid. And right as my mind registers this fairytale beast a screaming chihuahua jumps out from behind a shelf and starts yapping and I swear I just about shit myself.
-Ciao, Christian
While the boys were in the water I usually entertained myself on the beach, which has some incredible people-watching to offer. Topless blondes lounge next to Muslim women covered head-to-toe, some tourists take up the relentless offers for massages (I saw one couple surrounded by local women recieving a facial, back and neck massage, two manicures, two pedicures, and a henna tattoo- all at the same time), and Indonesians on holiday from other islands travel in packs down the beach requesting to have their picture taken with you and other Westerners- the bluer your eyes and the blonder your hair the better. 
We did get to get out of town and took this awesome bike ride through the rice paddies that Ubud is so well-known for- even stopping to try our hand at harvesting rice!- and through some local family compounds, where Christian tried to woe the ladies (see picture). 
We also got to check out a coffee/fruit/spice farm and tried a bunch of different stuff, most notably Luwak, which is coffee that is roasted like normal only after the beans are eaten by a certain type of cat, fermented in its stomach and then crapped back out. Suprisingly, it's really good! Also visited the monkey forest where Christian almost got eaten by a macaque and these bold little creatures litterally walk all over you (same kind as the wallet-snatcher at Uluwatu). 
We've both been suffering from a little "Bali Belly" so we took advantage our great room in Ubud (usually we are more that eager to spend as little time in our room as possible, due to cockroaches, questionable stains on the sheets, nude German neigbors, etc.) This heavenly little place had it's own patio overlooking a fish pond and some rice paddies. The owner Wayan and his wife, also Wayan as all first-born kids on Bali are named Wayan, were more than gracious and kept us constantly supplied with coffee and tea. One night during one of Bali's regular power outages Wayan brought us candles and apologized for the inconvenience, but we were pretty content to sit in the dark and watch the fireflies over the rice paddies. This place even had hot water! Pure luxury I tell you. 
