Finally in China

So we've been in china just over a week, and love it. its a little more pricey than the other places but well worth it. Alot of chinese people think im chinese or half chinese and start talking to me in chinese, but the people at the markets definetly know im not and charge me the foreign prices. From Vietnam we got into nanning (China) and then took a 30hour train ride to Beijing. Unfortunately all the sleepers were sold out so we had to sit on a chair for 30 hours, very uncomfortable. I thought we had it bad but the people who had the standing tickets had it the worse, not only did they have to stand 30hours but it was really really really crowded. it took me 20 minutest to walk 20 feet on the train. some women were just climbing ontop of other people to get from A to B. Now I believe there are a billion people in China.

more photos from Vietnam b

At Mui Ne there are these large hills made of sand, you can rent these plastic sheets to slide down the hills with, although it goes pretty slow. the sand gets all over the place, and you can barely keep your eyes open, but tons of fun.

More sound at Mui Ne, I thought I looked cool in this photo so i put it in.

Kayaking at Ha Long Bay

More Kayaking at Ha Long Bay

This is a photo from the top of the cave at Ha Long Bay

More photos from Vietnam

Here is Ha Long bay, the water is pretty contaminated, I saw oil on the surface everywhere I went and garbage floating in the water, but minus that the views were quite pretty.

The docking station at Ha Long Bay, tons of boats, these boats are pretty large and could accomadate probably between 30 and 40 persons, but must only took 2-8 and then departed on there voyage. also tons of pearls here. Sales ladies are draped in pearl necklaces, some look nice, others could probably go back in the water.

This is a street in Hanoi, and if your not carefull you will get ran down by a moped. there are tons of mopeds here, mopeds carrying whole families, even mopeds carrying mopeds. The clothes are pretty cheap as long as you don't pay the asking price. The food is pretty good. I cant get enough of the pho. and the beer is cheap, like $0.20 a cup. and the people are pretty friendly, some places i went to eat the workers would pop open a bottle of wine and drink with me free of charge.

More Mopeds in hanoi

This is a cave at Ha Long Bay, the rock makes a chicken formation, its hard to see at first, but after you see it, it becomes obvious.

Ha Long Bay floating village

More photos from Cambodia

Christinas first motorcycle (moped) lesson. she was pretty scared at first, but was pretty comfortable towards the end, untill she crashed into a curb. We rented a moped for $4 a day to cruise around sihanoukville (a beach area) .

We went to bamboo island, and there were tons of millipedes crawling all over the place. I was picking them up and throughing them around, Christina didn't want to get close. Im pretty sure millipedes are not poisions.

This is Bamboo island, the water is warmish, but not clear. the water starts off shallow and then drops dramitically.

At Siem Reap is where you would find Angkor Wat, which are humugus buhddist temples. it cost $20 to get into these unless your a local its free. so we just waited untill 5pm when the ticketing counter closed and went in. Here we found some elephants, which if you never seen before are prety scarry close up. Christina is cautiously approaching the elephant so i can take a photo of her.

Another photo of Angkor Wat, There are about 10 temples here, we only saw one, a midle seized one which we took a picture of. the temples are between 2km and 60km away from eachother and you would need a whole day to visit one, seeing that we kinda snuck in, we only had time to see one.

more photos from Thailand

This is called a tuk tuk, basically a cheaper version of a taxi.

Here is a view of PhiPhi island, lots of stingies in the water, and the rocks are very sharp. we happen to go snorkling on a day when the current was strong and two girls started to panic because they were too weak to swim back to the boat. Our boat guy had to go pick them up.

So PhiPhi island has some lare hills on it, and this a view from the top. all the shops and restaurants are at the bottom.

Their version of a togo cup.

The coolest bug iv'e seen so far. this was on phi phi island.

We weren't impressed with bangkok. we got there at 5am and left at 1pm. one street smelled like the aftermath of a college party, with alcohol and through up, and drunk people on the street, we visited some tourist sites and got the first train out. The people and shops away from the tourist areas were alot nicer.

more photos from Malaysia

Malaysia was probably one of my favorite places in the trip. this is a picture of one of the night markets. Alot of vendors sell the same items, so what I did was play the vendors against eachother, and would tell one that the other offered me a lower price, it worked pretty well. There is also alot of pirated DVDS, Games, and software here. Even propper stores sell the pirated stuff. Its pretty cheap too, like a buck per dvd. Our Hostel had a big screen tv and dvd player where you can play your pirated stuff at night.

I almost forgot why I put this picture on the blog, unfortunaetly the quality of the picture goes down when you post it, but if you can see in the middle of the picture there is a tiger that scared the crap out of me and Christina. I think I froze for a solid minute without breathing. It turned out that, that tiger was a dead palm tree leaf and the leaves went orangy-brown which simulated the stripes of a tiger. This was during our excrutiating hike in Taman Negara.

so this is a floating restaurant on one of the rivers that run through Taman Negara. The food was surprisingly delicious, as long as you didn't get sea sick from eating on a river.

At the end of our day long hike in Taman Negara we reached our hide just in time too. Our clothes were soaking wet, and the rain didn't help. I didn't bring any extra clothes so I had to sleep naked, i hope the other 6 people sharring the hide with us didn't mind, i also didn't bother to ask. this is the view from the hide. I didn't see anything all night, however the next mornning we spotted a Puma with its baby. I always thought pumas would be bigger, but I guess I was pretty far up and high. I was able to catch a brief video of the baby puma running through the grass. I will try and post a video of it latter.

These are the largest ants I ever seen. its on the top of the leaf. Im pointing at it with my index finger. they are probably the size of a quarter, and are running about all over the florest floor. I don't know what freaks me out more, having the super sized ants climbing on you or the leeches climbing on you. On our hike we met some fellow hikers and asked how they were dealing with the leaches, they said they hadn't seen any. so then we asked one of them to lift up his shirt, and there were like 4 or 5 leeches just eating away at him.

more photos from singapore

We didn't stay in Singapore too long, just 2 days. Its pretty much just like an average city in America, with more Asians and Indians. However Christina and I didn't really like the food.

more photos from indonesia

Indonesia was a very scenic country. this is a photo from the train window.

Even though this looks like fried brains, it taste great. its called nasi goreng, basically fried rice, and cost aprox $0.50. Only if I could find this in the states, the closest thing i could think of is the fried rice beni hannas.

This is how lazy people get around, they hire some guy to push them around on a bike. The bike has a cart attached to it that the passengers sit on. The guy pushing Christina is seen in the back with the dark blue shirt.

This is the place where I bought the Nasi Goreng (the photo above). It is just a street vendor. Maybe I should have put these photos in some type of order.

This is Christina giving the camera a weird stare. The background is Prambanan temples.

The Prambanan Temples are situated in a large gated park where deer freely roam. It kind of made me miss hunting season. especially that big buck in the back.

so here are some more photos from indonesia, but its taking forever to load them, so i will add more photos later. (plus this computer is really expensive to use, so ill wait untill i find a cheaper one)

More photos from australia

So eating plenty of icecream was one way to keep cool in Australia.

This half segull half dino looking bird was found all over Australia, and it wasn't shy about taking your food.

The only Koala's we found were in the zoo, and they were pretty lazy, Except for this relly hyper one who loved attention. Unfortuanetly I couldn't get a photo of it because everytime i stood next to it, it would try and climb on me.

This is the wirdist fish I saw at the great barrier reef, it has a big head and small body, if anyone knows what it is, let me know.

In a previous post Christina was pointing at a turtle, so incase you couldn't find it, here is a close up.

More of the Great barrier reef.

Some random place in Cairns, Christina is trying to keep cool by chowing down some ice cream.

The popular Bondi beach, a little smaller than expected, you can basically see the whole beach in the photo. And it is very cold, like a SoCal beach.

So i finally found a computer that reads my micro SD card, so im adding in some photos that Ive taken along the way.

Suprised by Cambodia

After leaving Malaysia we headed to Ko Phi Phi which is the island that 'The Beach"was filmed on. There were a lot of tourists, but when we went on the boat tour of the surrounding islands, it was beautiful, the softest sand I've ever felt. Monkey beach was pure which sand that felt like you were walking on silk, the only bad bit is that a mummy monkey tried to attack Ricky. We then went on to Bangkok, but it was a bit dirty and smelly, so we only stayed there half a day, saw the grand palace and a big golden buddah. We're now in Cambodia, which is a lot nicer than we expected. We saw Angkor Wat at sundown (some ruined temple), then headed to the capital and onto some beaches. We went on a boat tour today, not the best one we've been on, Thailand was nicer, but there is a photo of us on Bamboo island making pretty faces.

We were planning to head to Vietnam tomorrow, but we may be postponing that a few days due to catching a bug.