Mekong, Motos and Marriage Proposals

Hi everyone,
First off, we hope that you all have a wonderful Thanksgiving. We'll be dreaming of turkey, mashed potatoes, and pumpkin pie over our noodles and spring rolls. Our last post was from Nepal, where we were revving up for some wild travel on our way to meet Michelle's sister Claire and her boyfriend George in Saigon, Vietnam. We arrived in Thailand, where we promptly got on a mini bus on its way to Cambodia. We were told that the drive is about 4.5 hours - our driver made it in 2.5 hours. He was driving as if the car was on fire and the only water was in Cambodia. He dropped us off at the border, where we had to do only a mild amount of bribing to get through. Not too bad. From there we packed into a shared taxi to get us to Siem Reap, Cambodia, home to the Angkor Wat temples. Angkor Wat, known (especially to Cambodians) as the 8th wonder of the world, is the largest religious structure in the world. There are dozens and dozens of Hindu and Buddhist temples stretched out over an immense area. We had a great couple of days there: we rented bikes and toured around floating villages and markets, visited the temples, and ate some of the best food we've ever had - much of it involving fish wrapped in banana leaves and cooked in coconut milk and/or curry. On top of noodles. Michelle took a cooking class so we will hopefully enjoy these in the future.
After another crazy bus ride to Phnom Pehn, we decided to travel by boat to Vietnam along the Mekong river. The first boat was more like a bus on water, packed with people. Thankful that our first boat didn't end up in the bottom of the Mekong, we happily got on our second one - this one was a big step up, and we had some space to stretch out and view the fishing villages and boats that line the river.
We arrived in Saigon to wait for Claire and George, and we had two days to explore the city. We didn't quite know what to expect from Saigon, both in terms of the city itself and in locals' reactions to Americans. Both were great - we enjoyed the markets, the frenetic pace, and the clean, organized nature of the city. Anthony was particularly fond of the "moto culture" there. An alternative to taxis is to rent a motorcycle driver for $1 and just ride on the back of his moto to any destination in the city. After a few days he was looking for any excuse to take a moto trip. Snacks, pagoda visit, whatever. A little scarier was just crossing the street. There are literally thousands and thousands of these mopeds all over the city - way more of them than cars. They're all over the place, but there is a high level of order and flow with how they drive. Locals cross the street simply by walking at a moderate pace, and the motos simply move around them. We were very hesitant in our first attempt to do this, and we were frozen on the side of the street. That is, until, a sweet old lady with her daughter and granddaughter all of a sudden grabbed Michelle's hand, smiled, and led the way. While we tiptoed across the street, they giggled at us nervous Americans. We were constantly treated well by local Vietnamese, who were nothing but open, generous, and inviting to us.
We now would like to introduce our next guess bloggers, Claire and George, to tell about the rest of the Vietnam leg of the trip. Claire might have a difficult time typing with the new RING on her finger...

First, let us say that Anthony and Michelle seem fantastic . Happy, funnier than ever and man do they look good . Anthony is a bit scruffy and it suits him. George and I started the trip at 6 am in Winthrop waiting in the front hall for our cab. George took this wait time to formally propose to me ring and all! ( this is the same hall where Anthony and Michelle met and also were engaged) so, the trip started out pretty well.... 54 hours later we were on the roof of the Rex hotel in Saigon, for our rendezvous with michy and Anthony . After a night in Saigon , watching them wiz away on motos at 2 am (Michelle with a pink helmet) we met up the next morning and flew to phu quoc, an island off the Vietnam/ Cambodian coast for five days. Please don't feel bad for us. We are writing this blog an hour before parting with them. One final round of bananagtams is at hand. Hard to describe the trip in full sentences so I will give you some highlights: The local ladies who give massages on the beach call Anthony " superman" . He earned this moniker when they saw his eyebrows.... I think. In any case there was no end to hearing about "sooooperman" being "very funny" "hee hee hee" But, FYI it turns out superman is terrified of geckos. Just sayin... That's ok because George (or "sougie" a nickname he earned waiting for our standby flights and seeing his name on the board as SOU / G) is terrified of spiders, roaches, geckos, Mosquitos, and icecubes. By last night Sougie was in the mosquito net covered bed like the boy in the bubble.... I am most impressed with Michelle, who overcame her disgust with any card game resembling bridge (ie games with the word " trump" or just plain containing cards. ) Yes, it is possible that Michelle nearly mastered Euchre. As a team she and I put supermans Midwestern customs to shame, and we only cheated a little. At one point I heard Anthony muttering "I can't believe we are going to loose to these ding dongs"... I think that in the end, sougie & anthony were the big winners, but I am going to remember it differently. We are parting with great memories of sun, sand, games and wild creatures. We highly recommend meeting up with anthony and Michelle on any journey. Claire and George

Stuff White People Like: Nepal

Hello!
It's our last full day in Nepal and we are just on the brink of getting sick. We haven't been wearing our Michael Jackson facemasks so perhaps that explains the hacking coughs. Nepal has been great, Kathmandu is kind of a madhouse so we spent most of our time in Pokhara, about 8 hours away.
A few highlights: The first day we got here we got up at sunrise to walk up to the Monkey Temple. We thought that maybe it was named that to honor the animal or for some religious purpose. Oh no, it's named after the hundreds of monkeys that control the temple. If you've ever been afraid of swarms of birds as I am, you've never been swarmed by monkeys at dawn, pre-coffee. They howled and raged around us and all the Nepalese woman laughed at us as we tried to outrun them. The top was amazing - Buddhist monks chanting and monkeys crawling everywhere. We didn't realize it is the morning excercise for many people in Kathmandu, but it's like 1982 calisthenics: jumping jacks, touching toes, and twists. All of these are done with facemasks. We also toured other temples in Kathmandu and dined on delicious momos. This is high season in Nepal, so the city was somewhat swarmed with other western tourists off to the mountains and here to score cheap "North Face" gear in the souvenier shops. After two days we wanted to get a little closer to the mountains and to a smaller town named Pokhara.

In Pokhara we watched the sunrise (that's two sunrises, two more than I've ever done in my life) over the Himalayas and hiked through mountain villages. Little kids swarmed us and asked for candy and to take their picture. Then they wanted to see the camera to critiqe the pictures. Amazing. We hiked up to the Peace Pagoda and were warned about "evil jungle robbers with knives" - that was a little unnerving. Instead we opted for the straight route where 3 year olds were lapping us in bare feet.
Anthony went paragliding one day while I sat in terror watching the chutes all over each other on the mountain. It's not normal and I can't belive he did it, but the pictures are very cool. (Note to Anthony's mother: Michelle is kiding - there is NO WAY that Anthony would ever do anything like that. Disregard the pictures.)
We both got massages at the Seeing Hands Blind Institute. Some day when I can talk about Russia, Anthony can tell you about his massage. It's not funny, but it sort of is.

Next we fly to Bangkok and make our way through Cambodia and then to Vietnam in time to see my sister, Claire. We're very excited!

We miss everyone.
love, Michelle and Anthony

Nepal

Hi everyone,
This is going to be a little short, but we just wanted to let people know that we are safe and doing fine - there was some violence in Istanbul the day we left, but we were already out of the city and on our way to Nepal.

We're currently in Kathmandu and will be in Nepal for the next week. We've already visited some really interesting temples and have been enjoying the Himalayas (from a distance.) We head to a smaller town tomorrow where we can do some hiking in the mountains and get out of the city for a bit.

More later, including (hopefully) some more pictures up on the blog. It's really a pain to do, but we're trying our hardest to get more up.

Hope everyone had a great Halloween! Our costumes: very dirty, but still smiling, tourists.
Love,
Anthony and Michelle