Circle around SE Asia, now back at the beach in Thailand

We went up to northern Thailand and stayed with a guy named John. I got to do some really cool things. We went fishing, ate home cooked Thai meals, hiked in caves, climbed up to a temple on a mountain top, and went swimming at the bottom of a waterfall. We had such a great time we didn't want to leave.

From there we went up to Laos. In Laos we hung out in the capital of Vientienne. We rented biclycles and cruised all over seeing all the temples, museums, and other stuff. We got a bus north to Vien Vang. That place is great. We floated down the river in innertubes and went on a bunch of rope swings into the river. on some of them you would fly 30-40 into the air before letting go. It was awesome. We also went into a bunch of caves and got to swim up a river inside a cave. We road bicycles to one cave temple and on the way back it started raining. The rain never stopped. It was pouring and we got drenched. We were riding through huge puddles and it didn't matter because we couldn't get any wetter.

Next we left Thailand for the country of Vietnam. I didn't know anything about Vietnam except that my grandpa fought in a war over there a long time ago. To get to Laos we had to ride on three separate buses. One of them was riding in the back of a pick-up truck. There was not just people crammed in there but also pigs, rice, and a bunch of other stuff. At one point I counted 26 people stuffed in the back of the small pick-up truck. We were sure glad to get off that bus. Two days later we were at the border of Vietnam. It was a lot of work getting there and then the guys at the customs wouldn't let us in the country. They said it was because my mom did not have a second picture ID card. My dad said they were just trying to shake us down for some money. A couple of times they said, "You go back Laos." I did not want to take miserable buses back to Laos for two days. It took almost 2 hours before they finally let us into the country and in the end we did have to pay a small bribe.

In Vietnam we went to a lot of cool places. My favorites were China Beach, Na Trang (where we kicked back on the beach for 6 days, and they had a cool water amusement park), and the Cu Chi Tunnels. The network of tunnels went underground for 250 miles. My dad and I got to actually crawl through the tunnels that were used by the Viet Cong soldiers during the war. They lived in these tunnels for over 20 years. The Americans did not even know they were there for a long time and set up a base right above the tunnels. Crawling in the tunnels was cool, even though my dad got scared and I had to help him find the way out. It was so small at places that we had to crawl on our hands and knees.

While in Vietnam we also went to the capital of Ho chi Minh City, which they use to call Saigon. It was a big city and people were riding motorbikes everywhere. Even kids around 8-12 years old were riding motrbikes in the streets. It was very dangerous just crossing the street. We almost got run over a bunch of times. After awhile we would just walk out in the middle of the street and hope they didn't run us over. They were good at dodging us. We also got to ride in a bicycle rickshaw where a guy pedaled us all over the city. It was cool.

From Vietnam we took a taxi to the border and then a bus to the capital of Cambodia. The capital was called Phnom Penh and I liked it a lot. We cruised all over the place and saw some interesting stuff. One of the most interesting places was called Tul Sleng. It was a place where they locked up people and tortured them. They had this really mean guy who ran the country about 20 years ago and he hurt and killed a lot of people. In four years he killed somthing like 20,000. The place where they locked up and hurt the people was a school. I could not even imagine what it would have been like. I learned that they would take kids away from their parents and make them work in the rice fields. If the kids did not work good enough they would he tortured and their parents would be killed. When they were done torturing the people at the school they would take them to this place called the Killing Fields and kill and bury them. We went there and saw the graves that they had dug up. You could still see bones and pieces of old clothes in the ground. They also had a temple they built that had thousands of human skulls. It was creepy. It is hard to believe that somebody could be so mean and hurt so many people. It was very sad, but I was glad I got to visit Tul Sleng and the Killing Fields.

From there we went to Siem Reap and saw Angkor Wat. It was awesome. There were temples built over a 1,000 years ago. I don't know how they were still there all those years later. The coolest part was that you could climb on them all. You could climb anywhere you wanted, except when my mom would say, "Kyle don't climb up there it is too dangerous." I don't know why she was worried. I am a good climber even in my flip flops. We got up before 5:00 to see the sunrise. I don't know what the big deal about the sunrise was, but it did look pretty cool seeing the sun rise over the temples. We had our own private tuk-tuk driver that took us all over the place. It was great. That night we got to eat at a nice place that had an all you can eat buffet and Khmer dancing. The dancing was kind of lame, but the food was great. By the end of the day we were exhausted.

After Angkor Wat we took two buses back to Pattaya, Thailand. We were on the bus for over 11 hours, and one of them was 6 hours on a dirt road. It sucked. I was glad to be back in Pattaya where they have all kind of cool stuff to do. Yesterday we went to the movies, swimming, out for a great dinner, and then a Thai foot massage. This is the good life. We are going to hang out here for 6 days before flying to India. I am having an awesome trip so far. I feel bad for all my friends who are going back to school. Please send me an email or make a post on my blog.