Two for the Road

We just returned from our trip through South East Asia. Our trip started with a group of 11 other American bro's and sista's. We decided to go the cheap route and travel by train, from Hangzhou to the very south of China, Nanning. Needless to say, our train trip was very interesting! 30 hours on a train is definitely a great experience. We played with kids and babies, giving them all English names; practiced our Chinese; the guys played 'Train Olympics' where they made up games - like who can hang from the top bunk the longest, etc. After the 30 hours were up, we arrived in Nanning. We stayed there a day while we waited on visas to get into Vietnam. Nanning was a beautiful city! It was so green, with palm trees and other tropical plants on the side of the roads. Really good change for us, and transition into Vietnam.
We took a bus to Vietnam, which took us all the way to the capital city, Ha Noi. It was a really cool city, and the weather was perfect! (in the 60s) We stayed in a cool little hostel in the middle of the city (about $4/night!) and spent most of the time walking around the streets exploring. On our first quest for food, we found a little Italian restaurant! That was our first of very many Italian meals in Vietnam.
We stayed in Ha Noi for 3 days. That's where our group decided to break off. Some of us (us included) wanted to head on down to the beach, while others wanted to stay in Ha Noi a little longer. So, us, and two other couples took off. (Kyle & Rebecca Hooper, Michael & Kris Bowen) We bought bus tickets that take you all the way from the top to the bottom of Vietnam. We decided to get the night buses so we could sleep on them, and not have to pay for hostels along the way. Needless to say, sleeper buses are very interesting! If you're taller the 5'8" and/or a little overweight, you won't have a comfortable night sleep. :) We traveled from Ha Noi to Hoi An the first night. During the day, we walked around that town, and got back on another night bus to get closer to the beach. Then we stop in another city, Nan Trang, to wait on another night bus that takes us to our final destination. 3nights of sleeper buses, and no shower in between, you can tell we really wanted to get to the beach.
We finally arrived in Mui Ne at 2:30 in the morning. We crashed at cheap little hotel to finish that night of sleep and take a shower. The next day we checked into our beach bungalow! It was amazing! We had our own little bungalow, where we could walk out our front door, and there's the beach! We realized when we got there that Mui Ne is the place to be for Kite-surfing; and it's also the place to go if you're Russian! So, there were alot of Russian Kite-surfers there, getting ready for a competition. It was really cool to watch and quite entertaining. Our first night out for dinner, we found another Italian restaurant called 'Good Morning Vietnam'. It's a chain of Italian owned restaurants in all major cities in Vietnam. They had the best pizzas that any of us had ever had! (Better than Big Ed's for those Knoxville folks reading, and better than Crust for those Chattanoogan's). They also had the best Tiramsu! In total, we ate there about 9 times. :) After a few days at the beach, the rest of our group joined us there. On Sunday, we were able to wor.ship on the beach at sunset, that was pretty cool! Two of the days that we were there, some of us went surfing. We rented surf boards and took them to another beach with good waves. It was really fun! Callie got up a few times, and crashed many more times. We stayed at the beach a little over a week.
Our original plan was to go to Cambodia and Thailand also, but we didn't want to stay gone too long, so we looked into alternate routes. The cheapest way back to Hangzhou was going to Malaysia first. We thought that'd be cool so, we flew from south Vietnam to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. We stayed there about a day and a half. Malaysia was totally different than we'd expected! The people all looked different. We saw people from every ethnicity - Indian, Chinese, European, African. And most of the women wore a hijab (headscarf) on their heads. Islam is the national religion of Malaysia. Throughout the day, we would hear the call to pray.er over speakers, which played all through the city. Very different! We spent most of the day visiting the Petronas towers (pictures on Flickr) and walking around it. Our favorite part of Malaysia was, wait for it.....Chili's!! We ate Wendy's for lunch, Chili's for dinner, and Dunkin' Donuts for desert! (As you can tell, we ate very well on this trip)
Now we are back in Hangzhou. There are no students here, so it's a little boring, but we were able to come back just in time for Lost and American Idol! :)
We plan to go to one of our students hometowns for Chinese New Year, in a couple weeks. After that, both our mom's and Callie's sister are coming to visit!
(Sorry this blog was so long, we had alot to share). Stay tuned

Thomas & Callie