TravelStream™ news feed for member dane on TravelPod's free travel blogs service http://www.travelpod.com/syndication/rss/dane en-us Copyright ©2009 TravelPod.com Sun, 15 Nov 2009 02:47:37 -0500 http://www.travelpod.com http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/dane/se_asia/1258270786/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/dane/se_asia/1258270786/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/dane/se_asia/1258270786/tpod.html Sun, 15 Nov 2009 02:47:37 -0500 We've backpacked through Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia, then back through Southern Thailand. We've made quick trips to KL and Singapore, and we now live and work in Bangkok. Check it out.

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Lopburi, Lop Buri, Thailand

Lopburi is a must see for our visitors.  There aren't a lot of places in the world where you can have monkeys climb all over you while you stare at ancient ruins.  Of course, there are always some mishaps.  I have the infamous monkey attack video to show for mine.  Jack had a very large mother get a little protective and knock her on her ass, but it was all in good fun.  The most interesting part was getting my friend Pote to come along.  Lopburi is very much a foreigner destination.  Thais don't like monkeys, particularly not climbing on them.  I've told maybe 100 Thais about this place and they all make the same appalled face at the idea of intentionally letting wild monkeys climb on you and pick your scalp looking for parasites.  Well, Disneyland it's not, but it's pretty damn cool and I make everyone go.  Pote wasn't real thrilled, but he's a good enough friend that he drove us out there and even played with the monkeys a little bit.  Of course one bit him and he wanted to punt it across the ruins, but it's all fun and games as far as the monkeys are concerned.  Jeremy had to work and couldn't make it.  But considering his propensity for accidents, it was probably best that we didn't introduce the potential for rabies.  Lots of pics and some videos.  Check them out.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/dane/se_asia/1258269315/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/dane/se_asia/1258269315/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/dane/se_asia/1258269315/tpod.html Sun, 15 Nov 2009 02:36:19 -0500 We've backpacked through Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia, then back through Southern Thailand. We've made quick trips to KL and Singapore, and we now live and work in Bangkok. Check it out.

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Bangkok, Thailand

It was a long but not unpleasant flight.  Etihad is a pimp airline, even in economy.Getting back to Thailand felt great.  It was immediately comforting.  The familiar sights, the cheap cabs, the recognizable neighborhoods and even the brutal traffic were all known commodities, which both invigorated me and put me at ease.  They didn't do that for Jack.  It was utter culture shock, which I expected.  What was hard for me to grasp was that other people find that feeling unpleasant.  I love that newness of seeing a country for the first time, the strange script, the food carts, the exotic people.  It's why we chose to go to Thailand in the first place after the familiarity of Latin America for so long.  It's cool to know that we can arrive in one of dozens of countries in Central and South America and speak the language and navigate the culture, but Asia was an entirely new challenge.  A 22-hour flight (and going from university finals of her senior year to traffic jams 10,000 miles from the only world she had ever known - all within a week) had Jackie a little off balance.  So instead of immersing her in the newness of it all, we immediately showed her that Bangkok provides all the comforts of home.  We went straight to our new condo building, where she had her own furnished studio waiting for her.  We had pasta at a cafe downtown and pointed out the ubiquitous 7-11s.  We gave her a few hours to decompress from her journey before trying to impress her with the journey that lay ahead.Jeremy, my sister-in-law's son, was already in Thailand.  I had helped him get an internship at a 5-star hotel in Bangkok, and he arrived a week before we did.  He had also never been out of Texas, but he had been navigating Thailand all on his own for a week.  He was a champ.  I had kind of thought he'd hide in his condo (also in our building) and just work until we got there to show him around.  But he had already been all over the city, seeing the tourist sights and hitting the bars.  He was eating street food and learning the language.  He had thrown himself into his new environment with a zeal that I don't even think I would have managed at 21.  He and Jackie were the same age and from similar backgrounds, but for the entire summer they would be a study in contrasts.  I'll do a little foreshadowing and tell you that in the next couple of months there will be motorbike accidents, drunken singing, romantic encounters, massage parlors, sunburns, hospital visits (about 15 actually)...meeting foreigners, hanging out with locals, work, play, comfort and chaos.  All in the span of 75 days. 
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/dane/se_asia/1258268998/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/dane/se_asia/1258268998/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/dane/se_asia/1258268998/tpod.html Sun, 15 Nov 2009 02:14:58 -0500 We've backpacked through Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia, then back through Southern Thailand. We've made quick trips to KL and Singapore, and we now live and work in Bangkok. Check it out.

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Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates

Before going to New York, Jackie had never been out of Texas that she remembered.  Then after a week in NYC, she was landing in Abu Dhabi in the Middle East.  I reminded her that she was flying over or near Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Iran.  I think she suddenly felt very far from home, which she was.  For me and Lindsey, we were on our way back to Bangkok and felt like we were actually going home.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/dane/se_asia/1258260972/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/dane/se_asia/1258260972/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/dane/se_asia/1258260972/tpod.html Sun, 15 Nov 2009 01:44:41 -0500 We've backpacked through Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia, then back through Southern Thailand. We've made quick trips to KL and Singapore, and we now live and work in Bangkok. Check it out.

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New York City, New York, United States

You're not supposed to capitalize prepositions in titles, but doesn't "New York without Snow" look stupid?  Then we're all in agreement.It was our last stop on our 4-month tour of America.  We had round-trip tickets from Bangkok to NYC, so we headed back to NY for a week before flying back to Thailand.  I was looking forward to hanging out with Manny some more.  I had become so deathly ill so quickly when we arrived that we didn't get to do much.  Plus, Manny is in med school, which apparently takes a fair amount of time and focus.  But he hung out with us several days and we went out a couple of times at night.  This time, Lindsey got sick, which was particularly problematic because her sister met us in NY to go back to Thailand with us.  So I took Jackie to the city to see some museums.  We had previously said 15 words to each other during the 5 years I had been dating Lindsey, so I'm sure she wasn't thrilled about her sister being bedridden and me being her guide.  But such is life.  Then it rained all day, and I took her to museums I had just been to and got drenched in Central Park.  I wasn't sure how to entertain her.  It was difficult, because the only person I've traveled with in the last several years is Lindsey, and we like the same things and enjoy one another immensely.  This was an entirely different dynamic.  I didn't know how to talk about any aspect of popular culture and she seemed less than enthused about my thoughts on impressionism and Meso-American pottery.  But then we met Manny at the oldest bar in NY and drank some bad-ass local brew and friendliness came much easier.  Then I went home at 10 to take care of Lindsey, and Manny showed Jack how much more fun it is to do shots until 4 a.m. in Kew Gardens than wander around the Met in wet clothes.  Manny 1, Dane 0.  We did have some better weather the next day and Lindsey was well enough to hit the town.  Manny joined us and we walked all over the city.  We went to watch a taping of Late Night with Jimmy Fallon.  Manny hooked up tickets and that was pretty incredible.  Paul Simon was on and he played with The Roots.  Steve Martin was on and he was brilliant.  And then Tina Fey showed up and sat in the audience.  Probably the highlight of the trip.  It was my 4th time to NY and I had still never seen the Statue of Liberty, even from a distance.  So we took the Staten Island Ferry and saw that.  It's kinda cool.  I assume if I was poor, tired, or a member of some sort of huddled mass yearning to be free, it would be more impressive.  Also, when we first talked to Jack about NY, and asked her what she most wanted to see, she did not respond "The Met," "The Guggenheim," or "The Empire State Building."  She said, "Hard Rock Cafe."  So after lots of laughing and incessant teasing, we did stumble upon Hard Rock in Times Square.  Later, we wandered into FAO Schwartz and saw the toy extravaganza.  I was hoping to see the giant piano from Big, but it's not there anymore.  We did see some super life-like baby dolls on sale for $100.  You could buy a real baby for less than that in Thailand.That evening, we walked over the Brooklyn Bridge and took some cool photos and had awesome pizza, which we did several times a day every day.  What else?  I saw a monk in full old-school monkishness talking to a cop.  I found that fascinating.  I imagine the conversation went something like, "The Lord is my shepherd, and I have taken a vow of chastity and asceticism."  "Yeah, God's the freakin' best.  Fuhgedaboutit.  The Holy Trinty, you know?  God, the son and Joe Dimaggio.  Take it easy paisan."  I also imagine that all New York cops talk like the Jerky Boys.That was pretty much it.  Manny took us to the airport so we didn't have to drag our luggage through the New York subway again with people unceremoniously telling us to "Get the f*ck out of the way."  Next stop: Abu Dhabi. 
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/dane/se_asia/1258259941/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/dane/se_asia/1258259941/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/dane/se_asia/1258259941/tpod.html Sat, 14 Nov 2009 23:52:34 -0500 We've backpacked through Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia, then back through Southern Thailand. We've made quick trips to KL and Singapore, and we now live and work in Bangkok. Check it out.

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Richmond, Virginia, United States

From Austin, we went back to Virginia to spend a couple more weeks with my mom and Chuck.  It was great getting to bookend our trip by spending time with them.  Winter was snowy and pretty, then spring was beautiful.  We went camping in Virginia, then took a quick trip to Florida (by quick I mean a 13-hour drive followed by an identical return trip a couple of days later).  Camping was fun.  We made smores.  My mom and Lindsey love them some chocolate.  We checked out Colonial Williamsburg. I was unimpressed.  Watching people in historical costumes alternate between texting and bad acting isn't worth $40 to me.  But the buildings were nice, and it was a pleasant little town to stroll around.  But at no point did I feel I had been transported back to the 18th century.  There's something less than authentic about vending machines with $3 bottles of water and ads announcing "Ye Must Be Thirsty. Quencheth It You Scallywag!"  I think my image of all historical figures talking like pirates might be misguided, but my elementary school textbooks can't compete with Johnny Depp and his roguish charisma.  It was a fun couple of weeks though, and I need time like that with my mom to supplement our primary communication of Skype calls from 10,000 miles away.  From there, it was off to NYC to see the city sans my previous fog of jet-lag and incessant vomiting.  Sans.  Who talks like that?
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/dane/se_asia/1258259583/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/dane/se_asia/1258259583/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/dane/se_asia/1258259583/tpod.html Sat, 14 Nov 2009 23:38:36 -0500 We've backpacked through Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia, then back through Southern Thailand. We've made quick trips to KL and Singapore, and we now live and work in Bangkok. Check it out.

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Austin, Texas, United States

My friend Bev threw an amazing going away party for me.  We all got together at her house and had bloody marys, burgers, and beers. Derek came in town and brought his special lady friend, so I got to meet Kelly.  Omar came in from San Antonio.  Layla and Dave came up.  Janello was there.  My friend Moni had met me for lunch a few days before, so I had gotten to hang out with her already.  People were awesome for coming and hanging out.  We had a blast.  We went from early afternoon until the early hours of the next morning.  Drunk Cranium was a lot of fun.  I have great friends.  But I don't have pictures.  Someone must though.  Email me if you do. 
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/dane/se_asia/1257254915/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/dane/se_asia/1257254915/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/dane/se_asia/1257254915/tpod.html Sat, 14 Nov 2009 23:31:32 -0500 We've backpacked through Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia, then back through Southern Thailand. We've made quick trips to KL and Singapore, and we now live and work in Bangkok. Check it out.

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East Texas, Texas, United States

We made a couple of runs to East Texas while we were back.  Lindsey's from Niederland and still has family around there, so we went to see some of them for a few days. We also went to a wedding in Houston and saw another side of her family.  I went to my first crawfish boil, which entertained people a lot because it's not something you can mentally prepare yourself for prior to the event.  Crawfish are ugly little land crustaceans that you boil alive with cajun seasonings and some corn on the cob.  Then you suck their little bodies out of the shells in an frenzy of crunching and peeling and finger licking.  It's pretty gross.I also played washers for the first time, which is the throwing of washers (little rings) into nearby holes.  I also heard accents so thick that they make people from Lubbock sound like they speak the queen's English.  What else?  I went out to the piney woods and saw a pond with beavers and an alligator.  It was a very Texasy few days.  But East Texas is an entirely different world.  Lindsey and I both grew up off of I-10, but we lived in very different places.  Still, it was fun to meet her family and see her hood. 
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/dane/se_asia/1256617977/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/dane/se_asia/1256617977/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/dane/se_asia/1256617977/tpod.html Tue, 03 Nov 2009 00:30:29 -0500 We've backpacked through Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia, then back through Southern Thailand. We've made quick trips to KL and Singapore, and we now live and work in Bangkok. Check it out.

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Los Angeles, California, United States

My friend Deanne lives in LA now.  For most of her life, her last name was Itchon, which is probably one of the cooler names out there.  But now she's married, and her last name is Campos, which isn't nearly as exotic and I refuse to call her that. (Her husband's really cool, and I've spent a fair amount of time trying to convince him to take her name)  I actually haven't gotten in the habit of calling any of my friends by their married names, ostensibly because it's archaic and sexist to take a man's name like you're his property, but in reality I think it's just part of my general refusal to embrace change. Derek had some work to do in California, so I joined him and while he worked I wandered around the city with Itchon. We went to a quaint Santa Monica cafe for breakfast.  I got scrambled eggs with some sort of grass they tried to convince me was a vegetable, but just because it's green doesn't make it edible. So they mixed my eggs with lawn clippings and arranged them with a tiny piece of toast on a massive plate in a very feng shui manner. This delicacy set me back $17, but I think one of the bus boys was on Charles in Charge, so that was cool.Itch and I went to the Getty Museum, which is up on a hill overlooking the city.  The art is decent, but it's really the setting that makes it impressive.  That night we met Derek for drinks and did some general catching up and talking about how the Longhorns kick ass in various sports.  We then returned to Deanne and Kevin's car to discover that Itch had left the window down, and despite the fact that we were parked on the street in LA somewhere, no one stole my backpack, which because we were traveling had my camera and computer in it.  I felt pretty good about humanity by the end of the night.The next day, we went to visit our friend Jones who manages a minor league baseball team near San Diego.  I got to revel in California traffic, which brought us to a standstill at 2 p.m., 30 miles from any city, for half an hour.  We eventually caught the 9th inning of the game and hung out at Jones' house that night.  I got to meet Jones' kids and catch up with him and his wife, so it was a productive few days in Cali.  From there, it was back to Texas.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/dane/se_asia/1256616474/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/dane/se_asia/1256616474/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/dane/se_asia/1256616474/tpod.html Tue, 27 Oct 2009 11:17:33 -0400 We've backpacked through Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia, then back through Southern Thailand. We've made quick trips to KL and Singapore, and we now live and work in Bangkok. Check it out.

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Scottsdale, Arizona, United States

I had to make the rounds while I was in America.  My family has spread out across the country, I'm assuming just to make my visits home complicated.  So I started in Virginia with my mom and Chuck, then went to San Marcos to see my dad and two brothers, then Arizona to hang out with Derek.  That still left Daron and his family in Dallas.  At least Eric doesn't live in Colorado anymore.  And you'd think at least one of them would live in El Paso so I could get some Chico's Tacos, but that's probably asking too much.So Derek and I hung out for a couple of days, then my dad came to visit.  That was really cool - getting to have some guy time and play lots of golf.  My dad loves golf.  So does Derek, but probably not as much.  I like it, but the least of the 3.  That means that my dad wanted to play a round of golf every day, which we did, but he also wanted to chip and putt for another 6-7 hours every afternoon.  My father hovers somewhere between ambitious and A.D.D.  Sitting on the couch and talking is not a pastime.  Talking is only acceptable as a supplementary activity when combined with painting a house, building a fence, digging a ditch, or filling the ditch back in when you're done.  Why do Baby Boomers feel the compulsion to work so much?  I think Truman put something in the water to inspire the nation's children to help with the war effort and it affected fetal development.  My dad was born prematurely, according to him "because there was work to be done and he couldn't just lay around in a uterus all day."  He's still trying to make up for those 7 months he wasted in the womb.So we played 3 rounds of golf in 3 days.  I played pretty well, which made me happy, because my dad and brother are both much better than I am and I hate getting my ass kicked.  I shot a 91 on the second day, which is pretty impressive since I've only played twice since I came to Thailand.  On the last day I played like an epileptic monkey and hit the ball everywhere but the fairway.  Playing in the desert is hard.  You can hit out of the woods, but teeing off from a cactus is prohibitively difficult.  So I think I took in the neighborhood of 18 penalty strokes, which unless you're into S&M, is not a good thing.  Plus my back hurt because 31 is apparently older than I realized and my spine has been misaligned by years of third-world buses and trains.  So I had to start drinking on the back nine and would have thrown my clubs into a man-made lake if they had actually been my clubs, but they were Derek's so I played it cool.  What was really fun to watch was my dad's steady regression from trying to coach me, to openly laughing at me, to shaking his head at me in shame, to pretending he didn't know me when the cart girl asked if it was my first time playing.  After the weekend o' golf and fun, my dad headed back to Texas and Derek and I took off to California.  He had some work to do, and I had a friend to see. 
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/dane/se_asia/1256613396/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/dane/se_asia/1256613396/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/dane/se_asia/1256613396/tpod.html Tue, 27 Oct 2009 11:12:09 -0400 We've backpacked through Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia, then back through Southern Thailand. We've made quick trips to KL and Singapore, and we now live and work in Bangkok. Check it out.

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Las Vegas, Nevada, United States

We had a great time.  My mom really enjoyed herself, as did the rest of us.  Lindsey and I flew in first, then my mom and Chuck got in quite late from the East Coast.  Derek hooked up pimp rooms at the Palazzo with a great view of the city, so when my parents got in at 4 a.m. they were immediately greeted by the glitz and glimmer of the city.We went out for an awesome meal at Tao, where we ate great food and saw David Spade.  I'm not celebrity crazy, but it's interesting to see how small people are in real life.  That could be an optical illusion because they're often surrounded by very large men with only slightly concealed firearms, or at least Jamie Foxx was.  And when you see him in person, you really get a sense of how he deserves that extra x in his last name.  Fox just wouldn't suffice.And why is it that I think I'm all cool and composed, but when I saw David Spade I just wanted to scream Tommy Boy lines at him until he agreed to do a few scenes with me and pulled out a road map.  "Here's moron."The best part of the trip was probably having tapas and drinking sangria one afternoon.  It's a special moment to see your respectable and stoic parents get toasty before the sun sets.  And I don't mean the "trailer park, Busch Light, Daddy's gonna want to snuggle tonight" kind of drunk.  I mean just chilling out and laughing and seeing parental, disciplinarian figures as regular jovial people.  We laughed a hell of a lot and had to have sangria pitchers cleared several times before the evening was over.  On the 4th, my mom's birthday, Derek had room-service breakfast sent up.  He went all out for the trip and really made sure everyone had a blast.  Derek's an amazing mix of "lock up your daughters" but "dote on your mother" kind of guy.  He did everything he could to make sure our mom had the birthday of a lifetime.  He's a good guy, and don't let the 19-year-olds at Pure who are willing to disregard a lifetime of moral upbringing to get into the VIP section tell you differently.  So why does a blog about my mom's birthday talk about Derek so much?  Because Vegas makes me thing of him at every turn, and I rarely get to write about it.  And he orchestrated the whole thing, including a 9th-row-center viewing of "O" one night.  Cirque du Soleis is always amazing, but this was hands-down the coolest show I've ever seen in my life.  Les Mis, Vietnamese water puppets, and the egg cracking in Bangkok (whole other story) included.  "O" is ridiculously cool and everyone should go see it.  Eye level and 20 feet away helps too.  And I know my mom loved it, which was the point of the whole weekend.  She was thrilled every moment of the trip, and I was glad I was home for it.  I miss my family always, but making it to special occasions makes it bearable.  Happy Birthday Madre.
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