Loang Prabang

So after a horrible yet gorgeous 6 hours van ride were are now in Loang Prabang (silent R)- As I mentioned, the road was amazing but horrible- the Van had natural air conditioning- windows. And rain... and he drove on like 30 KPH because the road is full of turns... but here we are in the center of town!
No, wait a minute-"town" is over estimating...it's like a very big village, not very town-ish. But it's right next to the Mekong and some other river, and there are many beautiful temples.
Last night we went to the night market which was nice, and today we went to the temples. The largest one is located on a hill called "Pou See" and PLEASE- no puns/jokes/dirty associating, I am traveling with 2 guys and so help me god, I had ENOUGH with this joke.
Anyhow nice temples, but they charge 2$ admission fee each, so after one or two we got the idea. Afterwards we went to Beit Chabbad, and we are heading there tomorrow night for Shabbat dinner.
So that's it for now... I've uploaded more photos, so have a look:-)

Vang Vieng- episode 2

I keep telling myself I am over posting.... and even though:
Today we went on a day trip- we went with a group of Eleven: 2 Irish girls, 2 British guys, 3 Israelis and the Four of us. We started with a visit to a Buddha cave- I can convert with all the Buddha info I learned recently...But I learned today that the reason Buddhists don't eat pork is because that's what killed Buddha. Random piece of information for today!
Afterwards we went Tubing in a cave- very dark, and we had to pedal most of the way cause there was no stream..
Then we went Kayaking- a very good day for my biceps, no doubt- once again, no stream...fun. but we also did Omega- with no safety cord- it was fun. Risky, but So fun.
Something else I learned today is that I am a very tasty mosquito food. Oh, the honor...
Tomorrow David is leaving us and in Two days we are leaving to Luang Pabang.
And that completes this series of "Mosquitoes- what Sivan did today".. yeah, that sounds nasty. I'll think of something better for next time... or not:-)
Meanwhile, Have a lovely week!

Vang Vieng

Shabbat Shalom! We are now in Vang Vieng- a small beautiful town about 4 hours north to Vian Tien. The trip was fun- 4 hours in horrible heat, no air conditioning, full of sweaty people.... splendid. But it's a very very nice road.
We are staying all four of us in a nice bungalow right down the Sam Xong riverside, so we have great view. I'm dying to upload photos but in this damn continent finding a cooperating computer is impossible- the ones that do have USB connections do not support them.
Today we rented two motorbikes and went exploring- I cannot begin to describe exactly how pretty the country side is- trees, mountains, river, creeks, fields and villages. The people here are so poor, but their lives are priceless, which to me is nothing but amazing.
Just as we were heading back the sky turned cloudy and as we sat down for lunch it started pouring outside.
Funny thing- Vang Vieng is more of a village than a town, and it's very touristic- they have 2 bar/restaurants that have "Friends" on 24/7. TWO! and they are across to each other. To make things better, there is also a "Simpsons" bar.....so that's what we've been doing to avoid the rain. How odd..
So that's it for now....

Vien Tian &4,000 Islands

So first of all- Happy Shavout! In a bit of a delay.
Right now we are back in Vien Tian after being in 4,000 Islands.
Vien Tian is the capital of Laos- only it's smaller than Afula and does not resemble a city what so ever. There are many temples and it's right by the Mekong river.
On Tuesday we (Gil, David- a friend of Gil's from Germany and me) arrived here and Gil and I went to the Chinese embassy to deposit our passports and now that we're back our Chinese visas  should be ready.
In between we spent a day in a half in 4,000 Island- it's a 50K area by the Mekong river in which there are, sure enough- about 4,000 islands. Most of them are tiny, and in the winter are under water, but a few of them are settled- like the one we went to- Don Det (Don=island in Lao). It was awfully hot and humid, but beautiful- they only have electricity between the hours of 18:00-22:00- and with generators. Oy vay.
On our way back we went to Pakse (a town in the way) and went to visit the waterfalls- they are simply gorgeous.
So now we are back here, we are about to meet Nir (who is arriving from Thailand) and to pick up our visas and then we are moving on to Vang Vieng which is a small town about 3 hours away.
The weather is SO gross... it's kinda funny- out of 5 nights this week we spent 3 nights in a bus! For some reason they insisted on playing Lao Karaoke DVD for like 3 hours on they to the Islands and back. Well, what doesn't kill you make you stronger.

Just a Quicky...

Just letting you know that I switched to Picasa and the photos should be up now. Let me know if they don't, and I'll figure out who to kill.
I know mom, Violence is no solution. Right.

Kanchanburi

OK, for some reason computers hate me. I honestly don't know why, But I don't see any other reason I can't manage to put up some photos, or encode the default language in the blog to a NON-Asian one. I'm in Thailand, than why the hell it's in Japanese!?
Anyway, back to my topic- We spent the past two days in a resort named Kanchanburi. Beautiful place, literally a spit away from the Khay river. We took a speed boat (some kind of a water taxi) to a Buddha temple. we climbed up ( I swear the air was thicker than the water. breathing is challenging), and faced what appears to be the fattest Buddha sculpture I have ever seen. Apparently it's Chinese;The Thai Buddha must have dieted or something...
Anyway in the cave we saw what I refer to as the "Buddha modeling book"- many many Buddhas in different positions. We learned that one is to warship the Buddha of the day of the week he was born (each day of the week has a specific Buddha and one is to warship the one of his birthday, respectively).
After that we went to an Elephant farm, and we did some Elephant riding (PilPilon, here I come!) it's nice, yet not that exciting....but Elephants are way cuter than I expected. After that we went into the water with them and "helped scrubbing them" as they took a bath- meaning we scrubbed them like a rubber ducky for a few minutes and enjoyed their splashing with their trunks for the rest of the time. my Elephant, Mr. Pil, splashed quite a lot.

On the following day we went to 7 falls national park. It was beautiful, and our tour guide, Mimi was a very very cute Thai lady, who spoke to us both English and Hebrew.
Then we went to the Tiger temple, and took pictures with DRUGGED tigers. So mom, no need to freak out!

Today we were supposed to leave to Vien Tian, the capital of Laos, but we postponed it to tomorrow, since Nir is sick and I spent the entire morning in the Hospital with him. He is still there (dehydration) and he might have to spend a night or two there. Anyhow we are not leaving until we know for sure he is OK, but he might not continue with us to Vien Tian after all.
Anyway, if you survived my longest post yet, let me wish all a Happy Shavuot! It is my favorite holiday (well, it's MY holiday) so eat dairy and think of me;-)

Bang-Kok part 2

Well, It's kinda fast, posting day after day, but god knows when I'm going to get to a computer next...
today we did something very exciting- we made plans! We are leaving tomorrow for an over night in a place called Kachanubri or something unpronounceable like that... and on Sunday we are leaving to Laos.
Today we had a near death experience- we took a Tuk-Tuk to the MBK (a shopping mall). I do not want to hear another word about how bad Israeli drivers are. Jesus! The man drove in between lanes, speeding up so one could imagine the wings coming out of the Tuk-Tuk, and to complete the experience he almost crashed into like two buses and a taxi. Wow.
the shopping mall was beautiful and huge. 8 stories of what appears to be one of the biggest malls I have ever seen. So that's pretty much it for now.
After Laos we are heading towards China, then to Vietnam and we'll finish in Cambodia (we left it to the end so we can pull off an Angelina Jolie and adopt an orphan or something).
anyway, hope you're all well.. I put up like 4 photos, that's all I have for now. next time I'll have more...

Bangkok

Finally after what appeared to be the world's worst flight, I arrived in Bangkok. Geez.... once your out with your luggage, your like a freakin celebrity- people start chasing you around with taxi offers and god knows what. I took Gil's advice and pretended to be Hellen Keller- or the three monkies- and ignore them all.
Anyway I met Gil in the Israeli Connection and we are now waiting for Nir- a friend of a friend who is arriving later on today.
I still haven't got any news, but I'm very anxious to see if I'll actually post, seeing as I can't seem to make the damn computer change the language from Thai... and yes, I tried encoding. Doesn't work, so I sort of have to guess what I'm doing. And speaking of which, all those hours working in the supermarket with Thai people finally paid off- I managed to explain myself to the cab driver! my greatest achievement yet.
anyhow, I'll call it a day cause I'm jet lagged and I am sick of fighting and losing to the damn keyboard. No photos yet...

My first post- yay!!

So I haven't actually left yet, but since technology is not my thing I thought I'll give it a test-run.
Anyhow, I'm leaving on May 15, and due to return on August 15 (at least for the time being). I'll be meeting my friend Gil in Bangkok and that's pretty much as far as we planed:-)

So I hope I'll update soon.


Sivan