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February 19, 2013

I feel like I need to say something to wrap up this trip. It was a fantastic adventure.

It was amazing if you just look at the number of different types of transportation that it took to get through this adventure. It started with planes. A prop plane, a small jet engine plane and then a really big plane. There were 2 different busses, 16 passenger vans, shuttles and tuk tuks (motor cycle in front with a 2 person cart behind), a cyclo (passenger seat in bicycle powered vehicle) and boats. There were dozens of feries, big and small, passenger boats, floating villages and markets, speed boats and long tail boats. And last but not least, the bikes. Between the three countries I was on 3 different bikes. And there was a lot of walking that happened as well.

We met an amazing assortment of people from the people that went with us on the adventure from Boise, the guides that helped us along our journey and the people we met along the way. I would like to say one more time that our head guide who came with us through all three countries, Vannik, was fantastic. He did an amazing job of providing support under challanging conditions to our group.

This trip pushed my comfort levels and was challenging on several levels. But I can't help but feel that getting pushed of our comfort zones once in a while is what helps us grow. I think that a person's mind and growth level are like a muscle. If you don't ever push your muscles enough to get sore, you never get any stronger and your muscles won't really grow. This trip encouraged growth. This trip was a challange. This trip has encouraged me to look at myself, my paradigms and how I view things. This trip was good for me.

With that being said it is great to be home. I really missed my dogs. Our friends who house sat for us did a wonderful job at taking care of the dogs and house (thanks Courtney and Kevin). The dog were super happy to see us and seem to be very glad to have their people back and have been enjoying the extra love and attention. I'm happy to be able to drink tap water again and rinse my toothbrush in the sink. My bed and pillow feel wonderful and it amazing to not feel sticky all the time.

Have I mentioned how difficult this blog was to do with slow internet connections on an iPad? The blog is so much easier to do on a computer. There were definately some challanges with uploading photos, labeling them and just getting the posts to upload. The blogger program would not let me scroll down to the bottom of the blog on the iPad in the regular view, only in HTML mode so I had to do all of the editing for the longer posts that way. What a pain! i also had to switch between the mobile app and the full site program in order to upload pictures. It was a multi step process. Hopefully by the next trip, some of the kinks have been worked out of the programs. On that note, I'm going to end with some pretty pictures that have not made it in to the blog yet.

Lets start with some pictures of where we went diving...

Here are some more temple pictures (I was really struggling with uploading photos after seeing the Temples. Have I mentioned the trend of the nicer the hotel the slower the internet connection? Same hold true with mosquitos too! Nicer hotel, more mozies.)

Tree growing and taking over the temple structure

pretty much the entire temple was intricately carved. this was a sceen depicting war with Saim.

carving at the temple, and yes, they are topless

Here are some pictures to give you a better idea of what riding bikes was like in Vietnam. These pictures were taken with Jeff's go-pro helmit camera and we were unable to access them until we got home. They do a good job of giving a feel for the width of the roads and the slightly crazy nature of it. Scooters moved pretty fast. The bikes probably averaged about 14 mph durring this section so I'm guessing the scooters went 25-35 mph. In comparison, on the straighter roads some days we were averaging 17-19 mph on the bikes.