Up to now...

I'm so far behind. Computers with high speed internet have been hard to come by lately. So to make up for lost time, here is a point form essay of what we have been up to in the last couple weeks.

1) Our friend Karen joined us in Bangkok to travel with us for a few weeks. This was good because a) Dan, Mark and I had run out of things to say to each other and b) having another girl around is good and c) I like Karen.

2) We made our way from Bangkok to Koh Tao, a nice little island in the South of Thailand. Mark, Dan and Karen did some scuba diving. I got massages and drank ice coffees and read Water for Elephants. If anyone goes wants to go see the movie with me in about a month, that would be nice.

3) From Koh Tao, we headed up to Chiang Mai where we joined in the Songkran festivities. Songkran is the Thai New Year's celebration and it is, in short, a nation wide waterfight. So ridiculous. We just walked around with a water gun and a bucket soaking people and getting soaked. It was fun. It's a good thing it's really hot in these countries because otherwise I might not have enjoyed getting ice water thrown on me every 5 minutes.

4) We took a 6 hour bus ride (boring and hot) to the border between Thailand and Laos. Then we took a boat ride across the river to a new country.

5) We went and lived in the Laos jungle for three days, ziplining through the trees and sleeping in treehouses. We saw two snakes, a squirrel, lots of bugs, a couple birds, butterflies and monkeys. Oh, and leeches (luckily I grew up swimming in Wellman Lake and am somewhat desensitized to leeches. That doesn't mean I like them). It was awesome. Although I probably wouldn't have used the word awesome when we were being evacuated out of our tree house at 4am due to stormy weather and "potential strong winds". But in hindsight, even that was fun.

6) We went to an internet cafe while waiting for our 14 hour bus ride to our next location in Laos, which is Luang Prabang.

You are now up to the present. I need not elaborate how I am feeling about this upcoming bus ride.

But I'm sure there will be at least one good story to come out of it.