Hello fellow drifters! We are fast approaching the end of our journey, and it’s kind of hard to believe. Luckily, we have a couple of our most anticipated places left to visit. Thailand and Japan. After the Tomb Raider-esk temples of Angkor Wat, it was an easy flight to hop on up to Thailand from Siem Reap. So, we decided to go to Phuket (against advice of many friends) for Trent’s birthday for some beach time.

To be honest, probably not the best decision. It was okay, but we wouldn’t return. Even though we stayed in the lesser party area of Karon Beach, it did not lack in the number of drunk slobs peppering the beach. Best way to describe Phuket… spring break in Cancun. Spring Breeeaaaak!!! Our only saving grace is that at the hotel we stayed in we had our own private pool, which we took full advantage of.

Beach and bars no thank you. Private pool and room service for Trent’s birthday? Yes please. Food poisoning for Trent on the last day? Well, happy birthday Trent. We can’t have it all… Flying sucks anyway, add a fever, chills, and crippling nausea and you have pressurized aluminum tube hurtling through the sky on its way to hell. Or Branson, Missouri, whichever is worse.

After Phuket, we hopped on another quick flight to bustling city of Bangkok. Here we explored markets, walked around the city, and generally just explored different areas. The highlight here was a biking and eating tour through Bang Krachao, an island oasis in the middle of the city. We toured around the forest island, local eating food and feeding pond fish. It was shocking to feel so isolated and peaceful just a short distance from the craziness that is Bangkok. But, it was perfect for us at this point, we may be a little saturated on the cool-but-not-culturally-interesting big cities.

As such, Bangkok was just okay for us. It’s another large city in southeast asia and we weren’t really in the mental space to party, which is apparently where the city really shines.

Next, we headed to Chiang Mai. Now this was a place we really enjoyed. It’s still a decent size city, but it has more of traditional cultural flare to it. The Old City in Chiang Mai is a large area surrounded by a moat with old fortress walls around its entirety.

Inside the walls contained lots of residences, shops, really really busy markets, places to eat, and temples. So many freaking temples everywhere! Side note: the outside walls of the city was the perfect place to enjoy long runs, albeit crazy hot ones! We definitely recommend Chiang Mai. As an added bonus we were there doing Songkran. Literally a week long water fight where no one is safe. Your on your motorcycle going to work? Sorry, here comes a bucket of water on your head. From Grannys to little kids, everyone was out in the street with super soakers, hoses, or just buckets of water. We got soaked and loved every second of it.

Pro tip: While you’re there, save your money, avoid the inflated tuk tuk prices and opt for the fun little red songtaew wagons!

Now. The real reason you came here… Elephants!

The Good

Elephant Nature Park (ENP) week Volunteer Program = best decision ever!

Worst decision ever? Not staying two weeks! Seriously, practically everyone we met did not want to leave. However, pricey plane tickets to Japan prevented any additional weeks tacked on.

ENP is a pretty amazing sanctuary. Essentially a huge open space in the mountains / jungle north of Chiang Mai where nearly 80 rescued elephants enjoy freedom following years of horrific abuse.

ENP not only houses rescued elephants, but it’s also home to 450 (and counting) rescue dogs and a countless amount of cats, all living the life they deserved from the beginning. Some of the older dogs are allowed to roam around the park and interact with you (and sometimes the elephants 🙂 ), which was awesome. A handful of the dogs were disabled, but had the most amazing spirits and spunk.

They are also many rescued water buffalo that roam the property and spend most of their time hot tubbing in the compost piles and the river that runs through the park.

The animals have round the clock veterinarian care and all dogs and cats have been spayed/neutered and vaccinated. They refuse to turn away any animal. There is one problem with taking in all these animals, however. Space. Space is limited. There are 5x more animals (dogs, cats) being brought in than being adopted out.

They are at capacity and still pushing harder everyday to build new enclosures, buy more land, hire more caretakers. Those needs require quite a bit of money, hence why we paid money to shovel poop. We knew what our money was going towards, and therefore it was a no brainer. If you are in the market for a wonderful new companion (or maybe just a place to donate some money to make a positive difference), check out the following information here.

So, let’s meet the woman behind this incredible place, Lek Chailert. Lek grew up in Thailand and was a young girl when she first witnessed the abuse of an elephant near her home. Even being the country’ national symbol, elephant abuse was widely accepted among the people at the time and sadly still is tolerated too much. The elephant’s screams stuck with her, and she said that she simply could not ignore the abuse. She has done so much to help, it’s pretty amazing.

From that moment on she has not stopped advocating for the wellbeing and freedom of elephants, and all animals alike. She founded the Save the Elephant Foundation, and started numerous projects throughout SE Asia and the world, encouraging everyone to join her in the fight. She’s received lots of international recognition, including being invited to the White House in 2010 by Hillary Clinton to be honored as one of six Women Heroes of Global Conservation. Standing under five feet, she is a force, a champion, and without a doubt, a absolute superhero. She has had her life threatened, been shot at, and been put in prison numerous times by those who stand to lose the most from the ethical treatment of the elephants. Nothing has slowed her down. Being in her presence evokes lots of emotions, hence Michele’s swollen eyes in this photo.

Back to the park, at ENP, We had a private room (equipped with a mosquito net). At night the sounds of soft elephant trumpets lulled us to sleep. There was something awesome about laying in bed and hearing the calls of all the animals at night.  We were fed breakfast, lunch and dinner everyday, buffet style (cue Trent’s happy dance), and had plenty of time to relax by the river, watching the elephants bathe themselves and occasionally sneak their trunk past the fence to snatch bananas.

We worked roughly 4 hours each day, and our work included shoveling poop (it literally has zero smell), offloading trucks of watermelons and bananas, clearing the park property of uneaten food scraps, and cleaning out the elephant food sinks.

Michele has the unfortunate and fortunate incident of being knocked in the face by a flying watermelon when she didn’t turn fast enough in time to catch the next one. Unfortunate because it hurt. Bad. Fortunate because she swears it corrected her crooked bridge. See? All misfortunes have a silver lining! She’s now also faster in her reflexes out of sheer necessity. Win win!

Even though this part of our trip was all about the animals, we were lucky enough to meet some great people who will hopefully be friends for a long time.

Sitting around after our work day enjoying beers, learning about different homes, and talking about the elephants will always be a treasured memory.

The Bad

One day our “job” was to walk around the park while the guides introduced us to elephants and gave us their back stories and fed them bananas.

Not really work, but we’ll take it. The stories ranged from horrific to devastating. The one aspect of their life that all elephants shared was their initial story. Michele has been an elephant advocate for years and prior to coming to ENP she knew about the phajaan. Trent had only heard kind of second hand stories and, to be honest, generally avoids those kind of “sad” animal stories.  It seemed so barbaric and evil that surely it wasn’t still happening, was it? We can assure you that it is.

ENP is surrounded by elephant trekking camps that rely solely on tourists to come and mount the elephants. On one side of the park you can see hoards of tourists coming each day to ride these elephants. Hour after hour these giants cart tourists up and down hills for 10 or more hours. It was heartbreaking to see them constantly at work across the river from the park.

The one thing we hope everybody we know and care about understands after this is that ANY elephant that you see being used for entertainment (like the circus or giving rides to people) has had unspeakable and horrible things done to them to get them to obey.  It’s not like training a dog to sit or lovingly teaching your child to read. What happens is a crime against nature, and we plead with everybody who reads to never go the circus, ride an elephant, or give any money to support this. If you’ve recently bought tickets to do something, just message us and we’ll repay you for your lost expense as well as help find something else that will be more fun anyway, we promise we’re good at this kind of research :). So why are we so passionate about this? Well, here it comes…

The Ugly (The Phajaan)

What is phajaan you ask? Its translation: the crush… The worst torture of an elephant that you can think of, is happening to them non-stop. The people responsible for phajaan, known as mahouts, believe this treatment will literally “crush” their soul, in order to make them easy to control. Why would they do that?  So that we (tourists) can ride them, watch them paint stupid pictures for us, perform ridiculous stunts in circuses, and other forms of “entertainment.”

Until people stop making money from this unforgivable practice, it seems unlikely to stop. Elephants are dragged (with ropes) away from their families when they are young and easier to control. Elephants are highly sentient beings and one of the most family oriented species alive. Taking the baby away is absolutely devastating to the mother. They are tied up for weeks and are repeatedly beaten and stabbed with metal hooks, starved, legs stretched, their ears are literally torn, they are screamed at, kicked, and other forms of physical and mental torture. This continues non-stop until the mahout feels the soul is “crushed” enough for training. It’s such an awful experience, the mahouts have to stay up all night with the baby elephants and make sure they do not step on their own trunks to commit suicide. Think about that, elephants literally commit suicide to stop the phajaan.

After this torture the elephants live a life of non-stop labor and servitude without the things they crave most in the world, community, family, and freedom. Baby elephants even stand in the streets of Bangkok (and other cities) with their mahout, but otherwise completely alone, all day long begging for food. The bleeding-heart tourists see the skinny and frightened baby elephants and give them food. In order to give them food however, they need to pay money. It’s a win-win for the mahout, they are getting paid to have their elephant fed. We know its difficult if you experience this begging, but giving money to feed the elephant only results in more baby elephants being stolen from their families to do the same thing. Please never ever give money to anyone involved in this awful practice.

Depending on an elephant’s size, they eat roughly 200 – 600 pounds of food everyday and one thing that captives elephants aren’t given is time to eat. The elephants become underweight, sluggish and therefore underperform. When the elephants are not performing they are severely punished often times with repeated stabbing with the hook in an infected hole in the ear or head of the elephant. Elephants have very sensitive skin and ears, filled with more nerve endings than a human’s. They feel pain more acutely than even we do. How terrible that as a human species, we can ever think this is okay?

Of the elephants at the park, there were several of them with bandaged feet from stepping on landmines during illegal logging. Their feet were ripped in half and need daily treatment to heal. Here’s the thing with elephants, they don’t necessarily lie around all day.

They are mostly on their feet, making any type of healing last much longer. Many of these elephants will be healing their whole life, but that is only from the physical trauma. There are elephants with amputated ears because they became so infected from rips and holes. There are elephants who can’t move because of broken hips and legs from forced breeding, where an elephant’s legs are tied up and a bull in heat is released upon them.

This happens every month until it can be determined a female is pregnant.  Rape is rape, even in elephant culture and leaves a tremendous emotional scar on the female elephant. You can see it in their eyes, you can see it in the way they move. It’s a full-throttle punch to the gut to see the physical and emotional scars these magnificent animals have endured.

The hardest moment was during our trip back to Chiang Mai at the end of the week, where we passed a trekking camp, which is a camp where elephants are used for riding and entertainment. An elephant was being led by her mahout down a road and she was not stopping fast enough and the mahout repeatedly stabbed his bull hook between her eyes. The hook stuck into the elephant’s skin like it was clay. We left feeling so fulfilled only to be reminded that thousands of elephants all over Asia are still enduring this treatment.

Reading this is not easy, we know. Seeing it is much worse.

Our mission going forward is to spread the word about the truth behind elephant entertainment.  There are still millions of people riding elephants all over the world (primarily in southeast asia) each year. We urge you to look at all forms of animals entertainment with a skeptical curiosity. What’s behind the scenes? Is this normal for an animal to do? Does this animal even want to be doing this? 

For a more detailed account, please check out one of these amazing documentaries: Love and Bananas  An Apology to Elephants The Ivory Game Tyke Elephant Outlaw.  We implore you to become a champion for elephants now!

We apologize this wasn’t the lighthearted musings that we typically deliver but we felt it was imperative. Please share with people you know. Education is where change happens.

Click Below for Photo Gallery

Next stop following Singapore was Vietnam where Michele continued to take photos of Trent shoving food into his mouth. We started in the popular southern city of Saigon, also known as Ho Chi Mihn City. We immediately booked a street food tour, watched Good Morning Vietnam because who doesn’t love a Robin Williams flick, and freshened up our our Vietnam War knowledge.

Vietnam, widely known for their delicious food was a perfect place to continue binge eating. Our first food tour in Nam (yes, we said first) was meh, just okay. Given the mind blowing food we had heard about, we weren’t overly in love. But, since nobody likely has (nor should they) any sympathy for us, we will survive.

On the plus side of the tour we walked through the old quarter and were able to explore the oldest apartment buildings in the city, as well as try some funky street dishes. Still nothing blew our minds. We’ve had better. You know you’ve been traveling a little too long when what would otherwise be the highlight of the trip gets poo-pooed because it wasn’t mind blowing (somewhere a tiny violin plays sad songs in the background for us). The tour helped give us our bearings on eating around Vietnam, but for the remainder of our time in Saigon we crushed so many bahn mi sandwiches that we lost count, along with sticky rice wherever we could find it. Adventurous? No. Delicious? Yep.

The best part, every meal basically cost $1 or less. They were the real deal. The Whole Foods bahn mi ain’t got nothing on these questionable Viet-street sammies. Luckily, still no food poisoning issues thus far in our trip. Kind of crazy given the haphazard choosing of places to dine, we have grown particularly fond of alley food. Was that a rat that just ran over my sandwich? Nah, just a large mouse… Carry on!

So, I’m sure some of our more astute readers may realize that Vietnam has more to see than just street food vendors. Indeed, kind of hovering around us the whole time was our recent history with Vietnam, specifically the war. Embarrassingly, aside from the most basic of facts we really didn’t understand a lot of the intricacies of the war. Surprisingly, Trent’s high school, Edgewood (Go Mustangs!), history department didn’t cover the finer geopolitical aspects and nuances. Surprising for southern Indiana education, no? It may have been the whiskey bottle hidden in the history teachers drawer, but who can say for sure!? So, to brush up on our history, we plugged our way through Ken Burn’s docuseries, the Vietnam War. You can find it on Amazon, it’s really really well done. This was in preparation for Saigon’s war museum. It may have been one of the most well-done war museums we have seen. It was even more interesting to see the point of view of the country we were at war with, instead of the “slightly” biased view of our history books. Incredible photos that tell a devastating story of the toll of war and the people involved… It’s one of those museums that hangs with you for a few days. If you make it to Vietnam, this museum is a must.

After Saigon, we headed to Northern Vietnam to visit the capital Hanoi for a few days. We contemplated over and over if we’d cruise the junk boats through Ha Long Bay, which is probably the top tourist thing to do in Vietnam. Problem is it was expensive and about 4+ hour car ride there, then you either come back that night or early the next day. In the end, we decided to save our money. After all, we had been through the Norwegian Fjords and it doesn’t get much better than that. So, instead, we toured the Tam Coc, which the Vietnamese consider the “Ha Long Bay on land.”  

For this tour, we rode bikes through the incredible countryside of the Ninh Binh Province, taking photos of the farmers working tirelessly in the rice paddies and then hopped a small row boat and made our way down the Tam Coc River, ducking our heads under caves and watching in amazement as our boat lady (official name we think) rowed the entire way using only her feet.

To be honest it was quite touristy, with a lot of pressure to buy random trinkets or snacks, but still worth the trek. Fun fact: The area, Tam Coc, is where King Kong: Skull Island was filmed.

We had about five days in Hanoi, so we decided to give one more good ol’ college try to the street food tours, this time for Northern Vietnam cuisine. Thank goodness our stomachs were still making decisions for us, our “second time’s the charm food tour” was so much better. This time, two badass Vietnamese girls, Moon and Vivian, picked us up by motorbike and drove us around the old town area and French quarters of Hanoi, hopping off periodically to sit on tiny baby stools on the side of the road to try the local faves.

It’s a little hard to describe what it’s like riding a motorbike through the streets of old town Hanoi, but to say it was chaotic would be generous. There is apparently only one rule: There are no rules. Stop lights? Who cares. Drive on sidewalks? Why not. It’s basically a constant game of chicken. Sounds scary, but we felt oddly safe with our drivers, they grew up here and knew how to handle the madness with ease. Not only was riding around in the rats nest of other motorbikes awesome, this time, the food was incredible to boot. Another score for our inner fat kids.

Hanoi was lively with festivities happening all over the old quarter. Live music, people dancing and lots of eating, everywhere you turned. We enjoyed Hanoi more than Saigon.

Cambodia:

After ten days in Vietnam we move on to our next stop in the magical mystery tour, Cambodia. We would have loved to have explored more of this country, especially given its recent tragic killing fields history. But, our time is starting to run short so we opt instead to stop at huge bucket list destination, Siem Reap, to see the unreal temples of Angkor Wat.

Siem Reap had a real pleasant, almost funky vibe to it. Tuk tuks are the main form of transportation, there was fun (but kinda touristy) street called “Pub Street” with tons of bars and cafes that comes alive at night. Some food vendors sold various kinds of deep fried bugs and spiders. We wish we could say that we tried them all, but, well… nope. Don’t judge us, when you go to Cambodia you can eat all of the creepy-crawlers your heart desires. These two kids are happy with their decision.

We took one of our few days and rented bikes and took a relaxing ride in near 100 degree weather through local villages to what’s known as a “floating village”. Basically a fishing and boating village on the river with a bunch of houses floating on the water. It was actually pretty neat, they even had tents set up with pool tables so the locals could relax and play some outdoor eight-ball. We always like getting out of the main tourist areas and seeing what actual Cambodians lives are like, at least as much as we can.

While Siem Reap was a pleasant surprise, the highlight, without a doubt, was Angkor Wat. Angkor Wat is a massive, like death star massive, complex of ancient Buddhist and Hindu temples hidden in the jungle of Cambodia.

It’s the largest religious monument in the world covering nearly 500 acres. Describing it doesn’t nearly do it justice, so we’ll leave it to the hundreds of photos below to deliver the goods. It doesn’t get much more Indiana Jones than this folks.

We’re now on our way to Thailand for a few weeks to celebrate Trent’s birthday on a beach and volunteer for a week at the Elephant Nature Park , something that Michele has been looking forward to even prior to this trip! Get excited everyone.

Side notes:

• Dog meat restaurants are still popular in Vietnam. We passed many restaurants where fried dogs lined the windows, while other dogs were chained up outside, ready to join them. It was difficult to see. Visitors beware.
• Something that caught us off guard was the, let’s call it bathroom freedom, Vietnamese people have. Be prepared while walking around to witness lots of weeing on the side of the road, literally right in front of you. We stayed right next to Truc Bach Lake and people, men and women would pee right into it. And then fish out of the same water. Sushi anyone?
• So far in SE Asia, we’ve been lucky to enjoy lots of markets selling local goods, souvenirs, and the like. Vietnam was no different, but a word of caution: the quality of their products are not good by any stretch. Stalls upon stalls selling the same crap, all grabbing at your arms to pull you towards their booth. Slow moving, grabby people. Trent’s dream come true. Save your money for any other country in SEA.

Quotes:
“I felt something rumbling so I’m going to use the restroom before the Australians get in there and wreck it.”

“Bring you coffee,  pretend I’m a dog… You’re very demanding in the morning.”

Click Below for Photo Gallery

We continued our New Year’s celebrations in Singapore! Let us tell you some things about Singapore. This country/city is weird. And awesome. The city itself is a mix of old traditional Singapore culture fused with some futuristic city planning designs.

While we were more than excited to get to our home-stay where we got to hang out with some amazing smoosh-face pups, exploring the Lion City was pretty entertaining in its own right. It may be the most modern city we’ve ever been to. Crazy cool skyscrapers, the world’s largest infinity pool that straddles three separate buildings, completely automated public transit in some parts, and it was amazingly clean and orderly. Almost too orderly and clean, it felt a little bit like Stepford Wives meets Tron, but it still worked.

Let’s start at the beginning. When you land in Singapore you are met with an airport that feels more like the Bellagio in Vegas than the usual airport. Sing’s airport is the most upscale we’ve ever seen. 100 different types of modern chairs and couches for you to rest while watching a hologram display made to look like traditional shop-houses expertly projected on a random wall.

There were beautiful gardens in the airport and, importantly, the never before heard of pleasant and efficient customs. Seriously, going through customs when entering (or leaving) a new country is the bane of every international traveler. You take underpaid workers who don’t want to be there, couple them with grouchy jetlagged travelers who have usually had some sort of delay or long flight, then mix with just the right amount of useless paperwork and bureaucracy and presto! You now have the prototypical customs / passport control experience. To give you an idea of how much of a well-oiled machine it was, when we left Singapore we literally did not know we even had been through customs and had to ask somebody else to be sure we didn’t skip a step or something. They scanned our passport and thumbprint, an automatic gate opened, and we were on to the next destination. We would tip out a forty in memory of Singapore customs, but we don’t want to risk a public caning. So instead, we’ll just use it as the standard to hold all future customs.  We will never forget you.

This uber efficient initial impression pretty much carried through the rest of the trip. Singapore has their shit together folks. Nothing was very difficult here. Easy peasy. It also might be the cleanest city known to man. Seriously, zero trash anywhere. This might have something to do with the oddly strict laws they have. For instance, gum chewing is absolutely out of the question. You can’t even buy/find gum anywhere. Chewable mints are okay. As long as they are gone within a minute. Further chewing and there are some rather harsh punishments. Fines, jail time and sometimes worse. Among the strange laws, this also includes taking a sip of water on public transportation, spitting outside, or any type of street entertainment.  And don’t even think of bringing durian (aka the sewer rat of fruits) on the bus! Durian is disgusting, unless you enjoy tasting feet.

There is even an app you can download to “report” (read: tattle) on anybody you find breaking any of the rules. Level up Singaporeans! I guess our next perfectly choreographed dance routine celebrating the catalog of Billy Ocean will have to wait.

As we hinted to earlier the entire city had this odd sort of Jetson-y futuristic meets the East kind of vibe. The buildings in the downtown area looked like metallic lava lamp creations. Rarely “standard”, often leaning one way or the other to support massive infinity pools and tropical gardens across multiple structures. Not what we were expecting, but pretty awesome to see.

Since it was still Chinese New Year, this modern flare was juxtaposed against the usual red lanterns, dragons, lions, and other fun things we’ve come to expect as well. An added bonus to though was the last day of the Lunar New Year we got to have dinner with some of Trent’s old grad school buddies from Nashville and their precocious and adorable little girl Kai. The great thing about friends is that it doesn’t really matter where you meet up, it’s always great and grounding. Thanks to Chris and Peiyan for making us feel at home.

Speaking of the Chinese New Year, part of the New Year is to see what your fortune is based on your “animal”: Trent has the coolest one by the way, a Dragon. Michele is, well, a rat. So that means she is good at mazes and potentially leading radiated turtles to fight crime. While we were excited to see our fortunes, they were, well, aggressive would be one way to describe them. Trent’s centered mainly around a loss of a lot of money and severe digestive issues, they did not indicate if these issues were related. Michele’s mainly focused on a high probability of blood loss and that she shouldn’t do anything “risky” this year. Trent has decided that upon our return to the U.S., Michele will remain in a protective bubble for the remainder of 2018 and we will be investing heavily in Band-Aids and Bounty paper towels. Maybe a padded hamster ball… Suggestions are welcome.

We got to spend a decent amount of time in Singapore, mainly so we could look after two of the sweetest dogs we’ve ever met. Kaipo, a hyper yet snuggly French Bulldog, and Zuka, the most handsome and sweetest droopy face boxer who essentially became Michele’s throw pillow while we were there.

We found the house/pup sit through Trusted Housesitters and it was one of the best decisions we made. Why had we not signed up for this earlier? The perfect puppy fix while we are away from our sweet boy, Russell.

Spooky Buddhist Hell Dream

Probably the oddest thing we came across so far in Southeast Asia (and that is saying something), just a 5-minute walk from our stay was Har Paw Villa. Har Paw Villa is a Buddhist-themed park where children get their first look at some horrific Buddhist imagery.

Apparently, some people take their kids here to learn about some of the consequences of actions. Which sounds like a good thing, but these were more let’s say, heavy-handed in nature. For instance, if you are caught cheating on your examinations what would be a fair punishment? Failing the test? Giving your Grandpa a foot rub? Nope, you’d have your intestines pulled out. For the bankers out there, if you charge somebody excessive interest rates you won’t be arrested or sued, nope, instead you will be thrown down into a giant hill of knives. Sounds about right. Side note, Trent used to have a recurring nightmare where perineal father figure Michael Landon forced him to roll down a hill into a pile of knives. The only thing the Highway to Heaven star would say was, “nobody will believe it was me!”.  Please feel free to leave a comment with your interpretation as to the meaning of Trent’s dream.

Anyway, this place was so bizarre it was actually amazing. Statues of people with animal heads playing cards, rodents carrying other rodents on stretchers, and other awesome things sprinkled around every corner. You leave a little confused, but it’s free and hey, who doesn’t love scaring children into obedience?

We left Singapore feeling pretty recharged and ready for Vietnam. We didn’t really know what to expect from Singapore, but all in all it’s a pretty amazing place and similar to our CNY fortune of blood loss, there’s a high probability of a return visit.

Favorite Quotes

“Ha ha ha, that’s actually really funny… but we should probably stop talking about poop in our blogs”

“I love you so much! I get a girlfriend and a frat brother all in one.”

Click Below for Photo Gallery

Is it possible to be a sweaty mess for two weeks and still have an absolute awesome time. The answer is yes. Malaysia is HOT, people. And not like 95 degree hot, but 95 degree with a 100% humidity and scorching sun rays hot. So hot in fact you might consider wrapping yourself in diapers and calling it a day. But the breathable type, otherwise you’d just feel stupid walking around in diapers.

And we thought Europe in August was bad. That heat is child’s play in comparison. Anyways, we quickly learned to beat the heat like the locals do and have a great time while doing it. We’ll get to this.

Let’s back up. After watching turtles attempt to hump each other in Seychelles (it was as awkward as it looks), we landed for a quick pitstop in Colombo, Sri Lanka for a couple days. We had high hopes for visiting Sri Lanka initially, but we were itching to get Southeast Asia for the Chinese New Year so, for better or worse, we used Sri Lanka mainly as a stopover to break up the flights. Side thoughts, the action in Sri Lanka is more inland. While we knew this, we still opted to chill out in Colombo. If you plan to visit, you can probably avoid Colombo altogether, in our humble opinion. We’d like to give the rest of the country a chance to shine since we didn’t see it this trip, so until next time Sri Lanka!

First stop on our Southeast Asia tour and we find ourselves in Kuala Lumpur, the capital of Malaysia. We instantly fell hard for the city’s charming people, the food, oh my god the food, and their love, no, obsession is probably more accurate, with malls.

Malaysians
It should be noted that we knew nothing of Malaysia, except what we learned from Zoolander, which was nothing, except that there is a country named Malaysia. Oh, and they haven’t heard of Mugatu, so scratch that off your “ways to bond with Malaysians” list.

It was definitely not what we had pictured. Kuala Lumpur is an extremely modern and very diverse city. Huge, cool looking skyscrapers everywhere, impressive public transportation, as well as unusual architecture and fountains all over the place. The people welcoming us were some of the nicest, most hospitable people we have met so far. They were always eager to help, especially the women! We found ourselves at home right away due to their charming ways.

Street Food
The first week we stayed in the central and popular Bukit Bintang neighborhood, right next door to Jalan Alor, a street dedicated to nothing but food stalls. You quickly realize that there is so much food to try that surely you can’t try everything. We tried anyways. We ate so much food, and most of it we had no idea what it was. There is a lot of pointing at things you want, but no real understanding of what you’re actually eating. We had noodles made in large pans from an alleyway, YUM! Seriously, there was a random old Chinese man who beckoned us to sit down and he made us some noodle dish. It was amazing, and it was in an alley, a really dirty alley. Alley noodles are the best noodles. We had Indian food that looked like small disgusting piles of who knows what but tasted incredible, we ate off banana leaves, we ate out of coconuts, we ate out of trash bags, we ate and we ate and we grew and we grew.

We were happy and we were fat. Happy fat is the best kind of fat. Normally, Michele is supposed to be the responsible food person. Trent’s inner fat kid is constantly running rampant in search of pizza and custard as well as any local eats that could be found. Michele likes to sample the local cuisine, and then likes to eat healthy with salads and other boring options. Here, Michele’s inner fat kid was finally unleashed upon the world. Shoving children and elderly people out of the way in search of Char Kway Teow, it was a sight to behold and it was glorious. The food here will be hard to beat indeed.

Mall Madness
Similar to tweens’ social lives in middle America, the social scene in Kuala Lumpur revolved largely around malls.Yes, malls. And we aren’t talking about your everyday typical malls. It’s not just Hot Topics, Claire’s, and arcades like the ones Trent used to use to preserve his virginity for as long as he could. We are talking mega malls that are attached to several other malls via underground and skyhigh walkways. Malls that have insanely intricate and massive displays in the main areas for people to take selfies. Malls with a minimum of 6 floors, 300 stores, casinos, elaborate water features, live bands, over the top decor, large grocery stores, dragon dances, good restaurants, and much more. For reference, there is well over 200 malls in KL alone, and this is a city with a population roughly the size of NYC. Denver has 1 mall and so now we hate Denver. That’s a lie, we could never hate Denver. We’ve just tasted the sweet nectar of mall charm in the midnight hour, and now we want more, more, more.

The most important feature of the malls is the air conditioning. Because, as you walk around on the surface of the sun sometimes it’s refreshing to pop in for a quick blast of cooling goodness. From what we could tell, the locals visit malls to stay out of the sun. You can literally walk from neighborhood to neighborhood and spend 70% of the time, walking through connected malls. We did this a lot. Need to dry out, head into a mall. Need to use the bathroom, head into a mall. We often found ourselves completely mesmerized by the amount of malls and stores contained within one area.  The place to be seen at night was at the malls, which stay open really late. They ramp up security, blast music and the locals begin their unspoken competition on who can take the most selfies. The people watching is sublime and entertaining!

Aside from Bukit Bintang, we also stayed in the Bangsar neighborhood, a smaller, slightly less commercial area, but with a heavy beer drinkers vibe. Along these lines we had a bartender give us a bunch of free alcohol and then offer to “show us around” the next day. Probably just a nice gesture, but hangovers and spidey sense tingling kept it from happening. No waking up without kidneys in bathtub for these savvy travelers!

We spent a lot of time laughing at the number of malls in this neighborhood, exploring Little India and Chinatown, and running through Perdana Botanical Gardens, a large and impressive public park smack dab in the middle of the city.

Chinese New Year – Year of the Dog! Wang wang! (woof woof)
One of the reasons we accelerated our trip to get to Asia sooner was the fact that we could be there during their Lunar New Years celebrations. NYE has nothing on the Chinese New Year. 2+ weeks of fireworks, lanterns, dragon / lion dances, parades, floats, food, mall visits (remember so much of the action happens here), special meals, temple visits, gambling and drinking.

There’s no single day of celebration really, but a semi-constant barrage of things going on over the entire time.  And of course, being the year of the dog, we were excited to be a part of it all.

Penang
After KL, we flew to Penang. Is it possible to be hotter than KL? Yes. Is it possible that the food is better. Yup. Is it possible to have a population of under 1 million and still have websites suggesting the Top 10 malls? You betcha.

In Penang, we toured the many hawker stalls (large food filled centers), admired the street art, visited more Buddhist temples, explored the jetty markets, and hiked through a rainforest, which is similar to say, doing burpees in a sauna.

We also witnessed some epic Malaysian karaoke. The singing was accompanied by wind machines and bending toe touches, to a setlist including numbers by Whitney Houston, Mariah Carey and Gloria Estefan and the Miami Sound Machine. So many people forget about the MSM, that is a big mistake. The karaoke was one of the best things we’ve ever stumbled upon. We love you, Malaysia. Here is a sneak peak.

Quotes:

That dog is holding a sign that says ‘wang.’ Can you look up what wang means in Chinese? Ugh, I don’t really want to search for ‘Chinese Wang.’

Click Below for Photo Gallery

Memories

We invite you think about the best way to arrive into a new city. Think pleasant greetings, smiling faces, seamless entry and a general feeling that all is perfect and right in the world. The kind of travel beginnings you’d maybe find getting off a plane in Hawaii. Aloha!

This does not exist. For us anyway. Want proof? Keep reading.

We decide to take a redeye out of Cairo into Kenya, leaving close to midnight, landing about dawn. Michele was battling one of her epic migraines and the pressure inside the plane only exacerbated it. Not to mention that a questionable salad in Cairo left her with some major gut pains. Cue the uh-ohs. They locked the bathrooms earlier than normal before landing, leaving Michele in sheer terror of well, no other good way to say it, shitting her pants. Throbbing brain and twisting insides and a locked bathroom. Not good. We land and were almost in the clear. Or so we thought. While exiting, Michele’s insides gave way and she vomited all the way to the front of the plane (in a bag, thankfully) before diving into the bathroom, where, she proceeded to release everything else she had inside. From both ends. After having destroyed the bathroom, in her relieved state all she could muster to the attendants was “Sorry about your bathroom.” Really? Are you really sorry? Maybe she should have told them “you deserve better than this” or “may god have mercy on your soul”. Either way, head down and cheeks clinched we proceed inside the airport where we were greeted by a big yellow sign that read HEALTHCHECK. Ugh. There was a moment of panic thinking that pale and slightly stinky Michele may not be able to clear the healthcheck. Thankfully they did not seem to care. We spent the remainder of the day laughing (carefully though as not to jostle any other surprises) about Michele’s terribly bad luck. Oh well. Shit happens, Amirite?

Thankfully, we did not let this incident stain (see what we did there?) the rest of our trip to Kenya, an amazing place with equally amazing people. Right off the bat, we felt some relief (it’s just too easy) being back to where we could wear shorts and t-shirts without the risk of unintentionally offending anybody. Nairobi itself is pretty diverse landscape wise. With forests in the middle of the city with great wildlife and hiking, a modern urban core, some really nice areas, as well as some areas with crippling poverty. The people of Nairobi were insanely positive, like Stuart Smalley positive, regardless of their situation. Kenyans give a whole new meaning to glass half full. We arrived in Nairobi just days after 45’s “shithole countries” statement, and although his name did come up a lot, it was important for the people to make sure we understood they weren’t offended by the words, but instead they took it as a challenge to show how wonderful their country and people really are. Kenya, way to be the bigger person!

Karura Forest

Our favorite area of Nairobi was Karura forest, where you can run, walk, hike, bike, or skip merrily through a completely isolated lush forest smack dab in the middle of the city with a surprising amount of wildlife. Butterflies were literally everywhere. Monkeys, dic-dics, waterfalls, and solitude, we loved this place. Probably the only real negative with Nairobi was an unofficial “curfew” of sorts that we had multiple people advise us of in advance. Specifically, we were told it’s completely safe to be out at night, just don’t walk anywhere past 6pm. While we never tempted fate by disobeying this rule, we also never felt unsafe in the least. Makes us wonder what happens past this witching hour, maybe a Hunger Games type scenario? Well, given the crime history of the city we are happy to be “blissfully ignorant” about this, just this once.

Slum Tour
After settling into our digs, we booked a tour of some of the Mathare slums in Nairobi with three former street kids, Donga, Cheddaz, and Kissmart. They grew up as street kids, homeless and basically alone (except for the other street kids) from as early as five years old. Their stories were both amazing and heartbreaking. They saw friends killed with guns and machetes, they stole, conned, and worse just to survive. They were our guides through some parts of Nairobi would never have been able to go to by ourselves.

With them we were able to get at least a little bit better understanding what it would have been like growing up and living on the streets in the slums (hint: not easy). These guys not only survived, but now they want to give back and help kids who are in the same situation they were. They’re trying to do this through teaching music and being strong role models. They do these tours now as a way to give back as well as part of their healing process. Talking about the things they’ve done will never remove them, but it helps them to talk about it and acknowledge that where they have come from.

As we travel, especially recent travel, we have witnessed some absolutely terrible poverty. It’s hard to see, especially with not knowing what to do to help. This is just as true back home as when we travel. One thing we will take from this experience is, at the very very least, we will be sure to say hi, be kind, ask someone how their doing if they are struggling. They have a story and just being human is an easy to do.

Asante Sana, Squash Banana
So, Kenya is a fascinating country with a lot to offer. It’s more than just a place for safaris… But, we came here in fact to go on safari and It. Was. Awesome.  We took a slightly ambitious 10 day safari around Kenya with a great company called Best Camping Safari.

Chase bank, however, had a minor panic attack when we asked them to wire money to a man in Kenya who we had met on the internet. Apparently that sets off some red flags. Good eye, Chase, good eye.

There really is something amazing about seeing a giraffe just chilling by a tree, or watching a dopey baby elephant swinging its trunk around for fun, or seeing a pride of lions on the hunt. Giraffe meat is delicious by the way. Surprisingly tender and aromatic. Jk, not sure we’ll be able to eat meat again after the cuteness and animal bonding from this trip. Except for chickens. Chickens are dicks… eat away!

Ten days is a long time to be in a car, ours broke down roughly five times (3 overheating, 1 tire, and 1 transmission replacement), but this is what you get with the budget end of the safari spectrum. Still so worth it.

The safari will go down as one of the biggest highlights of our year long journey. We got to visit Maasai Mara, Lake Nakuru, Samburu, Mt Kenya, and Amboseli during the excursion.

We found all of the “big five”, but, to be honest, seeing some of the more “common” guys like the warthogs, giraffes, and gazelles were probably our faves.  Please click slide show down below to enjoy the fruits of our labor!

For anyone who has gone to a music festival and camped before, do you remember how good that shower felt when you got back home? Take that and multiply it by a hundred, that’s how good the shower felt when we finally go to our hotel by the airport in Nairobi on our way out. After we showered up and ensured that we would have a different flight crew than we had on the way into Kenya (sorry again about that bathroom), we fell asleep to the jungle-free sounds of some well-deserved AC and slept HARD!

Seychelles
Gearing up for SE Asia, we decided to take a short beach vacay out in the middle of the Indian Ocean. Tropical hikes, sandy beaches, rum drinks, blue waters, more rum drinks. We’ll spare you the fab details and leave you with this photo.

Q & A

How was the food?

Meh. It was quite frankly not that interesting. The best thing we had was chapati, which is basically a pancake / crepe like thing. To be honest we didn’t seek out the food as much here, and the safari often just consisted of picnic lunches or breakfast buffets, so we may not be the best ones to ask.

What was your favorite animal?

Trent:  Giraffes. They’re cool.
Meesh:  Is ‘all of them’ an acceptable answer? If not, then the elephant obviously.

Reader Polls

Click Below for Photo Gallery

Egypt, we’ve all heard about it since we were very very young. So many movies, cartoons, books, and dreams have talked about this mysterious and ancient land. To be honest, neither Michele nor Trent ever thought they would make it here, even as they were planning this trip. It took quite a bit of research to be convinced that it was safe given the way everything is portrayed in our news at home about the terrorist attacks and general bad stuff going on. 

We All Good
So, probably the first thing to mention is that you always feel very safe here. Remember, these attacks are happening in a lot of places that we still feel safe (London, New York, Las Vegas, etc), but the unknown part of Cairo made it seem more dangerous. To set the record straight, we were comfortable here, especially Cairo. If you go up towards Gaza, well, that may be different, but the main tourist stops felt as safe as anywhere we had been. So, after convincing ourselves that this was actually possible, this odd feeling of disbelief and excitement took over. We were actually going to Egypt, and we were going to see the last standing wonder of the ancient world, the Pyramids of Giza. Given that we had limited time for Egypt prior to our Kenyan adventure, and adding in the fact that we agreed to go slow, we spent time in Cairo and Cairo only. No regrets though, we’re just here for your pyramids and mummies. For now at least.

When we arrived, we figured out quickly that Egypt was going to be just a little different. We booked a hotel transfer, and a man named Mohammed met us almost as soon as we got off the plane. We found that kind of weird, apparently its ok for people to meet you past security and customs here if they are part of a tour company. So he stepped us through the whole process of getting our visa, getting passports stamped, walking us through security, teaching us to eat, as well as speak Arabic. Okay, maybe not all of that, but still quite a bit for a ride from the airport. We actually hit it off pretty well with Mohammed, but we’ll come back to that later.

BEEP BEEP
The first thing that you notice in Cairo is the traffic. Dear God. Cars weaving everywhere, in and out, and honking. Non-stop honking, the entire time you are here. Seriously, there should be a limit to the number of times you can honk within a day. Honking for you to move over, honking when they’ve been cut off, honking to let you know they are passing you, honking to say hello. Similar to New York City, if New Yorkers popped adderall, snorted an eightball and chased it all down with a double shot of espresso. Cairo is the biggest city in Africa, and it shows. The greater Cairo area has almost 23 million people living there. For perspective, NYC only has about 8.5 million. Luckily, Morocco traffic prepared us for this pretty well. For instance, Trent just sits back, closes his eyes, and hums “Jesus take the wheel” and lets everything go. Very freeing. On the other hand, Egyptians have a great sense of humor. One day when walking across a large bridge two guys stuck in traffic jumped on a motorcycle and rode it down the sidewalk right towards us. One of the guys simply smiles and yells, “This is Egypt!” to us as they careen down the sidewalk towards other pedestrians. Road rules are for wussies.

Zamalek
We stayed on a “quiet” (by Cairo standards) little island in the middle of the Nile river called Zamalek. It ended up being a good call, we could actually walk around, go for a run, and find good eats pretty easily. The island is host to many boutique hotels, trendy restaurants, and expats. It’s surrounded on all sides by the Nile River and while at first that may seem appealing if you love being by water, the Nile (at least during the time of year we visited) is nothing to write home about. Along with slow boats and upscale river cruises, the city’s trash also uses the Nile form of travel apparently. Even though it had a lot of plastic bags and coke cans (U.S.A!!), it is the longest river in the world, so it was still kinda cool to see.

Ok, we’re not going to lie. The single biggest reason why we came to Egypt was to go to the Pyramids. Actually, it was Trent’s #1 thing he would go see in the world if he could before this trip ever happened. It’s rare with such lofty expectations that something as simple as buildings made of stone could live up to them, but, they did and then some. Of course, words and pictures will never do them justice.

As your driving up to them, you can start to make out the silhouette of these massive structures looming over you in the distance. It gives you chills. At this point they are just shadowy behemoths, but as you get closer it starts to become more clear how massive and old they are. 4500 years old and they are still standing right in front of you. Crazy. There’s not really much to say about touring the pyramids ground, we had an egyptologist with us who gave us some great historical context.

But, really, it’s just about being there. And, apparently tourists taking really cheesy pictures like holding the top of the pyramid from a distance. But, who would do such a thing?

At the end of the tour you stop by the Sphinx who appears to be guarding the ancient grounds.  The Sphinx is technically huge, but, after seeing the pyramids it is surprisingly underwhelming.

Still cool, but, you should probably start the tour here instead of ending it, because the pyramids themselves are just too awesome. It’s actually hard not to feel bad for the Sphinx. Kind of like Carnie Wilson of Wilson Phillips, she was part of one of the greatest pop songs ever created as well as some acting success. But people seem to remember her sisters more. Poor Carnie, I mean Sphinx.

“He was Born in Arizona, Got a Condo Made of Stone-a”

“We’re just not museum people”. Not sure how many times we have said that throughout our journeys, and we’ve had a lot friends who sympathize with us too. But, even if you’re not a museum fan, go to this one. Its waaaaayyyyy too massive to see even close to everything, so it’s worth having an Egyptologist guide to get you through the highlights as a pro tip. We’ve never seen artifacts as well preserved as the ones here.

The color and paint on the jewelry makes it look like you could have bought it yesterday. Oh, and it’s a mere 5000 years old. No biggie. Of course the highlight of the museum is getting to see King Tut’s tomb and treasure. He’s not supposed to have been a “major” pharaoh, having only ruled 9 years and died very young. This fact makes the amount of treasure, clothes, furniture, and jewelry that was contained in his tomb so staggering, and equally hard to fathom how much crap a major pharaoh would have had. Apparently minimalism hadn’t caught on there yet. How many frickin’ footstools do you need, man? 

Egyptian Hospitality

Remember that guy Mohamed we mentioned earlier? The one memory, even with the pyramids, that we will take us from his place was when Mohammed invited us to go to his home and have dinner with his family. One thing about travel, you learn to say yes to things you normally wouldn’t. Dinner with someone you just met and their entire family? Always. Stranger asking you into his van for some candy? Why not. You get the idea. (Unless it’s riding elephants, then Just Say No)

The level of hospitality you receive when going into an Egyptians home for dinner as a guest is overwhelming. Mohamed picked us up (an hour drive for him in traffic), and brought us into his home where his wife, Lamyaa, had cooked for us. The amount of food served was similar to a Thanksgiving feast. As soon as we had finished anything, they would literally plead with us to eat more. “Please, please eat!”. Often just putting more food on our plate. The thing is, it would be accurate to describe the means that they possess as very modest by U.S. standards. The only reason to point this out is that we were blown away by how much they shared, when they did not appear to have an abundance for themselves. Not only shared, but they loved sharing and took pride in it. It was beyond humbling and touching. So we ate, and we ate, probably more than we’ve eaten before. Michele had to discreetly unbutton her pants to make room for more. We got to meet their two sons, both incredible kids who, apparently, both want to be famous soccer players (and maybe a doctor if you ask Mohammed.) Lamyaa was working towards her masters and taught math (in English) at a local school. Just exceptional people. As we were leaving, Lamyaa pulled Mohamed aside and gestured towards a mostly empty cabinet where they displayed their nicer items near the kitchen table. She wanted us to have a gift.

Us, strangers until that night, and they wanted to share something from their home. They did not have a lot, but they wanted us to have, as far as we could tell, one of their nicer things. Lamyaa picked out a handmade Egyptian cat god, Bastet, from their display and gave it to Michele. (Shown above) It was one of the most generous gestures we have ever seen. And then, the entire family, kids and all, piled into their car to drive us the hour plus back to our place because they wanted to say goodbye. One of the best experiences we’ve had on our travels, hands down!

That is about all the we can tell you about our time in Cairo. Besides Zemalak, the city is about as basic as it can get.

Q & A

You mention it was safe, did you ever feel unsafe there?

Not really, it took some getting used to the police / military presence everywhere. Guys with large automatic weapons standing around every major street and site. But, you actually do get used to it after a bit.

I’ve heard the harassment is bad here, is that true? In truth, yes it is. Young men (probably in their 20s) and younger boys frequently make crude remarks and gestures to women. It’s not every man, but it’s enough to make you think ‘wow, this is a problem.’

What’s the food like?

Other than our delicious meal at Mohammed’s, we found the cuisine elsewhere just so-so. We did have some excellent Mexican food though – go figure.

Is it expensive?

Very cheap actually. With tourism taking a big hit since the Arab Spring, the dollar goes a loooong way here. A liter of water is 5-10 cents, a beer would run you maybe 50 cents, and you can get a meal for a few bucks.

Click above for a bunch of pics of the pyramids.

When someone invites you to their wedding in Italy and tells you there will be sailing involved, you don’t decline. You don’t even pretend to ponder. You say yes. Did we mention that the sailing was basically on a pirate ship?

Initially, we weren’t sure if we would make it back to Italy during our trip (there are so many places to see and you only have a 90 day Schengen Visa to do it), but fortunately for us we made it back to Italy to attend a wedding in Positano. What followed was an unexpected and delightful turn in our travels leading us to hunker down in Rome for 12 days. We will come back to this, but first, Positano and the Amalfi Coast.

If you haven’t heard of the Amalfi Coast, it’s worth a Google (or a Yahoo, a Bing, or you can Ask Jeeves). Quaint little vertical villages tucked into cliffs along the coastline with incredible views. Views and stairs.  Stairs and views. Summing up, beautiful towns with stairs and views, make sense? After hanging out in Naples for a night, we took a shuttle to Positano where we were immediately met with somewhere around 10,000 steps to climb. Quite alright, you see, as we knew we’d be partaking in lots of alcohol and food over the next few days. Cardio for the liver and such. The roads in Positano are connected via winding cement staircases. You can easily get lost and have fun at the same time. Here, Michele will brag that she scaled the stairs more times than Trent did. What might be a quick trip to the market for a peach, ends up being a serious glute burner stair master workout.

It never hurts having friends in Europe. It also never hurts to have friends in Europe who are getting married in one of the most beautiful settings on the planet. The now newlywed couple, Chris and Katie, are two of the best people and we can’t thank them enough for inviting us to share their special event. I mean, this should be a shot across the bow for our other friends. Why haven’t you invited us to exotic locations and pampered us with sailing on a Spanish Galleon? We’re anxiously awaiting your attempt at topping this occasion.

Anyway, no big surprise but the first day of sailing was incredible. One day we anchored off of the coast and swam, drank, watched friends get married, then drank and swam some more. Not bad. Another day was a trip to Capri, we did not see George Clooney but Trent swears he felt his presence. The view from the boat was pretty okay. You got to see the vantage point of the little cliff towns that you always see on the post cards. Hundreds of colorful little houses sprinkled among cliffs with the deep blue water all around you. Also, not a single Jimmy Buffett song was played. Life is good.  But, you know what was just as good? Finally being around cool people in a social setting again. We both need space and quiet at times, but we’ve been missing friends a lot lately. Perfect timing. So, here’s to Chris and Katie, thanks again and keep being awesome.

A couple days later, we found ourselves in a café with zero plan of where to head to next. It should be noted that we needed to decide by the next day, as that’s when we had to be out of our place in Positano. Still working on that whole planning thing. Baby steps I guess. Luckily, it only took a little deliberation to decide that we would go back to Rome. While not new to either of us, it’s one of our favorite cities. There is something quite magical about walking outside and being surrounded by 2000+ year old history around every corner. We found a place in the Jewish Quarter and booked it for 5 nights. We had hit the jackpot with this place. A far cry from some of our places where 10 people shared one tiny bathroom. This place was all ours, no wondering if that hair on the sink is yours. You know… oh, you know. Anyway, our host Gaia was so friendly, if you ever go to Italy let us know and we’ll put you in touch to stay in one of her places, you won’t regret it. The apartment had several sunny rooms and a full kitchen equipped with all the necessary utensils.

 It was situated right next to ruins, the Tiber River and walking distance to everything. The ruins next door to us featured nightly piano concerts. We went early to watch the performers warm up, which was basically like getting a free show. All you had to do was pretend to take pictures of everything, giving yourself enough time to loiter and take it all in. It was great. We could relax, write, read, and get to know the area (and the pizza) on a deeper level. We spent a lot of time cooking meals from scratch as the grocery stores in Italy have the freshest of well, everything! So, our initial five-night stay got extended to eight… and soon after to eleven nights. Easily our longest stay yet.

We ate all the pasta and pizza you could imagine. For someone who doesn’t do dairy well, or even okay, Michele would ultimately sacrifice her gut for the land of flour, water and cheese. Remember those good poops from our last post? Kiss ‘em goodbye!

We did our usual site seeing, checking out the marvels of Ancient Rome and roaming the Borghese Gardens. If you haven’t been to Rome, note it down on your bucket list.

In fact, scratch out most and put this first. Go there and be prepared to walk around with your mouth agape the entire time. Truly amazing. The Colosseum, Forum, and Palatine, along with the random ruins peppered throughout the city, is a marvel in and of itself. Like taking a step back in time. The Colosseum and Forum, in particular, are mind blowing.  However, we’d be remiss if we didn’t note one “site”. So, on the other hand, this trip we made it to Circus Maximus.

Look at the reviews and you’ll be anxious to go, mostly 4 and 5 stars talking about amazing history and such. The people that left these reviews are suffering from what is known as cognitive dissonance. Basically, justifying the experience because they wanted it to be what they had built up in their mind. Let us save you some trouble, go to any Midwestern town and find an empty dirt field, ideally an old dirt track of some kind so it’s in an oval. Make sure there are no real trees and a decent amount of trash scattered about. Guess what, you’ve been to Circus Maximus! The history is cool, it’s what used to be the site of the chariot games and the setting of Ben Hur. But, underwhelming is being kind.

“Clark, baby, I can picture it in my mind, and it’s breathtaking.”
– Mama Griswold

Over the course of our time in Rome, we just lived life. We wandered through used book stores, sought out endless gelato, enjoyed long runs along the river, and counted the cats everyday at Torre Argentina. Torre Argentina is a fun ruin where hundreds of cats live. Locals take care and feed the cats, who mostly bask in the sun and walk around. Torre Argentina is home to currently 250 cats! Meow. Oh, and this is also where Julius Caesar was murdered. Et tu brute! Michele got her nose pierced at one point, because “it just felt like a good day to do it.” So far, no nose infection; fingers crossed. We visited local bars and watched Roma football (soccer) games and cheered with some diehard fans.

Europe loves football. Football is everything. We danced in Trastavere Square listening to acoustic English songs and sat on a lover’s bridge enjoying the local scene. Our only regret might have been wandering into a bar based on reviews only to find out it was a love-of-everything, Pittsburg bar. Steeler paraphernalia, ICB-light beer posters, and statue of Jesus wearing a Steelers helmet. Too soon. American tourists came in just to get photos with the bartender. It was awkward so we left.

One mistake, not that bad. We love Italy. We love the language, the over-the-top gesticulation, the food, the romance, the vibe. For a place where there is often a language barrier, strikes messing up the public transit system, a little pricey, but it just feels comfortable to us.

So, it’s on to Prague next, recharged and ready to go to a place that neither of us know really anything about. But hey, isn’t that what this thing we’re doing is about? Until next time drifters, and keep us informed of where you guys want to meet up with us. We’ll be out of Europe soon, but there is whole rest of the world to see.

STATS TO DATE
Chocolate croissants consumed:  TONS
Beds slept in:  25
Cropdustings by old folks: 7?

NOTICINGS
Europe doesn’t seem to neuter their dogs. So many balls.

QUOTES
“That’s the reason why you don’t go around licking random things”
— (reply) “Well… that’s one of the reasons”

Q&A from friends: 

“Which places would you considering living since the beginning of your travels?”

Most places around Europe would make for easy living. Europe in general is just, well, easy. Michele bases her love of cities based on their love of dogs and whether or not the grocery stores carry crunchy peanut butter. However, assuming we could get peanut butter anywhere thanks to Amazon, all of Europe has been an incredible experience so far. As far as living goes, we are certainly both partial to Rome. It just makes sense. Beautiful at every turn.  So far, Denver is hard to beat in our minds. The city has us wrapped around its finger!

“Are you coming home at all during your trip?”

Yes! Well, possibly. We are becoming more aware of the fact that this trip is ours and we can pop in and out of the U.S. as we please. At the beginning, we thought that we wouldn’t as flights over the big blue can be quite pricey. But hey it’s only money right. It’s more important for us that we fill our hearts on friends and family than try to save every penny. We are currently deciding whether or not a short break to see loved ones before hopping to the next continent is in the cards for us. Stay tuned.

 

As this is being written, we’ve been on the road for just over 2 ½ months. Writing that down makes it look like such a short period of time, but it feels like it was closer to 2 ½ years already. Time moves pretty slow when you’re seeing new things and not settling into any one place for longer than a week or two, often less. Even with the perception of being slowed down, we’ve struggled to find time and energy to write down our thoughts on what was one of the most rewarding and trying portions of our trip to date. It’s

not that we didn’t want to, we love you all and want, nay need, to keep you up to date and share our adventures. It’s that… well, traveling has its ups and downs… this platitude is one of those obvious statements that are so plain and commonsensical that you feel like you’re insulting people buy saying it. Kind of like, “what goes up most come down” or “what happens in Jamaica stays in Jamaica”. You get the idea. We experienced a lot of these on this portion, and we are just now coming out of the travel and heat induced daze, surfacing just in time to share with y’all our first time in eastern Europe. We hope you’ll forgive the delay in getting this one done! Anyway, this installment of Two Kids Adrift finds our heroes leaving the United Kingdom and flying to the land of goulash, paprika, amazing bridges, hidden bars, and a rich history. On a whim (a theme that is likely to continue with our somewhat cathartic and somewhat stress inducing lack of planning), we decided to fly to Budapest (Hungary). We knew very little about Budapest, save others having said things like “I hear Budapest is cool”, it is by the way, or “I always wanted to go to Budapest”, (which you should). But, it was just the kind of place we were looking for. Different, cool, easy, and being a little cheaper never hurts as well.

Budapest was perfect for us and what we are starting to hone in on as what we are looking for in these wacky travels.

For starters, we’ve become completely cool with the fact that we don’t need to do the most touristy things and we aren’t art museum people, which, though we’ve mentioned before, has only galvanized further as we move through this year. Rather, we want to be able to hang around in the town and get a sense of the local people and culture. To find the hole in the wall place where we can hang out and hopefully strike up a conversation with somebody from the area. And, importantly, just live in the city for a bit.

Budapest wasn’t built around sites to see for us, instead we just walked around, popped into the occasional café, and tried to take in the view. And there were some amazing things to see. It’s a hard city to describe, it’s two very different areas (Buda and Pest) separated by the Danube River. The bridges connecting the two areas are spectacular and used as a place to hang out at night. Nothing is as awe inspiring as some of the waterfalls we’ve seen, or the ruins of larger cities in Europe, but the feeling of Budapest is comfortable and contagious. You want to get know more about the people and its interesting past (occupied by both Nazi Germany and the Soviets, at one point at the same time), you want to just let it wash over you. Not wash over you in sort of weird, sticky way. More like wash over you like when your super tired and that pleasant feeling of the first parts of sleep start to take hold, it’s better if you just relax and enjoy the moment.

The one must see item for us was to visit the Ruin Pubs in the Jewish center of Budapest. These pubs are built into old abandoned buildings and empty lots. They’re not very well advertised, no big signs or anything to let you know where to find them. Most of them have big courtyards decorated with funky “found” types of items (think good yard sale kind of items), lots of colors and lights, local artists decorate the walls, and usually have a younger vibe. They started as illegal “pop-up” bars, but have since gone legit. If you ever find yourself in Budapest, check them out. It’ll be one of the coolest drinking / hangout establishment you come across. Other than that, there was a lot of playing cards, running along the river, and just living in Budapest. Not glamorous or anything, but it felt right in a lot of ways.

From Budapest, we decided to stay in Eastern Europe and take a bus to a country that as recent as the nineties was at war for its independence, beautiful Croatia. Mountains, crazy blue water, castles, great people, islands, great food, ties to Game of Thrones. It was awesome. Except for one thing. The fucking heat. Now we usually will try to refrain from using such language for our younger followers, but this is the only way to describe the heat wave that was going on during our visit. In Europe, they called heat wave “Lucifer”. We think that it’s giving Lucifer a bad rap to do so. Nothing puts you in a mood quite like walking around in 105+ heat, not cool weather gods! Heat aside (for now), we were fortunate enough to experience a lot of different things in Croatia. From the slower and livable capital city of Zagreb, to the awe inspiring “Hanging Lakes”, to islands in the Adriatic, wrapping up in the fairytale city of Dubrovnik, we fit a lot into our 2+ weeks here. Some may say, a little too much…

Our Croatian adventure started in the capital, Zagreb. Zagreb was surprisingly easy. Everyone spoke perfect English, the public transit was easy and cheap, Uber was there (and was crazy cheap), and since it was a city it had everything we needed to take care of some lingering personal matters. For instance, Trent’s hair is not something that grows out gracefully. Nah, the sides grow out like a cotton swab. With the top, well, the top does the best it can. Zagreb was the perfect place to take care of things like haircuts, much-needed waxings, planning, really lots of mundane things. There wasn’t really much to see in Zagreb, but there was something to eat. A recommendation from our Uber driver, we went to a place that specialized in Strukli. Strukli is essentially baked dough layered with tons of cheese and can be either sweet or savory. Think baked mac & cheese – plus lasagna – plus truffle oil – plus unicorns. The only bad thing here is it is served flaming lava hot and destroys the impatient mouth (Michele) like a hot pocket. Still worth it.

From Zagreb it is a short bus ride to one of coolest places on the planet, Plitvice National Park. Picture the bluest water you can imagine, add in jungle-ish foliage, and then imagine that there are dozens of lakes that are essentially infinity pools that lead to waterfalls, that are stacked on top of each other spread throughout the park. Definitely check out the pics below on this one, no filters used! Now, this place must have been amazing, because it was the hottest day ever recorded at Plitvice the day we chose to go (around 42 Centigrade and it felt like 110 Fahrenheit). Add in the fact that we were there during high tourist season, and it could have been miserable. There were so many freaking people, there were lines that lasted well over an hour (with no shade) in parts. Lesson learned this trip… avoid Europe during high season if at all possible. Luckily, we found some off piste areas that let us skirt the crowd and still take in the views. According to my phone, we walked nearly ten miles the heat wave that day.Even given some challenges with heat and crowds, sooooo completely worth it!

Exhausted, we had a 3-hour bus ride to get to the port town of Split. Split was supposed to be a stop to explore the 2^nd largest city in Croatia. Mainly, we just wanted to not be outside in the sun. Walking around when it was as hot and humid as it was in Split kind of puts you in an immediate bad mood. Not the best thing to be in when you’re staying in a 150 square ft. room on the 13^th floor with the same person you’ve been next too for a couple of months. Needless to say, Split was not explored as fully as other places. And that is okay.

Next up are were the islands of Croatia, initially we were going to stay 6 days on just one of them before moving on. As a last minute adjustment, we decided to split up the stay 3 days on two different islands, Hvar and Korcula. While on Hvar we had one of the best days we’ve had and one of the toughest. We stayed in a little village named Milna, where all the locals share the same surname of Tudor. Which is weird from a dating standpoint, but, I guess they make it work? Milna was tiny and built into cliffs surrounded by olive orchards. Pretty picturesque. But, this meant getting anywhere was pretty difficult. No direct paths and we did not have a car. Our best day on Hvar we ventured out the beach. The best beach (remote and beautiful), was a “short” hike away, but we had no idea how to get there. Sometimes getting lost is the best thing you can do. We ended up completely blazing new trails through olive orchards along cliffs until we found our way. Now, this beach was the nudist beach, but it was so hot we definitely did not care. The water was refreshing and the views (non-human at least), breathtaking. This was a great day. The next day was less so, Michele got pretty sick and was bed ridden the entire night and next day. There’s something very disconcerting about being sick and away from home. Add to that the fact that this tiny village did not have a store let alone a pharmacy, that made us feel even more remote.

But, all is well that ends well as everyone survived and we moved on the next island of Korcula. Korcula had more charm than Hvar, and we had more things close to us. A short stay here with similar things, swimming in the deep blue sea, oppressive heat, and catching up on the most recent season of Game of Thrones. Through some AirBnb mis-communication we ended up in a place with no air-conditioning. Normally not a problem on Korcula where the average high should have been 81 degrees, but it was 97. So even though Korcula was lovely, we wanted to get to Dubrovnik (and air conditioning) as fast as we could. What’s the fastest way? Rent a speed boat to take 2 hours across the Adriatic. Hell yes.

Ah Dubrovnik, if you watch Game of Thrones you’ve probably seen some of it and know it as “Kings Landing”. The TV series may not even do it justice to be honest.

A castle fairytale town with orange rooftops, cliffs, blue waves crashing on the city, and walkable fortress walls that can use to circle the amazing little city. Speaking of GoT, we splurged on a Game of Thrones walking tour through the old town in Dubrovnik where a lot of it is filmed. <Cough… Nerds! Cough…> We completely geeked out, and it was awesome. Our tour guide was involved with the filming (as many locals are) and had fun insider information about the show and the actors.

So, one really important factoid about Croatia that is vital to happy travels. Do not order a “mojito” in Croatia.

You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means. – Inigo Montoya

Mojitos are delicious, and it pains us to give this advice. However, their version of a mojito is just basically sugar rum water with some mint leaves dropped in as a garnish. Sound good? Nope, it’s not. You’re welcome future Croatian travelers, think of us next time you are not choking down an over priced rum-water.

-t&m

Favorite Quote in Croatia:
“I don’t want to discover anything else about myself”

A Q&A and other musings from Michele:

We get a lot of questions from friends and family about what it is like traveling full-time. I am writing this portion for some of my more curious friends who ask questions such as, and I quote, “How are your poops going? These are the things I need to know, Michele.” Or questions such as, “Is it hard being around each other 24/7?” “Is everything amazing?” My adorable well-meaning Grandma even asked, “What will you do about your period?” I will answer this question now. The rest of the women in the world also bleed so I think I’ll be alright.

“Is everything amazing?”

Short answer, yes and no. Traveling has been exceptional at times. We have seen beautiful architecture, breath-taking scenery, enjoyed spectacular people watching and have effortlessly floated in the super-salty Adriatic Sea while marveling at how incredibly fortunate we are. We have tasted the best coffees and beers, had delicious and unusual meals and meditated over the sounds of ocean waves. We’ve been lucky in that our health hasn’t been compromised and we still have all (well most) of the original items we brought to get us through our travels. Yes. Life has been great. Let’s be real though. Are these magical moments happening everyday? H – E – DOUBLE HOCKEY STICKS, NO! This is travel and not a vacation. We are figuring out how to live in a place and not party it up every moment. Not many, especially us, can withstand constant partying and vacationing. We both get bored of it. And we’ve definitely been bored at times. Neither of us do well with boredom. Most of the time is not exploring new caves or waterfalls, nor are we dancing and toasting to our fancy lives. Most of the time is spent researching the next place of travel, looking for accommodations with a washing machine and finding ways to discreetly smell my armpits. There have been a couple days where we laid around all day, a couple days where we spent most of our time in coffee shops writing (this is one of those days) and some days walking around in blistering heat annoyed at the lack of public bathrooms. Many places outside of the U.S. require you to pay to use public restrooms (something we were already accustomed to), however there have been numerous free urinal stands in many cities we’ve gone. I have to pay money to pee and he doesn’t?? The feminist in me wants to make a deal of it and then I snap back to reality and realize my privilege is boring and no one cares what I have to say. By the way, “toilet” is the universal word wisely used in many places. I asked one woman where the restroom was and she looked confused. I repeated and she shook her head no until I said ‘toilet.’ Ah yes, the toilet, around the corner miss. I don’t like asking for the toilet. It leaves nothing up to the imagination. Now restroom, I could be going to wash my hands, powder my nose or fix my hair. Toilet though. It gets right to the point. “Where can I go empty myself?”

Speaking of, how are your poops and other things…

Within the past couple years, I’ve met some of the best people in my life. One of these people, we will call her Lauren, is an inquisitive individual and always asks the hard-hitting questions. She wants to know how my poops are going.

Here it goes. I’m not sure why, but typically when I travel, my bowel movements become irregular if non-existent. I’ve never known why. Traveling days make me tired, but I don’t see why they change my bathroom routine. From the onset of this trip, I was worried I would have the same issues I typically do and not being able to use the bathroom for days and weeks, have to resort to laxatives or something of that nature. To my surprise, this hasn’t been the case. If anything they have been small and underwhelming. Possibly due to eating less and burning calories like crazy. I suspect the bowels will be more of an issue in areas where the water isn’t as potable as it is in Europe.

Checking out what you’ve made in the toilet bowl is a good way to see how your body is responding to change and to tell you what it needs. I’m no stranger and a frequent purveyor of the Bristol stool chart. Recently, I believe my poops are telling me that I am underfed and dehydrated. It has been upper 90s in some places and we are sweating buckets. Lately, it feels as though we are just in search of water as the water we bring barely makes it an hour. On top of that, when I am overly hot, I tend not to eat. Food just doesn’t sound good when there is sweat rolling off the tip of your nose. Needless to say, I have lost a few pounds and for once, it doesn’t feel good. I’m feeling very weak and when the place you’re sleeping averages 80 degrees inside, there isn’t much motivation for working out. I’m looking forward to getting to places where we can get back into our running (and yoga) routine and eat healthy on the regular. Speaking of eating healthy, it takes more effort to do while traveling than living in health-conscious Denver. Grocery stores tend to be smaller if not tiny and the choices are limited, especially when our cooking utensils are limited. Eating at restaurants gets too expensive and we like to start from scratch. We get by with what we can find, but lately it’s been muesli and yogurt, deli meat sandwiches, eggs and bananas. To top it off, so many places don’t even carry peanut butter. What is that?? Salt, pepper, olive oil, peanut butter. Those are the staples. Nothing more, nothing less.

Is it hard always being around each other?

At times, yes. We’ve been trying to give each other space, but it can be difficult if your accommodations are small and it’s 105 degrees outside. We don’t have the answers here, but hopefully one day we’ll be able to write an enlightening post as others have done on how we were able to survive without smothering each other with a pillow. This is a work in progress. One thing I have learned is that I need lots of space. I thrive on independence and naturally I’m able to get this at home. Traveling however, I don’t get that space and don’t realize I need it until I’m pissed and ready to punch someone. Getting the space I need before I “need” it is the key. I’ve been meditating a lot since we started traveling, which helps give me some time out, however that’s typically under 30 minutes and quite frankly not enough. WHY ARE YOU BREATHING SO LOOOOOOUUUUUDDD? Yeah. I’m a real pain in the butt when I don’t have alone time.

We are both becoming more mindful about our individual needs and trying to respect them. It’s only been a couple of months and we aren’t too concerned as we’ve always traveled really well together. We will get there.

How long will you travel? Do you think it will be a whole year?

Who’s to say. Our timeline is flexible and we have no immediate desire to see all places on earth. We’ve already put a few countries on the backburner and are content with our decisions. We may travel longer than a year which is what we set out to do, we may travel less. We may travel some and take a break to come home for a bit. Again, not sure. One thing is for sure though, we have not stopped missing our dog child since we’ve left. There are points when my heart hurts because to think of him. Of course, we knew that we’d would miss him, but we didn’t realize the intensity it would have. I personally think about him all the time and dream of him most nights. He is my buddy, my pal, my safety blanket, a paci of sorts, and there is nothing better than coming home to him every day. We have full-on conversations and he’s the funniest dog I know. No one makes me laugh harder or cry softer. He is the Zen master. He is my banana-face, Russell. If anything pulls us back permanently it will be because of him.

-m

“Because unlike some other Robin Hoods, I can speak with an English accent.” – Cary Elwes

Full disclosure, this is being written while sitting in a ruin bar in Budapest drinking pálinka (a Hungarian liquor that Trent is convinced tastes like fig and dish-soap, Skol!). You’ve been warned. The quote “Write drunk. Edit sober.” has never been more true for us than while traveling. It’s hard to get up the gumption to wax poetic about your travels when there is so much to see, so much to do. This is especially true for me (Michele). I’m a shit writer when I’m clear headed and I’m a shit editor in terms of grammar and spelling when I’m not. I’m constantly reminded of this by one Simon Little and his pristine golden pen. This is your one mention buddy so drink it up 😉

This post is actually about our travels in England and should most definitely be read with an English accent. England was a breath of fresh air, new blood, a leaf turned over, and any other idiom you can come up with. Initially, we had booked arrangements to Amsterdam, but then caught wind of a music festival in London featuring one of our favorites, Sylvan Esso. Errrrrrrr (tire squeals for those slow on the uptake). Reroute. We headed for London and all its glory, and it was a great call.  The festival was what we needed. They had a large mass yoga sessions in the early morning, which was a great way to ground myself for the day. (Eyeroll) No really, it was refreshing, except the photographers roaming the mats made it hard to stay focused on my breathing. Don’t take my photo dude! My hammies are tight and this downward dog looks more like a bloated bear crawl. Trent is not enlightened in the ways of the yogi, Namaste. The highlight was being front and center (literally) to see Sylvan Esso. Apparently, the word has not quite gotten out yet in England with regard to their being awesome. First Brexit now not knowing Sylvan Esso? Tough year for the U.K. Food trucks are ubiquitous at music festivals, this one did have some names that rival some of the best ever.  Some notable mentions were Buddah Bowl, Wrapper’s Delight (Trent’s pick for food truck name of the year) and the mac-daddy of all mac n’ cheese trucks, Mac to the Future. Along with Sylvan Esso, we saw Foals, Bonobo, RYX, Maggie Rogers and Laura Marling. It was glorious. Except the one carnival ride we decided we had large enough balls to ride. It left us both on the verge of puking. Never. Again.

In London we stayed in Hackney Wick, an area formally known as the most dangerous area of London before a recent gentrification. They were known for knife attacks (yikes!). Additionally, a few days before our trip (hotel already booked and pre-paid), a series of acid attacks where teenagers had thrown corrosive acid on strangers had occurred. Don’t worry family. Perps were arrested and all was well. After we got there we saw it was a bit of unneeded worry. It was a neat neighborhood, boasting copious hipster shops and healthy eateries. The first night we went to a formal vintage dress shop that at night doubled as a bar with metal bands playing upstairs. Definitely our speed. We splurged for a show in the West End of London for the musical Kinky Boots. Go see this if it comes by you, it was awesome. Great story, cool choreography (jazz hands everyone!), and amazing music. In the following days, there was more exploration of local yoga classes and runs through Victoria Park. Well done London.

“Balls to the wall. 60% of the time.” – fellow travel lover, Debbie Marshall

This bit of advice couldn’t have come at a better time. Thanks Debbie! T-shirts are currently being printed.

Needing to slow it down, we headed to the quirky seaside town of Margate. According to Instagram, we missed Jim Sturgess by only a few days. Damn. We spent time at Dreamland, a retro amusement park nestled on the shore. Quite strange but cool. They had a DJ performing in the middle of the park, casino machines intermixed with the ski-ball and kiddie games, and appeared to be a local hangout of sorts. A notable mention here was the Big Slippy, a large, very large at that slide. We rode it, tied in our finish and sprinted back up the stairs to ride it again. The competitive spirit in both of us wanted to cross the finish line first. Forget ties. There can only be one winner. It was Trent, his screaming of “Inertia!” as his girth bolted down the slide was remembered in Dreamland for minutes, maybe even hours. We had our own French-themed apartment with a sea view, situated above a highly-recommended cocktail bar, The Glass Jar. Here we enjoyed the best martinis in the whole world and our patriotic bartender indulged us in a Royal family Q&A. Side note: the country seems to be split on the importance or love for that matter of the Royal family.

One day in Margate, we rented bikes and rode to Broadstairs and Ramsgate, two nearby towns along the coast of southeastern England, stopping along the way to breathe in the sea air and take photos of cool stuff. Side Note: the thing about bikes… they don’t always work the way you’d expect them to. Half way into a trip, Trent’s front breaks went into a permanent lock, making his ride feel more like a grueling workout at SoulCycle then a casual coastline cruise. My bike came equipped with a constant ringing bell and SHREIKING breaks. No one liked me. We sat on the beach in Broadstairs, lunching on ice cream and sandwiches. It should be noted that the bravado of seagulls in Broadstairs is quite remarkable. They were practically walking on us and biting our hands to get our food. Trent lost a sandwich mid-bite when one particular guy swooped in and snatched it from his hands. It was kind of awesome.

You had to hand it to the gulls.

 

 

 

 

 

In Margate we did quite a bit of relaxing. We enjoyed an arcade, a GoT rerun marathon (we haven’t started the last season so no spoilers PLEASE!), yummy Thai take-out, the Shell Grotto and the funniest sounding squawking bird to wake us up each day at the early hour of 11 am. Speaking of the Shell Grotto, if you someday find yourself in Margate it’s worth the $5 admission and then some. It’s a bizarre underground cave completely covered in incredibly intricate and ornate designs made only with shells. Hundreds of thousands of shells. The best part is, they have no idea who made it or why. Possibly the next Dan Brown mystery? Yes please.

Before leaving England we took a train to Westcliff for a night, where we finally did some much-needed laundry. It’s interesting how when you travel your threshold for clean vs. dirty changes dramatically. I mean, turning things inside out is a completely acceptable way to have a fresh pair of undies or socks. Don’t knock it till you’ve tried it. All in all, we really enjoyed England, the small bit of it that we saw. We had so many recommendations from locals to see other regions of England, but our time and budget is somewhat limited. With this year is full of travel, it may not be the absolute peak our explorations, but it was exactly what we needed. We fully intend to get back to see more of the UK including Ireland and Scotland. In the meantime, we still crave the heat and we continue to slowly make our way to more tropical climates. Stay tuned, our adventures in Budapest, Croatia and an Italian wedding sailing off the Amalfi coast are to follow!

Things we are currently feeling shameful for:
1.  Feeling less than interested in Sweden :-/
2. Too many waffles in Belgium
3. Growing distaste for all children while traveling

Things recently lost: Chromecast

# of texts waking us up  at 2:00 AM because timezones are hard: Countless.

(Click images below to enlarge)

“Or imagine being able to be magically whisked away to…Delaware….Hi, I’m in Delaware”

So, the end of our Scandinavia trip ended not with a bang, but more of a whimper. We had a friend describe Denmark as the “Iowa of Europe”, and we liked Copenhagen much more than Sweden, so… yeah. We’re still very early in our trip and learning as we go, the thing that keeps slapping us in the face like a wet diaper is that our current style of travel is not a vacation. It’s not relaxing, it’s not refreshing, but, it is rewarding… especially when there are beer and chocolates involved.

After Norway, we needed a little space from the crowds and general hub-bub. So, we opted for a cabin in the woods. Horror and Joss Whedon references aside, it was a simple, incredibly tiny, cabin outside of the city with no one really to bother us save the wildlife and what I’m convinced was a Swedish axe-wielding maniac waiting for us to fall asleep. When we did venture into Stockholm via about an hour and half of public transit, we were impressively underwhelmed.

It was a city, a nice city even. But just a city really. The kind I picture people talking about gas prices and what the stock market did today. Nice, but not really that interesting. The one saving grace of Stockholm (that we visited at least) was Gamla Stan. Gamla Stan is the old historic part of town with narrow, cobble stone streets and tiny shops (and the tiniest statue ever!).All in all, the highlight here was the cabin and a little relaxation.

 

 

So, feeling recharged and ready for some social interaction (this is very rare for Trent) we moved on to Copenhagen, Denmark where decided to stay in a hostel. For those of you who haven’t stayed in hostels before, the general idea is that they are cheap beds usually shared in a big “dormitory” type room.

So, you end up sharing sleeping quarters (and bathrooms) with strangers, but usually like-minded ones.  We’ll come back to this later. Copenhagen was lively when we were there. Situated on water, there are affordable canal tours to get acquainted with the city. They have an odd obsession with Hans Christian Anderson, with Little Mermaid statues and every other street or building somehow associated with the children’s book author. It felt a little bit how I imagine people in New Jersey feel about Bruce Springsteen.

 

New Haven (Nyhaven), an old harbor area lined with boats, and an abnormally large number of English speaking guitar players at bars, and Paper Island (where the paper factories used to be) were highlights.  Copenhagen isn’t really known for its grub, so if you find yourself here paper island is a great place to go. Just a bunch of food-truck like places shoved into an old warehouse with seating on the harbor front.  We had quite a few days to explore the “city of spires” so we took a couple of days and rented bikes and just explored.

We ended up in the city’s parks where a jazz festival was going on, sitting on the grass and noticing that Danish children are the spawn of the anti-christ. There’s something about kids screaming in a foreign language that really makes you want to shove them down and taunt them. Alas, we didn’t… yet.

So, let’s get back to the hostel. Hostels are great places to be social, some of them (including this one) are built around plying the residents with alcohol and having different events to help with being social. The first night this was great, we met some very cool people from Spain and from D.C., and generally had a great time. But, by the time we left, we were kind of over the dance parties and noise (the bar stayed open till 5am and we were on the 1^st floor). On the brink of a nervous breakdown, Michele needed to switch floors or leave. They kindly moved us to the 6^th floor where we could enjoy some peace. Not exactly. The floor was filled with early 20 somethings literally running amok from room and to room, screaming well past midnight. Michele in her “friendly” teacher voice kindly reminded them they were sharing the floor with other people. Their rager continued, but at least they remained in their rooms.

Around 12:30 AM a man entered the room. He seemed weary and confused. He turned the lights on and sat in a chair in the corner. Twenty minutes pass and he is still sitting there. Lights on. What the fuck?! Trent asked him to turn the lights off. He replied that he was trying to read (something on his phone). Well we are trying to sleep! Annoyed. Over it.  He eventually turned off the lights and again, sat there. Sat there in a chair in the corner in the pitch black while the rest of us tried to sleep. He did not put his things in a storage locker, nor did he climb into bed. Aren’t all the beds taken? Was he lost? Was he there for ill-intended reasons? Our imaginations began to get the better of us and we both needed to take a chill pill. If this man wanted to sit motionless in a dark corner for a couple hours like a taunting vampire who are we to judge? Maybe we were overly tired from a complete lack of sleep the past 4 nights and our imaginations were getting the better of us. We already knew we were ready to leave Scandinavia, but this was definitely a nice way to cement that feeling.

The thing about buffets is…

Ready to leave Denmark, we decided to waste a couple of hours and head to the movie theater for a familiar pastime. Side note, we saw the Mummy, the newest one with Tom Cruise. Meh. We were famished and in the heart of a business district with little options. We stumbled upon a pizza buffet in a mall. Let me repeat. We went into a mall and found a pizza buffet like a couple of pre-teens. We dined. Or should I say we buffeted. We are not proud of this (well, Trent is a little proud). No person needs to partake in all-you-can buffets. It didn’t help that Trent kept commenting on how “nice this buffet is.” Mall buffet lest you forget. You can take the man out of Indiana but you can’t take the Indiana out of the man. Trent swears this wasn’t his idea. The truth will die us.  Needless to say, we left the buffet with aching guts and our heads down. Learning.

Belgium, there’s more than just waffles. There’s also chocolate and beer. Ah, quirky little Brussels. It’s little cheaper, a little seedier, and has more charm than our previous temporary homes. We got in very late to Brussels, and when we woke up the next day

we awakened to what felt more European-y than what we’ve seen so far. Old buildings, narrow cobble stone streets, huge gothic buildings in the middle of modern hotels and Starbucks. Quick side note, it’s blasphemy to get Starbucks while traveling. I get that. But, it’s the only place that gives you a proper sized coffee for the price instead of what amounts to little more than a jello-shot of coffee for 4+ Euro.

Brussels, seat of European Union, home to one of the most impressive public squares in Europe, and many other cultural marvels. That being said, easily the highlight of our visit was a 6-hour beer and chocolate tour. It’s probably not fun to read a description of going from one chocolate shop to another and then from one historic pub to the next, so I’ll spare you. But, if you ever go, this tour is a must. There were literally too many chocolates and probably just the right number of delicious monk-brewed libations and other local microbrews.

We met a great couple from Manchester during our tour and had a nice time swapping political musings from Brexit to our current U.S. President. What’s his name again?

 

 

Wrapping up our quick trip to Belgium we day-tripped to Bruges and Ghent. Gorgeous little towns, Bruges was serene but Ghent was the more interesting stop. A little bigger and more Gothic architecture and buildings.

 

 

Almost a month into this journey, crazy eh? It’s been a complete whirlwind. So much so, that we’ve decided to get back into our comfort zone. Next stop, London. Next event, music festival. This really is coming at the perfect time, we’ve been going so fast, seeing so much, that at times it feels like we are just hopping from city to city without really taking the time we need to soak it all up. Like butter on good toast, or, just a towel, or something that soaks things up. Anyway, finding the right pace for our travel is still a challenge, but we’re getting better. Longer stays are becoming a must, and finding events and festivals to see seems to be like fun way to pick our next location as well. Anyway, we can’t wait to get to London and keep moving along on this crazy trip.

Stats
Items lost: 4 (jacket, foot massage ball, razor, toothbrush)
Buffets: 1 shameful all-you-can-eat mall pizza buffet
# of times being pooped on by a bird: Michele – 2, Trent – 1

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You’re only as young as you feel… that is unless you are hiking with 25 pound packs up a 10% incline for 2.5 miles, then you feel pain. Sweat and pain. Side note, Trent is considering developing an adult diaper that you can wear in a fashionable way that is mainly built to grab the sweat that builds up overtime on a hot day between your butt cheeks. Please feel free to suggest names and / or let us know if you’re interested in investing. Anyway… only two weeks in and we’re already learning things like it’s okay not to like every museum you go to, especially the modern art museums with a rope tied to the ceiling spinning around and a picture of a creepy nude dude with his cats. Art is truly in the eye of the beholder, unless it sucks.

After the unpopulated beauty that was Iceland, we were ready to be back in civilization. We arrived in Oslo, the capital of Norway, around midday and were kind of relieved to be back in a city. Oslo doesn’t feel like a large city, it is very easy to walk around or hop on and off their excellent public busses and trams and is a very picturesque (and clean!). The people are very helpful and switch between Norwegian and English (and many other languages) effortlessly. Walking around you’ll run into streams and waterfalls, stumble upon random historic churches from the 1600’s, and of course see a lot of the touristy sites that tell some of the history of Norway, of which they are very proud. In general, the people of Norway have a lot figured out and things run very smoothly here.

We spent a lot of our time in Oslo perusing the streets and sites. After checking in with our gracious host, we ventured back out and explored the paths alongside a river through the city and around the University. Pretty amazing, even if it sounds a little slow… we’re finding we need slow every now and then. As you walk around you keep running into random waterfalls and old suspension bridges and locals out with their kids and pups. The path eventually runs into a fun bohemian area called Grünerløkka with lots of younger folks hanging out in cafes and enjoying the pretty amazing weather. Side note: everyone was eating ice cream. Like, everyone! Any hour of the day. Man, woman or child. Sun up to sun down. Ice cream. Everywhere. I mean… we tried it. It was delicious. However, it was just ice cream.

Reminder to self to Google ice cream craze in Norway.

 

 

 

(Big guy here got the little cone)

 

Oslo has a pretty rich history, and the next day we tried to take in as much as we could. Here’s the thing, we (Trent and I, if you were already so bored that you forgot whose website you were on) both REALLY want to enjoy museums. We consider ourselves pretty cultured (I mean, I grew up loving Italian dressing and French fries and Trent used to think Taco Bell was authentic Mexican) so we should really find museums interesting, right?

Wrong. I will be the first to blow our cover to say this isn’t the case. For most museums, we both had to plaster on a serious case of poker face to hide our boredom.

That being said, there were a couple museums that did peak our interest. One of the highlights here was the Resistance Museum, a recounting of how the people of Norway resisted Nazi occupation during World War II. Pretty intense, and very well done. As we travel through Europe, it’s going to be interesting to see the history of this important time from the eyes outside of classrooms in the U.S. We bounced around a few other museums that day, saw a giant polar steam ship, a raft made of balsa wood that sailed from South America

to the Polynesian islands in the name of science to advance a controversial theory (now that’s dedication!), and other some folk history of Norway. Interesting side fact: the Kon-Tiki (the balsa wood raft) inspired the “tiki” craze in the U.S. So, next time you’re at a tiki bar drinking out of a fake coconut with an umbrella, you can thank Norway.

 

 

 

All in all, Oslo is a great city, nice people, with a rich history. But, our visit to Norway will be mainly remembered for the country side and the Fjords… yeah, definitely the Fjords. After Oslo we headed via a six hour train ride to Bergen, the old capitol of Norway and it’s 2^nd largest city. This is where we discovered two things: First, we have too much crap in our packs and need to lighten them up ASAP. Second, google maps in Bergen is wonky. It estimates distance “as the crow flies” so to speak. So, what we were told was 1 mile ended up being a grueling 2.5-mile hike straight up a steep grade carrying the aforementioned packs.

Aside from this lesson learned, Bergen was charming. It has a lot going on around its harbor in an old fisherman’s area known as Bryggen. One of the highlights here was a trip up to the top of highest mountain in Bergen

using the Fløibanen funicular, a tram that uses a pulley system to scale straight up a mountain. At the top are beautiful panoramic views of the city, the North Sea, and some of the closer fjords. 

To meet our love of water, we started our journey through the fjords with a five-hour ferry ride from Bergen to the tiny port town of Flåm. This may have been both of our favorites.  The fjords were mainly made by glaciers, and the results are crazy calm waters (at times like glass) with huge mountain-like rocks jetting straight up out of the water on both sides. Everybody should see the fjords in Norway if they get the chance! They come highly recommended by a man who shall not be named. His name rhymes with Landrew Slee. 

A nice bonus on the trip was meeting an adorable 70-years young lady from Canada who was traveling on her own because she wanted to start seeing the world and a Scottish man (who now lives in China) who used to fish the fjords some twenty years ago and was reminiscing with us about his experiences then as well as sharing some of his knowledge about the area. Waterfall after waterfall, is it possible to become numb to waterfalls? Zzzzzzz

We ended our journey on the same train back to Oslo. Farewell Norway!

As a side note, we’re finding that the pace of our trip so far has been a little too hectic. We are exhausted to be honest. Those close to us know how much we appreciate “down time.” It turns out, hoping on and off trains, and sleeping in a new location every 3 days is more work than play.

Pro tip: if you only stay two or three nights in each location, you spend the entire time planning for the next one rather than enjoying where you are. Lots of learning experiences thus far and many more to come. Granted we have only been out of the country for two weeks, but we’ve been on the road for a month and living out of suitcase for 3 months. We have decided to slow down and lengthen our stay in each new place. Two weeks down, so many more to go!

Favorite Quotes:
— “That little girl just laughed at us.” “Let’s push her down.”
— “Hold on, I just have to get this underwear out of my butt.”
— “Urine is one smell I will not smell for fun.”

Population: 5.2 million
Currency: Krone (NOK)
Time: Denver + 8 hours

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