01/22/14 - 01/26/14 It's 1am and I cannot sleep. It is not because I am not tired, it is because I am very uncomfortable and a little uneasy. The discomfort comes from the fact that the bus I am riding has about an inch of legroom. The person in front of me, has already leaned back their chair once, crashing into my knees. The unease comes from the inexperience of the driver in driving a manual transmission. As soon as we left Luan...

01/20/14 - 02/04/14 One aspect of long-term travel that can be a bit of a pain is acquiring visas. As an American, I can pretty much get a visa for anywhere in the world. A few places can be very difficult, such as, say North Korea, but some are very easy. Americans don't need any visas to travel through Europe, as long they don't stay longer than 3 months, so that makes it pretty easy. However, for my trip through Asia, I needed to get visas for m...

01/16/14-01/18/14 "Ready...One...Two...Three...Jump!" I jump as high as I can and almost immediately feel gravity pulling me back to the surface and then 'Splash'! The shock of the icy cold water chills me to the bone and I immediately rise to the surface. "Oh My Gawd, this is sooo cold!" I swim to the ladder, as quickly as I could, and climb out of the chilly water and back onto the boat, immediately grabbing a towel to dry off and warm up. I am...

01/14/14 - 01/20/14 Chaotic Hanoi, a city that is over a 1000 years old and is one of the most interesting cities in South East Asia. This fascinating city is known for it's crazy traffic and its captivating Old Quarter. It has the odd distinction of having twice as many motorbikes roaming the twisting streets, than people living in the city! The people were also strangely proud of this odd fact, as I was told this quite often throughout my visit. This may b...

05/27/14 I realize that I have not posted anything for quite some time now, in fact it has been over a month since my last entry. Unfortunately, over the last month I have had to deal with a few personal issues and so writing has not been much of a priority. First, I have had a bit of writer's block. When I started this journey, I never thought of how much work writing a travel journal would be. I had hoped to keep up with the journal entries as ...