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 ...

01/08/14 - 01/12/14 The night bus to Nha Trang, my next destination after Saigon, was unlike any bus trip I have been on before. Most night buses, were just that, a bus that happened to go overnight. Vietnamese night buses, however, are built to go overnight, in that the seats are like little beds. And when I say little, I mean they are tiny. And they are not quite beds either, more like reclined seats. There is very little room to move around. And as ther...

01/04/14 - 01/08/14 After Maxine left, I had one more day in Phnom Penh before I headed to Vietnam. I didn't do much that day, just ran a few errands, but I did manage to run into a bunch of riot police. Apparently, there was some kind of protest in the middle of the city that had something to do with the garment industry. Maxine and I had witnessed some sort of event, a week or so before, when we were in Phnom Penh the first time, but we didn't know...