Our transition from traveling in relatively 'undiscovered' China to the tourist Mecca of Thailand hasn't necessarily been the smoothest. Several taxi-drivers and vendors seriously tried to 'take us for a ride'. I surprised myself with how quickly and firmly my guard went up. However, we are well aware that the Bangkok backpacker's ghetto (as our Lonely Planet described it) is NOT representative of the rest of Thailand or even the surrounding city. We fear the Wes...

This blog entry is long over-due! My apologies...finding both working internet and surplus time has been a bit difficult since we left Beijing. But to give a brief recap: we left Beijing and headed south on the train, stopping off in the town of Tai'an, where we climbed the most sacred of the five Taoist mountains in China, Tai Shan. The mountain is high and has 7,000 steps built into the side of it. Everyone from Confucius to Mao Zedong has climbed these ste...

On Wednesday, March 26, we took the train from Beijing to Tai'an.Beijing warmed us up for traveling in Asia and we are excited for this next stage of our journey.Taylor and his great roommates eased our transition here in China and helped us navigate Beijing.Taylor lent us his extra cell phone and we took advantage of him and his roommates many times to help communicate via cell phone with waiters, taxi drivers, and other people we met during our time in Beijing....

After leaving Buenos Aires over travels went into over-drive.From Buenos Aires we flew to Mexico City to visit Christina's cousin and family.We had a wonderful time spending time with Molly, Javier and Sebastian - their curious, smart and very cute 2 year old boy.Molly gave us a tour of Mexico City's historic center and the Zocolo. The sacristy room of the Cathedral was especially breathtaking.Each wall of the room featured a wall mural that depicted a different ...

Today we traveled back to Buenos Aires after a weekend at Punta del Diablo on the Uruguayan coast.Punta del Diablo is a little coastal town between Montevideo and the Brazilian border.Fishing is the community's primary economic driver but the warm summer days lure many Uruguayans to cabanas along the beach.However, sunbathers still have to share the beach with the fishing boats pulled up on shore. The gradual rise from the beach is speckled with little more than ...