around the world in 180 days

We left Steve and Phuket yesterday, and flew back to Bangkok. Anna was awake the night previous with the dreaded stomach problems and last night didn’t go so well either. She’s taking antibiotics and meds for guardia (which don’t conflict and won’t cause her problems) in hopes to clear this out. If they don’t do any good, then it’ll be back to the hospital to tell the umteenth doctor about her embarrassing stomach problems. I’m hoping the meds will work.

It’s ridiculous that we, but more so Anna, get sick so often. We are as careful as possible with food and water and all that and it doesn’t make any sense that so many stomach illnesses should hit us.  What caused it this time? Who knows? Maybe it was from swimming in the lake 2 1/2 weeks ago in Pokhara. That’d be the right time frame for Guardia. Maybe it was from contaminated ice in our watermelon juice in Phuket. Maybe it was a dirty spoon, or maybe it was any number of other things. I can tell you that she’s awfully sick of being sick and I am too.

With luck, Europe will be better on that front. We booked tickets today, and are flying to Munich on June 11. We’ll spend the next five weeks in central/eastern Europe (Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Austria and Germany) before flying non-rev (thank you so much Steve) on NWA back to MSP in the middle of July. Since we’re flying non-rev (non-revenue, Steve can fly people on NWA for no profit, as long as he’s with them or they are going to MSP–it saves us hundreds of $), we won’t know exactly when we’ll be back until we actually get seats on the flight,  We’ll probably be flying out of Amsterdam, as NWA has three flights a day out of there. With a little luck, we might be sitting in first class on our last fight.

Before we fly to Europe, though, we feel obligated to see some of the “real” Thailand (as if the beaches aren’t real). We’re going up north tomorrow, to a place in the hills called Chaing Mai that is famous for being a lovely place to visit. As long as Anna’s stomach isn’t causing her trouble anymore, we’re planning on doing a guided trek through the forests to see hill-clan villages and probably be pressured to buy souvenirs from them. We’re also talking about doing a cooking class whilst up there, but of course, all this depends on Anna’s stomach. We’ll be flying back on June 10 to spend the night in the lovely Bangkok airport before flying off to Munich.

Nepal does everything it can to distinguish itself from India: it even has its own time zone, only 15 minutes ahead of India, just to be different. Still, with a billion people and by far the largest area on the subcontinent, it’s inevitable that there will be some cultural similarities and both India and Nepal are fundamentally conservative when it comes to sex and public displays of affection. There are not many places in the world that are more the opposite of that than Phuket.

The thing that bothers me the most is seeing men who must be 60 or 70 walking hand in hand with a girl that can’t be a day over 20. As long as the woman is making a choice to do that, I guess I don’t have a problem with it. I just wonder how many of the women are choosing for themselves and earning money for themselves. Most, I hope.

Other than that, we’ve not been up to much. We met Steve in Bangkok on Saturday night; he’d been traveling for something like 40 hours and was pretty wiped out. After a few hours sleep, we took a cab to the new Bangkok airport, which looks like a space station. We left Kathmandu airport, which is a third world airport in every sense of the world, and landed at this space age wonder in Thailand. I felt like an astronaut getting off the plane. Anyway, after a blissfully uneventful flight, we landed in Phuket and the relaxing began.

Steve’s been a good tour guide. He knows quite a few people here, so he took us around and introduced us. We decided to splurge and stay at the same place as him, which still isn’t too insanely expensive, and when we were registering, one of the receptionists said “deposit?” to the man checking us in, who replied, “this is Mr. Richner’s nephew. Deposit not necessary.” Repeat business is rewarded in Thailand.

But yes. Very different. It’s like we’ve been welcomed back into the modern, if not the western, world.

All three photos are from the day we crossed the pass; as you can see, we were lucky and had wonderful weather. Enjoy! [Continue reading this entry]

We've been in Kathmandu for a total of 6 days now, between the first time we were here and the last few days, and before today, we hadn't seen any of the cultural sites here. It's almost shameful, until I ... [Continue reading this entry]

My brother Matthew has been asking us to buy him a sitar while we are on the Indian Subcontinent for as long as he's known we'd be traveling here. We told him that we'd look, but that it was unlikely. But ... [Continue reading this entry]

Again, not much to update about. We've been in Kathmandu since Tuesday, when we took one of those always-fun 3rd world bus trips. We were on a tourist bus this time, which made things more comfortable. There was no livestock ... [Continue reading this entry]

We've been relaxing in Pokhara for the last 4 days; tomorrow we take a bus back to Kathmandu. We've been hanging out with people we met on the circuit, which has been a lot of fun--Anna's great conversation, but we ... [Continue reading this entry]

Well, everyone out there in blog land, sorry for the long lapse in posts, but Anna and I are out of the mountains and back at an altitude you can reach in MN. I wrote every other day or so ... [Continue reading this entry]

We walked to Marpha yesterday, a town famous for its orchards, primarily apple, but also apricot and peach. All the hotels served apple pie and apple crumble, apple juice and apple cider and apple brandy, all of which Anna ... [Continue reading this entry]