Turkish Delight

After an 11 hr flight we arrived in Istanbul late on the 1st of March. We stayed with an old friend of Noelles mom, Jennifer and her husband Celil. It was nice to stay with people instead of in a hotel room for a change. It was quite shocking going from 30c weather to 10c and drizzley. Despite the weather, we had a grand old time exploring Istanbul. It is a huge city (something like 20 million) and there is so much to see.

The Blue Mosque

Inside the Hagia Sophia

This picture sums up how the weather felt here.

We flew into the Cappadocia region after 3 days in Istanbul. It is amazing here! Thousands of years ago people carved homes and churches into the hills. We stayed in a hotel that  was carved into the hillside in the town of Goreme. We spent 2 full days here wandering the hillsides and Valleys.

Noelle jumping for joy near the Goreme open air museum

The picture doesnt quite show it, but I am super high up and on a super sketchy, slippery cliff. This was as upright as I could get.

huge rock formations

Uchisar, there are hundreds of houses carved precariously into these hills, it blows my mind!

up in a cave

Noelle up on the 3rd or 4th floor. The rest had collapsed, so it was as high as we could go.

Noelle dipping her foot in the lake

Not! It is really the valley that we hiked back to Goreme from Uchisar. We were pretty sure it was a lake at first though.

Hiking Pigeon Valley back from Uchisar. "Fairy chimneys" at the top right of the picture (the towers with the little hats)

In the Underground city of Derinkuyu

Derinkuyu was pretty crazy. We went down 8 floors, but it once went down 16 to 20 floors, supporting 5000 people!

We spent two days in the south of Turkey, in Antalya. We rested here for the most part because the weather was pretty sucky. We got a traditional turkish bath, where we got scrubbed and slapped around by old turkish people. They rub super hard with an abrasive cloth and take off all your dead skin (and some not so dead skin). Then they lather us up with this big pillow case of soap and bubbles, so many bubbles. Then we got the full body oil massage, it was very intimate.

Noelle got rubbed raw by the old turkish lady.

Phuket

We spent 5 days on our second honeymoon in Phuket, an island in southern Thailand.

Snorkeling at Paradise Beach

 Phromthep Cape, the southern most point on Phuket Island

Phromthep Cape

Randy sun-screening right before his big burn

Angkor What? ANGKOR WAT!!!! (Cambodia)

We spent 2 days at the Temples of Angkor. The first day we rented bikes and rode to the temples. The second day we took a tuk tuk to the further away temples. They are really awesome, and words cannot do them justice, so here are a few pictures:

The path leading to Angkor Wat, Yess!

 Noelle found a new face to kiss at Bayon Temple in Angkor Thom

Many towers with 4 faces in each one, Bayon

Randy wanting to be an elephant at the Terrace of the Elephants, Angkor Thom

The North Gate of the ancient city of Angkor Thom

Randy sharing the load on the bridge to Phnom Bakheng.

Noelle admiring the large tree while not wanting to touch it due to the many red ants

Steph and Tim, this is for you. Sweaty.

Ta Som

Randy being a tree growing over the wall, Ta Prohm

Noelle in a tree, Ta Prohm

Tourists at Ta Prohm, on the photo op stand

Cambodia

Well, it has been a while since we wrote some stuff and posted pictures. So, we made it to Hoi An. It is a very nice city, very french looking. This is the place to get things tailored for you, there are literally hundreds of tailor shops. Basically the town consists of tailor shops, art shops and restaurants. So we bought some clothes, and paintings here.

 

After Hoi An we took a night bus to Nha Trang and were left on the side of the road at 5:00 in the morning. It was super nice to finally be somewhere warm again, so we hit the beach. The waves were super big and super fun to swim in. We rented some bikes here, explored the city, and got sweet sunburns.

 

a typical tourist pose

Next we went to Dalat, which is up in the central highlands of Vietnam. We rented a motorbike for the two days we were here, which was really fun / a bit scary. We spent alot of time driving around trying to find this coffee plantation that we had been told about, but is was off the edge of our map and the locals were never too much help. That was okay though, it was just fun cruising around the mountain roads. We did eventually find a coffee plantation (not the one we were looking for though) and ate a green coffee bean - not so tasty. We also hiked up a really touristy mountain called Lang Biang mountain; most people pay to take a jeep up though.

After some time away from the ocean, we felt it was time to get back, so we went to Mui Ne. The Lonely Planet spoke very highly of Mui Ne, so we were pretty excited. It is kind of a strange town though, there is only the one street that runs along the ocean for something like 10km. The ocean side is all owned by super expensive hotels, so it is tough to get to the beach, we always snuck through some restaurant. The day we spent on the beach was ultra windy, so lying on our towels we were just getting plastered with sand. We tried sitting on some of the many beach chairs, but got kicked off because they belonged to the expensive hotels. So we spent the day buying overpriced drinks at a restaurant so we could use their beach chairs. Mui Ne is the place to go if you want to kite surf; there were like a hundred of them sailing around the beach, somehow managing not to get tangled.

 

a chain of fishermen in their little saucer boats

After all this, it was time for the big city again. Ho Chi Minh City or Saigon has 7 million people and is pretty crazy. We saw the War reminence museum, which was pretty depressing. We were hoping to figure out what the war was all about, but it never really explained, so we are still kinda confused. We also saw a water puppet show which is a really strange puppet show where the puppets come out of the water. It was pretty cool, but weird and the music was really loud and a bit annoying. Rush hour traffic is completely nuts here! The streets are too full so the motorbikes take over the sidewalk - so scary! All in all Vietnam was pretty cool; the only thing was that everything was twice as expensive because of New Years. In Vietnam they celebrate chinese new year for two weeks after and that was the exact time we were there. Oh well.

We got to Phnom Penh, Cambodia a few days ago. We were hoping to have about a week and a half here, but the way things went, we will only have about a week. We visited the killing fields and the S-21 prison museum here. They are places where people were tortured and killed under the Khmer Rouge in the 70's. Again it was a pretty depressing afternoon, though it was good to learn some of their history.

So that was a long post, but we have done so much, and we totally could have written more.

Vietnam

We were stuck in Vientiane for about 5 days, waiting for money and our bus departure date. The $50 we were able to get from our Visa that one day ended up coming from nowhere. We called Visa and they had no record of us taking that money out - awesome! We got everything sorted out with the help of my (Noelle) mom. Continuing with our bad luck in Vientiane, Randy was super sick for a few days and we checked into a hotel with bed bugs. Luckily Randy did a thourough search and we found a bed bug!! We high-tailed it out of there before the bugs had time to do anything.

The bus trip to Hanoi, Vietnam was quite an adventure. It took us 30 hours on the sleeping bus. There were around 35 seats, but at least 60 people were crammed into the bus. It was so crowded. There was a couple sitting in the isle between Randy and I. At one point, the woman was sleeping with her head on Randy's chest, and her legs on my lap. The border was also crazy! It took us 3 hours to get through. On the Laos side, we had to push and shove our way to the counter to get our passports stamped. The power went out and we were scared for our passports to get lost in the crowd. We waited and eventually they got stamped. We then walked to the Vietnam side in the cold rain. There we got stamped again and waited some more for our bus to pass through. The Vietnamese guards thouroughly checked the bus and yelled at Randy when he took a picture. After more waiting in the rain, we eventually boarded the bus again.

Hanoi was a crazy city. The traffic is nuts; when crossing, the mopeds weave around you. It might almost be easier to cross with your eyes closed :) We went to visit the Ho Chi Minh museum-not too exciting. We took a 2 day boat tour of Halong Bay. It was beautiful, but cloudy so we couldn't see as much as we had hoped. We visited a cave and went kayaking. In the evening, our tour guide and the cooks on the boat sucked us all into a karaoke party. Apparently it's big in Asia. Randy wasn't feeling well again, so we left soon into it.

We arrived in Hue 2 days ago. We visited the old city which is completely surrounded by a wall and a moat. Inside the city is a Citadel, which is also surrounded by a wall and moat. This is where the emperor resided until the early 1900s. It was cool to see the old buildings, or what's left of them. Yesterday we spent the day relaxing. We watched some movies and took a short walk. It was New Year's Eve so we walked to the River and watched some fireworks at midnight. The streets were so full, and the traffic after was the craziest thing ever!! There was constant honking (even at the best of times in Vietnam, people are honking for no reason). Today we head to Hoi An. Hopefully the weather will be a little warmer there (it's been around 10-15 C and mostly drizzly). We'll post pictures soon again.

more pictures

 Wat Rong Khun (on our way to Laos). It's a weird place

 The slow boat to Luang Prabang, Laos. It took us 2 days

 The Nam Song River. We tubed down this river.

In Pou Kham Cave (the fake one)

 The real Pou Kham cave

Pou Kham cave. Randy with Buddha.

 One of the deep, dark tunnels in Pou Kham Cave

Biking home from the caves to Vang Vieng. The rush hour traffic :)

Patuxai, the Arc de Triomphe of Vientiane

Pha That Luang, the most important national monument in Laos. It's on all their money. Not that impressive though....but we still had to take one of these cheesy photos.

Vientiane

   Well, here we are in the capital of Laos. We left Luang Prabang via a scary bus. The highway was super winding and overall a bit sketchy, though we made it in the end (though we later heard about a bus that overturned on that highway a few days before).
   The Lonely Planet calls Vang Vieng a "hedonists Paradise" and it is pretty much true. Drunk/high tourists stumble through the streets in the evenings. We went for the tubing ride down the Nam Song River here, which is the towns big attraction. It took us 4 hours, though it takes much much longer if you stop at all the bars on the shore (they throw ropes at you, and try to reel you in). Tubing was tons of fun though, very relaxing. The next day we rented some bikes and spent the day biking to caves around the town. We were trying to get to the Pou Kham cave. Apparently there are 2 Pou Kham caves, the first one we went to was a sham, but still cool. We then went to the real one, and it was super cool. The main cave must be almost as big as the golf dome. We had some flashlights with us so we wandered in through the tunnels which was also really awesome, and pretty scary. There are no health and saftey regulations in Laos, so you can just go wherever you want, which is great.
    We caught a bus to Vientiane yesterday. It is a nice city, but we were only planning on staying 2 nights. However, our whole time in Laos, ATMs have not worked for us, and we have just been exchanging our american money for the Kip. Long story short we dont have enough money to get to hanoi, Vietnam. So we are stuck in Vientiane until we can sort things out with our bank (which is closed for the weekend). Yesterday we managed to get some money off of our visa, but it hasnt worked since. Everything feels different when you dont have money. Oh well, we have enough money to get us through the next few days.