And a Happy New Year!

It's been about a month since we've been back in the US, and we've been quite busy.

First of all, we tried to surprise Joan and Steve by changing our flight to arrive in Colorado a few days earlier than we had planned. All was going well, even extremely tight layovers where we had to sprint from one terminal gate to another, until we received a text from Joan saying, "Are you in San Francisco?" Thank you Delta for sending her an email. Grr...

We were going to stay the night in Denver and buy a car, but the weather reports told us that the skies would be dumping snow all evening, and if we waited the mountain passes would all be closed and we'd be stuck in Denver until they cleared up.  So, after flying for over 24 hours we made the 4 hour drive to Meeker.  Thank goodness for Seth. He was able to get us there in one piece through tons of snow.  When we finally arrived at Casa de Cobb in Meeker we had been traveling for a good 34 hours. Bali to Singapore, Singapore to Tokyo, Tokyo to San Francisco, San Francisco to Denver, Denver to Meeker. Man oh man, that was a really long day. 

A Cobb Christmas is always wonderful.  And having it in Colorado is an added bonus for me.  And for the past three Christmases we've had snow, so it's been beautiful.  This Christmas there was an exceptional amount of snow, and the trees were frosted with ice.  It was picturesque.  We took advantage of the snowy weather and made a point to use the snowmobile and sleds.  Seth was nice enough to dump me off the snowmobile leaving me nice and numb.  One day we attached ropes to the back of Steve's Expedition and went sledding up and down the ranch roads.  Though I'm getting better at holding on, Seth is an expert and can stay on forever.  Mochi really enjoyed chasing us on the sleds.

Speaking of Mochi, she was so excited to see us.  She bounced up and down and wiggled a whole bunch when we walked in the door.  She's been stuck to us ever since.  We missed her a lot.

It was so nice to see Emily and Jess as well.  We cooked delicious meals and shared stories from the time apart. Seth tried his hand at some of the dishes he had learned while traveling, and they were pretty darn good.

Christmas day was so much fun, and quite a relief for Seth and me.  We had been collecting gifts during the entire trip and we were finally able to give them and tell their stories.  It was so much fun.  Also, we had been collecting ornaments from almost every destination, and it was nice to put those on the tree and tell their stories as well.

Eventually Christmas was over and Emily and Jess left.  So, it was about time that we took our leave as well, and made our way back to Los Angeles to begin to rebuild a home base.

We were driving two cars back to Los Angeles.  While in Colorado we purchased a brand spankin new Jeep Grand Cherokee, and we still had my tried and true Honda CR-V to take back as well.  The Jeep was well equipped to handle the icy and snowy conditions we faced, but the Honda had Los Angeles summer tires from 2007.  Oops.  After driving it for about 6 hours the snow and ice became really bad and we were down to about 25 mph on I70.  After I watched the car in front of me skid off the road, then back on to face me, Seth and I decided that it was time for him to drive the Honda, because he has way more snow experience.  After a few more hours of driving we broke through the snowy conditions and made it to our halfway stop.

The next day was easy driving and we made it to Los Angeles without event.  Luckily we have amazing friends, Colin and Amber, we had a place to stay in Los Angeles while we found a place to live.  It was kinda fun having room mates.  It was nice watching movies in the evenings and chit chatting in the mornings.  Mochi might have a different opinion.  Their cat Sarah was not keen on having a furry houseguest and kept Mochi on lockdown.  It was pretty funny watching Mochi stop dead in her tracks when Sarah turned a corner.

After looking at dump after overpriced dump, we finally found a winner.  We now live in a really cool place in Playa Del Rey, with delicious restaurants in walking distance, and a big outdoor patio area.  It's pretty exciting.  It's kinda weird having a set home base after being a nomad for six months.  But, it's also very comforting.  It was always strange referring to a place we'd only stay at for two nights as home.  (i.e. "Let's go see one more monastery before we go home" or "You know, that 7-11 we passed on our way home yesterday")

Being back in LA is odd.  It's exactly the same, but little things have changed.  There are still things I love about LA, like being able to find the same exact okonomiyaki sauce we had in Japan in the Japanese market on Centinela, or knowing how to get places without looking at a map or asking for directions.  But, there are things that drive me mad about LA  the same way they did in the past, like traffic, and the cost of living.  Then there are the things that, to me, are exaggerated from when I left, and will be the reason I leave.  After seeing so much of the world I have been left with a wider lens.  It leaves me frustrated with all the wrong that could easily be right.  We have so much, yet we want for more.  Being in a place like Los Angeles we can't help but want more.  And then there's the horrible supercilious conversations you overhear and wonder, "do I sound like that?" Gosh, I hope not.  I could talk for hours about how the trip has changed me and my outlook on the world, but it's not that kind of blog.

So, Seth has his marvelous job back.  He's already back to work.  I, thanks to the help of many, will be starting at a new job very soon.  I am really excited to begin my internship to become a marriage and family therapist.

My plan is to keep this blog going and to see how it evolves.  Adjusting to life after travel is interesting.

Bye Bye Bali, Hello Singapore!

Ubud turned into a place to just relax.  We spent lots of time roaming the streets, eating decent meals, and reading.  On our last night in Ubud we went back to Cafe Wayan for the third time for their Sunday night Indonesian buffet.  Their food was pretty good.  We tried dishes like chicken satay, roast duck, and a variety of curries ranging from mahi mahi to beef.  

This morning we left bright and early for Singapore.  We finally made it to our accommodation, then turned right around to find our Haianese Chicken Rice.  The place we loved before happened to be closed, which was a bummer, but we went to the place next door instead.  Also good, but not as amazing as the other place.  There's always next time!

Dubious Diving, and a Bali Birthday

We left Gili Trawangan in hopes of finding more amazing diving off the coast of Bali near Amed.  But first, we were going to go out on a Jukung, a Balinese fishing boat, to catch some Mahi Mahi.  We set out before sunrise and the stars were amazing.  Once the sun came out, and we saw the boat and available gear, we knew that we would not be catching any fish.  But, we had a nice sunrise boat ride, nonetheless.  While we were boating around 'fishing' we saw pods of dolphins dancing through the water.  That was nice.  I wanted to hop in.

We were back and ready to dive at 8am.  We saw some pretty amazing soft corals, and we went deep to find a huge wreck of the USAT Liberty.  The USAT Liberty was a US cargo ship from WWII that was hit by a Japanese torpedo.  The damage was beyond repair, so they beached the ship and took out all the cargo.  The ship stayed on shore until 1963 when the volcano erupted and the lava pushed the ship back into the sea where it sits today off the coast of Tulamben.  Though it was large and there was a lot of life around the wreck, the water was cold, and our gear was pretty crappy, which made for an uncomfortable dive.  The next dive was to the Coral garden.  The site was filled with tons of soft corals, eels, sea stars, and tiny critters we had never seen before.  It was pretty neat.  But, it was still cold, and the visibility was still bad.  

It ended up raining pretty hard that night, and left us without hope for better visibility for our upcoming dive.  The plan was to do three more dives in the area, but after our first dive we decided against it.  Even though it was a cold and uncomfortable dive, it wasn't a shabby way to spend my 30th birthday.  We saw some amazing pink fans, some blue spotted sting rays, some purple nudibranchs, anemones the size of trash can lids, and so much more.  It's amazing what you can find down there.  

We hopped in a car to make our way to Ubud.  I'm told it's the cultural capital of Bali, but so far it seems to be tourist central.  Streets filled with expensive boutiques selling clothing, aromatherapy, and chachkies interspersed with hotels and restaurants.  So far, the best part is all of the huge geckos we've found in our rooms.  Also, our room is right up against the monkey forest, so we had visitors running around our roof and balcony this morning.

Dive Dive Dive...

Bali is supposed to be an island of peace, tranquility, luxury, and beauty.  Though we didn't find it on our first visit, we will be back in Bali soon to find it. We landed on the island of Bali late in the evening.  The drive from the airport to our hotel in Sanur, showed me tons of motorbikes, cars, and development.  I was hoping for a small, beachy, atmosphere.  Our hotel was beautiful.  The Griya Sanur is definitely a great place to stay if in the area.  There are large rooms, with big beds and great showers all surrounding a beautiful pool area.  We happened to be the only ones staying the evening, so we had our own little pool party, with our portable speakers.  Fun times.

We spent a day walking around Sanur.  It was kind of a sad beach, with trash and empty shacks selling cheap souvenirs and begging you to sit and have something to eat.  We strayed from the beach in hopes of finding the 'beach town' of Sanur.  There were big streets with zooming cars, and perilous sidewalks that would disappear into large holes at no notice.  We had to hopscotch from one stable concrete slab to another.

Eventually we found our way into a travel agency to get some info about Bali and the surrounding area.  And, from what we found out, the place we wanted to be in Indonesia was the Gili Islands of Lombock.

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The Gili Islands are just off the coast of the island of Lombock, just East of Bali.  This chain of three islands is known for it's laid back island feel and top notch diving.  After a boat ride that took about 3 hours longer than expected, we made it to Gili Trawangan, the farthest from the mainland of Lombock.  This is a small island with no cars or motorbikes, only bicycles and horse drawn carriages.

We walked around the main strip of the island in search for the perfect accommodation.  We found Martas House, a group of bungalows surrounding a pool and garden.  Our bungalow is sweet, with AC, TV, DVD player, a big bed upstairs and a large bathroom downstairs.  It's far enough from the main road to be quiet, but close enough to join in if we want to.

After that we decided that choosing a dive shop was in order.  The shop with, what looked like, the nicest dive boats, and the most people diving, was Blue Marlin Dive Center.  So, we talked to them and signed up for some diving.  Sandra signed up for an Open Water Course so she could begin to dive, too.  We ended up completing the Advanced Open Water Course, which included a deep dive to about 90-100 feet and a night dive.  We, also, became NITROX Certified, so that we can have longer dives at greater depths.

The diving here is amazing.  The water is 86 degrees Farenheight all the way down to the bottom, and from the boat, you can see straight to the bottom.  The visibility is amazing.  You can definitely see anything coming.  We've seen sea life like turtles, blue spotted sting rays, giant sea cucumbers, tons of tropical fish, scorpion fish, lion fish, crabs, sea stars, and even a white tip reef shark.  The deep dive was really amazing.  Going down you could only see blue at first and blue all around you.  Seth held my hand so I wouldn't get nervous.  But the ocean floor arrived and I was fine.  Like always, we saw amazing sea life, but a cool one we didn't see was the black tip reef shark swimming right behind us during our descent.  We were told about that afterwards on the boat by some other divers.

Also a new experience, was the night dive.  It was kinda spooky.  It was a wall dive, so we were just moving horizontally along the wall, but behind us was simply blackness.  You'd shine your torch out into the black and see nothing.  Better just to look at the wall.  We saw a huge eel move from the wall to find a better hiding place.  When he re entered the wall, he happened to find the resting place for a huge lobster.  They fought for the space and the eel ended up with the choicest spot in the back while the lobster had to hang out in front.  That was pretty spectacular.  But, the best part of the night dive was the bioluminescence.  We turned off our flashlights and waved our arms around a bunch and it was like we were batting fireflies around in the water.  The little green sparks from our agitation was wonderful.  It was like we were casting spells underwater, "Alohamora!"

We, also, rented some bicycles so we could circumnavigate the island.  There is a 'road' that follows the beach around the island.  It probably only took us about two hours to complete the journey, which included a swim, and a stop for drinks.  I couldn't honestly say that we rode all the way around the island, though.  There were points where the 'road' was just a sand path, and parts of it were too deep to ride through.  We definitely walked our bikes for some of the trip.  Well worth it though.

Off the coast of Lombock there is a wreck dive that we decided to do.  It is the wreck of a WWII Japanese ship, and it's down 148 feet below the ocean's surface. For those of you who don't know, that's a really deep dive, past what is considered recreational diving, getting into the technical diving status.  So we went down in a small group with our guide who was a tech diver.  The weird thing about deep diving is that descending to 150 feet feels just the same as dropping to 100 feet, which feels just like going down to 30 feet.  The only difference is that when you drop into the water, you can't see the floor, and when you are at the bottom, you can't see the surface of the water, it feels exactly the same.  But, the actual difference is the addition of way more nitrogen in your system, which means careful planning, and strictly following the plan.  The risk for nitrogen narcosis increases at that depth, but neither Seth nor I felt a thing.  They say that it feels like being drunk.

The wreck was really neat.  It sits on a sandy flat with no coral or real formations to see.  Finding this wreck was probably a difficult venture.  But, on and around the wreck lives tons of fish, coral, and anemone.  You can't enter the ship, but if you shine your flashlight into one of the holes in the hull you can barely see the other side, due to the densely packed fish using it as habitat.  Large pink, white, and red coral fans spring out from the outside of the ship, lion fish hide in the crevices, large grouper take refuge in the spaces under the hull, red snapper poke their heads out of corners to check you out, and schools of trevali hover over the top of the wreck.  A few feet away from the base of the boat are 35mm bullets.  Those were fun to see.  It was definitely a highlight in our dive experience, and a great last dive on Gili Trawangan.

Brusha Brusha Brusha...

I love landing in places where you can drink the tap water.  It means that we don't have to buy bottles of water to brush our teeth.  We made it to Singapore.  It's a funny kind of place.  A big, first world, modern city that happens to be a country as well (aka city-state), dropped right in the middle of countries that are a bit farther behind.  Walking around Singapore is similar to walking around a modern US or European city.  The demographics are mixed here.  The hot pot of Singapore is home to groups of people coming from all around the world, all trying to find a better quality of life.  Things to do in Singapore?  Shop and eat.  As you can imagine, we're here for the food.

Our first stop after dropping our bags at the hotel was the Maxwell Road Food Center.  In Singapore, there are large groupings of food stalls, much like a food court in a shopping mall.  But, unlike food courts in the US, which are packed with fast food joints with buddies like the Colonel, Ronald, and The King, these food centers are THE places to eat.  And here, they're not called food courts, they're called Hawker Centers.

Maxwell Road Food Center is home to tons of delicious cuisine, but we were there for something in particular.  Though often disputed, many will say that Tian Tian Haianese Chicken Wa has the best Boiled Chicken Rice.  Boiled chicken rice sounds pretty boring and bland, but in reality, it's amazing.  They boil the chicken to perfection in seasoned water, then they dunk it into a bucket of ice cold water to leave the chicken and the skin with the perfect texture.  Then they boil the rice in the water they boiled the chicken in.  The chicken and rice is served with a soy reduction and a spicy garlic sauce.  It was delicious and perfectly cooked.  We washed it down with an equally delicious and novel drink, barley juice.  It was earthy, sweet, and had little bits of barley that you could suck up your straw to munch as you sip.  For dessert we found a woman frying up tasty little balls of sweet potato, coconut, and other delicious insides.  Though fiery hot, I can't wait to try them again.

That evening we went to the movies.  I think we're making up for lost time.  We haven't seen movies our entire trip, and now that we've started, it's like we can't stop!  We saw Life of Pi in 3D.  It was a really good movie with spectacular special effects, Seth's co-workers are sure to get an Oscar this year.  

Today we slept in, which was easy, because our rooms had no windows.  So, at 9am when we finally rolled out of bed, it was still pitch black in our room.  

We decided to check out the Golden Mile Food Center.  There were a few places on our list to try.  The first was Kheng Fat Haianese Beef noodles.  They were delicious.  Thick vermicelli rice noodles in a thick brown beef stock gravy, topped with small slices of beef and beef meatballs, and served with a spicy garlic sauce.  Another hawker stall we sampled was Jin Hua Fish Head Bee Hoon, where they served a fish soup with a milky broth and vermicelli noodles.  Topped with fried garlic and spicy pepper flakes it was delicious.  

After our feast we wandered around Little India and the Arab Quarter, passing shops that looked all too familiar, reminiscent of the beginning of our trip.  We eventually made our way to the Thieves Market, which happens to be Singapore's first swap meet.  It's a makeshift area with people selling all sorts of nick knacks laid out on blankets on the cement.  There were things like used shoes, phone chargers, carved wooden statues, and bigger ticket items such as laptops and cell phones.  Whether or not these items were hot was unknown, but the vast variety, and hard usage alone, would make it easy to imagine that they were not acquired legally.

Just after the Thieves Market, we noticed that the far away rain cloud from earlier had finally made it's way over to us.  And the skies opened up.  The torrential downpour waited just long enough for us to duck into a Sweedish coffee shop to have a drink and watch the storm.  We would have stayed there until the storm passed, but we had a plane to catch.  So we braved the storm, and were drenched by the time we made it to the metro stop (Singapore has a great, easy to use, metro system),  Just as we were beginning to dry off, we left the station to become drenched once again on our way to our hotel.  Now, we're on a plane, headed to our penultimate destination, Bali, Indonesia.  But, don't worry, we'll be back in Singapore to try more food, and hopefully see some sights!

Back in Bangkok (Again) - Terrible Taxis and Market Marathon

We're back in Bangkok, for the last time.  We decided to try another hotel near Khao San Road, and it was a disaster.  Lucky House advertised itself as being clean and cheap.  It was only cheap.  But, it definitely wasn't the worst hovel we've stayed in, and it was still in a convenient location.  

Our first day was cut short, due to the massive amount of traffic getting to the hotel from the airport.  Even though Thailand doesn't have an acting king anymore, they still hold their former king close to their hearts.  Apparently his birthday is December 5th and they celebrate his birthday for the entire month.  This, being the first weekend of the month, is some sort of holiday where people were trying to get home early or get out of town to celebrate, which meant unbearable, stand still traffic for miles (or kilometers).

After checking in to our hovel, we walked around, showing Sandra all that is Khao San Road.  We, then, made our way to MBK, a huge shopping mall.  Not only was MBK huge, but it was connected by a skywalk to two or three other shopping complexes, a science center, and a center for the arts.  It was immense.  Sandra used the time to purchase a new camera, bargaining her way into a pretty sweet deal.

We ended up on a round about ride by a tuk tuk driver who tricked us into going to a restaurant that would give him a kickback, when we had asked to go to another area.  He lied.  Oh well. But, it took us at least an hour to find a taxi to take us back to our hotel area of Khao San.  Once again, they were either trying to charge us way too much, or simply refusing to take us there.  Work ethics are different here.

On our way back to the hotel, we ended up stopping at what turned out to be a huge night market with carnival rides, games and attractions like a 'freak show' (with no actual freaks) and a haunted house.  It was filled to the brim with people, so after some time of shuffling through the crowds, we caught a tuk tuk back to Khao San Road.  We decided that the perfect way to end the evening was to get a massage.  What better way to end the day, than with a massage.

The following day we ended up on a market marathon.  The last time we tried to visit the Tailing Chan Floating Market we learned, the hard way, that it was only opened on the weekend.  So, we made our way to the riverside market.  It was wonderful.  Stalls selling gardening supplies, fruit, and food lined the street down to the river where a floating dock served as a food court.  Little wooded boats were lined up around the dock, serving up fresh seafood like grilled prawns, scallops, and even chicken satay.  All was delicious and the relaxed ambiance served for a very enjoyable morning.  We chose this market specifically for this reason.  When you tell a taxi driver you want to go to the Tailing Chan Floating Market they tell you about how they will take you to a better, bigger floating market.  Those are jam packed with tourists, and maybe some locals, and I hear it can be a hectic, stressful experience.  We leisurely made our way through the market without being hassled by anyone, and most of the other patrons were locals, with a foreigner sprinkled here and there.  It was really nice.

Afterwards, we caught a cab to Chinatown.  We walked around the streets revisiting their electronics section, in particular.

We decided that one more market was in order, so we caught a tuk tuk to the Skytrain station in order to arrive at the Chatuchak Weekend Market, the largest weekend market in Thailand.  This place was massive.  Hundreds of stalls selling 'I love Bangkok' tees, Thai silk tissue box covers and ties, street food treats, and even a western store selling 10 gallon hats and cowboy boots.  

It had been a long day and we were ready for our last meal in Thailand before heading back to our hotel.