Beijing, China

The Forbidden City.

We were only in Beijing for 3 days. We picked up our train tickets and then boarded our train bound for Moscow on June 8th.

A functional sculpture near our hotel in Seoul called "Sharing a Biscuit"

Beginning of the Cheongaycheon stream in Seoul at night.

Lisa standing on the North Korean side of the JSA UN building that stradles the border. The door in the back leads to North Korea. The South Korean soldier is there to prevent us from going out through that door.

This was a musical laser light show being projected on mist that was shot up over the stream. Really cool.

Leaving Vietnam

Our students finished up their final papers and final presentations on May 18th. We then went on our last trip with the students and yesterday they all flew back to the U.S. For some reason we have not had electricity in our apartment for the last 5 days, since we got back from the trip. We were not home when they come to collect $ for the electric bill, so they shut it off. We did manage to pay them, but for some reason, we still don't have electricity. So our last days have been spent in another teacher's apartment getting our stuff organized.

We'll have one last dinner with the remaining one teacher, the director and the secretary that really takes care of everything. Then off to the airport at 8:30pm. Our flight leaves Hanoi at 11:35pm bound for Seoul.

It has been an incredible year and experience living in Vietnam and traveling all over the place. We have a solid understanding of the country and it's culture although our grasp of the language is still simple phrases and all the numbers. But it was enough to get us by. Hanoi is a challenging place to live due to the air pollution and noise pollution but enlightening nonetheless. No regrets.

We will stay in Korea for 4 nights as this will give Lisa the opportunity to see the places I saw in 2007, this includes a tour of the DMZ, a peak across the border at North Korea and of course a visit to a jimjilbong!! I know all my former students are envious of this last thing:)

Following Korea, we'll fly to Beijing for 3 days before boarding our train on June 8. Stay tuned...

update

Lisa and I are on our final trip with the students. We are in the mountains on the border with Laos. As I write this, all I can see is green forested hills and misty clouds. It has been raining a little. We are visiting a permaculture school that teaches sustainable farming practices to indigenous minority groups that live in Vietnam or Laos. Worm farms, biogas systems, composting, strip cropping, grey water use, and soil erosion prevention farming techniques and the like. Strangely, the food here has been extremely repetitive. Rice and eggs every single meal for 5 days. Although yesterday they slaughtered a pig and we were excited for something different. We had rice, thin slices of pig fat, boiled liver, heart and stomach and bloody looking sausage. Not really the most appetizing thing to eat or look at.

Oh well, we have had the opportunity to swim in the river, jump off rocks into the river and go for a hike. Lisa had a very full leech on her ankle that fell off two nights ago when she took off her sandals. I gave it a little salt bath and it vomitted up her blood and then died.

Langkawi Island, Malaysia

We were able to purchase a very cheap airline ticket from Hanoi to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia back in October and our date finally arrived. We chose the weekend after the AP tests were all completed and then we took off. Instead of staying in KL for three days, we managed to find our way to Langkawi Island on the west coast of the Malay peninsula off the coast of the border of Malaysia and Thailand in the Andaman Sea. Our hotel was very nice and pretty inexpensive. The temperature was near 100 degrees during the middle of the day. There were lots of Muslims on vacation here including about 60% of the women wearing full black burkas. There was a sign near the pool that explained what was appropriate to wear in the pool if you were a Muslim woman. We didn't know there was such a thing as a "burkini" until this trip!

View from our hotel window.

Lisa on the beach.

We took a day trip to a national marine park to go snorkeling. An hour boat ride away to a small island with a coral reef. Our boat in in the background in this picture. It was fantastic! We saw all kinds of fish including an elusive but large (3 feet long) porcupine fish and a tiny yellow spotted box fish...and several black tipped reef sharks, the biggest about 4 feet long.

One of the sharks that came very close to the shore, I took the picture from the pier.

Our snorkeling site.

16 mornings in a row

I thought it would be interesting to take a photo from our balcony in the same direction every morning when I got up. So I did it for 16 days. Sometimes I think people think that living in Vietnam is living in a lush, tropical, sunny place. It is tropical by definition and lush and sunny in some places. But we live in Hanoi, one of the fastest growing cities in the world probably. Population of Hanoi in 2000--1 million. Population of Hanoi in 2010--6.8 million. You don't have growth like that without consequences to environmental quality. So here are 16 photos of the same image over 16 days in a row.

Is that the sun peeking through??

The above photo is the morning after a rainy day. The rain quite literally washes the air. The droplets of water condense around air particulates and then drop to the ground. This particular morning, we took the elevator downstairs and walked outside to our bus stop. We both commented on our "super vision." It was weird, like we had a film peeled off our eyeballs. Everything was so sharp and clear. Things had edges. The leaves were green. It was like we were surrounded by objects that were real, that we could reach out and grasp. Like we were in some sort of movie set. It lasted one day.

Building progress from August to May

Picture from our balcony in August.

Picture from our balcony in May.