So much cruising on the west coast!  Los Angeles was great fun, as usual! We caught up with good old Josh and raised hell with Dana. We jumped down to San Diego to visit Olivier and Aline, and we managed a little day trip to Tijuana — very exciting things going on there! The time has flown by, and we just have not had as much time as we would have liked with all of our friends in this part of the country.

Well…. since California, we’ve been to Vegas, the Hoover Dam, Arizona including the Grand Canyon, several national parks in Utah, and now we’ve landed in southern Colorado. Toby joined us for that whole wild ride. It was incredible. No, spectacular! All of the above. Despite the frigid temperatures at night in our tents, the days were gorgeous and the views even better. We did a good deal of hiking and even more gawking out the car windows at this beautiful part of the USA. We head into northern New Mexico tomorrow morning.

We’ve landed back in the USA and explored a bit of San Francisco. High-tailed it up to Oregon for the film festival in Ashland, got to visit our new friends there, and even got in some snowboarding. That was a pleasant surprise! We bought a car (man what a chore that was), now we’re snaking our way back down the coast.

It took us two-and-a-half days to get from Oregon back to San Francisco, the slow way — Highway 1. We saw many giant redwoods, some charming towns, and had some excellent food. We got back to SF just in time for Yuri’s Night, a sort of music festival slash science fair, in honor of the first man in space.

Had a great time in New Zealand (as usual). We spent most of March there. Two weeks in the northland, hiking around Paihia, Haruru Falls, and Urupukapuka Island. We then visited our old Barcelona friends Tristan and Nia in Auckland, followed by a scenic train ride down to Wellington for the Summer Set music festival. Then we took the ferry across to Picton and rented a car to drive around the south island. We did Picton to Christchurch in a roundabout way. We saw wine country by bicycle, some sea lions and dolphins, and did some diving off a floating platform in a lake at St Arnaud.

After a whirlwind tour through Cambodia, Laos, and Thailand, we left Bangkok (and Asia) behind yesterday. We are now relaxing in the gorgeous Bay of Islands in New Zealand.

After HCMC (aka Saigon) and 4 fantastic days of beachy goodness on forested Phu Quoc island, we took the ferry to Rach Gia (Mekong Delta), and things started looking a little queasy. We had set up a private cycling tour for the delta, but that first day was totally shot, due to some kind of food poisoning — both of us got stung. Pip was immobilized, but I tried a few km on the bike before throwing in the towel (and throwing up! Yeeech!). I normally have a “stomach of steel” but not this time. I was a mess, and Pippa was worse off than me. The support vehicle took us in the rest of the way to Can Tho, and we crashed out after the initial pharmacy run. Next morning was better, but still shaky. We had to rise at 5 AM to catch the famous floating markets, and it did not disappoint. What followed was a charming homestay in the very un-touristed Tra On, and that totally made the Mekong tour for us. The family was so nice, the house and gardens were fantastic. We did get a bunch more cycling in, so all was not lost.

After a quick sleep in Chao Doc we got an early start on a boat to Pnomh Penh (Cambodia). I had a bit of a scare at the borderö the agent told me I can’t be issued a visa because I have no blank pages left in my passport! I pointed out that I did have blank pages, but then he showed me those pages are not to be used for attaching the visa. He said I may need to return to Saigon to get more pages in my passport at the US Embassy there. Fortunately, he said maybe they can “work something out” for a $15 fee. That seemed to work, and they put the visa on one of the few remaining pages. I’m pretty sure I just bribed a customs agent!

We’ve been stuck using internet cafes that don’t read DVDs, and all my Vietnam photos are backed up to DVD only.  I want to update my flickr in tandem with my blog. As a result, I haven’t been updating either yet. We’re in Cambodia now, I don’t expect the situation will improve until we hit Thailand, which won’t be for a couple of weeks.

We have gone from Hanoi to Ninh Binh, to Hue, and now we’re in Hoi An. There are a lot of tourists here, but for good reason. It is a nice little town on the river just a few miles from the beach, and there are hundreds of tailors and cobblers — you can have any item of clothing made to order (or copied) — for dirt cheap! Pippa has had one skirt and three pairs of pants copied, all in less that 48 hours, for about $10 each item!

We did a full day cooking course today, complete with a visit to an organic farm to see how they grow the herbs and vegetables, then the organic market where they get the ingredients, then to the gourmet cooking school and restaurant to learn the dishes. We learned how to make our own rice noodles — it isn’t too difficult!

We’re going to spend all day tomrrow on the beach to work on our tans - it is so hot and sunny here. Then we head down to Nha Trang, for a 1 night stopover, then to Dalat (in the central highlands) followed by a 2 day mountain bike trek back to the southern coast before we go to Saigon. Then we’ll spend 4 days on a secluded forested beach island called Phu Quoc. Then Cambodia.

Had a great two weeks (Nov 20 - Dec 4)  in Japan (Osaka - Hiroshima - Miyajima - Kyoto - Takayama - Tokyo). We experienced the usual stuff: Sushi, bullet trains, futuristic surroundings. One nice thing about visiting in November were the gorgeous autumnal colors. We wouldn’t have managed Tokyo nearly as well without the help of our hosts. Highlights for me included a day trip to Miyajima, the temples of Kyoto, hole-in-the-wall bars of Golden Gai, Akihabara, and Yoyogi Park.

We saw a great deal during our two weeks (Nov 6-20) in South Korea. Even North Korea! The taxi drivers like to watch satellite TV while they drive. Decorative cabbages adorn the public spaces. Burial tombs harmonize with the natural order of things. Norebangs (aka Kareoke rooms) abound in this country. All-in-all, a whirlwind, fantastic experience. A big thanks is in order to our generous hosts in Kyeong-Ju.

My laptop died today. We were in the Osaka airport and my backpack fell (again) to the floor. this time, part of the back and front cracked. I tried to turn on the machine and the backlight for the monitor has apparently stopped working. So the computer works, I just can’t (barely) see the screen. I’ll soon probably try to salvage all of my files, then get rid of the computer. Maybe in Tokyo. I will try to go without a laptop until Hong Kong (at least). Maybe longer (until arrival in the USA, as planned). It was slowly dying anyway. It is more than 5 years old now!