Merry Christmas from Egypt! The trip here was long but uneventful. My mom was kind enough to drive me to the airport early Tuesday morning where I checked in for my shuttle to JFK. We grabbed some breakfast and said goodbye. I meandered over to my gate and watched episodes of Bones on my iPod until we boarded and then I slept the whole way to JFK. I had to wait a couple hours to check in for my flight to Cairo, and then I wandered around the terminal until my fl...

This will be a short entry just detailing how the end of my jaunt through Asia went. The bus from Chiang Mai to Bangkok itself was not too bad - as far as overnight buses go it was perfectly reasonable. The only problem was that it dropped us off by Khao San road at 5:00 am. Half asleep, we were all forced to track down accomodation. I had tried to reserve a room at the guesthouse where my suitcase was being stored but was told that they, like most of the gue...

Well, the trip into Thailand wasn't as bad as it could have been. I guess that's saying something. At least the roads were sealed. Have I succeeded in frightening you all away from trips to Laos? Anyway, a tuk-tuk arrived at my guesthouse right on schedule to bring me to the Northern Bus Station. I arrived, changed my receipt into a bus ticket - presto! - loaded my bag onto the bus and tried to find the most comfortable place to sit. Technically, everyone ...

Hello from Laos! The sleeper bus to Vientiane wasn't too awful, fortunately. It wasn't a proper sleeper bus with converted bunks but it was a comfortable coach bus that got us to the border bright and early. When we arrived at the Thai side of the Friendship Bridge most of us passed through without a hitch - one guy, however, had lost his departure card and held us up for about twenty minutes at the border. Then we drove over to the Lao side where we handed o...

Hello again! Sorry this entry took so long, I've been distracted by all the photos I've had to upload! Well, the bus from Siem Reap wasn't exactly the scam bus, but it certainly wasn't what we'd paid for. It was more of a chicken bus. Anyway, it brought us to the Thai border where we spent almost two hours waiting to clear immigration. There were separate lines for Thais and for foreigners and the foreigner line was out the door. The Thai line, on the other...