wudang to roma, with some adventure list thrown in

We took one last look out our hotel window in Wudang before heading out on a journey that would find us in Roma a week later.

It started off with a 26 hour train ride from Wudang to Shanghai. Enough time for a night's sleep and some work time. Also, lots of smoggy countryside.

It looks like it might just be foggy, but don't be fooled.

We were lucky enough to get to Shanghai a couple days after they had reached record pollution levels. It was still bad, but nothing like they had a few days before we arrived, we heard visibility was down to eight feet.

When the pollution subsided a little, we saw a whole skyline of buildings that you can't see here.

We had a few days to kill in Shanghai so we saw some of sights we had missed our first time around. We walked around the French Concession, which was one of the nicest city atmospheres we found in China.

We also went to the Bund and saw the world famous Shanghai skyline.

We were ready to leave China as we headed to the airport to catch a plane to Bangkok. We had a one night layover there before we headed to Roma, and we decided to turn it into a "One Night In Bankok," type of night, with the Murry Head song as our anthem.

First up was to knock some things off of the Adventure List that we forgot to do our first time around. So we started off by eating bugs - crickets to be exact.

Just another handful of crickets.

They didn't taste very good, mostly like cardboard, so we had our fill and deposited the rest in the closest trash receptacle. Next up was getting Maggie a tattoo, a Henna one. She had decided on a compass, something that plays prominently in her book.

See the compass on her wrist?

So after night filled with Khao San road, Archa beer and Hong Thong whiskey, we woke the next day and boarded a plane to Rome, with what was supposed to be a quick layover in Colombo, Sri Lanka.

Upon boarding the plane to Colombo, we were treated to quite the surprise. We had been upgraded to Business Class (which is First Class on this airline). We have no idea why. The only thing we could think of was that on a plane full of Sri Lankans and dirty backpackers, we looked the most respectable (we try to always look nice for flights for just this reason, but it's never worked before!) - but who knows.

It was both of our first time flying International Business Class and we lived it up. Champagne before takeoff, seats that turned into beds, a fancy diner on plates, glasses of cognac, we did it all.

We never wanted to leave the plane when we landed in Colombo. We doubted it would ever happen again and after you've tasted first class, it's hard to go back to the ruffians in coach. But we finally got off, only to find out that our one hour layover had turned into an seven hour layover. It was 1am, which meant the plane wasn't leaving until morning, so from our luxurious beds in first class, we were now relegated to pushing two benches together to finish our nights sleep. How the mighty had fallen.

It turned out to be not completely awful, though, and after a better night's sleep than we expected, we boarded the plane to Rome. We lucked out and the plane was fairly empty. This allowed Andrew to commandeer an entire row to polish off his beauty sleep.

Maggie, who always gets enough beauty sleep, took some pictures from the plane as we passed over the Middle East.

Then finally after many days of trains, planes and a few tuk tuks, we made it to Roma. Maggie didn't look any worse for the wear. Unlike Andrew, who you'll notice we didn't take a picture of when we arrived.

slow boat up the mekong

At the Laos boarder (after we crossed the border on a long boat across the Mekong from Thailand to Laos) we jumped directly onto a slow boat that would take us down the Mekong River to Luang Prabang. It is supposedly a rite of passage for any South East Asian backpacker - so we had to do it.

Yes mom, they still have Farang Badges in Laos

We decided to take the slow boat rather than the fast boat, even though the slow boat would take two whole days and the fast boat only six hours, because we've heard very very bad things about the fast boat, and we saw what they were talking about right away. They're eight-person boats where you have to wear helmets and hunker down with your knees to your chest and not move for six hours. Apparently quite a few people have died in the frequent crashes. So yeah, slow boat it was.

We'd heard varying things about the condition of the boats, but ours wasn't bad. The first day we actually had a table to set our stuff on which was quite nice.

It's like boat roulette. Which one is ours?

We sat across from a French couple that we befriended and made the trip much more enjoyable. Good conversation has a way of doing that.

Arnaud and Julie. I think Julie is asleep, not just avoiding the picture. (Sorry for the weird pic, Julie!)

The sun was setting over the Mekong as we ended our first day on the river. The village we stayed in the first night seems to exist solely for the river boats to make their stop on the two day trip to Luang Prabang from the Thai boarder.

The hotel we stayed was right on the river and we had quite the view from the restaurant. Though, even while on the river, work still needs to be done.

Elephants taking their morning bath.

The second day had many more locals on the boat as we made our way into Luang Prabang, the second largest city in Laos. This made it a much tighter fit as locals brought aboard all of their goods to bring to the big city.

Laos's version of dick in a box... cock in a basket. (In other words, somebody brought a rooster on the boat. One guy also had a gigantic bag of grub worms all the Lao people were fascinated with--apparently they're a delicacy.)

The river itself is not that beautiful. It's pretty muddy. But the surrounding mountains were dramatic and gorgeous.

It turned out to be a fine trip, but we were pretty ready to get off the boat once we got there.

no sleep till bangkok... well maybe a little

We made the journey back to Bangkok from the beaches in the south--specifically from Ao Nang. It was a multi-legged journey that ended up taking us a total of 32 hours from Guest House to Guest House.

The first leg was a ride in the back of a truck (called a songthaew here--it's a truck with two benches in the back) from Ao Nang to the Krabi bus station which was around a half hour journey.

Thai bus stations are a tad different than an American bus station. As they would say "Same, Same... But Different."

Krabi bus station

Once at the bus station we got our sticker (Farang Badge) that lets everyone (who doesn't speak English) along the trek know where we are going so they can make sure we are on the right train, bus or boat. 

Getting a combo ticket like this (in our case, bus-->bus, but they can involve ferries, trains, etc) is a really popular way for farang (foreigners) to travel in SE Asia. It takes a lot of the planning and guesswork out of getting from place to place (for a price, of course, but sometimes it's worth it. Like here, we just took the bus part, and did the train ourselves.) These combo tickets are part group tour and part kindergarten field trip. Everyone on the same route gets the same color sticker, so the Thai bus drivers can go around the bus station and say, "You! There!" and hopefully, everyone gets to where they're going.

The bus took us back to the East Coast of Thailand to Thong Sala, where we had originally caught the night ferry to Koh Phangan, and where all the trains to the north stop. It was about a 3 hour journey with a stop in the middle of nowhere for about 6 of us to get off and climb into a minivan for the rest of the journey to the Thong Sala train station (since the rest of the 30 or so people on the bus--the ones with different colored stickers--were going to the islands, which is a completely different place many miles outside of the city).

Once we got to the train station and got our tickets we had 6 hours to kill before our train was supposed to leave. We passed the time with a few meals and some work before finding out that the train was delayed another 2 hours. So around 11:30pm we climbed onto the night train to Bangkok, which was supposed to be a 9 hour journey.

Bedtime in the upper bunk (photo taken from the opposite upper bunk)

After a fairly good night's sleep we awoke thinking we should be close to Bangkok... boy were we wrong. We were still nine hours away, because...we never really figured out why. So we had a whole day to kill on the train, and our laptops were dead at least half that time.

But hey, at least we weren't our seatmates across the aisle--they had a flight to catch that evening, and figured with the train getting in early in the morning, they'd be safe. Oops...

Really, though, the train was pretty nice. And we needed more practice sitting still and doing nothing anyway...

A shack with satellite out the window of the train

The lower bunks turn into two facing seats

we're velibers: renting bikes in paris

Velibs, in our humble opinion, are the best way to get around Paris.

Velib is Paris' bike sharing program, and not only is it really fun riding around Paris, it's a pretty sweet deal. For 1.70€, you get 24 hours worth of bike rentals, which means you can go to any Velib stand in the city (they claim they're every 300 meters, and I wouldn't be surprised--they're everywhere) and then return it at any other Velib stand. For each individual trip, if you return it within 30 minutes, there's no additional charge. (Which means on longer trips, we could find a Velib stand, return the bike, and get another one out immediately, and not get charged!)

We ended up Velibing all over the city, from our apartment in the Marais to the Eiffel Tower on one side of town and up to the Sacre Coeur on the other (though down from the Sacre Coeur was a much more fun ride...), and everywhere in between. There are even bikes lanes a lot of the way!

The only downsides we found were that 1. You had to be really careful to get a bike that actually worked (we accidentally got bikes with no brakes, one with no chain, and one missing a pedal over our time there). Luckily, if you get a dud, you can just return it and get a new one. And 2. These suckers are popular. Even though there are tons of stands, we'd occasionally have to visit two or three or six stands until we found one with two working bikes available. 

Overall, though, Velibing it was a great way to get around the city, and we'd definitely recommend them as way around the city. We're Velibers!