Vietnam Calls

Well if you cannot remember Kelly and I are off on anohter (and perhaps our last) adventure. Tonight we leave for Vietnam for 14 days on our 'winter break'. We will be flying Etihad Airways (not Ethiopian) from Abu Dhabi to Bangkok, Thailand. We will stay with Kelly's friend Francine for the weekend and on Sunday will fly to Hanoi, Vietnam. Early Monday morning we will be taking a 3 day tour with 'Handspan Tours' to Halong Bay. We will be kayaking around Halong Bay and camping overnight on a traditional wooden 'Junk Boat'. If you have never seen or heard of Halong Bay check it out on google images and it will blow your socks off! After our tour we will head back to Hanoi where we will explore the 'old quarter' of the small city for 3 days. Then we are flying to Hue in central Vietnam where Quy will be waiting for us at the airport. Quy will be our tour guide for the next 4 days. After leaving the airport Quy will lead us to our modes of transportation for the next 4 days......two Yamaha 110cc motorbikes! Thats right, we will be embarking on a 4 day motorcycle tour (guided by Quy on his own bike...hopefully?) around the Hue area including Dmz, Hoian, Vn, and Da Nang via the Hai Van Pass (google that too). It was my personal request that we ride the Hai Van Pass, not to scare the heck out of Kelly but rather to take advantage of one of the most beautiful highways in the world. After our motorcycle trip we fly back to Hanoi and then back to Bangkok where we will meet up with 2 other friends (from Kuwait) and spent 2 days in the markets before heading back to Kuwait. We will arrive back here Feb 14 so shortly there after you can expect an update.
Take care and we will talk again in two weeks.

New Years in Lebanon

We have returned from our New Years adventure in Lebanon. It was a great way to ring in the New Year. A small posh restaurant, owned by a friend, in Beirut was the site of New Years Eve. 10 of us gathered and gorged on an all-inclusive 9 course meal for the hrs that remained of 2009. After the dinner we went across the street to a bar called, Chaos, and partied the night away. It must have been 6 am when we arrived back at the Beverly Hotel downtown Beirut. The next day we grabbed lunch, hopped into our waiting taxi van (7 person) and headed for Mt. Lebanon for our next adventure at Cedars Ski Resort. The drive took us along Lebanon's West Coast for 2 hrs then into the mountain area that resembled that of the Canadian Rockies, or at least what we remember of them. We spent the next day on the slopes learning again how to ski and snowboard only this time it included dodging boulders, jagged rocks, and chunks of ice. The ski hill had not seen a lot of snow this season and so we had to make the most of what we had. Mike and I took the chair lift to the summit and tried our luck at getting down in one piece. We managed; but not before falling many times on pure ice-glaciers that polluted the entire slope. The edge of our snowboard did not exist and therefore we were unable to have much control over what we were going or where we were going. Adding to this was the 100 km/h wind that we headed directly into on the ride down. This helped slow us down....I suppose? All in all a good day, actually a great day as none of us have seen snow in 2 years. We thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. The next day we jammed into a taxi van once again and headed on a 14 hr journey to two of Lebanon's largest tourist attractions. Anjar was the first stop. It is one of the few un-mayyad sites in the world. This site existed during the 8th century A.D and only flourished for a few decades. What is interesting is the city was discovered by mistake in 1943 when archeologists from turkey were excavating the area for a different reason. It is full of large monuments and pillars that show a glimpse of what the city once looked like.

Our next stop was Baalbek. This is another site of a very old civilization. It is famous for its exquisitely detailed yet monumentally scaled temple ruins of the Roman period, when Baalbek, known as Heliopoliswas one of the largest sanctuaries in the Empire. It is Lebanon's greatest Roman treasure, and it can be counted among the wonders of the ancient world. The largest and most noble Roman temples ever built, they are also among the best preserved. It was a great piece of history that 5 history teachers in our group got to experience . For the rest of us it was just simply amazing! After a few hrs of exploring we headed back 2hrs to Beirut and checked in at the airport. Our 11:45 pm flight landed us back in Kuwait at 4am. Teaching started at 7, so needless to say there were 10 VERY tired teachers that day at school. Another trip, and country to check off the list with many more memories and stories to tell. Pictures will follow as soon as I find where Kelly put the camera. Check back within 24 hrs for the visuals.

-Ryan-