Its been a while

So it has been quite a while since I have written anything about my time here in Southeast Asia. I think it has been around 4 months or something like that. In the span of that time a lot of stuff has happened and I feel like I need to write some of it down while it is somewhat fresh in my mind or I'll lose it forever. One of the first things I wanted to talk about was to make a list of things that I will and won't miss about Trang. I think I'll start with the things I won't miss first.

1. Having people just shout hello at me while I ride by on a motorbike. If your gonna yell at someone at least have a follow up to hello.

2. I won't miss the general confusion that comes from a huge language barrier. While that can be kind of interesting sometimes, and it is all part of living in another place, a lot of times it just gets frustrating.

I'm sure I could think of others but it is a lot more fun to think about the things you will miss. So I'll go ahead and list those.

I think I'll ditch the number format for this one and just go off the top of my head.

I'm going to miss seeing the kids that I taught. Its very strange to go from seeing them everyday to knowing that you will never see any of them again. I'll miss some of the staff at Wichienmatu, not many but there are a few people that I will miss. Being able to eat lunch for 50 cents a day will also be dearly missed. I'll miss when my dinner bill is over a dollar and I think that is expensive. I'll miss being able to ride my motor bike around and park it right in front of wherever I want to go. Being able to fill it up for the week and only spend two dollars will also be missed. I'll miss the good food and being able to eat from a street stall. I'll miss the friends I made, especially Joe and Hok those guys were awesome. And especially I will miss being one of the better basketball players in the city that I live in. Its back to being perhaps slightly above average when I get back home. But I digress. I think I will mainly miss the experience of living and working in a foreign place where English is not the main spoken language. I know I was complaining about it earlier but that made the experience challenging and difficult and in the end that was what made it rewarding. It will be strange to go from being a novelty to look at in Thailand to being just another white person in the United States. Its gonna be a tough transition and I'm not sure how I will handle it but we will find out in about a month.

Here I would like to take some time to congratulate the UNC basketball team. I know many on the team are regular readers, so congratulations boys you earned it. Its funny Keats and I were in Phnom Penh, its the capital of Cambodia in case you don't know, and we were hanging out with my buddy Sam who lives and works there. We were walking around just talking and we passed by a sports bar and he told me if I wanted to watch the championship game live there we would be able to. I though he was just being a jackass and messing around with me because he went to Duke. And we all know that people who went to Duke love being jackasses. But lo and behold he was not and I decided we had to stay an extra day in the city to watch the game. It ended up not being very exciting but I'll take a beatdown in the national championship as opposed to a thrilling loss any day. I hope Franklin Street was crazy and I'm sorry I missed it, but I think it was a worthwhile trade.

Our travels so far have been a lot of fun. We had some great times in Bangkok with my brother. Who knew a dirty disgusting city could look so great 57 stories up. Laos was fun, we stayed in one city a bit to long but it was still a good time. Cambodia was a bit of a dump. Angkor Wat was truly amazing but everything else about the country was a bit depressing and very dirty. But that will happen when the smartest people in your country are systematically murdered. But at least they had the championship game for me to watch. You will be remembered fondly for that Cambodia don't you worry. We are in Vietnam now and it has been a really good and interesting place. I have never been in a country that my country was formerly at war with. It is extremely sad to walk around and see a man with no arms or legs or a badly burnt face and know that your country probably had a great deal to do with why his life sucks so bad. I think we view war in the US differently than other countries because we pretty much always get to pack up and leave a war zone, whereas the other country has to stay and rebuild there way of life. The physical damage done to the land that is evidenced here is something that cannot be forgotten quickly because it simply cannot go away. People die or grow up but for the most part bomb craters stay where they are.

Tomorrow Keats and I are heading to the Mekong Delta, an area to the South of Saigon. I am really looking forward to that. After that we are heading to Danang. We found out it was either a 19 hour bus ride there or a 34 dollar flight. The decision pretty much made itself. I will try to write a bit more in the next few weeks just to get my thoughts down somewhere before they get lost. Anyway let me end this the only fitting way I see.

GO HEELS.