Despite all the fake construction, most of the foliage in the hotels is real.

Most.

We ate at the Bellagio buffet and it was by far the best buffet I’ve eaten.  A bonus was that after standing in line for a few minutes a guy came up to us and handed off a front-of-the-line ticket.  We walked right in!  We were leaving as the people that had been in front of us were just coming in.  Afterwards, we walked outside just in time to see the fountain show.  Oceans 11 moment.

Here’s how to really do chocolate fondue.

Here’s how to have fun in FAO Schwartz.  Marshall’s a silly boy.

We saw the lions at the MGM Grand.

I saved the best for last.  Animatronics.  It doesn’t get better than this.  If you’re ever in Vegas, this is a must-must-see.  Caesar’s Palace.  Write it down.

Thanks to M&M for making our vacation totally rad.  For taking us places they’ve been to multiple times before.  Good times, noodle salad!

See all the photos here.

They have real sharks there.

Marshall was eaten by a shark.

These are the two scariest sharks I have ever seen.

After being scared out of our mind by M&M sharks, we cruised out by Lake Mead to hike up into a slot canyon, which I think is called Lovell Wash.  Despite the 110 degree heat, it was sweet.  Kind of surreal.  Just don’t be caught in one during a flood.

The dawrgs were panting machines.  M&M said they usually run way ahead but they must have been extra dehydrated because they stayed pretty close.  It’s hard to pass up hand-fed water.

It was fun to be in the mountains outside of Vegas.  Cuz mountains are cool.  And it’s not the norm for visiting Vegas.  And these ones have stria.

All Vegas photos here.

Actually, it was really cool to see what Marshall has been up to in Vegas for the last few years (work-wise).  The construction is quite amazing.  Everything is so huge.  I have literally zero experience in construction but I would think creating these monstrosities has to be intimidating for an architect and the all the builders that have a hand in it.

In our tour, we of course passed lots of inviting fashion stores.  The prices are high but they definitely throw-down in style.

We each played the slots with $20 – Lacey won $5!  I lost it all.. but I did have this “almost” moment.

We went to a Cirque du Soleil show that night.  Beatles Love.  These shows are always incredible.  At one point they covered almost the entire audience with a gigantic white sheet – it was like the parachute bubble in elementary school – and then the whole sheet was sucked into the stage floor.  If you’ve never been to a show, the theaters are circular with the stage in the middle.  The most intense part was an acrobat floating around on a large swing like forty feet in the air.  I was just waiting for him to slip and eat it.  Ack!  Well you can’t take photos during the show but here’s the entrance, which is fantastic in itself.

All the Vegas photos here.

Now for our action-packed adventures.

We went to Fremont Street our first night.  I’ve been to Vegas a few times (Lacey never had) but never walked around Fremont.  I didn’t know that there is a giant massive overhead screen that spans multiple blocks and shows video montages with famous songs.  Awesome!

There are these amazing artists on the street that create beautiful paintings, using only spray paint.  Straight up Krylon.  They reproduce the same selection of paintings over and over, which is why they are so good, but it’s still an incredible feat.  And since I have negative artistry skills, I totally exalt skilled artists.

Here we are!

Apparently, Fremont Street rocks different themes and the current one was Summer of ‘69.  Despite the liberal fascist tendencies of that era, the music rocked.  And the bands downtown Vegas on Fremont rocked the songs of Jimi Hendrix and others incredibly well.  Honestly, I was surprised at the obvious quality of the musicians playing – I don’t normally expect much from random cover bands.  But these cats were great!  There were even some flying ring girls.

Thus concludes our first day.  For all the photos go here.

It’s pretty obvious this town is architected to look European.  Apparently, in the 1960’s the town was about to vanish so the townsfolk came together while listening to The Beatles* and recreated it as a Bavarian tourist town.  They succeeded and they continue to keep it real, holding big festivals every year like Oktoberfest and Christmas Lighting Ceremonies.  History 101 right here.

* History does not say they were listening to The Beatles.  But they totally were.

When we arrived the night before around 9:30pm, we ended up feeling pretty lucky because the hotel we stayed at, the HoJo, has a peculiar policy of closing down for the night at 10!  As in, if you arrive after 10pm, you are greeted with a friendly sign that says the hotel next door has nice rooms.  Ha.

We started our adventure with a healthy Bavarian breakfast.

If you’re in Leavenworth, you have to play the miniature golf course that sits right next to downtown, complete with mountain goats!

And with mountains.

And with intense competition.

There are tons of fun little shops in Leavenworth to wander and peruse through.  In one section this guy who was making peanut brittle called out to us to come over and try some.  We obliged of course and had some of the best brittle I’ve had.  He makes everything low fat and low sugar and all natural (something like that) and it’s great!  He said he’s really a builder around that area and making brittle and chocolate and other fun sweeties is his hobby.  Fun!  Pip-pip cheerio.

As well as brittle and chocolate, we stumbled into a shop with a large wall of salt water taffy…  ahhhh yeah.

For supper, we found an underground restaurant called Andreas Keller to stuff our stomachs full of amazing Bavarian food.  Bratwurst, sausage, sauerkraut, red cabbage, oh my!  I can’t wait to go back to Leavenworth for the sole purpose of eating this food again.  Of course, it still doesn’t come close to the fantastic food Lacey churns out daily

Mmm.

On our way out of town we stopped in the drizzling rain because I had to be in a picture with this knight.  When Lacey looked at this knight she cried, “My leige!  Thou art tall in stature!”  And then she looked at me and exclaimed, “My leige!  Thou art tall in chivalry!”

No, really, she did.  She totally talks like that all the time.

All the pics here.

As of 2009, Phi-phi Islands are under investigation after two tourists, one American girl, Jill St. Onge and one Norwegian Tourist, Julie Michelle Berghiem mysteriously died while staying at the Laleena Guesthouse. Their cause of death is unknown, however alcohol, drugs, and food poisoning have been all ruled out of the case. Tourists are strongly urged against traveling to Phi-phi Islands without knowledge of the potential dangers.

Whoa, what?  Apparently, they developed a cough, along with their roommates (Jill’s roommate being her fiance, Ryan Kells) and were dead within 12 hours.  This site is tracking progress, or lack or progress, on the investigation.  If you want to experience something haunting, read her last blog and the comments following it.

When I was there, I was taught how to scuba dive from an instructor named Cole Mansfield of Barakuda Dive Center.  (There’s some pictures of Barakuda along with the owner soon after the tsunami about 2/3 of the way down the page here; I was told he’s the most amazing diver cuz he’s like a seal.. ha).  I found another haunting link, which looks like a list of survivors that was posted right after the tsunami.  Notice Cole is listed.

Strange and tragic.

I guess the only picture I have of Cole is his bare back.

The owner of Barakuda (”the seal”) taking a nap.

The water level reached in this cafe.

The strip that was devastated.

I was in the middle of reading about request scope in Dependecy Injection, a software developer nerdbook, when this flashback entered my brain and now I’ve spent most of my morning reading and thinking about these Ko Phi Phi tragedies.  It’s hard to go back and concentrate on work after bumping the emotion button.

We went to the famous market.

And down to the piers.

We saw ugly sea creatures at the aquarium.

We ate ugly sea creatures at The Crab Pot.

And we listened to sweet a cappella outside the original Starbucks.

I also took Lacey into Ye Olde Curiosity Shop on Pier 54 to check out the mummies, the shrunken heads, the two-headed calf, and all the other freaky things hanging out in there

Luckily we encountered lots of freaky things in Seattle (including a guy who popped his eyeballs out of his sockets as we walked by) so we were prepared for Derek’s freaky bikes.  Haha.

All the Seattle photos are here.

My struggle is that I want to write things that make me laugh so I don’t bore myself to tears when I reread it some day.  You know, because like anyone else really reads my blog, so as long as I make myself laugh that’s all that matters right?

Now that I just finished talking about writing things that make me laugh, I remembered that this post is not about things that make me laugh.  (So far it’s about me thinking out loud).

A few weeks ago I visited the Shiloh battlefield from the Civil War down in Tennessee.  It was one of the bloodiest battles of the war.  There’s a pond appropriately named the Bloody Pond because it was the one water hole around and all the injured and dying soldiers gathered in and around it to cool their wounds and drink bloody water.  Lovely.

The heart of the battle occurred in the “Hornet’s Nest,” a small clearing the size of maybe a couple city blocks?  The Union were lined up behind a little wood fence along the Sunken Road.  Imagine chillin’ here waiting for the Confederates to pop out from those trees a’blazin’!  Scary!

Well even scarier is what happened, the Confederates got a line of cannons along those trees and started bombing the heck out of the Union soldiers, busting ‘em up real bad.  So much that they were able to start running across the field and make the Union soldiers retreat into the woods behind and to the left.  It was from here they retreated to the Bloody Pond and then on further to Pittsburg Landing on the Tennessee River.

It was a powerful victory for the Confederates but shortlived.  That night General Ulysses S. Grant arrived with his reinforcements and decisively worked over the Confederates the next day.

I’ll spare all of us any more details but here’s a cool cannon line accurately modeling a part of the battle.

It’s interesting to remember that a lot of these battles took place on people’s private property.  That building is a replica of the dude’s house that lived here and owned this land.

Closer…

If you’ve never been to a National Cemetery, it’s amazing.  They are meticulously maintained and there are huge fines for breaking even a little tree branch.  And of course the real amazing part is that it’s filled with courageous soldiers who died fighting for the freedoms they believed in.  Freedoms too often taken for granted and misunderstood nowadays.  Freedoms they believed so strongly in there were divided families fighting on opposite sides but meeting at night to make plans to be in different locations the next day so they wouldn’t kill each other.  Freedoms they believed so strongly in they were willing to die for them so that their children and future generations could have them.

Sadly, we had to leave the beautiful water, coral, and fishes of Phi Phi behind. It was not near as sad for me as another bloke we met though. Originally from England but living in Spain for 7 years, he’d now been traveling and scuba diving for 7 months. He fell in love with a blond girl who was also traveling and they’d been together for the last 3 months. We met them the night before departing and he said he’d see us on the boat the next day as he was leaving too. As we boarded the next morning, he said, “this one’s gonna be a tear jerker.” They held each other up until the last second and from then on the tears freely flowed. Total heart break. When Danica asked him when he’d see her again, he turned his head and said, “Never.”

The hour and a half boat ride from Phi Phi is a sad one even after only being there for a week. It gives you all this time to sit and think and watch the islands fade away. Danica let her mp3 player soak her ears and, since I don’t have portable music, I softly sang every song I could think of to pass the time and memories. The van ride in Phuket to the airport was not suicidal this time so we safely made it there and caught our flight to Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia. Another passport stamp! At the KL airport we taxied to the distant bus station and barely caught a bus to Johor Bahru. It was the nicest bus yet! Only a few horn honks! Ahhhhhh, much more peaceful. Along the way, we stopped at a hawker-style restaurant area and I ate some much needed food, teriyaki chicken, fish cakes with sweet chili sauce, a no-meat hot bun roll thing, some tapioca crackers, a Milo candy bar, and a Vanilla Coke. Danica called Mr. Chua, the gracious and hospitable man who she and her parents spent a bunch of time with on the first half of her trip. A poor phone connection led Mr. Chua to think we were already in Johor Bahru but luckily they waited and searched for us at the bus station for an hour or two until we actually arrived.

To our delight, he put us up at his brother’s incredible resort, Pulai Springs, home to a 5-star Chinese Restaurant and a world-renowned golf course. I felt U.S. clean for the first time since leaving; I didn’t even bother to use hand sanitizer. The rooms we stayed in are $250 a night rooms with beautiful dark wood walls and floors in the main room and marble floors and lots of mirrors in the bathroom. The bathroom reminded me of the old Chavez residence. I slept in until 10 am this morning and then breakfast’d at Glen Eagles, the other awesome restaurant at Pulai Springs Resort, with Mr. and Mrs. Chua and some friends of theirs. One of their friends is a Malaysian man who used to have a part in the kingdom. Apparently, in the city he lives all the friends lost out some years ago and there hasn’t been meetings there since. He told us this morning how he misses the meetings and has never felt anything like them in other churches he has visited. I think if there was a meeting where he lives, he would go. I hope he has an opportunity to revive his committment. As for the food, we had nasi lemak, the traditional Malaysian breakfast, “carrot cake,” and an omelet. I don’t want to try and describe nasi lemak or carrot cake but I bet Danica did in her blog about a month and a half ago if you’re interested. I’ll just say nasi lemak is not breakfast like we think of and carrot cake is not cake.

The rest of the day I spent lounging by the pools, sitting in a steam room, lifting weights, watching The Interpreter in the resort’s Cineplex, eating chicken satay with peanut sauce and chocolate banana cake and drinking Milo, hanging out listening to The Rubatos and watching English football (soccer), and finally eating another traditional Malaysian dish, some of Danica’s lasagna, some cheesecake, and a Tutti Frutti Ice Cream bowl.

Three pools sit right next to each other. One has a waterslide built into rock, one is an Olympic size or close lap pool, and the other has large boulers lying about. Upstairs in the Sports Centre you have your choice of a good-sized weight room, the spa area complete with 2 jacuzzis, 2 saunas, 2 steam rooms, and a bunch of rinse-off showers. A therapy healing massage area lives upstairs as well which Danica partook in. The locker room downstairs is the nicest locker room I’ve ever been in. Also reminiscent of the former Aunt Debbie abode, it has shiny black floor tiling, healthy dark wood doors, and a large entrance area with comfy chairs. It felt really nice to lift weights for some reason; maybe a taste of home and normalcy? I tried some I’ve always found awkward, the hip/butt ones where you sit normal but your legs start spread and you squeeze them together, and the opposite of that too. That probably doesn’t make sense but it’s probably enough for me to remember and that’s the main reason for this blog anyway.

I haven’t watched too much futbol/soccer but the few times I have I’ve gotten to like it much more and enjoyed it this afternoon, especially while listening to The Rubatos. They’re a five-peop cover band from the Phillipines with a guy on synth keyboard, a guy on guitar, and 3 ladies in black respectable black fish-net singing. They covered everything from sappy Classy 99.9 to Englebert Humperdink to Backstreet Boys to Tom Petty, all performed in their synthie smooth jazzy Phillipino glory. As for the Cineplex, I pretty much had my own private theater. The wide screen I saw upon entering made me think I’d be seeing a wide screen version like in the U.S. but they stuck with the Asian style of motion pictures, copied illegal versions. I’m pretty sure every single CD and DVD they sell in Asia is an illegal copy. This version was especially sweet with Malaysian subtitles, a time counter at the top, and it wasn’t even the final polished edition. It was raw scene cuts like you see on deleted scenes on DVDs. So even though I was out the third world developing country environment and in a nice fancy resort, I was assured that I wasn’t back home.

After all 3 giant meals of wonderful food today courteous to Mr. Chua, he still had sandwiches made up for us and Cokes so we’d have food for our overnight airport stay here in Singapore! He and his wife are so generous! It’s almost 3 am now, only an hour until we can check in, but I’m still totally packed full. I did just finish a tall Cafe Mocha, which even though we’re in a developed country like U.S. tastes nothing like Starbucks and lovely PAML Cafe mochas I’m used to. Earlier I joked with the D that our Pulai Springs care package may be our Thursday morning convention breakfast but it’s looking more to me like my joke may become true. As much I was foodless when I blogged from here at the start of the journey, I am now foodmuch’d.

I guess I’m out of words at the moment and we’re leaving to check in very shortly so I’ll stop and call it good. This is it, my last words from the other side of Earth. Kinda sad that any more words on this blog will come from home. But I’m definitely ready for a little home-time. I’m sure a week will be enough though! I’ve learned massive heaps on this trip and plan to use it on future ones! Thanks to all who have read my bloggage (rhymes with cloggage, hmm) and I hope it wasn’t too boring and I didn’t repeat the word “awesome” too much. I do plan on editing and refining the blog off and on, hopefully removing some of the awesomes and making it perhaps more readable. In any case, it will get filled with appropriate photos to supplement the words so watch for that! I’m sure the photos will do way more in describing my experiences than my words can. BUT, as Danica likes to quote, “A picture is worth a thousand words but being there is worth a million.” So don’t just live vicariously through me, get out and do it yourself! (Those who are able of course). Don’t you wish I had something thoughtful and moving to leave you with as a final Asia Tour statement? Well I don’t, so how about: I have to go catch a plane ride home.

Keith

p.s. Is home where it was when I left? If home is where your heart is, where is my heart? Is it in Cambodia? Is it in Viet Nam? Is it in Thailand? Is it in Spokane? To be shallow and literal, my heart is in my chest. Is my home in my chest? What chest am I talking about? The chest on my body or my hope chest? But I don’t have a hope chest. So I must be talking about the chest on my body. So my home is in my chest on my body where my heart is. Doesn’t that mean my home is wherever I am? Doesn’t that mean my home is right here right now, in the moment? I think so, my home is in this moment. This small instant digital sample of life. The moment.