One Night Of Fire

I've finally finished Harry Potter, so I'm back on the blogging scene. I won't say anything more about the book so I don't spoil it for anyone who's not done yet. But once you are done reading, please give me a call to discuss. :)


July 14th 2007


Another party put on by the group The Danger. This time it was called One Night of Fire, the return of the Renegade Parade. Everyone was going to get together and parade somewhere in the city. Because this was not a licensed parade group they didn't release the starting location until just before it started. We got a text message that told us to meet in the center of the Brooklyn Bridge. So we drove into the city and managed to find a parking spot. I looked up and saw that we had parked right next to Gold Street. This was appropriate since I happened to be wearing a dress that a friend, Lauren Resnick, had given me for my 21st birthday. Well, more like she let me borrow it and I never gave it back and finally she said I could just keep it. But I still love it and think of Lauren R. every time I wear it. I may not wear it often, but when I do I know it's going to be a good night. I decided for some reason that I wanted to wear wings. I think in the initial e-mail they told everyone to wear white and be angels. So I didn't really want to be just like all the other odd people, I wanted to be my own brand off odd. I decided gold was angelic enough and that I'd make myself some wings. I found a place online that told me how to buy 16 gauge wire and shape the wings, then put panty hose over the top. I made a pair using this method, then decided that it didn't really go with my metallic motif. Instead I decided to create some curlicue wings that complimented my outfit better :) I think Scott felt a little left out since I was so dressed up and he just had a white t-shirt on, so he decided to wear my discarded wings. Those wings were pretty small, but I found a way to attach them to his back and off we went. Sunset on the Brooklyn Bridge was beautiful. The city skyline makes a nice backdrop to the geometric lines of the bridge. It is a very pretty bridge, and the walkway was incredibly crowded with all kinds of people. I felt bad for people who were out on an evening stroll only to be confronted with a huge mass of boisterous and crazy looking people that they could barely squeeze past. Of course everyone had their camera out, including me, and it was funny to see the camera etiquette or social interplay going on. Some people would try to discreetly snap a picture of you, then smile shyly when they'd get caught at it. I usually just smiled and struck a pose. When you're in costume it's easy to get carried away with the energy of a crowd and act a little more bold than your usual reserved self. Enough with the third person-ness there. Haha at one point I saw two people standing taking pictures over each other's heads at the crowds, then a third person took a picture of them doing this, and I decided that I'd continue the trend and take a picture of all of them. I showed them the picture I'd taken and Mike, the third person, took my e-mail address, so now I have all four pictures that were taken at that moment. Our friends Kevin and Eric met up with us in that seething mass of people somehow. Kevin said he'd seen an acrobat climbing around on the cables of the bridge, as cars zoomed below. I think there were probably close to a thousand people there all waiting for something to happen. Finally we got a text that said "The cavalry leads the charge" which apparently meant that we were supposed to follow a person who came running by with a horse mask on. So we followed the "cavalry" into Manhattan. I decided I'd better find a restroom since I had no idea where we were going and if I'd ever find another one. So I spotted some people walking into a building and asked to borrow theirs. In downtown New York at that time of night there was no way I was going to find an open shop and there are no public restrooms. Unless I wanted to drive home to Jersey I would have been out of luck entirely. These people were very nice and they were setting up an art gallery for a show the next weekend. They asked me what the heck was going on outside and I explained it all to them. They were very amused. Once we rejoined the crowd, we saw that we'd missed our chance to play in the fountain, since the the cops had put a stop to it before we got there. That's OK, I had fun in a fountain on my wedding night. Here we are parading through the city, hundreds of dressed up people all going to the same unknown destination. It is fun to be a part of since there is a spirit of camaraderie, everyone is complementing each other on their costumes or just talking and meeting new people. It turned out that we were supposed to head into the subway, but Eric had to pick up his bike from another train station around the corner, so we left the crowd to go our own way. We saw two other stragglers who were taking the same train as us, and they got service in the subway, so they got the text that said to head to Coney Island. The train we wanted to take wasn't running, big surprise, the weekend subway service is always hit or miss. So we took the "Special J" train, and certainly got a few funny looks before we made it to a station where a crowd of fellow revelers were waiting. We'd managed to beat most of the people to the train station where we needed to transfer by taking the other route. People had drums, or noisemakers, or just yelled or even sang songs. They all cheered as our train pulled into the station. I felt sorry for the people who were already on the train as we boarded. They didn't know what hit them. A night train home suddenly turned into a raucous subway party, complete with a band who played their way to Coney Island. At one point it became a sing along car with people starting up songs and everyone joining in. At each stop people would run to the next car and we'd start over with a new group of people. We stayed put, since Eric had his bike and it was tough to move through the crowds. This was fine though, since everyone else kept changing cars. I think people in some cars started crowd surfing, if you go onto flickr and search one night of fire you can see even more photos from that night.




When we finally got to Coney Island we got off and saw the NYPD Bus. That made me laugh, since I had no idea how they'd expect to cart a busload of carousers off to jail. Overall the NYPD was very nice. They had a strong presence to make certain that nothing got out of hand, but didn't stop anything unless it did. Coney Island was an appropriate choice since that was one of the last weekends that it would be open before turning into condominiums, and well frankly we all seemed to fit in with the sideshow freaks :) I took off my sandals as we stepped out onto the beach since I didn't want to have to lift a ton of sand with every step. There were performers twirling fire, and I stopped to take a picture of the Scott, Eric and Kevin and the big Ferris wheel. After a while we decided to start the long trek home and I realized that I only had one shoe in my hand. We looked around, but we'd wandered from the spot where I took a picture, and I'm guessing dropped the sandal. It was also very dark, and the sandal was the color of the sand. Since it was just a cheap little flip flop that I'd bought for $5 two years ago I decided to head home without it. Eric gallantly offered me a sock so that I'd at least have something on my foot, then gave me a piggy back ride to the station. I'm sure Scott would have done the same, but he was wearing sandals too, so he had no socks to give me. We finally made our way back to our car and drove home. Minus one shoe, but we still had a great time.




Here are photo's from that night. Enjoy!

Sony Sushi

Working late tonight for an event at work. At least I got tons of free food. Tasty too, sushi and steak yum. I can't believe they'd just throw everything out after a party if I didn't "save" it. Sony's sushi is always excellent, hurray for Japanese companies. Still reading Harry Potter, not that many people have died yet so I've got a ways to go. I'm sure you miss me and my blogs. Thanks for the comments. Interesting fact for the day. The very first Sony product was an electric rice cooker. It's amazing we ever took off from there because apparently at the time rice was scarce in Japan and the rice didn't always get cooked very well or evenly in that particular rice cooker. Now you've been edu-ma-cated.

Today

It rained today. All day long. I have more to say, but I finally have the new Harry Potter book after a long and vicious struggle with UPS. I also got a parking ticket. I'm now a parking ticket teenager I've gotten so many. I'll have to recount all my trials and tribulations later though, my book calls!

All Star Game 7/10/07

It was a night for an all star lineup, on the other side of the country MLB allstars were lining up while in the City, the hot muggy weather may have been a deterrent to some, but for the all stars of the Sony Wonders nothing could keep them away from the Central Park ball field. This rough and tumble team has had a rocky season, with at least 4 games cancelled due to rain, heat or pesticide. They were raring and ready to go. Thankfully one of their best players was back from an extended time-out in Vietnam and the team was ready to bring home a big "W." Adrienne slugger Schafer stopped every ball that came her way in short field, a new position replacing her regular position at second base. With two mean arms backing her up in the outfield the Wonders were on their way to certain victory at the top of the 7th with 2 outs and up by 4 runs at with a lead of 9-5 over The Headliners. Suddenly a long ball was hit deep into far left field. Cries of "foul" "foul ball!" echoed across the field, as the outfielder aka Big Mike T. drifted back back back but not far enough in time to catch the long ball. Sadly, Big Mike T. had somehow hit a sour note with the ump, and with a gleam in his eye he stared down the invisible hilly and tree obstructed line to call the ball fair. This is a man who shook his head when Big Mike T. was up at bat and was forced to call a crazy wide ball as a ball, and gloated at the chance to call a strike at something that no sane man would have swung at. He had it in for our outfielder, so we had no chance when the other team's man rounded the bases for home. Bases were loaded and all we needed was one more out to cinch the game, but yet another wide left ball heads to the outfield. We know we have no chance, but struggle valiantly to get the ball home. One last run manages to make it home before we can get the third out. The score is 9-11 at the bottom of the 7th inning. All the Sony Wonders need is a couple of run to send the game into overtime. The Sony Wonders managed to send one man running home with the score at 10-11, you could feel the tension in the air. Adrienne Slugger Schafer stepped up to bat. Ball 1... Ball 2... Strike 1... It's a hit out towards the second baseman. Schafer sprinted towards first knowing that she didn't want to become the second out for the team. The ball sped towards first base and Schafer saw it hit the glove of the first baseman a second before she could get there. But she didn't give up and ran through the base anyway, as the first baseman fumbled the ball. She was safe at first! With every toss the pitcher made Schafer ran halfway to second base, ball one.. strike 1.... ball 2.... distracted for half a second, Schafer realized the ball has been hit and she isn't halfway to second. Desperate to make it she slides like a pro, but doesn't make it in time. She's out for the game, and with a man on third waiting to come home the final out is made at the plate. The Wonders suffered an excruciating 10-11 defeat.

Ask and Ye Shall Recieve

Sarah said... "I need a "a new blog has been posted" notice."

I have added a thingy so that you can subscribe to new post notifications. Just scroll down to the "New Post Notifier" section and type in your e-mail address then follow the on screen directions. This should send you an e-mail everytime I update the blog. This way you don't have to check back every day again and again hoping for that moment of joy when you find that I have added some new content to brighten your day. Ok maybe I went a little overboard there...

Edit 12:21 pm: So I realized that this is more confusing than I thought at first. There are RSS and Atom feeds, and they seem to only e-mail you once a day instead of as soon as something is posted. I have changed it over from blogarithm which I tried to use at first to feedburner and rmail. I think feedburner will just pop up in your browser, rmail will e-mail you within a few hours of a post. If anyone knows more, please explain!!!! I'm so confused.

Brian said... "What the heck is Ri-Cap? I don't remember ever seeing that type of camera, perhaps it's Japanese."

Well Brian, instead of making you search back through the archives to my very first post where I explained this, I have added a definition to the sidebar that I hope clarifies things for all new visitors.

Happy reading everyone. If you have any more requests just ask! I just request that you comment away.

The Righteous and The Wicked 7/7/07

July 4th
We did almost nothing on July 4th; I don’t think we even left the house.

July 7th
Scott loves this group called the Danger. They are a very artsy, edgy, Brooklyn type group. Their main purpose as far as I can tell is to create large parties or gatherings that bring together different artists and people to enjoy them. By artists I mean a wide variety of folks from DJs to face painters. There are two main guys who put on the parties. Once when we helped set up for one of them I saw a huge 7 foot tall monster in one of their rooms. Apparently he makes puppets for a living. He did work on the Broadway show Avenue Q which has puppets and which Scott and I loved. Anyway this party was in Manhattan for a change (they're usually in Brooklyn) at an old night club. The theme for the evening was “The Righteous and The Wicked,” so basically Angels and Demons. I decided to be wicked since when I looked in my drawers I happened to have some deliciously wicked clothes given to me at the bachelorette party. Thanks Ms. Lauren Resnick! I even wore the lovely sparkly bracelet that I got at the same time as the corset since I felt like it did a good job of symbolizing greed. It just seemed to go with my theme of wicked. I had to try for all the 7 deadly sins. I definitely got most of them in. Can you even name them all? I feel like they’re the 7 dwarves, too difficult to name them all at once. Anyway, we met up with Eric Bryant who came dressed in an awesome shirt he’d made himself. Well, the shirt was already made, but he decorated it. It was a white shirt that he’d taken a sharpie to, and written all kinds of neat random words and phrases on. Eric is working on becoming a writer so he’s got a lot of great original material. Inside they had free drinks for the first hour. They also had a camera set up with a projector that was projecting images onto a sheet that they’d draped at the top of the stairs. This was a “portrait party” put on by a guy named Devin and also Jeremy Nelson. http://www.jeremynelsonstudio.com/ It was great fun to have your portrait taken and to see everyone else posing for the camera. It’s amazing what people will do when they are in front of a camera. Then you got to wait anxiously to see if they’d post it up on the big screen and how they’d crop it when they did. You can see in my slideshow the picture of Scott is very cropped. But in the picture they posted on the internet it’s not as cropped. There were acapella singers, I forget what they were singing about, but it was something totally ridiculous. I remember laughing at the lyrics. It reminded me of Phoebe’s songs in the TV show Friends; it was something along the lines of “Smelly Cat.” There was a DJ with a dance floor where we all danced for awhile and I had to take a break from dancing to watch Scott prance in front of a mirror. I’m glad he took ballet in college, he’s much better at the prancing these days. There was a face painter there who painted your face for free, so I waited in line and had some lovely face paint done. He was very happy with the way it turned out, and I liked it too. Sometimes it’s fun to have a sort of mask on. Then everyone looks at you but they can’t see you. I think that’s what I like about performing in theater also. You get the attention, but you don’t have to be scrutinized personally, you’re just playing a character. There was supposed to be something amazing that happened at 3:00, but that was too far away for us, so we decided to head home. To give credit where credit is due. All the pictures that are posted in this posting were taken by the photographer at the party, I listed their website above. The slideshow are all my pictures. I just didn't want you all thinking that I'd suddenly become some sort of real photographer.


And the slideshow...

Yankees Game 7/2/07

A friend from work, Derek Costas, is getting married in September. He also works like crazy and stays late a lot. This means that his free time is very limited so he graciously offered Scott and I Yankees tickets that he had but couldn't use. So Monday evening Scott and I grabbed dinner and hopped on the train to Yankee's stadium. I'm not a Yankee's fan or a Yankee's hater. I'm not even that big of a baseball fan really. I just enjoy going to games and watching the people and the experience of it all. I actually do like baseball when it's live. Scott and I got some snacks to carry into the game and had them hidden in both our bags, but we got stopped entering the stadium. Apparently men aren't allowed to carry bags in. Only women are. Talk about inequality eh? We were told we'd have to go across the street to the bowling lanes and rent a locker for his bag. So we walked away, acting as if we were being obedient, and then went behind a planter where we promptly stuffed Scott's bag into mine. It was a tight fit, but since I just came from work, I have my big black, I don't drive a car so I carry this bag around, bag. It worked out just fine, we walked in with a bag of bags, snacks and all. Scott was surprised at how clever his wife could be. I'm really just good at being sneaky, don't tell :) So we got some hot dogs, since that's something you have to do, and shelled peanuts too. Our seats were at the very last top row, row X, so we got some good exercise. Baseball stadium stairs always make me feel like I'm going to fall down them. They're just so steep. It was actually a decent game since it was tied for awhile and A-Rod ran into the first baseman and injured himself, making everyone oh so concerned that he couldn't make it for the All-Star game. Is it wrong that I like to watch sports injuries happen? The Yankees won, which was a surprise since they hadn't been doing too well. I dedicated the game to my Monica, our friend from Hong Kong, from Minnesota since that's who the Yankees played against. We got on the train and went home with no further excitement. I took a picture with my cell phone since I didn't have a real camera with me, so that's why it's all pixelated.

Walk Manhattan 7/1/07

I'm finally catching up to myself with the blogging. Here goes:

July 1
The weekend after we returned from our honeymoon, Scott thought we would just stay home and relax. When I heard that Sky and Anna had plans to walk Manhattan, something we'd planned for over a year, I had to nix the staying at home and join them for a little stroll. The plan was to "Walk Manhattan" from tip to tip - 220th st to Battery Park. Google Pedometer (you'll have to zoom to see our route) says it is about 14 miles. So we took the train all the way up, which took about an hour, and realized that the end of the line didn't quite go as far as we needed to go because of weekend subway construction. So we got on a bus that would take us all the way up across the river so we could officially start our walk of manhattan.

At 215th street we stopped to climb some stairs, though I didn't climb them since I knew there were still hundreds of streets left to go. I think we were just excited to get started though. At 207th st. we came accross the subway station where we exited. Whew it felt like we were making some progress at least. I saw a street anqtiques vendor with some turquoise beads I liked, so I made my friends buy them for me. Aren't I nice? I felt I needed to own some adventure beads. Then we stopped in at a drug store for water and ring pops. I'm not sure why Anna thought we needed those, but she insisted that we did. The only ones we could find were Care Bear ring pops. It made me very nostalgic, I remember watching Care Bear cartoons when I was a kid. We tried to find some little doll or thing that could be used so we could take a picture of it on our adventures, like Flat Stanley, but we didn't manage.

I felt like a real New York kid when we came upon a hydrant that was spewing little jets of water. We stopped to play in it. The weather that day couldn't have been better, warm but not hot and breezy, perfect. We thought there were a few things we wanted to see along the way, but we hadn't planned very well, so we didn't know where these things were. I think Anna wanted to see a church that has the largest gardens or land or something in the U.S. We passed a few churches and pretended that they were the right ones.

We thought that perhaps we'd do something fun like price a head of lettuce every 20 streets to see how the price changed, but I think we forgot about it after 10 streets. It was very interesting to see how things changed along the way. Like a spectrum or gradient of wealth. The closer to Midtown the closer to money and the taller the buildings.

We wanted to get food that was specific to each neighborhood, but when we asked someone and they told us the best place was behind us, we just couldn't back track, so we stopped for some bbq and enjoyed the break at 166th street. Up in the higher streets there seems to be more of a community, with street vendors and families all wandering around. I saw a guy who had a little shopping cart vending business going on. He had a juice press and he'd sell you fresh fruit juice. We thought it looked good, but we were too full from lunch, so we kept going. We introduced Sky and Anna to the street ice cream carts. They're all over in Jersey City. It's not really ice-cream. It's more like gelato or sorbet with a little bit of creaminess to it. They sell it to you in little dixie cups for a dollar.

We paused at Columbia to check out the campus. It's very beautiful, I'd never been there. The grounds have some nice sculptures and a nice neighborhood-y feel. After that we decided we should pick up the pace since we weren't quite half way and it was getting late. We hoofed it down to Central Park where we paused at 60th street for Anna to change her shoes. I couldn't believe she had worn flip-flops the entire way. So she changed into sneakers and we got about 5 streets further starting to complain about various aches and pains when Sky decided he wanted to take a picture of the pond in Central Park. At that point they realized that his camera had gone missing, and must have been left at the shoe changing place. Sky and Anna jogged off to try to get the camera before it was taken. When we met them 20 minutes later hopping out of a cab, they told us that they'd gotten to the bench to find a note under a rock. It said "If you can describe the camera, call this number..." So they called and some guy answered and told them to come meet him. Sky was very glad to recover the camera since his dad had given it to him, and well, it's just nice to get things back. So on we went trucking on down to Korea Town. We paused there for some Pink Berry, my new favorite dessert. and kept going until we reached Battery Park. It was pretty dark by then, but we felt like we had conquered Manhattan. We saw a guy catch a pretty big fish and decided we would catch a cab home. No more walking! Phew, anyway it was a good and very satisfying day.

Brian, a friend of Scott's from his lab, told us about this website http://www.newyorkcitywalk.com/ when he heard about our adventure. I was pleasantly surprised to find that this guy who has walked every street in Manhattan, is from New Mexico. I e-mailed him to see if he'd found any good NM food, but he's had no luck either. I'm still searching. Perhaps if we walk enough it we'll find it.

Honeymoon Volume IV (Final Instalment!)

Finally! I've made it to the end of honeymoon adventures. So much has been going on in my current life that I haven't had time to finish this. I feel like I'll never catch up to real time. Anyway, here goes.....

June 24

We found out that our "discounted" rate meaning we didn't pay the full $320 for a hotel room didn't include breakfast at the hotel in the morning. Interesting how a $15 hotel can include that and a very expensive one is too cheap to toss in the free breakfast. It was still just standard eggs etc. So we went and found a bakery and ate a loaf of fresh french bread for breakfast, then meandered over to an internet cafe since our oh so fany hotel also made us pay $1 every ten minutes and the cafe was $1 for an hour. The $15 hotel had free internet access, sure it didn't have soap, but given a choice what would you choose? LOL, ok ok so I did enjoy the Caravelle Hotel, I just felt like we were treated like second rate guests because we didn't pay the full rate. Anyway, after breakfast we decided to go to the War Remnants Museum. Not the most romantic choice for a honeymoon since we pretty much saw a lot of gruesome things that were pretty depressing. We understood that this was all from the Vietnamese perspective and so of course things could have been and problably were somewhat skewed in the way they were presented, but it still made you want to shut up so people couldn't hear your American accent while you're walking around staring at atrocities like mock "Tiger Cages" where men were held captive with their feet constatntly shackled. Sometimes the stories and pictures would show some woman crying over a body and say that her husband was just farming and then the soldiers came and killed him. I have no idea how often a "farmer" was a guerilla insurgent or how often our troops carelessly killed some innocent civilian. It certainly wasn't very fun to think about though. After that museum we decided that we couldn't take any more for the day, and went to lunch at a highly recommended restaurant. It was quite crowded, and looked like it had some really great dishes, Scott and I didn't really know what we were ordering though, so I think we may have accidentally ordered side dishes. They were alright, but nothing spectacular. The menu was in english, but things do sort of get lost in translation sometimes. Much like the "To this way" signs all over the temples in Angkor Wat, or the "Inconvenience caused is regretted" sign that we saw. Scott thought that one meant that if you caused someone to be inconvenienced you'd regret it, I explained that it was just their way of apologizing. After lunch we finished up some souvenier shopping, and hung around the hotel room a bit. Then we went and got some more Pho at Pho 24, the place Scott burned his mouth off. We walked by a bar and for some reason decided to go in and get a drink. We sat at a table and noticed that there were a pair of very familiar looking mugs sitting there. Our good friends Senor Bob and Cha-Cha were sitting amongst the bottles. They even said Macayo's on them, so we know that they came from the same restaurant that we had our wedding rehearsal dinner at. For those of you who don't know, Bob and Cha-Cha are the names of the mugs that you can get at Macayos restaurant. These restaurants are located in Arizona and there is one in Las Vegas. It was still pretty amazing to see them on a shelf in a very random Vietnamese bar. We saw that the place had some dart boards so we asked for some darts and started playing a little. My dart game isn't the best, I'd say it's probably on par with the rest of my athletic abilities. I think most anyone who knows me knows how great that is. I decided that since this was pretty much our last night, I needed to take inspiration from our friends Sky and Anna who come back from every vacation with more friends than they started with. So we asked the couple standing near us to play a game of Cricket. Cricket is a darts game where you have to get certain numbers 3 times before your opponent does in order to start scoring on them. The couple was very nice. They both were visiting from Hong Kong where they worked. Monica was originally from Minnesotta and Pete was originally from Australia. He was familiar with the actual Cricket, but soon caught on to this version as well. Our new friends were quite generous and made sure that neither of us went thirsty that night. In the end the we played 4 and a half games with the final standings 2-2 with the last game unfinished due to an ATM run. A pretty perfect way to leave it all I'd say. I forget why exactly, but at some point Pete decided to write on my leg, I remember telling him that I'd show him that in the morning. We left the bar at midnight since it was closing time and thought we'd grab some food, but everything was completely shut. The only people we saw were a man laying in the middle of the sidewalk face down and spread eagle while he got a massage from some lady. We headed around the corner to our respective hotels and made plans to meet at noon at our hotel lobby to get some lunch.

June 25
Scott and I woke up fairly late, but quite hungry and got ready to see if Pete and Monica would remember to come meet us. When I was in the shower, I looked down surprised to see something funny on my leg. I really wish I'd taken a picture because I can't remember exactly what it said now. Something like "Hi, don't worry... you will get better...lose your family at darts." LOL! Scott had to read it for me since it was nearly illegible. We packed our bags and left them with the front desk since we had to check out by noon and our flight wasn't until midnight. Then we waited for 10 minutes in the lobby and decided we were too hungry to wait any more and luckily Scott remembered that they were staying in the place across the street from us. We had exchanged cards and e-mail addresses so we were able to call their room. Scott and I wandered over to get some more bread from the bakery while they finished getting ready since we were starving, and saw another Pho 24 on our way. Each of the Pho 24s that we ate at were different locations, all within probably less than a square mile of each other. So we met up with our new friends and dashed through the rain to eat some Pho. Fortunately they took our advice and didn't chomp down on any of the hot peppers:) We showed them our Pho eating techniquese which I'm sure they were quite impressed by hehe and had a very enjoyable, but somewhat groggy meal. When we finished eating it was completely pouring outside so we made a mad dash to a coffee house that turned us away since they didn't have enough seating. We mad dashed across the street to an Illy coffee shop, which was kind of funny since there is one of those practically under my office in the city. Speaking of franchises, I didn't see any McDonalds while we were there but I did see a lot of KFC's. After our coffee we said goodbye to Pete and Monica since they had to catch a flight home. We went to pick up all our tailored suits and dresses, and were brave enough to try another museum. This museum was the Ho Chi Minh city museum, and generally showed the history of the city and the people, we avoided the war relics room and explored the tunnels under the building that were used as a command post during the war. We had read in the guidebook that this used to be a governors mansion and that the gardens were often used by couples for their wedding pictures. Sure enough we did see a bride and groom posing for pictures around the house and in the gardens. The place had a double staircase where the bride and groom filmed part of their wedding video. They had her walking down the stairs to meet him at the platform where he was uncomfortably strumming a guitar. You could tell it was a prop and that he didn't really play. The walk back was nice since it had stopped raining and by then we were equipped with an umbrella from the hotel anyway. We walked through a park where every one of the numerous benches was occupied by people sitting out. The parks in HCMC were interesting. They were almost more like medians sometimes, and never bigger than a block or two, but people used them to the fullest. Families would play soccer, and at dusk they seemed to have mass exercise classes where a group of about 80-100 people all stood and did calisthenics in unison. After dark if you walked along the edge of the park it was practically bumper to bumper with parked motorbikes. Each motorbike had a guy and a girl who were very obviously canoodling. Hehe it was a strangely public lovers lane. Scott really wanted to try an Argentinean Steak House that he'd read about so we went there for dinner. It was ok, I think I had some fish and he had blue cheese steak. Scott really liked his. We managed to strech dinner to last about 2.5 hours since we didn't have any hotel room to go to before we caught a cab to the airport. When we did get to the airport, there were huge hoards of people standing outside of it. At first I was glad we got there so early, thinking that everyone was on a departing flight. I could barely even get through the crowd. Then I realized that nobody in the crowd was actually going into the airport. They were all there to say farewell to some loved one. There were lots of very loud goodbyes, I hadn't realized that's what they were at first because I don't speak Vietnamese very well. I tried to learn the phrase "can I take your picture?" from the guidebook, but decided it was easier just to motion with my hands and nod questioningly. I also learned thank you - Cahm Uhn (pronounced ca mun). They sort of laughed and smiled when I tried that. I have no idea what I sounded like. We had a lot of time to kill at the airport and it was nearly midnight, so I decided we needed an airport foot massage. It was actually quite nice, since it got us out of the noisy flourescent lights and into a soothing atmosphere with blue lights. Scott wasn't quite as relaxed because when he sat down he slammed his elbow into the corner of the table in between our chairs. He couldn't even make any noise about it because the room was a big square with comfy chairs around the perimeter filled with people getting massages. The fountain in the middle wouldn't have drowned out his yelp, and I'm guessing would have startled all the relaxers. It was a bit like fast food massage, but it was still nice to get a massage instead of sitting on hard plastic. We had already gone through security, but we had to put our bags through the machine again as they checked our boarding passes and placed us in a second waiting area. This one was for all the passengers on our plane, and didn't have enough seats for everyone though. I think every traveling person had a baby with them and they all seemed peaceful since it was the middle of the night. When we finally got onto the plain and into the air it was a different story. Those babies cried for a good 20 minutes solid. Full out screams!

June 26
It was our goal to stay awake all the way to Korea so we could reset our clocks, but that didn't really work. 5 hours of sitting in a plane doesn't help you stay awake. The rest of the trip was pretty uneventful. We spent some time in the Korean airport again, then 13 hours on a plane. When we finally made it to the US I believe our bags were one of the very last ones to come out. It felt like it took forever. New York was definitely the hottest out of all the places we'd been. Phoenix, Vietnam, Cambodia nope NYC was hotter than them all. Some friends of ours had been kind enough to keep our car so we didn't have to pay for parking. so we got dropped off there and went home! The goal was to stay awake until at least 8 or 9 pm. We landed in NYC at 11 am. I think we just rested our heads at about 4:00pm and didn't wake up until 2:00am. Oh well. We're all adjusted now, and we had a very very nice honeymoon.

Honeymoon Picture Slideshow

Honeymoon Volume III

June 21
Apparently we set our travel alarm and forgot to actually turn it on. So we saw the sunrise from the back of the tuk tuk. A tuk tuk is basically a small cart attached to a motorcycle for those of you who don't know. Our guide Soryar told us that even now that all the troubles in Cambodia are over there are still lingering pockets of corruption in the government. There seems to be a lot of animosity toward the Vietnamese. Soryar said that Cambodians have to pay $130 for a passport that expires every three years, in Cambodia that is a ton of money. The Vietnamese however, can come into Cambodia and work with no passport or Visa. So there are a lot of Vietnamese people that come over with money and just sort of start taking things over. For example, the $20 a piece that we paid for our entrance to the temples apparently doesn't go towards maintaining the temples, it goes to some Vietnamese company that managed to somehow position themselves so that they get money from every person coming into the park. I didn't totally understand what he was saying since he has a strong accent, but I definitely encountered many Cambodians who were very proud of their country, but weren't very well off. So we visited a bunch of different temples, Bayon, Angkor Thom, Angkor Wat, Ta Prohm and Preah Kahn. All very interesting places built by a series of emporers from about 1100 AD to 1500 AD. Jayavaraman VII built a lot of the larger temples, and was one of the more prolific emporers around 1100. The strange thing is that all the Cambodians speak proudly of him and how he built so many of their hospitals for children etc. They talk like he's a modern day hero even though he lived so long ago. Perhaps it's because there's really nothing current that they can hold up as an example. There used to be millions of people living in and around the temples, now it's pretty much overrun by tourists. We were there during the off season. I think it was just the start or almost to start the monsoon season. We had a few afternoon showers, one of which we got caught in, but in general the weather wasn't too bad. We climbed all over the temples, and saw how each main site had a different county in charge of reconstruction. It was interesting to see the difference between reconstruction styles. Some people just used concrete and recreated missing chunks, others put things back as best they could but left it mostly intact or tumbled around if they couldn't put it back up without risking further damage. The latter was the U.S. tactic. Soryar said that the U.S. rebuilt site took forever, apparently we are quite meticulous restorers. It was pretty amazing to see every surface covered in carvings on these massive structures. It was great to be able to climb in and out of everything to explore. There would occasionally be people with shrines set up who wanted you to come make a prayer with their incense for good luck and of course donate money. We timed it so that we'd be at Angkor Wat for sunset since we sort of missed sunrise. It was fun to try to evade the guys who were trying to usher everyone out before sunset had quite come on. You know me, I had to get my pictures! That night Soryar took us to a hotel where they had dinner and traditional Cambodian dances. On the way over we saw a ton of bats on one street where apparently the bats like to hang out. He got us a great table right in the front of the show. It was funny to watch the dancers because they were all young teens who you could tell knew the dances and were going through the motions while they acted like typical teens flirting and playing tricks on each other. I don't think it was obvious to most people, but we were so close and I was watching them and they saw me catch them at it. It was very entertaining. The food was a mix of different strange things. I don't even know how to describe some of the things we ate. Nothing stood out as particularly fantastic. Soryar picked us up afterwards and took us back to our hotel for the night.


June 22
Soryar picked us up again in the morning and was supposed to take us to go see a lake with a fishing village, but it was raining pretty hard. We decided that we didn't need to see another fishing village since we'd seen one in Vietnam, and Soryar said it was all made up of Vietnamese people who sold you overpriced trinkets anyways. So we decided to go to a school Artisans D' Angkor where they teach disabled kids "art" basically they painted silk and laquerware and carved statues out of wood and stone. The deaf girls all painted silk, the boys were carvers etc. It was strange because everything they made was just the same thing over and over. The masters would come up with the designs and then the students all just made a ton of replicas. I personally thought it would have been nice to let the students try to be creative on their own, but I think they are considered lucky to have a job at all. Slightly depressing to think about really. After the school, we went shopping around and bought some souveniers. I enjoy haggling with all the shop owners, but Scott didn't like doing it at all. If I left it up to him, he'd just take the first price they offered. After we had our fill of shopping Soryar took us to his cousin's restaurant. I ordered the volcano meat, which was this little stove looking thing that they brought to our table with a bunch of raw meat and some soup and some raw vegetables. Scott and I kind of just stared at the thing and finally had to ask the server how to do it correctly. In the end I think the server decided the best thing to do would be to just stand there and cook it all for us. It was a conical shaped metal thing with a trough around the edges, so you were supposed to grease it up with some butter and put the meat on the slopes of the cone, then pour the soup in the moat and put the vegetables in that to cook. It was really really tasty. They seasoned the meat perfectly and the broth had great flavor too. Scott ordered something else, a mango salad I think, but it wasn't nearly as fun or tasty as mine so we pretty much concentrated on eating our way through the meat volcano. Afterwards Soryar took us to the airport. He gave us a couple of scarves with his name and e-mail printed on them as a gift. It was very nice. Cambodia is so cheap that I think for three days of tour guiding and driving everywhere and constant supplies of bottled water we owed him $20, but we of course tipped him a little more. Heck, I can't go 20 streets in Manhattan taxi for that cheap. Anyway, we worked our way towards the airplane after we paid an unexpected $50 charge to leave Cambodia. I'm not sure what that was about, and we hadn't read about it in any of our previous research. Especially since we already had to pay enough for the Visas to get into the country. Despite all that we were sorry to have to leave so soon. We really enjoyed Cambodia and the pride of the people. We had a little time to kill so we stopped for some Dairy Queen, which we were surprised to find in the fairly small airport at Siem Riep. Also Scott mistakenly thought our flight left an hour later than it did, so we just made it in time to get on the plane and go. Whew, good thing we got there "early". On the one hour flight to Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC) they again fed us a full meal. This time it was sandwiches, which I was wondering if they had, since I hadn't seen any sign of sandwiches anywhere, which seemed odd since these are people who seem to take their lunch with them out to the fields. Once in Vietnam we found ouselves in the midst of a massive noisy city. Quite the change from quiet Cambodia. Motorbikes zoomed every which way through a maze of city streets. To my surprise Scott had for some reason decided to book us in a $15 hotel room here. Basically a backpakers hostel. Don't worry $15 in Vietnam gets you a little more than it does in the states, but not much. It's a good thing I'm not claustrophobic because our small room had no windows. It did have a private bathroom, but there was no soap to be found. It was very clean, just very spare. Scott told me he wanted me to see how good I had it. I told him that this was my romantic honeymoon and that perhaps we could look for a different hotel for the next night. We contemplated taking a trip out to the Mekong river delta or to a beach, but in the end decided we'd just find a nice hotel and hang around the city for the last few days of our trip. So we wandered over to where the nice hotels were and walked into one of the best hotels in HCMC and booked a room for the rest of our stay. The Caravelle Hotel was apparently the target of some bombings during the Vietnam War because that's where the Western journalists were all staying. The story goes, that there wasn't any of loss of life though, because the bomb didn't hit close enough to the bar. Anyway, this place was definitely going to be a step up. That night we ate at Pho 24

June 23

Ugh, somehow the internet lost all the typing I did on the Ri-Cap of this day. So I'm going to make it short and sweet. The $15 hotel room gave us breakfast and had free internet. We moved to the much more expensive Caravelle Hotel. They gave us a nice corner room on the 18th floor, so we had a nice view of the city and the opera house. The room smelled like smoke even though it was non-smoking. I think hotel smells follow me. There was shopping for tailored clothes. We had sushi for lunch. We had street cake from some lady on the street with a waffle iron type contraption making fortune cookie shaped cakes. It was tasty. We saw ladies getting pedicures in the streets. We got a 75 minute foot massage for $7, it was nice. They fed us watermelon and tea. We went to dinner at the hotel restaurant and ate some good fish. Stopped by the hotel bar to see what was going on there, and found really bad band so we left and went to bed. It was mostly a relaxing day, sorry there's not more detail, but I hate writing things I've already written all over again.

Stay tuned for the last of the 4 volume Honeymoon series.

Honeymoon Volume II

June 18
The next day we dropped the other four shipmates off to explore a cave and we got on to another fairly large boat to go collect our kayaks. The other 4 were only staying one night and we stayed for two. Oh I forgot to mention that the night before we all took our time at dinner and ordered lots of wine and then the ship people gave us a cake that said "Happy Honeymoon" and flowers. The bouquet was nice, but I had nowhere to put it, and no desire to drag it around with me. The cake was actually very tasty, I'm usually not a fan of store bought cake but I guess they do a good job in Vietnam. It was lemony and the frosting was light and tasty. They also had very good coffee on the boat. I'm not a big coffee drinker, but this tasted so good I definitely stole half of Scott's whenever he got a cup. The way it worked was that everything was prepaid except for drinks, but they'd give you coffee and tea for free. The coffee was strong but had a very nice smooth flavor, I was surprised given that we were out to sea and it was a free drink. Anyway... We got on this other Dragon boat that probably could have carried about 40 people, but it was just Scott and I and our guide Hoa and the crew. We motored over to a fishing village where we picked up our kayaks and got to see where they kept the live fish in nets in the water. Then we towed the kayaks out to the limestone cliffs and got in. Our guide was in a one man kayak and Scott and I shared a 2 person Kayak. With a kayak you steer from the back, where Scott was. It was a good thing there were two of us though, my arms would have been very very tired by the end of the day if I hadn't been able to take small breaks. We kayaked under a tunnel/cave into a lagoon, and then walked the kayaks through another cave/tunnel into a second lagoon where we paddled around and saw some coral and enjoyed the view. On the way back out the tide was starting to come in, so it was a little tough to get out, but you know me and my strong arms I got us there. Phew, so we paddled back to the boat which took us to this nice island with a beach that had just one Vietnamese man lying in a hammock behind a bar where they apparently sold bathing suits. Our guide let us go explore the island while he cooked us lunch. Exploring was really just climbing to the top of some cement steps, but it was still nice. They set up a little table and chairs for us to have a nice romantic dinner on a private beach/island. Now you can see in the picture that our table and chairs were a little short, they remind me of the kiddie lawn furniture you see here in the states. However, all over Vietnam people used these same short plastic chairs, or squatted or used stools. I think they are just used to being low to the ground. Anyway, halfway through our lovely barbecue six course meal I heard a thump and turned around to see the bathing suit seller man with a very bemused expression on his face. He scrambled up from the ground where he landed when his hammock came untied. Scott was facing him and got to see the whole thing, I tried to be polite and not laugh, but I couldn't help myself. Soon after that our private beach became more public when a few other boats showed up. One was full of Asian guys who just stayed on the boat. Our guide, Hoa pronounced Ho-uh, told us that they are Vietnamese who come out to Halong Bay to gamble on the boats. After lunch and beach lounging we stopped by a floating fishing village museum, not a lot to see there besides the various tools they use for fishing. We also kayaked more to a few rock formations. Hoa told us a story about another group he took out kayaking. He was in a two man kayak paddling an older woman and there were two other boats with young people in them. They challenged him to a race to the ship jokingly saying loser buys drinks for the night. Well he took their bet and apparently called up the ship's captain on his cell phone and told him to come around and pick him up. The captain was confused, but Hoa motivated him with the promise of free drinks. The other kayakers didn't realize what had happened and were trying to paddle after the ship that was circling around them. Hoa said he had some nice drinks that night. We got back to the boat and said hello to our new shipmates. A gay couple from Hong Kong and a single guy from the US I think. Scott and I were pretty tired though and went to bed early.


June 19
Nothing too much exciting happened this day. It was mostly a traveling day for us. We stopped again at Serenity Humanity Peace Love etc etc and still didn't buy anything. We got back to our hotel which was the same one we stayed in the first night, only to find that the room they put us in reeked of paint fumes. Apparently they thought they'd spruce the place up for the honeymoon couple by painting it 5 minutes before we stayed in it. Unfortunately this room had no balcony, no jacuzzi tub and the windows opened up into the lobby. They brought up some candles and told us to go to dinner and the fumes would clear out. I also forgot to mention before that the beds in this hotel were like sleeping on cardboard. I've never encountered such hard mattresses before. If you climbed into bed knees first it felt like you were banging your knee on the ground. I know it sounds like I'm complaining, but I really did enjoy the Hanoi Elegance Hotel. So we went out to dinner and shopping which was pretty fun. All the little street stalls are so interesting. They all have the same junk to sell you, but the lifestyle was interesting to see. Everyone worked out in the street making dinner and whatnot. It's hot and humid there, and I'm guessing most places don't have air conditioning so the families all sit outside on the sidewalk on their short chairs and stools and cook and talk. If you want to look through the piles of embroidery or whatnot, they'll hand you their stool. They are masters of that selling tactic I remember learning about in psychology, where if someone gives you something you feel obligated to buy. For instance one woman trying to sell us pineapple responded to our "no thank you" by plopping her conical hat on my head and plunking the bar of her carrying apparatus over my shoulder and saying "picture, picture." She must know that us tourists are suckers for pictures and secretly covet the idea of taking this very picture. So of course I handed my camera to Scott and then we bought some fresh cut pineapple. It was tasty, but overpriced as far as Vietnamese pricing goes. I think the exhaust fumes from all the motorbikes got to me, because I was more than happy to sit down in a restaurant and just have some water. I don't really remember what we ate, but I remember that Scott's was good and mine was greasy, so I ate some of his. People wonder how he stays skinny, but they don't know that it's because I eat all his food and drink all his drinks. One of the more interesting streets we walked down that night was a street where all these men were sitting out banging sheet metal, tin I think, into everyday functional things. The type of thing you'd see at home depot to cover a vent etc, they were hammering into shape on the sidewalk. We got back to the room and it still smelled, though not quite as bad so we dealt with it and went to sleep.

June 20

Another day of travel, after shopping for the last items that we wanted such as picking up a pair of linen pants that Scott had made for him. They are very nice pants I must say. I think it was $15.00 for two pairs of tailor made pants. I'm surprised they didn't try to charge us extra since I'm sure they had to use a ton of fabric on his long legs. They even delivered it to the hotel, quite the service. The coffee at the Hotel was also just as good as the coffee on the boat, so we figured it was a Vietnamese thing. For lunch we at at the Green Tangerine, a french restaurant. The French have had a large influence on the Vietnamese as I believe the Vietnamese were occupied by them for quite some time. The food was very tasty, and I had a three layer soup that came to me with a little candle warmer. It was an interesting mixture of salty and sweet layers. Scott ate rabbit which tasted just as good as chicken, if not a little more rich. He also had what I thought were mashed potatoes which I was excited about because I felt like starches were an afterthought in Vietnamese meals. On the boat the rice would come at odd random times, sometimes at the beginning, middle or end of the meal. We thought maybe it was timed to come at the same time as the squid course, but I think in the end decided it just came whenever it was cooked. Anyway, I found out that Scott's mashed potatoes were actually mashed Lotus seed, I could vaguely detect they weren't potatoes after that, but I am always happy with carbs. After lunch we hopped in a car to the airport, thankfully we had internet in our room, so I received the e-mail from Vietnamese Airlines telling us they'd cancelled our flight and put us on another one 4 hours later. This flight was relatively short only about 2 and a half hours long, but they still gave us a meal and served coffee. One thing I noticed about these flights was that they're the opposite of American air carriers. They wanted to feed you every other minute but you had to push the call button and ask for any kind of drink. Though the drinks were free whether you wanted alcohol or soda. The food this time was just some mushy beef stuff which I skipped since we'd had such a good lunch. We arrived in Cambodia and bought our Visas and walked out to meet our Tuk Tuk driver Soryar pronounced Soy-Yar. He took us to the Hanumanalya hotel where we had a honeymoon sweet reserved. I should note that the Honeymoon planning was Scott's job, and he did a terrific job. I forget what the hotel name means in Khmer, the language they speak in Cambodia, but it was very nice. All dark wood, and such nice space. They left us a message in flowers on our bed, and some floating in the tub. We made plans with Soryar to pick us up the next morning so we could see the sunrise over the temples.

Honeymoon Volume I

June 15

On to honeymoon adventures. So our first day we departed from New York's JFK airport at about 7 in the evening. We hopped on a 13 hour flight to Seol South Korea. I gave my coworkers a lengthy report about exactly what I did on that flight, but most of it involved watching movies and being told by the stewardess that I did not want the Korean meal I wanted beef with noodles, so we compromised and Scott got the Korean meal and I got beef with noodles. As I could have guessed on Korean Airlines the Korean meal was the more edible of the two, though it did come with a sheet of directions which told us that the thing was called BimBap. It was basically noodles with some ground beef and then a side soup thing that you poured in and a tube of chili paste for flavoring, not too bad as plane food goes. We arrived in Seoul and my sinuses were not so happy with all the pressure changes etc and since our imported pharmacy was checked through to Vietnam we braved the pharmacy in the Korean airport, a man with a lab coat handed us two boxes and told me to take one from each after I pointed to where it hurt and said sinuses very slowly multiple times. It's so fun to be the stupid tourist. The airport was very nice, they even had free internet in their traveler's lounge which was good since we had 3 hours to kill.

June 16

After another 4 hour flight we finally arrived in Hanoi, Vietnam! We looked around for the prearranged driver and didn't see him, so we walked over to a telephone to try and call to check on the driver since our flight had been slightly shifted, and some nice guys sitting near the phone offered to let us use their cell phones. They said something about how the pay phone wouldn't work. For some reason the call wouldn't go through on their cell so we gave them back their phone and wandered around checking the signs people were holding up. I forget why, but somehow we got directed to the 2nd floor where we found another identical pay phone, but those nice gentelmen had followed us and gave us their cell to try again. They even dialed for us this time. I think we finally got through and confirmed that the driver was at the airport, so we thanked the man and walked away. Of course he comes running back after us telling us that we owed him money! In our sleep deprived state we just looked at eachother in frustration at having been duped and threw the guy a dollar, which is equal to 160,000 Vietnamese Dong. We finally found our driver and made it to our hotel room. We couldn't see much along the way since it was dark, but we did learn an important rule of Vietnamese roads. The horn is used constantly, if you're passing someone in another lane you honk, if you're basically anywhere near another car you honk. It wasn't so bad, in NYC people honk out of anger and frustration and I feel like you can hear that in the horn. Here it was just common communication, and some of the horns had a very melodic honk.

June 17

The hotel room at the Hanoi Elegance was very nice., it had a computer and free internet and a nice balcony even. I spent some time the next morning standing on the balcony with my camera stalking the cone hat ladies. We had a nice complimentary breakfast and took a short walk around then came back to our hotel and hopped in a van that would take us to Halong Bay. The drive took four hours, but it was pretty nice. We got to see the countryside and small town Vietnam. Scott and I were impressed by the massive half finished concrete apartment buildings. When we asked about them someone told us that they started building a bunch of luxury apartments only to realize that no one had money to buy them. There was a lot of construction going on all around so I would say the economy was pretty booming. Most of what we saw were rice fields and the people working them with their water buffalo and conical hats. I loved seeing such stereotypical things as an everyday reality. It was neat to see that the culture wasn't just traditional costumes that people put on for tourists like it can be in many other places. One of the main features of the road were all the motorbikes. They were everywhere, and were used to carry everything. I even saw a family of 5 all on one bike. We stopped at a place where they make handicrafts such as embroidery and marble sculptures. I'm not sure I'd want to have to figure out how to get a marble sculpture back home but they were nice enough. The sign on the way out read "Serenity, Humanity, Beauty Company" aka tourist trap.

We finally made it to our boat on Halong Bay! It was a beautiful "Junk" with sails and nice wooden decor. We shared the boat with two other couples. One pair was from the UK and the other pair was from France. The scenery was quite stunning, though I feel like I was never really able to capture it on camera. There just weren't enough different colors to really get the depth and majesty of it all. Or maybe I just need to learn more about photography. To quote from Scott's journal that he kept along the way: "The bay is called 'spine of the dragon' apparently not, as I thought,because the limestone cliffs resemble dragon spines, but because in legend these cliffs were formed by a dragon's tail twisting and cutting into the rock until it dug a huge hole that water flowed into. I think the first explanation is better and more exciting, but there's no battling history in this case." Whew! I'm getting writers cramp. I think I'll have to save the detailed account of the rest of the honeymoon for another day's posting.

Wedding Picture Slideshow

A slideshow of wedding pictures from my camera as requested.