Penang - 1 day

We woke up rather early when the train got into Butterworth. It was like, 7ish, and was supposed to be even earlier technically but then there was the delay in leaving. We trudged over to the ferry station, but we just missed one so had to stand around for a while. Eventually another ferry came, and I dozed in my seat on it and didn't even notice it had left. I was so confused when Nina and Alex were like "we're at Penang" because it totally didn't feel like it had moved at all. We got off the ferry and managed to find a tourist map of Penang. There weren't very many spots marked with names that indicated their activities, but we decided to go to this area where there was a toy museum and a floating mosque.

We decided to taxi there, and asked a few taxis. The first one said we weren't going to get anyone to use a meter in Penang, but we wanted to try anyway cause that was so much cheaper than agreeing on a price beforehand. Finally some guy got us a metered taxi - but it ended up being a cab that's meter was running like at twice the speed it should have been. :| Would have ended up being cheaper haggling with the guy who refused to use meter in the first place. Ah well, lesson learned. Don't use the big blue van taxis. He also didn't really know where he was going, and didn't speak English well, and took us to a hotel first but some random guy on the street was able to translate for us and we made it to the toy museum.

Only.. we ended up spending 100% of our cash on the taxi, so we had to find an atm. And apparently the closest one was a 15-20 minute walk away from the toy museum. We finally made it there and got out money. We decided to walk to the floating mosque first because we thought we were very close to it after the walk we made, and then we wouldn't have to backtrack later. It was a bit confusing to find, we got contradicting directions from our map and asking locals, but we made it there and wandered around it some.

We wanted to find breakfast, but nothing looked super appealing for a while. Eventually, back near the bank where we used the atm, we settled on this random restaurant. Nina wanted something more breakfast-y, and I wanted something more vegetarian, but I was carrying around a bag of mangosteen so I was glad to have a place to sit down and eat at least. The guy told me a couple of the dishes were vegetarian, but as soon as he served me one with pieces of chicken in it I no longer trusted him and didn't really eat any of my $2 meal. My mangosteen were delicious, though. Best fruit ever.

Afterwards, on our walk back to the museum, we found what we had really been looking for - a delicious amazing bakery. I ate a slice of chiffon cake and had a can of chrystanthemum tea, and bought another slice, an apple pastry, and an almond cookie to eat later on our long train ride. I was kinda tempted to buy a whole chiffon cake (only $5 USD!) to eat later but we were a little worried about running out of cash again so we held off on it. Nina tried my other piece of cake later and realized how amazing it was, and was sad she hadn't tried it while we were at the bakery cause she totally would split the whole cake with me. We wandered over to the nearby bus depot to use the restrooms, and spent a few minutes looking at a sadly adorable litter of very unhealthy looking kittens begging for food near a table where some people were eating.

Finally we made it back to the toy museum, paid our admission fee, and wandered around for like 45 minutes. It was well-sized for the amount of time we had to spend there. It was mostly action figures, some dolls, some life-sized giant things, some other types of toys. Alex was saddened by the lack of things like blocks and legos. We caught a bus back to the ferry station (much cheaper than the taxi, and not much slower, tbh) and then ferried back over. I got a garlic bun and more tea during the ride, and bought a bag of roasted chestnuts on the way to the train station.

Our train was delayed about 20 minutes, not a big problem, I started reading the second book I brought on the trip, The Eye of the World. We got on and I was surprised because the sleeper cars were in their seat form, not their bed form. I wanted a bed so I could more easily nap and relax for the journey XD. I spent a couple hours blogging, read a little bit, napped a little bit. We had to get off at the border and get our passports stamped / some papers processed for leaving Malaysia and entering Thailand.

Shortly after we got back on they came around with menus for food. That was really exciting because we weren't sure the train would sell any food, since it was super tiny and didn't appear to have a food car or anything. Also, I had eaten all the pastries I had saved and all my chestnuts within the first few hours of the train ride. Oops. Anyway, what was even MORE exciting was that they had a specific vegetarian meal on the menu! Yay! They handed out food in a kind of confusing manner, sometimes setting down bowls or plates and then taking them away a bit later, but I ended up with a plate of pineapple, a bowl of soup, two bowls of vegetables, and a plate of white rice. The soup was questionably vegetarian; it looked like vegetable broth, and didn't have any chunks of meat, but Nina's bowl of it had what was probably one chunk of weird looking chicken. I had eaten some of mine before noticing that chunk in hers, so I just finished eating the cabbage / root vegetables in mine anyway. The vegetable bowls were AMAZING. Probably my favorite meal I've had on the trip. There was baby corn, broccoli stems, cabbage, tomatoes, carrots, and ear mushrooms. No green onions for me to pick out, omg! It was a super garlicky and slightly gingery sauce, super flavorful without being spicy. Managed to eat both bowls, somehow. I want more, now. :P

A bit after dinner they turned our bench-seats into beds. I settled into my top bunk, and stayed up a little bit chatting and reading but went to bed around like 10 I think.

Kuala Lumpur - 2 days

We spent a long time the first morning in KL trying to decide what to do. Other than going to Batu Caves, we didn't really know how to spend the rest of our time. We browsed through a tourist map and guide book, and asked some questions of the family who owned the hostel of how to get places. We came up with some ideas, but decided to still go to Batu Caves first. The commuter train went directly there, so we walked over to the station and rode it over.

I got some delicious fried Indian snack and a hat with a really neat pattern while we walked over to the stairs up to the cave. I tied the rest of the bag of snacks to my belt loop so I didn't have to carry it myself, and we took a handful of pictures around at the bottom before starting our ascent. There were 272 stairs up to the top. Once we had climbed up a small portion of them, we started seeing monkies along the sides of the stairs, and clambering over them some. When I got close, the monkies became incredibly interested in the bag of snacks I had tied to my belt. One on the side grabbed the bag and tried to pull it from me, and when I went towards the other side of the stairs another one started eyeing me and approached. I was scared so I turned around and hurried back down some.

I successfully escaped with my snacks, but I had tied the bag too tightly to my belt loop, and I couldn't undo it. I waited til the monkies had cleared away mostly, and hurried up to reach Alex and Nina. After we climbed more of them, however, another monkey tried to get at my bag. I had Alex help me tear the plastic bag off my belt loop, but while doing so a monkey grabbed the inner bag that contained the fried snack. He spilled it all over the steps, and he and a few other monkies grabbed big handfuls and ran off - I got a bit of video of this part. After that they left me alone; my purse wasn't brightly colored and didn't look like food, I just shouldn't have brought those snacks with me. XD

We reached the top and poked around a little; it was very pretty, but we were all super sweaty cause it was so hot out. On our way down, we walked to the side a bit where they had a separate cave called the Dark Cave. You had to buy a guided tour to get inside these ones. We wanted to do it, but I was starving because I hadn't had much of anything for breakfast. I wanted to go down to get lunch first, and Alex and Nina were nice enough to consent. We ate at a vegetarian Indian restaurant at the base of the steps; the Thali Plate I had wasn't amazing but I greatly enjoyed the parts of Alex's Masala Thosa I ate. Afterwards we realized we didn't have enough cash anymore to pay for the Dark Cave tour, so we went on a 30 minute adventure to the nearest atm. It was so hot outside and so gross that we got a taxi back from the atm to the front of the caves.

Back up the steps, and this time Alex was the one who was silly and brought food/drink. A monkey bolted off the wall and tore his orange soda bottle from his hand. The monkey couldn't even open it; we saw him sitting on the wall for quite a long time, just holding the bottle and trying to bite at the plastic. The cave tour was pretty cool; there were some interesting bugs and bats in there, though there was this family that kept talking really loudly and over the guide and it was very frustrating we couldn't hear him.

After the tour we trained back to the hostel. We decided to go to the Luna Bar that Freeman had mentioned; he was there, so we talked to him about how to get there. He also told us about this great brunch deal at Sky Bar on Sundays, which happened to be our second and final day in KL. We decided to do that on the next day. We wanted to take public transit to Luna Bar, but the station for the train we needed was closed for technical difficulties when we got there. So, taxi instead. It turned out that there was a pool party going on at the Luna Bar; the whole staff had rainbow afro wigs on, the pool was filled with awesome floaty toys, there was neat music and flashing lights going on. We had some drinks and two orders of this delicious Spanish Mushroom appetizer. My drink basically tasted like strawberry milk, it wasn't as epic as the Frozen Space Cookie that Nina got.

We changed into our suits, swam around and hung out in the pool for a while. The most fun toys were giant orca whales and giant crocodiles that you could clamber up on and float around on top of. Nina kinda wanted to hang around longer in case more people showed up to the party, but we ended up leaving cause we thought that it probably wouldn't get many more people than were already there. We walked over to what Alex was told was a huge shopping district, and browsed the streets. It was mostly food and massages that were being sold. I bought 400 grams of roasted chestnuts from a street vendor, and we ate a mediocre meal at a mediterranean place. Afterwards, taxi back, and we went to sleep fairly shortly after returning.

The next morning we caught a taxi to a Deer Park. We were there 15 minutes before it opened, so we hung around until it did. It was a fairly small park, but we got to see a huge herd of deer. They came up super near the fence because of this family who was there at the same time and tossing them pieces of bread. They also had quite a few mousedeer enclosures. Mousedeer are so freaking cute, I would love to own one. Afterwards, we sat by a nearby lake and evaluated plans. We had originally intended to go to the butterfly park, but then realized it might not be a good idea while covered in bug spray.

Instead, we walked over to the nearby National Museum. It was really interesting; we learned things about Malaysia's history. We only had time to explore the two galleries on the bottom floor (there were two more on the top) before we had to leave to make it to the Sky Bar in time for the sunday brunch deal. Basically, for about $50 US we got a fantastic buffet lunch, access to the hotel's swimming pool, a fifteen minute shoulder massage, and unlimited cocktails from 12-3. The parts of the meal that I could eat were garlic bread, gazpacho soup, amazing samosas, a vegetable omelette, and french fries. None of the drinks we got really wowed me, but they were good enough.

We swam around in the pool for a bit, but it ended up getting kind of cold as clouds gathered. There was a lot of thunder, but we didn't really see any lightning. Probably because we were in the hottub around 3, it ended up taking forever for us to get our desert and bill. We asked about desert 2-3 times over 45 minutes and then we finally got it around 4: an amazing coconut pudding with carmelized pineapple, a banana crepe each, and some pandan / lime ice cream. Then finally our bill. Wed got out of the hotel around 4:30, which sort of sucked because we had wanted to go to a flea market that closed at 5. Our intentions were to take public transportation back, so we started walking to the nearest station.

However, while walking, the sky basically opened up and water started pouring from the sky. We hid under bushes to evaluate the situation, then found a blue tent and sprinted over towards it. We gave it about five minutes or so to see if it would pass quickly, and then started to try and flag down a cab. It ended up taking about ten minutes or so to do it because almost all of the taxis were driving on the other part of this three way intersection we were near. Eventually we got one and went back to the hostel.

Once at the hostel, we dried off a bit and told Freeman about our adventures at the bars he recommended. We had some time to kill before going to catch our evening train, so we decided to wander around Petaling Street, a famous shopping area in Chinatown (where our hostel was located). We got a couple souvenirs / gifts and Nina bought a purse. We tried some jackfruit pieces and their texture was meh, it tastes kinda like a melon. We also managed to finally find someone selling cut pieces of durian wrapped in plastic. I bought more roasted chestnuts, but these ones were inferior as their outsides were all sticky and made my hands a mess while eating them. Alex and Nina both bought satay from street vendors and ate them while wandering.

We ended up being kind of in a rush to get to the train station; we had to pick up our tickets before 8pm even though the train to Butterworth/Penang didn't leave unil 10. It was close, but we made it in time. I found a restaurant that had a vegetarian section; we sat down there and I got some fried rice and veggie-meat satay. The rice was too spicy and not that great, but the veggie chicken satay was totally amazing. The pumpkin soup Nina ordered was fantastic as well, even though I don't like pumpkin.

Our train ended up being delayed over an hour, and I sat and read while waiting. Once we were on, I was only one chapter away from finishing my book, but after I did I felt incredibly motion sick from reading while moving. I sat for a few minutes hoping it would go away, then just threw up in the bathroom and felt massively better. Fell asleep rather easily on my bed in the sleeper car.

Singapore - 2 days

For our first day in Singapore, Alex and I were mostly on our own - Nina had to work both Thursday and Friday, but she had a lighter day on Friday. We decided to go to the Singapore Zoo, as it's a pretty acclaimed place to visit and we hadn't been to any zoos thus far. We took public subways and busses over there (they have an amazing public transporation system, super efficient), ate some pizzas, then wandered around for a few hours. I learned some stuff and saw some animals not common in American zoos. There was a really cool part where we were in this enclosure where some lemurs were, and they were super unafraid of humans and hung out really close to us, people were even touching them - though we didn't, cause the sign said not to :(. We also rode elephants, which was alright, a little scary. We didn't get any real pictures of that though since we were both on an elephant at the same time.

After the zoo, we headed towards this place called Haw Par Villa where we were going to meet Nina around 5:30pm. We stopped at a mall on our way because we thought we had enough time - bought ear plugs, a pasta snack, aloe vera for my sunburn, more sunscreen, and Alex got his glasses adjusted because they were being really annoying to him. We ended up being a bit late, but we still had enough time to get through the Ten Courts of Hell exhibit before it closed at 6pm. Luckily, the rest of the park was open for another hour. We went mainly because of the Ten Courts, but the rest of it ended up being super amazing. Basically it's like a park / garden where there are a MILLION statues and different sculptures of random mythology or cool animals. Nina had come with her boss, Ray, and her coworker Andrew. Ray posed us a bunch of times to take cool pics, and Nina and I scrambled up on top of quite a few animal statues. Our most epic one was a golden deer that was perched rather high off the ground to start with, though Nina said a giant gorilla was harder to climb.

Sadly, my camera had run out of power while Alex and I were at the zoo, so I didn't get to take any of my own pics. :( But I'll steal the ones from Alex's camera and I'm sure I'll get some back from Ray eventually.

Once the park closed at 7, Alex and I showed them how to get back to the main part of town on public transit (Ray usually took cabs, but with 5 we would need two). We got off in Little India for dinner. Alex bought a belt when we were wandering around the streets, because he had lost one in Brastagi, but this new one broke like two minutes after he bought it. Ray bought us all a delicious Indian meal, and I was incredibly satisfied by my food, it was actually mild enough that I could eat it all.

Afterwards we went to this store called Mustafa's, which is GIGANTIC. It had multiple floors and seemed to stretch for blocks. We wandered through it for a really long time trying to find shoes because Nina's new sandals (which we had picked up for her in Brastagi) were killing her feet. We eventually found em, and she eventually chose some shoes that were decent. Ray bought some interesting juice drinks for us all to try, and paid for a van taxi that we stumbled upon to take us back to the hotel. Then, sleep.

The next day Alex and my morning adventure was: find a place to do laundry! Conveniently, there was a self-service place 20 minutes away on public transit. Google maps also showed a vegetarian Chinese food place there, which sounded exciting. We headed over with our clothes, started laundry, then attempted to find the food place. After a ton of wandering and asking locals where it was, the eventual conclusion was that it was no longer existing. :(. So instead we went to a food court where one of the places was labeled "vegetarian." Food courts in Singapore are basically like, small shopping areas with tables where all the people who used to be street vendors were set up so that they would be off the sidewalks. I got some bland noodles and a cabbage dish with a fake meat in it that I didn't like too much. Also, a can of cold chrysanthemum tea. It was around this point that I started consuming massive amounts of that. So delicious. Then we switched laundry and hung around at the place until it was dry.

After our laundry was done, we went back to the hotel and had perfect timing - we ran into Nina, Ray, and Andrew when they were on their way out for lunch. We went with them because I hadn't been fully satisfied with my noodles earlier, and we were waiting for Nina before doing our next activity anyway. The place we went only had one vegetarian item other than rice, lady fingers (okra) with garlic sauce, so I got that and it was also kinda meh. The service at the place was really bad, too. We had to order our drinks three separate times, and they didn't even come until after we had gotten our food.

After lunch, Alex, Nina and I caught a taxi from the hotel to a nature reserve in central Singapore. We did a 1.5 mile-ish hike to the highest point in Singapore and back. It was alright; fairly standard rainforesty area and I don't like hiking all that much. There were a bunch of monkies in the parking lot, which was cool, but we didn't see many while actually hiking. We had read earlier how to avoid monkey aggression, and were careful not to make eye contact, keep our distance, and not bare our teeth at all. They didn't pay much attention to us.

We taxied back to the hotel, then changed really fast and jumped in the pool really quick before we had to leave for the airport. Nina and I had been craving nachoes, so we ordered them from the pool bar, but they were very strange and made with Doritos. O_o. Whatevs, they were pretty satisfying. Quickly changed, Nina dropped off part of her luggage at the Fairmount desk, and then we were off to the airport. The taxi driver we had there was a very bad driver, and by the time we got there I felt super nauseous. I bought a grilled cheese with tomato after my stomach calmed down, and then two bao for desert - one filled with lotus paste, one filled with red bean. All was delicious.

Our flight was super short, only like 45 minutes, and then we got a taxi from the airport to KL proper. At first we thought we had been overcharged because we had purchased a taxi from an airport booth (came to like 25 USD) but then it turned out that KL was like 75km away from the airport, sooo actually not that bad of a deal. We checked into our hostel, went online with the wifi there for a bit. This guy whose name we later learned was Freeman (I have no idea how to spell that name) talked about how despite all the hype, the best views of the city weren't from the KL Tower or the Twins but from these two hotel bars, Luna and Sky bar. We chatted with him a bit, then went to our beds and slept. We had three beds in a dorm-like room of about 12. Alex and I had been a little unsure about staying in a hostel, as neither of us had ever done it, but in total it ended up being a really great experience, everyone there was fantastically nice. The bed I slept on the first night was right under the vent, though, so I was rather cold (the next night I traded beds with Alex).

Brastagi - 2 days

We woke up at like 5 or 6 the next morning to get ready for our epic hike. Breakfast was okay, I had some fresh fruit and toast. At around 7:30 we met up with our guide in the hotel lobby. I stayed and chatted with him, while Alex took a quick motorbike ride with someone from the hotel to go to an atm. We took a short bus ride to the base of the trail, then started the hike. Most of the way up was a paved road, which wasn't too bad.

There were lots of interesting plants the guide stopped to point out to us. My favorite was a fern-like plant where when you touched it, the leaves retract to the stem. There was also a plant that had seed pods that exploded when you squeezed them. We saw a cinammon and acacia tree on our way up also, which were neat. Apparently the road was paved so nicely because loggers need easy access to the trees at the top, which was kinda sad. There was also trash everywhere. We passed by an empty little shack where the guide said a shop used to exist, but there weren't enough tourists anymore to support it.

After a while we had to climb up a dirt trail to the side, then we came to this really cool rocky area with a crater and lots of places smoke was coming out. The sulfur smell was strong but I didn't find it super unpleasant. We FINALLY made it up to the top of this little peak, then sat down to eat our lunch. I was made a vegetarian fried rice by our hotel, which was actually rather delicious. However, there were A MILLION TINY BUGS EVERYWHERE. They kept flying in my face, behind my glasses, in my food, crawling down the neck of my shirt. It was probably one of my worst experiences of the trip. I had no problem with them while hiking up or down, it was just when sitting still with food that they were so unbearable. I applied copious amounts of more bugspray, ate as much of my fried rice as I could, and had a couply bananas that the guide brought.

Alex wanted to climb to the top of a different peak, cos it was technically a little higher and looked pretty easy, so he spent like 30 minutes running over there to do that while I chatted with our guide. He was a really cool dude, passionate about nature, and was talking about how sometimes he would pick up a ton of trash on the mountain and the other guides would never help him, just would think he was crazy for doing so. When he came back, we chatted a little with a Dutch couple that had been hiking along the trail a bit ahead of us for most of the way up. Then, we started the descent.

The descent was much shorter, about 2km vs 7km, but was rather difficult going. It was primarily steps, but they were very steep and uneven and there were often places where steps were missing and we had to jump down large gaps. At one point there was a HUGE fallen tree blocking the entire path, we had to pass our bags through to the guide and then squeeze ourselves through, grabbing on to hanging rope vines for support on the steep side past the trunk. I was insanely sore and exhausted, and my legs were kinda shaky, they weren't used to that sort of exertion. Alex had a really hard time with this part because he isn't very flexible, and it was kinda fun and amusing that there was actually something related to hiking that I could do quicker and more easily than him. It was at least fairly cool, since we were rather covered by the rain forest and not exposed to any direct sun. It was also a cloudy day.

At the bottom we had to walk about ten minutes through town before reaching the hot springs. Changed into our swimming suits, then sank gratefully into the water. Basically it was a little facility that had pools fed by the hot springs running off the volcano. Some of the pools were way too hot to get into. It was nice to rest there for a few minutes, but when I was reapplying sunscreen before getting in I missed a few spots (my shoulder / neck area and arms) and so later I ended up getting a sunburn. It was mostly mild except for the left part of my neck, that got super red.

Once we had sufficiently soaked, we walked for a while to a bus that would take us back to Brastagi. The busses in Indonesia were not very good quality; they were like 60's vans that had sideways seats in the back, very cramped and bumpy. We just made it back to the hotel when it started raining some, our timing was very lucky to get the coolness of impending rain without having to get wet at all. Since the hotel didn't have much vegetarian food, I just ordered french fries with cheese in the room. It was really difficult to get the person on the phone to understand we wanted "french fries" and not "fried rice." After eating, I took a couple hour nap, ordered more french fries, took a shower, and passed out - I was completely exhausted and sore after hiking.

The next day we woke up pretty late since we didn't have many plans other than traveling. We ate breakfast at the hotel, went online a bit, and packed up to leave. We took a shared taxi leaving at 11 back up north to Medan. It was more expensive than it should have been, but we paid extra for the convenience of having our hotel set it up for us. They recommended leaving that early because sometimes traffic was pretty bad, and we had a flight to catch at 4:50, but we ended up getting to the airport around 2. Medan's airport is probably the worst I've ever seen. No airconditioning really, and not even any restaurants, just little snack booths, and only a few chairs. We got some snacks and I read more or less until our plane left for Singapore.

Once we got to Singapore, we grabbed some dinner (I had delicious Indian) and then took an airport shuttle bus over to Nina's hotel, which was the really fancy five star Fairmount hotel. We hung out in the lobby for about an hour. Since she didn't have a phone on her, we had prearranged that that was where she was supposed to meet us around 8:30 or 9. But my estimate was off, we ended up getting there like 10:30. She had an event to go to that night, so we weren't sure when she'd be back. We were somewhat worried that she had already came back and gone up to her room, and we weren't able to get online to see if she was on aim. Eventually around 11:30 she arrived, though, and everything was good. We went with her, her coworker Andrew, and this girl Kate who also was working the conference to the famous Long Bar in the Raffles Hotel. It was where the Singapore Sling cocktail was invented, which is apparently moderately famous, at least in Singapore. I didn't get one myself, but Kate let us all taste hers, it was okay.

After that, back up to the hotel and I got to sleep in half of Nina's room's awesomely amazing comfy king bed. We weren't even sneaking into her room, she had told the front desk and we were registered as guests and got our own key, it was pretty sweet.

Samosir - 2 days

Our Medan hotel was pretty nice. I ordered a fried tofu dish and some lady who worked there was really nice and warned me there was shrimp bits in the breading, but she could get it made vegetarian for me. The dipping sauce was SO SPICY though, oh my god. Basically Indonesian food has thus far been way spicier than Vietnamese food. Alex and I also tried this beer called Bintang, which was rather tasty. We wanted to buy massages since they're pretty cheap, but they only had one massage therapist so I let Alex get one and I fell asleep.

In the morning we had to find a ride to Parapat, a town on the edge of Lake Toba. Our hotel didn't arrange one way rides, so we left it, and someone at the door tried to sell us a private taxi for 700k (like $90ish). We haggled him down to 500k, but we didn't want to pay more than 450, so when he refused we just walked away. A random tuk tuk driver stopped us on a corner and offered to take us to Lake Toba. We had a bit of confused conversation, his English wasn't very good, but somehow we thought he'd give us a ride to Parapat for 300k. As it turned out, however, he gave us a ride to some random place and wanted 30k. But he had some English speaking friends there that told us where we could find a shared taxi (that's originally what we wanted to do, but no one picked up when we tried calling numbers that we had). We got a ride to a place for 40k, and from there paid 90k each for a ride to Parapat.

The minivan ended up taking about 4 hours. We stopped in a little town and I bought a bag of rice cakes, which were pretty bland but vegetarian at least. There are tons of delicious bottled teas in Asia, we need more of those in the US. I slept for about half of the ride, then our driver got kind of lost driving us to the ferry station. The ferry station we were at was very touristy, but it said the next ferry wasn't leaving until 5:45pm, and it was only 3pm when we got there. We knew there was another harbor, so we decided to try to get there. We mistakenly thought that the harbor was called Tomok (because the sign had two listings of ferry times, but actually Tomok was the name of the harbor on Samosir, where we were trying to get). We hopped in a small bus that took us over to a different ferry station, where we were able to get on a ferry that left just 30 minutes later.

The ferry ride was super beautiful - Lake Toba is gorgeous. Once we got in to Tomok, we took another bus over to our hotel (Tabo Cottages), which was also absolutely charming. Tons of small little cottage places, a beautiful grassy area and tons of fantastic places to just lounge around near the lake shore. Dinner was delicious, I got a rice souffle (spicy), a hot milk with honey, some very crispy fried tempeh with lime juice, and more Bintang. We also tried tapioca chips, but I prefer them sweet to salty. Afterwards, we bought massages from the hotel. They were awesome, then we slept.

I woke up around 7, and Alex and I just hung around for a bit since we got a free breakfast at 8. It was super delicious, I had awesome chewy bread with butter, avocados, and an amazing cheese I wish we had asked the name of. We also ordered a cup of Kopi Luwak coffee, which either is way less delicious than the hype or our cup was poorly made. It was super grainy. We arranged a driven tour for the day, and we left around 9 with the driver.

The first place we stopped was a very tiny village called Ambarita. There were like, six traditional Batak houses (though smaller than the traditional ones used to be) and one of them was set aside to be a museum. A guide led us through the museum and told us fascinating stories about the Batak people, such as how strongly they valued having babies. A common dream for a woman was to have 33 babies, a sacred number, but usually they only hit 10-20 before they couldn't have any more. The Batak people were cannibals, but only in certain instances. This was because prisoners who committed certain crimes (rape, murder) were considered animals, and killed. Thus, since they were just animals, villagers could eat them if they wanted to. We were shown the stone chairs where judgment was passed and then the other set of stone furniture where people were killed, it was very interesting.

Next we went to another small Batak village where we saw some traditional Batak dancing. Then to another village where an old lady with really bloody teeth/gums was sewing traditional blankets. Our driver gave us some avocados and this nut thing whose name I don't know how to spell. The nuts were delicious, though. After that we went to a hot springs, and Alex got a bit to eat (I didn't totally trust the place we stopped at for lunch to be vegetarian). We drove back down to the southern part of the island and saw the grave of a Batak king, and then we were done on Samosir and had to catch a ferry back to Parapat to get to Brastagi before sleeping.

Hanging out at the Tomok ferry port was really amusing. This Batak guy was chilling there with a couple kids and his wife and we talked to them. At one point, he caught a beetle with his bare hands and tied a string around it, giving it to his young daughter. She ran around holding the string as the beetle buzzed loudly and angrily above her head - it was really amazing and hilarious, I caught part of it on video. Afterwards, I shared some coconut wafers with them and the man showed us some pictures on his phone of a fish with tusks and a giant catfish he caught in Lake Toba. Eventually our ferry arrived and we left back, then bought ourselves a shared taxi ride to Brastagi.

The ride to Brastagi was AWFUL. The roads were super twisty and not well paved, I felt more motion sick than I ever had in my life. Somehow I managed to survive the three hours of this, but I was also starving since I essentially skipped lunch. We checked into our hotel and I had a plate of some spaghetti / vegetable thing, and we booked a guide for our hike the next day and a ride back to the airport two days from then. Then we passed out, exhausted.

Ho Chi Minh - Day 2

Woke up nice and early to be out the door around 7 for our Mekong Delta boat tour. There were like 9 other people on the tour, and our guide was very nice and spoke fluent English. They were very considerate about my vegetarianism, and I got a nice croissant with lettuce and tomato for breakfast. The boat ride was very smooth and I didn't get seasick at all, it was very interesting looking at all the run-down houses on the edge of the river and the plants once we got further into the more rural areas.

Our first stop was at a Buddhist pagoda, where we were shown around and told stories about various aspects of Vietnamese tradition. One interesting story the guide told us was about how, traditionally, a new wife lived with her husband's family for three years after the marriage. She was always the first to wake up and last to go to sleep and had to help take care of everyone. After the Buddhist temple, we went further on the boat and stopped at a rustic village. First we walked around the farmland, it took about 45 minutes and we saw lots of crops, interesting tropical plants (pineapple bushes, banana and coconut trees, etc).

Then we boated a few minutes away and got off at a more trade-oriented part of the town. We walked through a super crowded market where people were selling all sorts of fascinating things. This and the crop area we walked around seemed very un-touristy, and was a neat glimpse at how people actually lived. The grossest thing at the market was a bowl of living frogs. On closer inspection, their eyes were missing and there were only bloody sockets, and their skin was super pink - it looked like they had been skinned alive. Completely awful. There were also bowls of live fish and pens crowded with little chicken and duck babies. One of the catfish decided to jump out at us, and an Australian man in front of me was tossed a bucket by the person manning the stall. He was able to catch it and return it to the bowl, which was impressive.

It was somewhat drizzly while walking around, but it started pouring near the end of our walk through the market. We walked under a more stable shelter (lots of the booths had only cloth coverings, we stood under a bigger metal one) until it conveniently ended a few minutes later.

We then boated over to another nearby area for lunch and visiting a Cao Dai temple. Cao Daism is fascinating, and I had never heard of it before we visited the temple. It's basically a Unitarian-esque religion, that values strongly Buddhism, Christianity, Daoism, Confucionism, etc. The temple was one of the prettiest buildings I had ever seen in my life. It was painted in gorgeous rich colors and looked so bright and happy.

After we saw that, we had lunch at a second Buddhist pagoda; this one also served as an orphange. Our guide told us that some portion of our ticket price is donated to this orphanage as charity, which I'm guessing is why they were willing to cook all of us a meal. They were insanely considerate of my vegetarianism. Not only could I eat two of the main dishes, but they cooked me a separate little dish as well. The main dishes I could eat were a very spicy vegetable soup with bamboo, pineapple, tomato, and okra, and a fried rice dish with tiny green peppers and carrots chopped up small that was somehow tasty even though I like neither green peppers or carrots. I also was made a dish of well-seasoned tofu and cooked lotus root. They were considerate enough to warn me the salad had fish sauce in it. There were also kittens roaming around, one stayed close to our table, mewling pathetically and loudly and rubbing against our legs. A British girl beside me felt bad for it and fed it some rice.

Then the boat ride back - this took about an hour and a half. It was raining pretty steadily, so most of us sat inside the little cabin area instead of out in the front where it was more open. We ate fresh lychee purchased from the market, along with a relative of lychee whose name I forgot and some mangosteen. I learned that mangosteen is like the BEST FRUIT EVER. I had like, three of them. They taste like a mixture between peaches and lychee and I hope I get the chance to eat like a million more before going back home.

Once back to our hotel, we decided to wander around the streets near our hotel. It was fun just walking by all the different shops. I bought a laptop bag because of weight limits on airplanes - on the way here I learned my bag could only be 7kg, or about 15lbs. Mine was 18 to start with, and I intended to acquire some things. You're usually allowed one carry-on and one "small bag" to stow under the seat. So I figured I could put my heaviest things in my laptop / small bag, and then my backpack would be light enough. Hopefully it'll work out; as far as today's flight goes, though, my limit was 10kg and they didn't even bother to weigh my backpack. It's nice to have just in case, though. Only cost me $10 to get, and I bet I could have haggled them down cheaper.

We also bought snacks from a bakery, and cream puffs from a cream puff store. The cream puff flavors were so weird! We wanted to get a durian flavored one, but they were out, so we got a thing of 9 mini vanilla cream puffs and one creampuff with strawberry flavor and cheddar cheese on top. It was too weird of a combination, I made Alex eat most of it. I'm going to accidentally make him fat on this trip with how often there are delicious things I want to eat, but can't finish. Oops. After we felt we had wandered sufficiently, we stopped at an Indian restaurant and I had some of the best Indian food I've ever had. The okra and peas in my dishes tasted insanely fresh and amazing. Only problem was that it was a bit too spicy for my tastes.

We had considered drinking a little and playing pool at a bar we had passed in our wanderings, but we were both too exhausted and Alex felt like he had had enough calories for the day. So back to the hotel, where we showered and took care of random stuff online.

We decided to book a different hotel than the one we had chosen initially for Medan; the hostel we had booked seemed really sketchy and had bad reviews. So we got a nicer place, which is actually kind of important because we're probably going to be spending most of this evening hanging out there. Basically, the only thing we're doing today is traveling. We woke up around 5:30 and headed to the airport (and accidentally got scammed by a taxi whose meter had to have been running way faster than it should have - our ride cost $15, it should have been like $5. lesson: do not let people at hotels get you a taxi, know the reputable companies and pick the taxi out yourself). We had a 9am flight and I typed up most of this while we're sitting around waiting in Singapore for our 4:50pm flight from here to Medan. Medan isn't a great city, so we plan to stick to our hotel other than dinner. Early tomorrow morning - off to Parapat, Lake Toba, and Samosir.

Ho Chi Minh - Day 1

So the flights ended up being not too bad. I was basically able to sleep for most of the first 11 hours of our 13 hour first plane ride. I woke up briefly every 2-3 hours and played around for a bit on the in-flight entertainment system, which was fun to do considering that's what I'll be working on once my job starts up. I read for basically the whole second plane trip, from Taipei to Ho Chi Minh, and I'm on page 200 of the first Game of Thrones book now. Super good so far. When we got to Vietnam, I was a little worried because I had realized at LAX that I left the passport photos I took back in my Irvine apartment (needed them for a visa), but I was pretty sure I had read they would take the photo there for a small fee and they were able to do that no problem.

We decided to just use one of the taxis advertising near the exit of the airport, even though it was a bit expensive compared to average rates, we paid $9 for about a 30 minute ride to our hotel. Once out of the taxi, this guy tried to convince us to stay at his hotel instead (not notable because of the occurrence, everyone on the street harasses tourists to spend money), but when we said no he helped point us towards our hotel. After we had dropped off our luggage inside and went back outside, he was waiting to talk to us more. We mentioned we were going to lunch at a vegetarian place (one across the street had a note that they had veggie options) and he offered to show us a better one. We agreed, and he led us over a couple streets to a cool little shop. His name was Bamboo, and he was very friendly.

Alex and I ate lunch at the store. I *tried* to order fried okra and a cabbage blossom with a garlic sauce, but the waiter didn't speak much English and when I pointed at the menu he messed up and brought me fried onions and a vegetable plate instead. The plate had cauliflower, carrots, and onions, so it was edible anyway although it had a light sprinkling of a peppery peanut mix on some of it that I wasn't super fond of. While we were eating, a guy from Spain sat down at the restaurant and amazed many locals by playing an accordion. After lunch, we originally planned to go to this tourist park thing but when we had looked it up in the hotel earlier it was a bit too far away to go to in just an afternoon. Since we didn't have any plans, and we liked the guy Bamboo who had helped us out some, we asked him for some recommendations of where to visit.

He offered to take us around and show us a few places (not as sketchy as it sounds - a lot of people sell rides around the city on their motorbike). Vietnam traffic is pretty nuts, way more motorbikes than cars and tons of honking because that basically seemed to mean "I'm going to drive past you now, please don't hit me." It was really fun riding through the city that way. Bamboo took us first to the War Memorial Museum, which was really interesting, obviously way biased against the United States, and incredibly depressing. We stayed a while reading through the exhibits, then he drove us over to a Buddhist temple. It was super pretty, and had two ponds filled with turtles and fish. Next was a handicraft factory where they made lacquered plates and art work (they were either hand-painted or in-laid with mother of pearl / eggshells), and I accidentally fell completely in love with a small piece of art made of eggshells and had to buy it. Finally he took us to see these two cool buildings, a Notre Dame Catholic church and the very historic post office.

After that back to our hotel, and then of course we had made the very silly mistake of not negotiating rates upfront. For some reason even though both of us knew that piece of advice, we had assumed that Bamboo not mentioning anything meant we would just pay him whatever we wanted to for his help. We had planned on just giving him about 100k dong ($5) and he wanted 600k ($30). His reasoning was based on an unspoken rate of $5 an hour per person for three hours. Whatever, it was a little pricey when compared to the average rate of renting a moto driver, but he was nice and it wasn't really that much money and we'll remember to negotiate upfront definitely in the future.

We went inside for a bit, then managed to summon up the energy to feed ourselves and find Alex a phone. He wanted to get a prepaid one so he could be reachable. We found one partway down the street for a decent price, and also bought some outlet converters (conveniently unnecessary in our first hotel, but will be probably needed in later ones). Then we went to dinner, and I ordered a vegetarian crispy noodles + veggie/tofu dish but the sauce on it tasted really bad so I didn't eat much of it. I had some of the bruschetta we ordered for appetizer, and part of an avocado shake which was fun to try but made me realize that avocado and sweet things really don't go together well. Had some of Alex's rice, too. We also picked up a motion sickness medicine from a pharmacy next to our hotel, which we might end up needing for either our boat tour tomorrow or possibly our budget airplane rides coming up internal to Asia.

Totally time to sleep, now.

Portland - 3 Days

umm so since Alex wrote up the details of most of the Canada trip from winter break, i decided to not actually write up what happened for the majority of it. but before i decided to be a lazy hobo like that, i actually had stuff written for the pre-Canada time in Portland. i meant to post this like way earlier but i forgot, so hereee it is now before even more time passes.

THURSDAY
we got into the train station and nina's friend allison was there to pick us up. we all squished ourselves into her car, nina and i shared the front seat and we just sorta shoved a lot of luggage into the back on top of people. we were dropped off at nina's house and threw all our stuff downstairs, got a tour of the place, and met her housemate erica and a few of erica's friends. we then walked over to allison's house which was pretty nearby and tried to figure out snowboarding plans, but we called to make reservations and they said they didn't have any left for friday soo we decided to just go snowboarding in vancouver.

after that was settled we borrowed allison's car and nina was very nice and drove us downtown to the grocery store so we could get food and drinks (she was done with finals and wanted to celebrate lol, and since we weren't snowboarding the next day why not~). she got a cider and some apricot thingy, ryan and alex got some newcastle and heineken, and i got some mike's hard lemonade. we went back to her place and she dropped the car off at allison's while the rest of us threw together dinner. no microwave, so everything took foreveeer in the oven. i split some vegetarian chicken taquitos with alex, they were okay. i started drinking my lemonade with the end of them, and once ryan was out of the shower and his food was finally done we played king's cup. it is a very silly drinking game. i tried the newcastle beer and nina's stuff but they all tasted gross.

then alex and nina and jay and homer and i drove to vancouver (washington, not canada) to this pool hall where we were meeting this guy patrick. i kept saying i was going to be sooo good at pool but i lost both of the games i played, one against nina (which took forever we were both sucking so hard XD) and one against homer. i took some pictures and it felt like we were there only twenty minutes but then all of a sudden wtf it had been two hours and it was midnight, and the pool hall was closing.

FRIDAY
nina and i woke up in the morning at like 9:30am to the sound of water dripping. surprise! just the day before ryan was talking about how it looked like water leaked down into her basement bedroom and she was like "nah that's never happened." which of course meant it had to happen the very next day. the toilet flooded or something and it decided to come down into nina's room. :/. we spent a bit of time moving all her stuff out of that corner of the room and trying to dry things up. her and jay called the plumber and after the bathroom was mostly cleaned i took a shower and got up for the day and ate a bagel or two. ryan was sort of hungover so he walked around outside and went to taco bell. i just sort of chilled on my laptop for a while. eventually everyone was up and the plumber was on his way so we left the house at like 2 to go to chipotle downtown. it was deliciousss.

after that we walked a bit through downtown to get to powell's bookstore, which is gigantic and awesome and amazing. we spent like a really long time in there, because clearly i just need more books to read i mean i just don't have enough. sami somehow got nothing, ryan got like one music book thing, nina and alex each got 10+ and i got like six or seven. i got one of dave duncan's older books in a newer looking binding, two books on linguistics (one debunking common linguistic myths, one on the linguistics of texting), the third demon wars book, and a coupl eothers i'm not remembering. they had this thing where they'd ship your books for $13 to anywhere if you bought ten or more, so alex and i got all ours shipped back down to california which was awesome.

from there we took public transportation to the zoo, which was open at night for this special zoo lights thing. they basically had like a fuckton of christmas lights in the shape of animals or random things or just decorating trees and archways. it was actually fairly awesome, although the train ride thing which was part of the package wasn't exactly worth the 30 minute wait but oh well, it was fun anyway. it was also a bit sad that we couldn't see most of the animals because, well, they were asleep and the sun was down, but we did see like sea otters and some monkeys. we also found the place we played at before near the great ape area with like the vines you could swing across on but it was blocked off which was saaaad. we did take pictures again with the bears by the gift shop, tho. XD.

after we got back ryan and alex and i ordered a pizza from dominoes and sami and nina cooked some food things of their own. after eating i had to make nina the cookies i owed her. sami wasn't feeling well so she took some benadryl and passed out early but she gave us the cookie recipes for sugar and chocolate chip. we didn't actually have enough chocolate so when nina went with jay to pick up homer from somewhere she bought some hershey's bars. i learned that i am not actually terribly good at baking, we sort of added things in the wrong order and it was really hard but we (alex and i, tho ryan helped a little) managed to finally get something in the oven. the cookies did not actually stay very separate, they sort of all merged into one cookie. XD. but at least they tasted okay? i enjoyed the sugar cookies we made at least (which was not actually a separate batch, i was way too lazy to make both, so i just put like three cookies on the tray before adding chocolate chips. but yeah, i'll have to owe her some real cookies when i learn how to like, make real cookies.

but yeah after that and doing some laundry we basically crashed, tiring day.

SATURDAY
woke up aroound 10:15am, repacked my stuff so i only needed one bag to bring to canada, cleaned the dishes from the cookies the night before, then hopped in jay's car cause he was nice enough to drive us to the train station. i'm on the train to seattle right now, it's weird it's the first one i've been on that's only one story not two. they also have tv screens and are playing polar express atm. it's sort of annoying, their power outlets don't actually work so i can't charge my phone or my netbook, i'm glad that my netbook had enough power for me to actually get to this point~ kbye for now.

San Franciso - 3 Days

This is the San Franciso portion of my trip up north to Canada.

TUESDAY
woke up ridiculouslyyy early at 5:30am after like four hours of sleep. ate some waffles and veggie bacon, thennn everyone got over and we shoved ourselves and our luggage in my dad's minivan and off to the train station. we printed out like 30+ train tickets (cause of the various transfers and stuff XD) and then managed to get to the right place pretty quickly. sat next to sami on the bus to bakersfield and i played a lil bit of ds then listened to music while sami used my pillow to sleep on my lap then i used my pillow to sleep on hers. then we were basically there. it wasn't a long stopover and then we were on a more comfy train (same type as the amtrak i take from irvine to chatsworth a lot). i read a little bit, wrote like one post for souls and worked on nominating people for souls yearbook superlatives. then i slept a couple hours i think, listened to music or w/e, i don't remember too much of it so i must have been unconscious. XD. then we made it to oakland!

got our checked baggage, thenn walked some blocks through oakland to get to the BART (bay area rapid transit) which is like a subway thing. we were such noobs figuring out how to buy / use the tickets, but eventually we worked it out and even got on the right line. i think it went like, under the bay, which was weeeird. we took it from oakland to downtown san francisco, got off and started walking to the hotel. i'm not sure why anyone thought it was a good idea, but i was the one telling us which way we were supposed to go. so there was this amazing thing where we walked down one block and i was like "wait we should have been going the other way lol." so we turn around, walk back, and i'm like "wait i was j/k we want to go the other way" >_>. so we walked down this block like three times carrying luggage, i'm lucky they didn't kill me rofl.

but yeah we found the hotel, it was sooo tiny in terms of like.. horizontal space. o_O. sami and i stayed outside with the luggage while ryan and alex went to check us in (we said we only had three people with us). thenn we shoved ryan sami and i into the fucking SCARY tiny elevator (the door to it was like.. literally a wooden door with a handle, not like some fancy metal sliding thing) and made it up to our room on the fourth floor. our room was waaay cool, from our window you could see down the entire stretch of block downtown that we had walked down. and like, the place is called "hotel des artes" so there were funky things painted everywhere, super cool looking.

after getting settled (and of course, checking out the free wireless internet that the place offered) we tried to find a place to eat. ryan suggested indulging ourself with fancy expensive dinner because san fran is renowned for tasty tasty things, so i searched online and found out a hotel literally across the street had a good-sounding restaurant called "the roots" with some vegetarian and peanut-allergy-friendly stuff. it had very charming decorations and the food sounded rlly good. sami had an argula + goat cheese salad, ryan had a steak thing and alex and i split a cheese tasting platter, truffle oil + parmesan + garlic french fries and a fettucine dish with a crushed red pepper and tomato sauce. considering how picky i am, i was ridiculously and pleasantly surprised that i thoroughly enjoyed every part of that meal. it was SO GOOD. the waiter was really cute and amusing and we chatted with him a lot, and at the end he totally gave us an employee discount on the meal which saved us like $20. o_O. so we tipped him super nicely, haha.

after that we were going to walk to taco bell to get sami some more food because her salad while good wasn't amazingly filling, butttt the taco bell i totally swore was down this one street wasn't there, so we didn't find one and gave up. it was cold but dry, i wore my new warm weather jacket which has THUMBHOLES omg i love jackets with thumbholes, i was so excited when i realized it. but yeah so we just sort of wandered around the financial district of sacramento, looking at the awesome christmas decorations that were all over the place and taking lots of pictures. i got a gingerbread latte from starbucks, which was pleasing. XD. we got back around 10 or 11, i wandered around online a bit then showered and straightened my hair then went to sleep around 1130 or 12.

WEDNESDAY
alarms were set for 730, i didn't get up until like 810 after sami and alex had been awake and talking for a bit. it was rainy outside which was sorta disappointing for all the walking around we had planned, but we were like "eh whatever~" and i checked the weather and it was supposed to dry up by the end of the day. ryan went down to scout out free breakfast and brought back some stuff, i took a toasted bagel and cream cheese and got dressed + did makeup. decided to wear silly new beanie which is very blue. considered wearing scarf, but eh it wasn't cold enough to warrant it. checked out of the hotel but we left most of our luggage there behind the desk, very nice of them to let us.

we walked over to market street and caught a bus to haight and ashbury, where ryan really wanted to visit. it's basically this really hippy street corner that was huge in the 70s and where like the grateful dead, janis joplin, jimmy hendrix used to live. most things were closed when we got there at like 10:30ish but we walked around trying to find the grateful dead house first and by then more things were opened. we entered this one shop because it had like an amusing stoner's chess set with like pot leaves in the window and ryan wanted to know how much it was, and once we were inside we browsed a little. before we left ryan was like "o where is grateful dead's house btw?" and they told us and then also told us the store we were browsing actually was where jimmy hendrix used to live, lol. there were a few things ryan wanted to get but we went to another store first to shop comparatively. in this other store ryan got a t-shirt for his cousin. we stopped nextdoor briefly because it was a hat store! and there were some SEXY hats buttt they were waaay expensive, so i didn't get any.

we were a bit hungry afterwards so alex and ryan got paninis, sami stopped by grocery store and got stuff to make a sammich and I had a tomato/mozerella crepe. after that we proceeded to walk towards golden gate park, we had to walk through that to catch the bus up north to golden gate bridge. it's a GIGANTIC park. on the way from haight & ashbury we were literally offered pot like four times, it was highly amusing. the park was amazing, we stopped at this children's playground with this badass rope thing and spent some time climbing on that it was just way too much fun. mostly the rain had stopped by now, so just everything except the sky was getting us wet. walk through park might have even taken an hour or so, and we didn't even get through half of it it's that huge.

caught the bus and made it to the golden gate bridge. it was super foggy so we couldn't really see the bridge that clearly but it gave it a really cool atmosphere, and we could see it well enough to enjoy it. ryan had been there before, so he took us down this path towards the ocean where we could see it better and from there we went through this pretty garden to this concrete tunnel. eventually we ended up at this pier where a bunch of people were fishing and walked out there and chilled for a bit. we didn't stay long, it was prty cold and we were getting hungry again but it was nice to see. after that we had to walk to this other bus line. this was a LOT MORE of a challenge than the map we had made it look to be. cause see, there's this dotted line on the map. on the left side, one inch = 1.87 miles, on the right side, one inch = like .7 miles. up until golden gate bridge we were hanging out on the right side, but now we were on the left. we walked somewhere around 2 miles, much of it uphill and through paths through randomy brushy areas. it was actually really difficult because by this point our feet / legs were killing us (especially sami's.. she was wearing some not very comfortable boots D: ) and we were starving. and then at the end, to top it all off we had to run to catch the bus because it just pulled up to the stop a block or so in front of us. SO HARD. but yeah we caught it lol.

from there we went east to fisherman's wharf. ryan wanted clam chowder in a breadbowl so we went to this place his parents said had the best clam chowder and alex and him got breadbowls of it. it was right next to a boudin SF which was great cause i got some tomato soup from there in a breadbowl too. ryan, for the sake of science, got a cup of clam chowder from boudin as well but thought his first bowl was tastier. after that we browsed shops and i got little trinkets for my bro, dad, and mom. we stopped at in-and-out to get sami some dinner, thenn to ghiradelli square! i got myself some tasty chocolate covered raisins and got a couple presents for other people~ it was very pretty. we were sorta exhausted, so we decided to start heading back even if it was a bit earlier than we had to. took bus back, stopped at starbucks (got a gingerbread latte!), wells fargo (withdrew some $$), and got our luggage out from hotel des arts. thenn we made it out to the ferry building and found the little amtrak bus station. sami wanted to grab some food for the train, so ryan and alex watched our stuff and we walked to 7-11 and taco bell and got some snacks.

bus ride was short, it went over the bay bridge which made me antsy because long bridges over the ocean are sorta scary. train was a few minutes late but nothing major, we got on and got our seats and then most of us tried to sleep right away. i stayed up a bit eating crackers then tried to sleep, but it's really fucking hard when the person behind you is playing some sort of crime drama with lots of sirens and screaming and cursing on their laptop really loudly.. a conductor told him to put on headphones, but he just turned it down for a bit then turned it back up when the conductor was gone. :/. it was really annoying and kept waking me up, it bugged ryan (who i was sitting next to) too but neither of us wanted to say anything to him.

THURSDAY
my sleep was fairly interrupted by lots of things, but i still ended up doing best out of alex sami ryan and i. they weren't able to sleep like at all relatively. i probably got between 8-10 hours if you add up all the chunks. at some point i guess around 4:30am ryan went to go walk and look at the lounge car and he saw people sleeping there so he tried to sleep and did a little bit, but came back around 7:30 cos it was too cold. but during that time i stretched out over two seats and slept pretty solidly except for one point when sami left because there was a baby crying a few rows back and i was awake for like five minutes just listening to that, blah. that woke me up at one point around 10-11am too i think. but yeah, i did get a fair amount of sleep. at about 1pm i woke up for real and moved to the lounge car with big windows to snack and listen to music and write this journal thing. also so ryan could have the opportunity to sleep for a few hours with two seats to stretch out in, poor guy looked so exhausted. D:

but yeah, that is where i will end this part of the journal, it's about 2:15 now (yes i take forever to write these) and the train just pulled out of salem, oregon. we're gonna be in portland in less than two hours. ^^. i'm gonna eat some yogurt and maybe read or nap a bit more~

Salt Lake City - 4 Days

So Friday we left at 5am. I slept from there til 10am when we stopped in some random town Glendale, Nevada. Woke up cos we stopped and I stayed awake from then til like 3pm alternatively reading, listening to music, and writing a post for Souls. Then dozed a while more then we were theree at like 5 or so. Got everything into the hotel, we called my aunt Alice and she dropped by after she got out of work. She took us to her house and then out to this neat pizza place called The Pie (decorated with math pi symbols XD). It was rather tasty. Afterwards she went swimming with most of my family I stayed in the room though cos I didn't feel like swimming, I wrote one more Souls post. Thennn we went to bed pretty early. Had sort of bad cramps all day which sucked.

Saturday woke up at like 8, went downstairs to have breakfast. Drove over to Uncle David's house, and Uncle Charles was there too. I petted David's dog Emmy a while, a pretty red golden retriever, while Charles and David washed the windows of my dad's car. Thenn we drove an hour or so to David's cabin in the mountains. It was neat, I took lots of pics while there. Very pretty views. We drove back, then went to lunch at Pei Wei then back to the hotel. Then we all drove back to Alice's, Dad dropped Mom and I off for my cousin Jenny (6-7 years older than me)'s baby shower. Dad, David and Geoff all went out to do mini golfing or something. Baby shower was okay, there were a lot of people there I knew even less than my relatives and I don't even know my Utah relatives all that much. ): So it was a lil awk but sort of fun doing lil baby games like guessing baby foods and stuff. At one point my Aunt Barbara had a spider on her back and was like "get it off get it off" to me and I was like "O_O I CANT." So she ran inside, tearing off her shirt, and this little girl Mary was there with a camera saying "I'm supposed to take pictures." XDDD.

I gave Jenny's daughter / my first cousin once removed, Valencia, a few gifts from when I was cleaning my room like an iPod dog speaker thing and some bracelets. But I didn't really play much with her until bridal shower was over and Dad & Geoff were back, then I started jumping on the trampoline with her and we became friends again. She's 8, last time I saw her she was 4-5. We hung out she showed me around inside and stuff. And we went out to the back and picked plums and apples from their little orchard. Valencia decided she wanted to cook something with them and I helped her make a "delicious" fruit and vegetable salad with plums, apples, pickles, zucchini, grated parmesan, cheddar, and tomatoes, haha. Then we had tasty spaghetti dinner with one bite of the salad for all of us. Alice put on some little kids movie about a puppy and we all watched that, I wrote a post while it was on. Then back to the hotel and sleepings.

Sunday woke up at 9am to snag breakfast, then back to hotel room and slept until like noon was awesome. Drove out to Uncle Charles & Aunt Barbara's house and we had some pasta / burgers for lunch. They have 10 cats and 4 dogs there o_O. I spent a lot of time cuddling with this one pretty cat Penny and Charles kept trying to get me to take it for my apartment next year, offering $300, free food, a free cage if I took her. XD. They're trying to cut down their number of cats. After being there for a while Cousin Joe (5 years older than me) came upstairs and we talked about comp sci cos he was in the army or something and just came back and is doing his second year of a comp sci major now. Which was cool, I've never really spoken with him before we're facebook friends now. Uncle David, dad, Geoff, mom, Aunt Barbara and I all played some silly board game called Would You Rather. It was amusing enough. Afterward we hung out in backyard while Geoff, Mom, Uncle Charles chilled in the hot tub and everyone except my family sipped on beers. I was offered one multiple times though, haha.

After that we went to Alice's house for dinner again, got there around 6-7. Cousin Mike (6-7 or so years older than me) was there this time which meant his son Kaiden (8 years old) was there along with Jenny + Valencia. =D. He's RIDICULOUSLY cute little blonde kid with glasses. Geoff and I rapidly befriended Kaiden again and we jumped on the trampoline with them a bunch. Dinner was pizza + spaghetti. After dinner Alice got out her scooter (which initially brought to mind the picture of like a Razor Scooter but is actually one of those gas powered motorcycle things). And I spent a tonnn of time riding around her backyard in the scooter and this go-kart it was wayyy too fun. After I was done with that Geoff and I chased Kaiden and Valencia allll over and I got so exhausted. XD. Once again Kaiden was SOOOO cute. Valencia liked to call him a dork and stuff and one time saying he was king of dorks I was like "yeah well I *like* being a dork!" and Kaiden gave me a ridiculously adorable grin. XDD. They had to leave at like 9 or so and so did we, except when we were trying to get out the door Geoff lost his shoes. o_O. We spent like 20 minutes scouring the backyard and finally found them, then went back to hotel. Slept, woke up at like 5 and we drove back. I slept til 10 or something idk. Read for a while, around 12:30 I drove for like an hour from outskirts of Las Vegas to Baker, CA. Mostly going 75 on a freeway, which is good practice for driving considering my whole family was in the car which meant serious yelling and backseat driving and rough-housing between them all. Then I dozed some more. We got back around 3:45pm!

Portland - Day 3

Woke up at 7:12am and showered. Went downstairs to eat breakfast, had part of a waffle and an English Muffin. We rushed out the door after writing down Nina's directions and managed to catch our bus by running down half a block, watching it stop in front of our hotel, and proceed to the stop we were standing at. I bought an all day ticket thing then played a little bit of Harvest Moon while we went back downtown. We managed to get off at the right stop but we thought Pioneer Square (where we were meeting Nina) was this park thing so it took us a while to actually find the right Starbucks. But it was okay because she was running late too, for a sad reason though, nosebleed. ): She missed two trains, got there to meet us at like 9:30am or so, said "hi" to Alex's parents then we walked off to find the bus we wanted to take to the Rose Garden.

We got there pretty easily but the wait was a while so we taught her how to play Mao. Then we got there and wandered around for a while and got some shaved ice which was pretty good, except I kept dropping it all over me. Then we went to the Japanese garden which was alright but cost like five dollars to get in. We tried to take this special zoo-train into the zoo but it wasn't running for a few hours so we went by the boring bus. While waiting, we played cards and picked grass and then threw the grass at each other. Once there we got some cash out of the ATM and then I had a delicious quesadilla at this cafe. In the restaurant we mapped out with a pen where in the zoo we would go.

Once inside the actual zoo, we walked around pretty much on the track I set. We saw a bunch of cool animals, but some of them were lame and sleeping because it was rather hot out. We did this one simulator ride that was completely not zoo-related and took us on a ride around to all of the planets. At some point Nina got an orange soda float, which was bad, but in washing up the stickiness we found a nest of baby birds with was adorable. Near when the zoo was closing we went into this butterfly room place. It was supposed to cost a few dollars but we all got in free because the cashier wasn't working and the person liked Alex's threadless t-shirt. We spent like thirty minutes trying to get butterflies to land on us but we all fail'd.

So after like four hours in the zoo we get on the Max which is like half-subway, half-train, and spend like forty minutes or so going out to this other nearby city, Hillsboro. Because we needed to go to Sonic. It's like nearly 8 by the time we get there, and we spend twenty minutes or so teaching Nina how to play Pusoy and catch a bus that should run nearby Sonic. We're all trying to look for the street we need, Butler, but Alex is the one paying the most attention. Ten minutes into the trip his dad calls so he's on the phone and not paying attention and we unknowingly pass our stop. After five more minutes of driving we ask the bus driver if we'd passed Butler and he denied having any knowledge of the existence of the stop but told us Sonic was at this DIFFERENT street, one we passed a while back.

So we got off and decide we might as well just walk if he said we passed it. We walk for a bit and we're all exhausted already because we walked all over the zoo too. Finally we get the GPS working, and it says Butler is a few streets down from where we were. And it happened to be the one street that none of us read the name of, the one we were joking was probably our stop cause we missed reading it. Annoyed, but HEY SONIC! so we walked down a bit and had some good juice and onion rings and mozerella sticks. It's like, almost ten by now and we have to be back downtown by 11:30 to catch the last bus back up to our hotel.

The bus that drove us earlier was the 48; however the driver said it was his last run so we knew we couldn't get back on it, so we wandered a bit trying to find a stop on a nearby street for some other bus but ended up failing to find anything. We went into a nearby Hilton hotel and asked for directions back to the Max station or a recommendation for a bus and they gave us some weird and incorrect sounding directions and said it was only a 15-20 minute walk. Heartened by the estimate, we start off down Cornell, the street that the 48 went down and the one that crosses Butler.

Words cannot properly express the pain and monotony of spending the next hour and a half walking in as brisk a pace as we could manage down to the Max station. Early on I had to pee from drinking my Sonic juice, and I eventually actually went behind this one sign on this one pretty dark road with Nina and Alex standing by. It was pretty hilarious and definitely hardcore. We stopped at a Chipotle to ask for directions to the Max station and they told us what we pretty much knew: take Cornell to 185th. Cornell took FOREVER, then we got to start on 185th.

We actually had no idea how to get to the Max station from 185th, a thing we noticed after we were already so far down it there were no open stores or anything around us. Alex tried to buy a soda once, but like as soon as he got to the door the light went off and he was closed, it was kinda funny and a happy moment because Nina and I got to temporarily collapse on the grass. Then it was back up, and onward. We found a few bus stops and tried calling to find out what time they were coming, but none of them were actually still running.

At around 11:20 or so we started freaking out a little because we had been walking down 185th a LONG time and things weren't looking familiar, partly because we failed to pay attention at all on the beginning of the bus ride out towards Sonic. Finally we got to what looked like train tracks and start wondering if we had crossed them or not. One thing that was definitely frightening was the fact that when we turned onto 185th on foot we chose to go right even though we weren't 100% sure that was the way the bus had come from, so we started questioning that turn. We couldn't find the train station on the GPS, either, so it wasn't really able to help us at that point.

We decide to push on a little furthur, JUST IN CASE. So we get to the train tracks and see the little gate to cross and like a couple steps onto the track the lights start flashing and the things on the road lower so cars can't drive by. We hurry across and it comes quite a bit closer to us than any of us were comfortable with. Watching it pass by, we notice that large letters painted upon it declare it to be "The Max Blue Line." In turning around we also notice a sign that indicates the Max runs by - a good thing, because we turn right on the next street and then go down a little alley / sidewalk thing and end up AT THE STATION YAY OMG.

So it's like 11:35 now, which happens to be the time we had to be back downtown. Alex's mom calls and starts freaking out a bit at him because she doesn't know where Hillsboro is and didn't know he was going so far. She gives us the numbers for a couple taxi cabs, and we wait for the subway to come. Nina calls the trimet phone thing to find out when the next Max is coming but it says it's going to be 3:30am, which seems ridiculous but is not exactly the best thing to hear. Nina calls Emily, the friend she's staying with, and Emily says if she can get a hold of a car she'll see what she can do to help.

A little while later a Max shows up and we are all ecstatic and get on. Except, like, at literally the NEXT stop the Max announces that it is terminating and everyone has to get off. We're all upset and angry at it, and we're doing so loudly, so another person who gets off comforts us by saying another Max should show up in 10-15 minutes or so. Slightly heartened, we sit there just enjoying the action of sitting after walking FOREVER. My feet, thighs, and calves are all throbbing in pain by this point. After a bit the Max does actually come again, then we take it back downtown which takes another 30 minutes at least.

We hang out for a few minutes near the stop and discover from Nina that these odd water statue things are actually drinking fountains. Then Emily is able to pick us up and she's super nice and gives Alex and I a ride back to the hotel. We give her the rest of the fudge we bought at the zoo in thanks for her kindness, and she comments on the shirt I was wearing because it was one she designed and Nina had sent to me. She drives slightly how I imagine Sami does, and her boyfriend, William, who is also in the car, has to remind her once or twice about red lights and such. Then we lied to Alex's mom and say we took a taxi home because she doesn't like him driving with strangers.

We're finally home around 1am and then eventually we fall asleep, I put off writing this so long I forgot what else actually happened in the next few hours. :D. I probably tried to write some of this, talked to Nina, ate some veggie meat, while Alex complained about light and stuff. Sounds likely to me, at least.

Portland - Days 1 and 2

Bus was alright. It was pretty empty, and roomy, and decently comfortable. I watched about half of Princess Bride with Alex, then his laptop battery died (there were no outlets) so I just kinda half slept and hugged my pillow until the bus was over. It got there like half an hour early which was cool so we went inside and I got a drink.

Then we got a nice table on the new train, I played some DS games like a bunch of Rune Factory and little bit of Kirby. Sometime in there while I was playing DS games we watched Mulan. At some point Alex went down to the food court and bought a cheese pretzel, pizza, and some beef jerky. The two things I tasted were really not that good so he went back down and got some french fries, which also kinda sucked. Then a third time he got some chips and nacho cheese which were actually good, but when we tried to buy more later they were sold out, it was very sad.

When we got off at Sacremento at midnight, we were informed our train was going to be two hours late. So we just hung out in the train station, which at least ended up having free wireless internet so I went online to talk to Nina. Then we watched part of Happy Endings, which Alex didn't like and so wandered away even though there was hot Maggie Gyllenhal.

Eventually at like 2:30 the train finally got there and we got on. It took me until like 4 to actually fall asleep though, and first impressions of the new train were really lame. There were no tables, just rows of chairs and no outlets, more like airplane seats than the last train we had been on. I slept until 7 then woke up for a little bit, managed to fall back asleep and have dreams that Alex was ordering breakfast without me even though I was STARVING since all the food but the nachos sucked on the last train. He woke me up at 9 though cause he had made reservations at the train dining car for then - he had woken up at 7 but not been able to fall back asleep. So we went to get food and they had nothinggg so I just picked at Alex's omelette and hashbrowns, but the hashbrowns even were gross and had green onions on them.

Then I went back to my seat and slept on and off until like 1pm or so. I woke up and ate some cheese and crackers and a bit of goldfish. I played a bunch of Harvest Moon and read for a few hours in order to finish the Chuck Palahniuk book about Portland that I wanted to give to Nina after reading it. The train kept constantly updating the arrival time. It totally failed in estimating time correctly, like it would say "in eight minutes we'll be arriving at our next stop!" and fifteen minutes later we'd actually stop. After a million different estimation changes we finally got there at like 7:20pm. Then we wandered around the bus station for a bit, we didn't know how to get to the hotel. We talked to Nina but she said that she'd rather wait until tomorrow to hang out because we wouldn't have much time anyway; our train was originally supposed to arrive at like 3:40pm.

The person at the train station was nice though and gave us a free taxi ride to our hotel because of how delayed our train was. It's a pretty nice hotel. I got a cheese and tomato subway sandwich and put some veggie meat on it, the first real meal I'd had in the past two days. Then we spent like thirty minutes looking for this part of my headphone that fell off, but to no avail. Went to sleep at around 1:15am.