Toto, we're not in Australia anymore!

Greetings from Hanoi, Vietnam. In about a week, we have more than doubled the number of countries we've visited since August. Here's what we've been up to: Last week we flew to Siem Reap, Cambodia, where we met up with Tom White and Christina Nguyen. We spent a couple of days touring Angkor Wat and the rest of the Angkor temple complex (there are over a thousand temples, we walked around about 8!) When we landed in Siem Reap, it really felt like we were in a foreign world. As we were riding in the taxi to our hotel, we passed tuk tuks (basically a motorcycle with a cart attached to the back to carry ~4 passengers, except some of them had about 8 or 9 people in them), motorcycles carrying entire families, and lots of large cows just lying along the sides of the (dirt) roads. It was mass chaos everywhere- it made coming into Australia feel like a walk in the park! Touring the temple complexes was amazing- some are over a thousand years old and the level of detail they put into the carvings in the sandstone walls is unbelievable. We did a sunrise tour at Angkor Wat, which was very cool, since it's the quintessential image when you think of tourism in Cambodia. Our guide for both days was a local Cambodian guy, around our age, and was one of about 1,000 licensed tour guides for the area. It took a little while for us to understand each other, but after a while I think we got a pretty good system for interpretation down and really enjoyed learning about the history of the temples- and he was great at pointing out photo opportunities. One of the temples we visited (the name is escaping me right now) is where parts of the movie Tomb Raider were filmed. We ate some great food- very similar to Thai, with a bit more emphasis on the sweet / sour flavors, and successfully navigated the crazy streets without getting run over by a tuk tuk! After a few days in Cambodia the 4 of us flew back to Bangkok, where we used points and lived the really good life for a few days at the Sheraton Grande Sukhumvit. Free (amazing) buffet breakfast, 5-star service, free happy hour, amazing pool which made it feel like you were at a resort in the middle of a bustling city. Unfortunately for me I was cooped up in the room getting over the flu almost the whole time, but honestly if I were to pick a place to get sick that's where it'd be! I did make out out into civilization for one day, where we took a tour of the Grand Royal Palace, saw Thailand's largest reclining buddha (which was huge, 15 meters tall I think and completely covered in gold leaf.) It's their king's 80th birthday in a month, which is a HUGE deal and they're erecting all sorts of special displays around the city to honor him. Steve, Tom, and Christina went to a Thai Boxing match one night and said it was really cool.....so that's my version of our 5 days in Bangkok. The good news is that we'll be back there a couple of times so more time to explore. That brings us to the present day- we flew yesterday from Bangkok to Hanoi, Vietnam- the country's capital, in the north. Steve, my hero, successfully navigated us through multiple scams, because I was still loopy on my flu medicine and wasn't much help. First, the taxi driver in Bangkok didn't want to start the meter and when we insisted he tried to kick us out of the taxi instead of taking us to the airport. Steve negotiated a better rate and we didn't have to switch taxis. Then, after landing in Vietnam, the minibus driver's helper said it would be 100000 dong (about $6) for both of us to ride, then after he leaves the driver comes in and tries to charge us 150000, after some unhappy Vietnamese he decides to drop it and charge us the original rate. Then the driver drops us off in front of a hotel called "Star Hotel" where the proprietor runs out and tries to pull us in saying "we have room for you, room for you"- fortunately Steve was aware enough to realize this wasn't the hotel we had a booking at, we wanted "Stars Hotel", and after some firm discussions and much pointing at the map they realize that we were onto their scam, let us back in the minibus, and dropped us off in front of Stars Hotel. Right...... so we found a place and had a nice dinner thanks to our Lonely Planet recommendation, spent the night, then realized some really loud and crazy new yorker person was staying downstairs, decided to switch hotels and now we're sitting in the lobby waiting for them to clean our room. The good news is that there's free internet. Now we just have to figure out how to make it around this city without getting scammed too much! The adventure continues.....