Back in the U.S. of A.

We all knew the fairy tale had to come to an end at some point, but you can't say we didn't live it up the past 14 months. What a whirlwind of adventures we've had! Big thanks to all of you who've graciously followed us on this wacky experience of a lifetime. It surely has been one wild ride.

David and I flew "home" May 10 after five great weeks in New Zealand. Our consolidator wrangled us a free stopover in Fiji, which was great despite rain the bulk of the time. It didn't stop us from downing bottles of Fiji Bitter, playing cards on our balcony, and snorkeling when the sun did appear for brief stints. We had to fly to LAX next to catch an SF flight, but that was fine with us. For the first time ever, it was comforting to see the City of Angels, if only for a few hours.

We enjoyed eight nights in Fiji, branching out of our Western-catered resort to attend a Fijian Methodist church service in the village. We always make an effort to hang with the locals as much as possible, and Fiji was no exception. It reminded us a lot of Kenya, with its beautiful jungles, third-world villages, and wonderfully kind people. As luck would have it, one of the girls from church also works at our resort, and she later invited us to a kava ceremony at her father's house. Her sister and brothers were there, along with her dad (who lived in the Bay Area...go figure) and all of the subsequent kids/grandkids. Too cute! We brought gifts for the family, then got down to business. Kava tastes pretty nasty but it gives you a good, mellow buzz. It also, if you drink enough of it, forces you to visit the jungle outhouse, which--thanks to the resident stinkbug on the wall and toad on the floor--wasn't my favorite part of the night, but the warmth of these folks quickly overshadowed that dicey part.

New Zealand surpassed my expectations and then some. We scored a killer deal on a rental car and toodled around both the South and North Islands for 32 days. WOW! Highlights were swimming with dolphins (amazing!), hiking to the foot of Mt. Cook (the country's highest peak), strolling around the lake in Wanaka, cruising the Milford Sound, and soaking up Maori culture in Rotorua.

Sadly I fell off a horse in Glenorchy just as we were preparing to gallop up to the lookout where Aragorn and the gang hung out while filming a good chunk of Lord of the Rings. Oh well...at least nothing was broken (and the pics are beautiful). I suffered a nasty contusion on my left hip and thigh that still has me limping today. It put a damper on much of our adventure plans for NZ, but once I hit the sheep show in Rotorua while David did the more physically demanding morning of sledging, I was in hog heaven and forgot all about the injury...for a time. We all know how much I love animals!

Australia wasn't our favorite for reasons I won't ramble on about here, but the body surfing was killer (to coin a phrase from my UCLA days), and we spent most of our time at the beaches between Brisbane and Sydney. And yes, we held the requisite koala and even fed a few kangaroos (domesticated ones, that is). And I have to admit that seeing the Sydney opera house and harbor in person was pretty special.

Prior to arriving in Oz via Singapore on a raucous redeye to Brisbane that left us too drunk to rent a car (no joke), we spent 10 glorious days back in Bali, where we'd visited in 2005. Our attempts to get to Lombok failed as storms persisted and we opted to kick it in Ubud versus brave the rough seas for the chance at idyllic life on the Gili Islands. We were so glad we did, as many of the old memories came flooding back from our earlier days there. We even reconnected with a hotel staffer from our 2005 stay who made the effort to visit us at our current guesthouse. We were treated like family at our new pad, got $5 massages almost daily, ate great food, did a colonic, hiked around the villages and rice paddies, and soaked up some sun at our pool. We made many new friends this time around and hope to return in the future to further our explorations of this magical island and culture.

It's been wild to be back in the States, but at least the culture shock has been kept at a minimum due to our spending the last two months in Australia and New Zealand. The former has all of the things we dislike about America; the latter is a hidden treasure we don't want to share with anyone :-)
We enjoyed five short days in San Francisco (much to the chagrin of our good friends), taking in a Giants game (Americana at its best!) the morning after our U.S. return. We were still a bit jetlagged but cheered on our home team regardless. It was quite emotional to rise for the national anthem, something we hadn't done or heard in a really long time. It felt good that day to be an American, which wasn't always the case when we were traveling.

We moved on to visit our good friends Cathy and Hashem, also in the City, who graciously hosted us for four more nights. We spent long evenings eating good food, drinking yummy wine, and telling stories. Hashem graduates tomorrow from SF State with a broadcasting degree, and we wish him well on his quest for his first news reporting job. He and Cathy are very dear to us, and we just hope Hashem's new career doesn't send him to South Dakota for too long a stint. We envision great things for them both.

Seeing as David's 40th conveniently landed during our first week back, we made it to Vegas last Thursday in our car (fresh out of storage) to celebrate in grand style. What better way to reintroduce yourself to American culture than to hit the land of plenty where everything is bigger, better, and glitzier than the rest. Of course, I jest. But the contrast was an interesting one, and we had a blast! Didn't win back any trip expenses (I think we lost the equivalent of a small home in SE Asia), but we had a great time gambling, cruising the strip, and riding the NYNY roller coaster at midnight. Despite a couple of late-night three-card poker streaks, where I hit two big hands, we came out behind but had a fun time doing it. Isn't that always the main thing?

We then spent one night with my college roommate Devon and her family in Henderson, NV, and had fun catching up with them and their adorable girls in their new home. We're now here in Scottsdale, Arizona, visiting my mom, and reuniting with David's parents, who flew in yesterday from Connecticut. It's really great to be back with family, who, along with our friends, are the things we truly missed while traveling. Well, and good Mexican food, too. I can't lie.

We plan to spend June on the road in the Southwest to see if there are any other areas we could consider living in the future, as we've resigned ourselves to the fact that we'll probably never be able to buy in California (yes, even despite the failing housing market). But in all honesty, I think we're procrastinating coming back to the "real world" (and I'm not sure you could move me away from a coast). We do plan to return to San Francisco in July and then probably sublet for a bit until we figure out our next move. We're considering an apartment in either the Napa/Sonoma area or the Monterey Peninsula. We desperately need to get our stuff out of storage (it's been 2.5 years!), get rid of half of it, and start work on our book proposal and other creative adventures. And yes, some kind of jobs will have to be in our near future as well. We don't naively expect to become famous published authors right out the gate, but one has to keep the dream alive, right?

Of course, I'd be lying to you all if I didn't admit David and I have had plenty of conversations lately that center around when we'll be heading out into the great big world again. I think we're more acclimated now to living in Asia than we are to the modern conveniences and abundance that America provides. We're more comfortable with showers that get the entire bathroom wet, and spicy foods that make our stomachs sit upright and masochistically beg for more. I miss the cows walking down the street and the loud hum of foreign languages in my ear.

Stay tuned! Our next blog just might come to you from the mountains of Nepal or an English-language school in Indonesia. And you know I'm only half-joking.

A Birthday to Remember...Sulawesi Style

Things have been looking up since we fled India and hit the streets of Malaysia. A month later, after zipping through modern Kuala Lumpur, lovely beachside Langkawi, culturally awesome Penang, and the amazing landscapes of Borneo (both Sabah and Sarawak), we've now arrived in Indonesia. North Sulawesi, to be exact. Not a place where they see many Western tourists, but we like it that way. We get a lot of stares, which, when we throw back a smile and "hello," turn into more smiles and big "hellos." We like that, too.

I celebrated my birthday this year as an affair to truly remember. It arrived with much anticipation after a crazy two days of travel from Kuching, Malaysian Borneo, to Johar Bahru, Malaysia and on to Singapore, which is just across the causeway and supposedly a quick drive. Using public transportation, however, makes it a three+-hour ordeal. Luckily we were crashing in the spare room at David's second cousin once removed (or something like that), who lives in Singapore with his adorable family (which includes a brand-new baby). Nonetheless, the family charm was soon dispelled by our over-four hour delay to Jakarta, which was besieged by floods.

Thanks to a cool immigration control dude who let us use the Diplomats lane for passport control (thus shaving some 30 minutes off our wait), and some quick-thinking parking control guys at the Jakarta airport, who radioed for a patrol car to whisk us over to the domestic terminal when the shuttle bus didn't arrive, we arrived just in time to make our flight to Manado in North Sulawesi, although we did have to throw too many U.S. dollars for departure tax at the ticket agent (no time to argue a fair conversion price), not to mention perform the 1,000-meter dash through the airport with four backpacks on in sweltering humidity, while every Indonesian on Java appeared to be screaming "Manado, Manado" back at us when they saw us running pell-mell asking, "Manado? Manado?" We were the last people to board and caused quite a ruckus when the flight attendants couldn't figure out how to offload our large backpacks at the last minute to the cargo hold and ended up cramming them in with their own bags in the special wardrobe.

We arrived very late at 1:30am the next day, found a good guesthouse, and slept like babies. We wasted no time in leaving the city, heading up to a little hill village called Tomohon in the Minahasa Highlands, about one hour south of Manado. Tomohon is lush, green, known for flowers/nurseries, and sits in a valley beneath two stunning volcanoes, both of them recently active in the 20th century I believe. It's really lovely.

We found refuge at this great little home stay called "Happy Flower," run by a neat Indonesian family. There are only three bungalows, four mangy dogs, tons of flowers, and tons of frogs croaking at the tops of their lungs all night long. It was pretty clean and neat, despite mildewy pillows and a few bugs in the partially open-air bathroom. It did have hot water, which is a bonus here, and a great balcony where we read and just watched the rain fall while the butterflies flit by.

Yoce, who greeted us on arrival, does tours around town. A cool Canadian girl named Jolene was with us the last two days at the home stay; she also happened to be one of only two other Westerners on our flight that crazy night, and greeted us with a, "Oh, so you're the guys making all that commotion on the plane the other night." Luckily she said it with a smile. As we quickly bonded with a fellow North American, the three of us hired Yoce for a half-day tour of the market and then a hike up to the crater of Mt. Mahawu. The price (about $25 for the three of us) included transportation and fruit, in addition to guide services. Not shabby.

So the transportation: This area is filled with little turquoise minivans called "mikrolets" that take you everywhere. So we hop in one of those from the rice field we were strolling along, and arrive at the main market about seven minutes later. We toured around and they sell some really gruesome things: fried bats, rats on sticks, and the most disturbing of all: dogs! We saw complete whole dogs charred and sitting on tables, some cut open to show their guts, not to mention LIVE dogs crammed in cages waiting to be...um...fried. So that was funky, but the people and stuff were amazing to see...probably the weirdest market in all our travels. That says a lot, given where we've been.

So then the next challenge...local scooter riding up to the volcano trailhead (don't tell our insurance agent). We'd heard from two cool Aussies that stayed with us the first night that this is how you really get around to the cool places here. I really didn't want to get on the back of a motorbike with an Indonesian dude smoking and driving on village backroads, as our insurance doesn't cover us, and you always hear horror stories (and see banged up people) in Asia. But as they say, when in Rome...

So by the time I'm done snapping photos, David, Jolene, and Yoce are already on the backs of their scooters, so I hop on mine. My helmet doesn't snap in, but then again...when in Rome. As David put it later, it would suffice for the initial impact but probably flop off after that. Lovely thought. Despite my initial anxiety, we never went that fast and ended up having this really serene, beautiful ride up the volcano through amazing farms and fields.

The hike was pretty easy, the crater really cool. We hiked through a ton of long grasses above our heads along the rim for about 10 minutes and then Yoce cut fresh mangoes for us up there and we took in the sulfur smell. The views were out of this world, although much of the sea beyond was clouded over. Then we hiked down through the jungle, and it wasn't too buggy. We alit on a local road, hiked through the village for a bit, and then since it started sprinkling...back on another posse of motorbikes. The ride was fast, and we made it back to the home stay in one piece. It was just really fun, and a great way to spend my 39th birthday.

David gave me a cute little cotton pouch he'd bought in Malaysia, stuffed with hand-drawn coupons for massage, ice cream, and the like. It was really cute and thoughtful, especially given the resources of where we are (read: unless you want to buy a scooter or a charred dog, limited). We had a nice dinner with Jolene and the mangy dogs at the home stay, then chilled out afterwards. It poured all night and we had rats eating/nesting in our ceiling, but other than that, a peaceful sleep.

It's a birthday I'll never forget, and just another really amazing day on this wild adventure of ours. I feel really alive here and so relaxed, and it's great. People are SO friendly and the area is really beautiful. I wonder how I can top that for my 40th...any suggestions are welcome.