A few highlights of the last month:

• Smoggy, sumptuous Saigon: where we sampled all forms of transport and movement – rowboats and speedboats down the Mekong, high speed slides at a waterpark on the outskirts, public buses to war museums and art galleries, and dark tunnels within the once Viet Cong subterranean stronghold of Cu Ci. Also delicious street subs and squid skewers washed down streetside by bia Saigon.
• Jogja Jams: our first stop in Indonesia, we learned about Batik Art (and Batik Art scams), marveled at the Buddhist and Hindu monuments of Borobudur and Prambanan, discovered and rediscovered Indo cuisine nightly from the upper floor lookout at Bedhot restaurant, and from ground level at various curbside satay joints, hired a bicycle taxi and caught a street performance of Ramayana, the Hindu epic affectionately described by locals as “Romeo and Juliet, with a happier ending.” Also spent two days just reading, writing and walking aimlessly. A blissful break.
• Brash Bromo: hiked up to viewpoints aplenty at 3am to catch a glimpse of Mt. Bromo and its environs, only to be foiled by fog and thousands of vacationing Indonesians attempting same. Thankful that we avoided the rushed tour groups and managed to find a great view later in the morning. Trudged through the Bromo moonscape, watched sulfur puffing from a must-have-been-active crater.
• Kuta Bali: snagged a killer room with an enormous patio, chic furniture, pool, and an acrid bathroom stench (trade offs!) located in a building annex off an alleyway to an alleyway, devoured fresh snapper at Gong Corner, shopped for shorts and shirts in Legian, ate McDonald’s ice cream (thrice), drank beers in the sand while masseurs, successfully, vied for our attention, fought crashing waves and improved our body surfing technique, attended Easter Sunday services on the beach, dined on luxe Italian fare in Seminyak, indulged in the local liqueur, Arak, with an array of too sweet mixers.
• Inglorious Gilis: bicycles stuck in the sand on our circuit of Trawanagan (remedied by several coca cola breaks downed from gazebos overlooking the ocean), noticed a couple at a dance party that looked a lot like us (but way more Nordic) arguing in the exact same way that we had argued once prior at a dance party on another island, snorkeled the Meno wall and saw hundreds of fish, ate tempeh curries, urap-urap (veggies with bits of coconut), pizzas, pastas, and tuna steaks from gazebos overlooking the ocean, introduced to scuba at Han’s reef where we spied sea turtles, manta rays, lion and dragon fish and irridescent coral, shortly followed by a big beer Bintang during happy hour spent in a gazebo overlooking th—really, it’s the only seating available in the Gilis.

Next up is Kuta Lombok for some surf, Sengigi for some spa, and Ubud for some recharged spiritual mojo (whatever that means), followed by three seperate jets to whisk us up n’ away from sea level to Kathmandu…