So, after too long in coming I finally started my travels around North Africa and the Middle-East. My flight went from JFK through London Gatwick to Tunis where I would be starting my trip. Amazingly enough, the first leg of my trip arrived in Gatwick at like 5:00am (over an hour early) and that plus my already pre-existing 2.5 hour layover meant that I had a long time in a really boring airport before my continuing flight to Tunis.

The flight to Tunis finally boarded and we left Gatwick on time and arrived in Tunis also on time at around 12:30pm. You'd think that 3.5 hours would be enough time for my backpack to make it onto the continuing flight but unfortunately with airlines operating the way they do that was not the case. So, after waiting for all the bags to finish being offloaded onto the carousel and realizing mine was not among them I went to the lost luggage person and somehow with my non-existent French and Arabic and the person's non-existent English I managed to find out that my bag decided to take a later flight and would be arriving after 8pm.

At that point I went out into the terminal where my friend Andrea was waiting to pick me up and from the airport we went straight to lunch at a good Lebanese restaurant close to Andrea's house (I hadn't eaten a real meal in more than 15 hours). From there we continued on to Andrea's gorgeous house in the “La Marsa” area of Tunis where I got settled in.

Once back at Andrea's I spent a couple of hours of catching up with her and re-acquainting myself with her great Bernese Mountain Dog Murphey and meeting her newly acquired Tunisian housecat Max, who had recently decided to adopt Andrea as his new owner.

From there Andrea and I took off to pick up her friends Matt and Laura for dinner at a local Indian restaurant to plan out a trip around the North West of the country for the next couple of day since they were all off work for the Islamic holiday Eid Al-Adha. On the way to dinner we swung by the airport to pick up my luggage, but of course it still hadn't arrived. Fortunately, after dinner we made a my third trip to the airport of the day and this time my backpack was there safe and sound.

So, since I have decided to create a blog to update people on all of my forthcoming travels I figured it would make sense to go through some old emails and post some of my writings from previous trips.

In an attempt to get ready for my travels around North Africa and the Middle East I have decided to start a blog!

As a way to start off the New Year on the right foot I have decided to finally send a very summarized conclusion to my Asia trip report (since it is now over 3 months late) and to update everyone on my life in New York.

So, for those of you that have been wondering; yes, I am still alive and have actually been back in the US since the end of September. In my previous trip report I had left off with my arrival to Laos. Unfortunately, I only stayed in Laos briefly because of the continuous torrential downpours (I guess they call it the rainy season for a reason). But I at least had a couple of days with reasonable weather in a really nice town up north called Luang Prabang as well as in the south at a series of islands in the Mekong river called Si Fan Don.

From Laos it was back to Thailand, this time to visit the south of the country and to get some sun and relaxation. I started on the East Coast of the country at Ko Pha Ngan island where I stayed in an incredible bungalow overlooking the sea. It's amazing what you can get for $5/night in some of these places. After a few nights at Ko Pha Ngan I headed over to the west coast to the island of Ko Phi Phi, an island that had been devastated during the tsunami. Coincidentally, this is the same island where The Beach was filmed. Anyways, my goal at Ko Phi Phi was to volunteer with the reef cleanup after the Tsunami, but unfortunately they stopped using SCUBA divers for that the week before I arrived so I ended up just enjoying some more sun and relaxation.

After Ko Phi Phi I spent a day in Krabi and then left for a 20 hour trip via 3 buses, two trains and a van ride to Northern Malaysia. This was one of the more exciting trips as there had been a surge in terrorist activity in Southern Thailand so there was a lot of armed military personnel everyone on the trains and other places. I also was the only non-Thai person on virtually all of the legs of the journey.

In Malaysia I went directly to the Perhentian islands to enjoy even more sun and most importantly SCUBA Diving. I also figured I'd be productive and in addition to just doing some fun dives I'd take a class so I signed up for a 3 day Rescue Diver course. The Perhentian's were great both above and below the water with a laid back atmosphere and some really fun people. Upon leaving the Perhentian's I went to the Cameron Highlands, the Taman Negara rainforest (the oldest in the world), and finally Kuala Lumpur.

From Malaysia I took a flight to Macau where I spent one day wandering around the former Portuguese colony. From there I took the Hydrofoil to Hong Kong which I also briefly explored for a few days. Finally from Hong-Kong it was off to Mainland China for the final part of my trip.

I arrived to Xi-an China and spent a few days in this city, although the main purpose of my visit there was to see the Terracotta Army, a group of more than 8,000 life size soldiers built out of clay that were buried with emperor Qin in 210 BC. The most amazing part of the army is that every single soldier is distinct with unique facial features and expressions.

After Xi-an it was off to Beijing where I spent several days exploring the ancient sites including the Forbidden City, the Summer Palace, Tiananman Square, and most impressive of all the Great Wall. The final stop on the trip was Shanghai where in addition to seeing the city I got to hang out with my friend Hillary who has been working there as a teacher for the past year.

Anyways, I hope this summary wasn't too boring but I have heard from a lot of people asking what happened to my trip updates so I figured I might as well conclude them. Also, if you are interested I picked some of the better photos from my trip and posted them on line so feel free to take a look at them at:

http://www.imagestation.com/album/pictures.html?id=2118707181

After returning from Asia I had about a month to get readapted to the real world and moved into my new apartment in New York before starting my new job with a big management consulting company. So far everything is going great. I love my apartment as it's in the middle of Greenwich Village, one of the most happening parts of town, and the job is also good although sometimes it involves some fairly excessive hours.

My last day in Vietnam was spent visiting Ho Chi Minh, the former leader of the country. Uncle Ho as he is affectionately known in Vietnam is revered as a hero and the Vietnamese government went so far as to embalm him against his explicit wishes. So, following in the footsteps of those other communist leaders Lenin, Stalin and Mao, Uncle Ho is stuffed and visible in his giant mausoleum for the interested tourist (except of course for the 3 months of the year when he is shipped off to Russia for maintenance work).

Visiting Uncle Ho requires waking up early (he only sees visitors in the morning) and going to his massive mausoleum where you wait in line while dressed respectfully (clothes covering knees and shoulders, no hats, etc.) After about 45 minutes in line you make it to the mausoleum itself where speaking is not permitted and you are basically rushed past his body in about 20 seconds while surrounded by dozens of armed guards and security cameras. Overall, it was an interesting experience just to see the amount of pomp and circumstance associated with a corpse, although I would suggest his Russian maintainers take some lessons from Madam Tussad cause Uncle Ho isn't looking so good anymore...

After Vietnam my plan was to take a bus to the capital of Laos, Vientiane. Unfortunately, when I tried to book my ticket I learned that an ASEAN (Association of South East Asian Nations) conference was taking place in Vientiene at the time and for the next 6 days no tourists would be allowed into the city. Since every mode of transport to Laos from Northern Vietnam goes to Vientiene I was required to make some changes to my itinerary. In the end I decided to fly to Bangkok and visit Northern Thailand before crossing the border into Northern Laos and then go south through the country until crossing back into Thailand to visit southern Thailand.

These changes actually worked out really well because in Laos there are no ATM machines and much to my chagrin I realized my ATM card was about to expire at the end of July. So, flying into Bangkok allowed me to take out some much needed cash to help tide me over for the rest of my trip. An additional benefit was at this same time my future roommate Aaron was planning on going to New York City to look for apartments and being in Bangkok made it a lot easier for us to coordinate things. In fact, I spent a total of probably 12 hours over a 3 day period on email, the phone and Messenger trying to figure everything out (which is nothing compared to the amount of time Aaron had to spend actually looking at places). In the end it worked out well cause we found a really nice place in Greenwich Village (at least that's what I've been told). For any of you that are interested my new apartment as of August 15 is 277 W. 10th Street. You can find a map of where the apartment is here: http://maps.yahoo.com/maps_result?addr=277+West+Tenth+Street&csz=New+york%2C+ny&country=us

Apart from trying to find an apartment in New York, I did manage to do a couple of other things while in Bangkok including getting a couple of custom tailored suits, visiting a few temples, doing a bunch of shopping, and eating some AWESOME food. Although probably the most fun thing that I did was watching an exhibition Soccer match between Real Madrid and the Thai National Team. The game was a blast despite some serious challenges I had getting to and leaving the stadium that was only 25km (15 miles) away (it took over two hours to get there and almost three hours to get back). Once I arrived to the stadium I bought a general seating ticket from some touts in front of the stadium and since I was 30 minutes late for the game the touts sold it to me for less than half of face value. Even better, after entering the stadium we found seats within 5 rows of the field! It would have been nearly impossible to have better seats. Not surprisingly Real Madrid won the game three to nothing.

After almost four days in Bangkok it was time to head north and my next stop was the old capital of Thailand called Sukhotai. Despite its former glory Sukhotai is currently a very small relaxed town that happens to have dozens of old temples and other ruins scattered throughout. I arrived to Sukhotai around 6:00am after taking a night train from Bangkok and once there I rented a bicycle and went all around the city admiring the 800 year old ruins. That same evening I was off again on another night train to Chang Mai. Unfortunately, during this leg of the journey I couldn't get a sleeper car and the train was the local (not express) train which meant that it stopped every 30 minutes or so. Of course since I was sitting in the aisle seat at every stop I was awoken by passengers getting on and off the train. All in all not a very relaxing train ride and when I arrived in Chang Mai at 5:00am the next day I was exhausted. The very first thing I did upon checking in at a guest house was sleep for another 5 hours.

Once I had recovered a bit from the journey I made my way down to the guesthouse common area and started talking to some Brits and Canadians who had signed up for a three day trek of the mountainous area around Chang Mai. I decided to join them and the next morning a group of 12 of us were on our way. The trek was awesome with some spectacular views and some surprisingly difficult terrain. The first day was particularly challenging because it was very uphill and an incessant light rain made the ground really slippery. After about five hours of hiking we made it to the local hill tribe village where we were staying the night. Unfortunately, we didn't get much of an "ethnic hill tribe" experience since it was fairly obvious that the villagers were used to receiving masses of tourists and the village was more of a tourist way station than an authentic tribal village. Despite the lack of the cultural experience the village was very picturesque and that evening from the terrace of the bamboo hut where we stayed the most vivid rainbow I have ever seen appeared in front of the verdant green hills in the background making for a spectacular landscape.

The next day we continued the trek with another 5 hours of hiking eventually stopping to stay the night in another bamboo hut next to some very impressive waterfalls. It was really nice being able to jump in the river and feel the waterfall pounding against you after a hard day of hiking. The third and final day of the trek involved a short hike (about 2 hours) until we met up with some elephants. We finished the trail section of the trek with an hour long elephant ride where I got to sit directly on the elephants neck which was a lot of fun (despite being hosed off with mud by the elephant next to me). After the elephant ride we went white water rafting for an hour and a half through some fun (and really long) class 3+ rapids. The most remarkable part of the white water rafting was the incompetence of our guides who were telling us to do the exact opposite of what you actually should be doing. Fortunately, everyone survived without incident and surprisingly enough nobody even fell out of the boats. The final stop on our journey was bamboo rafting where I got to steer a 8 meter (25ft) raft with 8 people on it down a river with a bamboo pole. Not as easy as it sounds. When we finished the bamboo rafting we ate lunch and then got back into the truck to return to Chang Mai.

After another day and a half in Chang Mai wandering around the night market and enjoying the Thai food it was time to continue on to Laos. I booked a trip that included a bus ride to the Thai border town of Chang Khong and then a two day slow boat journey from the Laos side of the border to Luang Prabang. The six hour bus ride to Chang Khong was uneventful but I met a bunch of really cool people including some Italians, Brits, and Israelis during the ride. After arriving in Chang Khong (a little one street border town) we had dinner and went to the only bar in town which happened to have a live band playing. The band was decent and it was particularly entertaining that the lead singer must have had at least 10 costume changes while we were there. The next morning we crossed the the river into Laos and found our way to the boat that was supposed to take us to Luang Prabang.

We arrived to the boat in the morning to find that it was already almost full, although much to our surprise more and more people kept getting on. In fact, we sat around for over an hour and a half as as additional passengers kept coming onboard. People were forced to sit on the roof in the rain and huddle up in the cabin next to the captain. Eventually we departed on what we thought was a cramped boat, but little did we know that the worst was yet to come as the boat proceeded to make another half dozen stops picking up even more people and goods at each one!

About two hours into the trip I noticed several of the crew members running back and forth with a panicked look in their eyes and at the same time the captain started making a beeline to the shore. Fortunately, we made it back to shallow water fairly quickly because as soon as we were next to the bank water started filling up the bottom of the boat. At this point half the people on the boat had to get out so the crew could start ripping out the floorboards with crowbars in order to access the leak to try and repair it. Watching the repair process was actually quite entertaining since fixing the hole involved a pair of pants, a t-shirt and a lot of rice (no joke). Needless to say the more than a hundred people on board weren't too trusting of the hasty repair work but eventually everyone was coaxed back on and we continued the journey. Surprisingly enough, the rice and pants did the trick six hours later we arrived safely in the tiny Laotian town of Pakbeng to stay the night.

Pakbeng is out in the middle of nowhere and therefore is rather underdeveloped. It actually reminded me of a town from a western movie both architecturally with its one dirt road, and in personality since it is in a somewhat lawless opium growing part of Laos known as the golden triangle. Electricity in Pakbeng is very sparse and where it exists it is on for only a few hours a day so the candlelit atmosphere added to to the city's charms. Definately an interesting place. The next morning I left to meet the boat for the second half of the journey and discovered that rather than using the hastily patched up boat from the day before we had been split up on two smaller boats to finish the journey. The rest of the trip passed uneventfully although the scenery was incredible and I arrived to Luang Prabang by mid afternoon.

That pretty much concludes this installment of my travelogue and as you've probably noticed I've decided to fill up your mailboxes even more this time by including a couple of visual aids to better demonstrate what I'm writing about. Hopefully it doesn't fill up your mailboxes too badly and if you're interested in seeing a few more pictures I posted some up on my Imagestation account at http://www.imagestation.com/album/pictures.html?id=2122504814&code=17638029&mode=invite&DCMP=isc-email-AlbumInvite.

Anyways, stay tuned for the next installment which will include Laos and maybe even Southern Thailand.

Hey Everyone,For those of you that don't already know, I graduated from Business School this past May and will be starting work as a Management Consultant for Booz Allen Hamilton in New York in October. When I accepted the job I realized that this would probably be the last time for a long while when I could take some serious time off so I decided to take off for three months and travel around South East Asia. I am now a little more than a month into my trip and am having a great time.

The trip started with a really long but uneventful flight from Los Angeles to Bangkok where I arrived a little before midnight. I spent a couple of days in Bangkok trying to reacquaint myself to the noises and constant motion of being in large cities in developing countries while also seeing a couple of tourist attractions including the Royal Palace. After two days in Bangkok I was off to Angkor Wat in Cambodia via the most painful busride/scam.

The busride cost about $2 and in theory was supposed to be 10 hours long, leaving Bangkok at 7:00am and arriving in Siam Reap (outside Angkor Wat) at 5:00pm. In reality the whole route was designed to milk a bunch of tourists of as much money as possible during a 16 hour fiasco. The trip started with a 6 hour bus ride to the Cambodian border where our bus just barely outpaced the children that were on their bicycles outside waving to us (the trip should have taken about 4 hours). During that leg of the journey we made a forced lunch stop at an overpriced tourist trap restaurant and once we neared the Cambodian border it was time for another stop to get Cambodian visas. At this point, rather than taking us to the Cambodian consulate directly we instead got dropped off at another tourist trap near the Consulate so we would have to get our visa's through the bus company which just happened to add an extra 20% surcharge.

From there it was off to the hustle and bustle of the land border crossing between Thailand and Cambodia which is always fun. For those of you that have never crossed a land border between two developing countries it is amazing all of the things going on and how hectic a situation it is. After about a total of 2 hours between leaving Thailand and arriving in Cambodia we were on our way again. At least for a few minutes that is until we stopped at another place where we were coerced into changing money at a moneychanger affiliated with the bus company who offered really bad rates. After yet another hour of waiting we continued on the final leg of the journey to Siam Reap.

We finally arrived in Siam Reap at around 11:00pm and were taken to a hotel outside of the town where the hotel owner tried to force us to stay in a cockroach infested room that looked like it hadn't been cleaned in a month. After a lot of arguing with the owner I along with a German guy and a French guy decided to just walk away and try and find some sort of transportation to a different hotel in town. After a few minutes we flagged down three moto drivers that took us to a Guesthouse that the French guy knew about. We arived to the guesthouse around midnight to find it locked up with no one in sight. Since our moto drivers already took off we decided to make a bunch of noise in the hope of waking the owner up. Eventually it worked and we were given a room at "Smiley's Guesthouse".

The next morning we went to Angkor Wat to see the ruins of the Khmer empire and within 5 minutes I realized that the hassle of the day before was well worth it. Angkor Wat is an area of Cambodia with dozens of temples that were constructed over a period of several hundred years by the Khmer people. The temples and palaces are some of the most incredibly massive and intricate buildings I have ever seen. It's mindblowing to imagine what some of the ruins must have looked like in their prime. Another remarkable aspect of the ruins was the way nature had started taking back what man had made with gigantic trees growing straight out of the walls of some of the temples. Without a doubt, Angkor Wat is one of the most impressive man made places I have ever seen.

After spending 3 days exploring the ruins of Angkor Wat I went to the Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia where I wandered around the town and saw a number of sites including several locations that pertained to Cambodia's recently very violent past including the killing fields and the S21 prison. S21 was a prison where basically any educated Cambodian was taken to be tortured and killed as the Khmer Rouge tried to eliminate any possibility of being overthrown. In fact, only 8 people in the course of around a decade of the prisons use made it out alive. Not the most uplifting of attractions but it was very fascinating to hear about such a dark chapter in humanities recent past.

From Phnom Penh it was off to Sihounakville to enjoy the beaches in the south of Cambodia but due to incessant rain (it is the rainy season after all) I only stayed one night before continuing on to Vietnam. One good thing about this stopover was in Sihounakville I met three British travelers (Gavin, Ellie and Tiggie) who were following a similar route to myself so we decided to join up for a while. The journey to Vietnam was via a slow boat on the Mekong river. The trip took a full day passing by really picturesque fishing villages and rice paddies before arriving in the Mekong Delta in Vietnam. I spent a few days in the Mekong Delta before going up to Saigon.

Saigon was a lot of fun and it was really interesting to hear the other side of the story from the Vietnam war. It's amazing some of the atrocities commited by the US against both the people and the environment in Vietnam that are never really discussed in the US.

After Saigon I started north along the coast of Vietnam stopping in 5 different cities before arriving in Hanoi (Mui Ne, Dalat, Na Trang, Hoi An, Hue). In total I spent about 2 weeks during this part of the journey and during this time I saw some incredible places and did some really cool things. In Mui Ne I watched a flotilla of fisherman going out in what looked like wicker baskets for fishing at Dawn as well as wandered amongst some spectacular sand dunes. In Na Trang I enjoyed a beautiful beach and went SCUBA diving amongst some incredible coral reefs. In Dalat I wandered around a peaceful mountainous town and saw some really cool temples. In Hoi An I rented a moto and drove out to some ruins about 30 miles from the city past some of the most amazing landscapes imaginable. And in Hue I took a boat trip on the Perfume river visiting a number of cool temples and palaces.

The trip up the coast ended in Hanoi where I arrived 5 days ago. The next day I left for a 3 day boat trip to Halong Bay which was mindblowingly beautiful. Halong bay is made up of several thousand limestone islands and islets that makes the water an irridescent green color. That in contrast with the beautiful blue sky on the way out was remarkable and I can only hope that some of the photos I took can do it a little bit of justice. The delicious 8 course meals we were served on the boat throughout the trip weren't half bad either...

I arrived back to Hanoi yesterday and I spent the past two days exploring the city and the surrounding area. Tomorrow I will be going to take a look at Ho Chi Minh's preserved body and the former POW prison known in the US as the "Hanoi Hilton" and then on Wednesday I will be off to Bangkok to start the next part of my trip which will include Thailand, Laos, Malaysia and Singapore.

For those of you that actually made it to the end of this message I apologize that this email is so long but I have sort of been slacking and this is recapping a full month of my travels. I will try to be better at sending them off a little more frequently in the future so they will not be nearly as long.

Hey Everybody,

Sorry I have continued to be so bad about staying in touch, but it does not seem to be something that I am particularly good at. Anyways, I am writing this letter to update you all on what I have been up to during the past months and to share my plans for the near future.

As most of you probably know, for the past year or so I have been living and working in Madrid, Spain. Since returning, I have been living with my girlfriend Alicia in her incredible apartment in the very center of Madrid. For those of you that are familiar with the city, the apartment is about 100 yards from Puerta del Sol. As you can imagine, I have had a great time, and while I have not been as active socially as my first time in Madrid (less partying), I have made a number of friends, and for a change I have actually gotten somewhat settled.

Of course, when I say settled that does not mean stationary. Since arriving in Madrid I have managed to do some travelling within Spain including climbing the highest mountain in the Iberian peninsula (Mulhacen), visiting several small Spanish towns and villages including Toledo (as in Toledan Swords), Sigüenza, Jaca and Cuenca, and of course some larger cities as well such as Zaragoza (where Alicia is from), Barcelona, and Granada. I have also taken several trips internationally, of which the most interesting was definitely when I took a month off to travel around Tanzania, Kenya and Zanzibar over Christmas with my friend Parveen. The trip was great, and I got to test out a new camera and lens with around 50 rolls of film. You should be happy to know that at least some of those pictures turned out ;-> So if anyone feels masochistic, you are always welcome for a slideshow ...

Okay, now I know what you are all thinking, Steven just goes to random places, travels and never actually does any work. Well, contrary to the popular opinion this is not the case (I do have a job after all). When I first arrived in Spain in May of last year I was not really sure what I was going to do or where I was going to live (not even the continent). However, I got really lucky and the first day I was in the country I received an unsolicited offer with a small Spanish telecoms consultancy. Because instead of me going out begging for a job, the job came looking for me, I was in a much better position to negotiate and I managed to get a decent salary (although still fairly poor by US standards). Anyways, at the job I have had several projects, ranging from HORRIBLE where I was consistently working 80 hour weeks in an environment I hated and with people I did not particularly like to my current role where I am doing project management for some really neat projects for a great client.

So, since everything is going so well for me I figure "time for a change" and that leads me to the next part of this letter - what I will be doing in the near future. As many of you know, including some that may know in far more depth than they would like (thank you VERY much: Tom, Lynne, Parveen, Nisha and Jenjen), last year I spent a great deal of time and effort putting together some MBA applications at a number of schools. Well, I am pleased to report that surprisingly enough I was accepted at USC's Marshall School of Business (a top 20 business school for those of you that don't keep up with these kinds of things). Even more surprisingly, I managed to get a half tuition scholarship that should save me around $33000 over the course of the two year program!!! But, as you can imagine with a $33000 covering just half the tuition, the remaining tuition, other expenses and cost of living in LA without income will still make me a very poor student.

My current plans are to continue working in Spain till the end of May (yippee, less than two weeks!), then to stick around Spain for the month of June taking it easy and travelling a bit. Then in July I will head back to Maryland to visit friends and family and to start preparing for my move to LA. Finally, towards the end of July I will be moving out to LA in order to be ready for my first day of school on August 15.

There is however one small disclaimer that I would like to put out. These plans are quite likely to change. I actually just received a call from my boss yesterday and apparently they are so desperate to keep me on till they can find someone adequate to replace me (of course that's impossible ;-> ) that they are now starting to offer me all sorts of bribes and other incentives to extend my last day. But regardless, I will be starting school in August, so by mid-July at the latest I will be in Maryland.

I hope everything is going great with everyone, and I am looking forward to seeing as many of you as possible when I get back to the US.