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.

After keeping you all in suspense for such a long time, I figure it is about time to send out part three of my South American Travel updates. The last update I sent out included my travels through Brazil. This time to keep from boring you all too badly, I will only talk about my travels through Bolivia and I will save my peruvian adventures (where I am curently) for yet another email.

For those of you who heard something about my travel plans prior to my departure, you may be wondering where the idea of Bolivia came from. After all, originally I was just planning on visiting Brazil and Peru, two relatively prominent nations in Latin America. So why did I decide to visit the poorest most indigenous and one of the least talked about countries in South America? I guess the only answer to this is word of mouth. During my month travelling around Brazil I kept meeting other travellers who had nothing but great things to say about Bolivia, and who insisted that I really should spend some time there.

My original plan with regards to Bolivia was to get a plane ticket with a few stopovers in a couple prominent cities and then head over to Peru. I expected my total time in Bolivia to be about a week and a half. This estimate proved a little shy, as almost four weeks later I was still in wandering around the country. My first destination in Bolivia was a town called Cochabamba where I arrived by plane from Sao Paulo. The flight was supposed to take 6 hours, but after an unplanned 5 hour stopover in Santa Cruz the plane surprisingly enough was 'slightly' delayed. After arriving in Cochabamba much later than I originally expected, I basically checked into a hotel, grabbed some dinner and got to bed early in anticipation of a now rushed tour of the city (I had only given myself a day and a half to see the town without taking into account aircraft delays).

The next day I spent wandering around Cochabamba. I wandered up well over 1000 steps to see the largest Jesus statue in South America (bigger than the one in Rio), wandered around the streets and overall started getting acquainted to life in Bolivia. It was actually startling to see the differences in lifestyle not just between the US and Bolivia but even between Brazil and Bolivia. The average salary in some parts of Bolivia is something like $50/month, shopping is all done in open air street markets including in the major cities, and things like sanitation and hygiene certainly aren't given as much priority as in Western Countries. Despite this though, the people were all very friendly, and happy. Everyone was eager to talk and find out about the gringos and all in all it was a very welcoming place.

From Cochabamba I was scheduled to take a short 30 minute flight to Sucre. So after a mere 7 hours of delays the flight departed and I was on my way to Sucre with yet another day of vacation lost due to the wonders of Bolivian air transport. The one nice part of this delay was I met a group of travelers (two English, one Australian and two Scottsmen) in the airport who I ended up travelling with for the next part of my trip. Sucre is a beautiful colonial town which I spent some time wandering around. The most interesting thing I did while in sucre was to view the worlds largest dinosaur footprint collection. A cement factory while chopping up limestone discovered sets of tracks hundreds of meters long from dozens of different types of dinosaurs preserved vertically on limestone walls, and these are now available for public viewing. The sad thing though is the factory is still chopping up the limestone where the dinosaur tracks are preserved to make cement.

After Sucre my original plan was to fly to La Paz, but by this point I had become so disenfranchised with flying in Bolivia I decided to join the group I met in the Cochabamba airport and take a bus south to the mining town of Potosi. Potosi was one of the most interesting and tragic towns I have ever visited. During its heyday it was richer than New York and Paris. The majority of the spanish colonization was provided for by the mines in Potosi where veins of silver 2 meters wide existed and where more than 8 million Bolivian natives and african slaves were killed while mining the ore. The city is also the worlds highest at around 4500 Meters (14000ft). This originally caused me some problems with altitude sickness, but I quickly learned that a great natural remedy for this is Coca leaves (also used to produce cocaine).

While in Potosi I took a tour of the still operating mines, and got to see the conditions that the miners are working in today. The mines were basically used up by the Spaniards, and today the locals are barely able to scrape by on the ore that they can accumulate (average wage around $100/month). The mines are covered in natural asbestos and arsenic, and the miners have virtually no safety provisions. The entire mining process is done by hand without electricity, ventilation, or mechanization. Miners basically chisel out a hole with a hammer and chisel till they have created a gap big enough for a stick of dynamite. They then blow up the hole and carry out the rubble on their backs. The average life expectancy of the miner after they start working in the mine is around 10 to 15 years. However, the miners earn more than double what they would earn at other jobs available in Potosi.

From Potosi I left for the salt flats at Uyuni in the South of Bolivia. This consisted of a 4 day jeep tour driving around some of the most spectactular scenery I have ever seen. The first day we actually drove around the salt flats which covered the ground as far as the eye could see. A lot of the flats were covered with a thin layer of water which created the most incredible reflections of the landscape. Other highlights from the four day trip included active volcanoes, numerous geysers, exotic animal and bird life, a train cemetary and swimming in natural hot springs.

After Uyuni, the next stop was Bolivia's capital, La Paz. My first couple days in La Paz I mainly took it easy, saw the sights and had a great time bartering with the street vendors for random souvenirs and gifts. A couple of the more intersting sights I visited included the Coca Museum and the San Pedro Prison.

The San Pedro Prison is probably the most wacked out place I have visited in South America. Some of the more exceptional aspects to San Pedro include the fact that guards are not allowed inside the prison gates, and inmates have to buy their accomodations (cells), which can cost into the hundreds of thousands of dollars. However, the nicest (5 star) accomodations include jacuzzis, satellite tv, and anything else you could want. It is in fact normal to bring your wife and kids in with you if you get sent to jail. The prison has a bunch of restaurants including Japanese, Italian, and German (of course the proprietors are of the respective nationalities). The prison has its own counterfitting operation where the inmates make fake student id's among other things. The prison even has its own orphanage and school system where they teach children up to the age of 12 or so important things to get by in life such as how to make cocaine! In fact, for those tourists that are so inclined in addition to a tour you can rent a room for the night which will include cocaine, marijuana, and a bottle of rum for a bargain price.

After a few days in La Paz I decided it was time to do something a little more active, so i signed up for a mountain bike ride to a nearby city called Corioco. Now this was not just any mountain bike ride as the road it follows descends nearly 4000 Meters (13000 feet) in just 80km (50 miles). The road is also considered by the UN as the worlds most dangerous road since 26 vehicles (or about one every 2 weeks) careens off the edge. But what makes up for this danger is the incredible scenery that you get to ride past. During the descent you pass through more than three different distinct climate systems, and see everything from the Andean highlands to tropical rainforest, the landscapes are just indescribable. An added benefit to this ride was at the end in Corioco I stayed in quite a nice resort hotel situated on the side of a mountain with a nice swimming pool, hammocks, beautiful day hikes, and overall quite a relaxing atmosphere. It definately was difficult to leave and head back to La Paz (especially considering I had to return by bus on that same most dangerous road).

The day after returning to La Paz I went on a day trip from the city to a place called Valle de La Luna or Valley of the Moon. While I was there I rented a quad bike and rode up and down trails for quite a while with a group of people from my hotel. The funny part was I had never ridden a quad bike or any sort of motorcyle before, I never showed them a drivers license, I never signed any sort of waiver or agreement, I just said i want to ride and they gave me the keys to a 300HP Quad and pointed to the woods. I thought they would get suspicious when I stalled out 2 or 3 times as i was getting used to the motorcyle style clutch, but no problems at all. So after having a blast on the quad bikes we went to the actual Valley of the Moon, which is an aptly named section of badlands that really look like they should be on the moon.

The next destination in Bolivia was a town situated in the Amazon basin in the north of the country called rurrenebeque (Rurre) that I was going to use as my base for tours of the Jungle and Pampas. I flew to Rurre on a Bolivian Air Force plane, which the air force uses to generate a bit of extra money for the armed forces. However, despite this change in carrier, the plane was still 3 hours late, and actually ended up landing at a city 1 hour away from Rurre. I suppose this was understandable though since the dirt air strip which is the Rurre airport was too muddy for the plane to make a safe landing.

The next morning I left for a tour of the pampas which is sort of marshlands that run next to the Amazon jungles in Bolivia. The nice thing about this areas is you can see lots of animal and particularly birdlife. During my 2 day tour I saw numerous types of monkeys, sloths, dozens of different birds, alligators, crocodiles, strange pig/anteater looking creatures and coolest of all pink river dolphins (which we also got to swim with). Unfortunately, we also ran into more than our fair share of Mosquitos, sandflies, Fire ants, and other nasty insects. After the two days in the Pampas we returned to Rurre for the night which happened to be Good Friday so I got to watch the locals celebrating and parading down the streets.

The following morning it was time for a two day jungle trip, we took a hollowed out canoe (with a huge outboard motor attached) up one of the amazon tributaries until we were well into the middle of nowhere. Once there we set up camp and started our jungle excursions. Some of the highlights of the trip included bushwacking through the jungle with machetes, drinking water from vines in the trees (a la Predator), taking the Heart of Palm from palm trees, finding and eating various edible fruits and nuts, making pan pipes from the bamboo in the forest, and seeing some more cool animal life including some gigantic and highly toxic spiders. After two days I returned to Rurre where I spent one final night before flying back with the Bolivian Air Force Plane to La Paz.

My final stop in Bolivia was Lake Titikaka which is considered one of the highest navigable lakes in the world. I arrived at a town on the Bolivian side of Titikaka called Copacabana and the following morning took a boat trip to the Isla del Sol or Island of the Sun. The island is supposed to have been the birthplace for the first Inca, and was a sacred place for the Inca people. I spent the better part of the day hiking around and visiting the inca ruins on the island, and spent the night in a fairly nice hotel on the island. The next morning I took a boat back to Copacabana where I caught a bus to Puno in Peru.

So, that catches everyone up on the Bolivian section of my travels. One other effect of all that time in Bolivia is in order to be able to see anything in Peru I had to extend my vacation a bit, so I will not return to the US until April 20. I hope everyone is well, and I apologize if I have not been very good at keeping up with personal emails while I have been travelling, but I will try and make up for it when I get back.

Since I didn't get too much hatemail from my last update, I figure it is safe enough to send out another. As I mentioned before, from Sao Paulo I was going to go to the north of Brazil to scout out what were supposed to be some incredible beaches, and very culturally rich towns.

My first stop in the north was Natal. In Natal I had plans to stay at a Youth Hostel that I had heard about from some other tourists. The hostel was designed like a medievel castle, and of all things had a nightclub underneath of it with live music every night - this sounded to me like a great combination. Unfortunately, the public transport system in the north of Brazil is a little different. Rather than buses, vans drive around the city with someone screaming out the window the general vicinity to where the van is going. If one of the vans appears to be going in your direction, you wave it down, get in, and tell the driver where you want to go. This normally works very well, but when you speak relatively poor Portuguese, and don't really know where it is you are going it gets more complicated. Somehow though with a combination of luck, patience and three vans I arrived...

The hostel really was quite nice, and immediately after checking in I met a fellow Swedish consultant. He was actually someone in a very similiar situation to myself since he was taking an unpaid leave of absence from his company (BCG), to help them in their attempts to weather the economic downturn. The two of us ate dinner, and met up with a crazy Danish guy. Then we all went out, had some drinks and hung out till around 2:00am.

The next day I woke up for a buggy tour that I had signed up for when I arrived at the hostel. The tour was a trip to some of the beaches and places of interest near Natal. My buggy included a driver, an American girl, a Scottish girl, and a Brazilian guy (surprisingly enough). The entire thing was a lot of fun. We went to three different beaches, a few freshwater lakes, and took part in a number of activities including a rope swing, sandboarding, and some daredevil buggy driving through the sand dunes. At the end of the day I met up with the Swedish guy again, and we got some food and afterwords went to the disco underneath the youth hostel. It was a lot of fun with very good music.

From Natal it was then off to a small fishing village called Porto do Galinas (Port of Hens). So as usual, two buses and three vans later I finally arrived in town. In Porto do Galinas I met a friend and coworker from Sweden named Per. We relaxed and caught each other up on our vacations, then in the evening for entertainment we drank some beers while watching the local youths playing soccer on the beach. It was actually quite incredible how good they were. The next morning I woke up very early to go SCUBA diving. After diving I wanted to go kayaking with Per through a nearby Mangrove forest. After walking about 4 kilometers to get to the place with the kayaks we find out the guy who rents them is off working his other job and we should 'come back tomorrow'. The worst part of this is the day before Per had also tried to go kayaking, and they also said to 'come back tomorrow'.

The next stop was Recife, and Olinda. The two cities are right next to each other, but couldn't be more different. Recife is a modern town with a lot of businesses and a fairly good nightlife. Olinda on the other hand is a colonial town that hasn't changed that much since it was colonized. So the two together are really nice since you can do cultural stuff and enjoy the atmosphere of Olinda during the day, and then go out and party in Recife at night. Per and I spent two nights in Recife and I had a great time. We went out both nights till around 4 or 5 in the morning, and the only reason we left that early the second night was to catch a 6am plane to our next destination of Salvadore.

Salvadore was also a colonial town, and it is the third largest city in Brazil. Salvadore is also known as a cultural center of Brazil, and there is a lot of african influence from the slave trade that prospered there for so long. In fact, something like 80% of the people in Salvadore are of African descent, so it is a very different environment than most of Brazil.

After soaking up the atmosphere in Salvadore for several days, it was time to return to reality - at least temporarily. Okay, I'll explain. As some of you know, for the past several months I have been applying to MBA programs. While in Brazil I had heard back from one of the programs (Wharton at U-Penn), and they invited me to an interview. As all the interviews had to be completed before March 9, it was fortunate they were holding interviews in Sao Paulo on March 7 and 8 so I would be able to have one without cancelling my trip. As it was things were quite complicated since I obviously did not pack a suit and dress shoes for my trekking around South America, and I did not think they would appreciate it if I showed up for the interview in hiking boots and a t-shirt. Anyways, everything came together and the interview (actually interviews) went off without any major problems.

So now that that stressful part of my trip is over, it is time to continue with my vacation. I just bought a plane ticket today for Bolivia, and I will be leaving tomorrow morning...

That's it for now...

Hey Everyone,

Just wanted to drop a quick note to let you know what all I have been doing in these past two weeks here in South America. As you may already know, I arrived in Rio on February 12th. When I left from the US I was unsure if I would be able to find accomodations, because I was to arrive in Rio at when I though was the middle of Carnival. That did not turn out to be a problem though as Rio had its major carnival celebrations on February 10 and 11.

So, I missed much of the big carnival celebrations. But I at least had a bed to sleep in. Fortunately, the following Saturday was the Winners Parade, which is sort of a best of from the Carnival. I decided that since I missed the first part of Carnival, I had to at least stick around for this parade, and so I ended up staying in Rio for the next five days. During that time I did all the typical tourist things in rio, not to mention hanging out on some of the famous beaches (Copacabana, Ipanema, etc.). One of the coolest things I did though was hanggliding over the city.

Eventually Saturday came along and it was time for the Winners Parade. The parade started at around 8:00pm, and went until 4:00am. The entire time huge groups of people made their way down the Sambadrome, which is sort of a long stadium designed to accomodate these processions. The floats were immense, the costumes incredible, overall it was pretty mindblowing. The only real downside was it decided to pour down rain much of the evening, and by the time I got home I was completely soaking wet.

The next day, which was also my last day in Rio, I went to a soccer game in the Maracana stadium (one of the worlds largest), and watched the number one and two teams play each other. The following day it was off to Ilha Grande, a gorgeous tropical island off the coast of Brazil. Once I arrived, I checked into a small hotel on the water with its own private cove. The place was really tranquil and nice. I spent 4 days on the island visiting different beaches and just chilling out.

After that it was off to another beach town called Paraty, and a village outside of it called Trinidade. Both were also really nice, especially Trinidade which had an incredible natural pool with beautiful rock formations and crystal clear water. After the tropical paradise, it was time to re-enter the real world. Last night I took a bus to Sao Paulo where I am right now. I will only be staying here for one day though as I am going to catch a plane to the north of Brazil and visit Natal, Salvadore, and maybe some other cities in between.