the day after Christmas.

I'm sitting on the balcony watching the sun set on the ocean while 2 Cambodian kids in the distance are pushing each other around in a makeshift scooter down a hill. The last few days have been a lazy blur as what usually occurs once I get to a beach town. Yesterday we drove around on motorbikes to different beaches. I had a manicure and pedicure for $5 while sitting on the beach drinking a beer. What a Christmas. The only productive thing we've done the last few days was go and get a Vietnam visa which took literally 5 minutes to complete a form at the embassy. We leave for Vietnam tomorrow- just a few hours away by car. Not quite sure what the plan is from there. Either take a boat to a small island or float down the Mekong Delta and stay with Vietnamese families. Either one sounds amazing. Then it's off to Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City) for a few days and up the coast. We fly out of Hanoi on January 11th so there's still plenty of time for vacay. I've finished 2 books in the last few days and working on a 3rd. This book is about the Cambodian genocide during the Khemer Rouge. It's a tough read just because it's hard to believe that someone so young could go through such horrific events. It's a memoir of Loung whose family is separated when she is 5 years old. Very intense, but very good insight into what happened during the late 70s. It's so crazy to think that if I stopped someone over 30 years old, they would have lived through this violent time and still have strong memories of it. I'm reading the sequel- Lucky Child. She was the one picked to go to America and leaves behind siblings in Cambodia. She talks about how she adjusts to American life and tries to recover from what she endured. Highly recommend both.
This is a memoir by a guy who quit his job as an engineer in a cubicle to seek adventure. He starts out biking through Afghanistan and going down the Nile in Ethiopia and Sudan. My favorite chapter was about taking camels through the Empty Quarter of Saudi Arabia- apparently this is a whole other book and I can't wait to read that one. Owen loved this book. I liked some of the chapters, some weren't that interesting to me as I'm not really into kayaking and rafting.

Lots of beach time and poolside to read which I love.