Auf Wiedersehen!

We are all set for our next traveling adventure! In less than 30 days we will be heading off to experience all the wonders of Europe! The main purpose and highlight of this trip is to celebrate Miss Autumn’s Dirty Thirty at the 200th anniversary of Oktoberfest. While I’m super excited to get my bier on, there are a great many other things that I am equally if not more excited to see and do.

Our adventure will start in Amsterdam where I hope to rent some bikes and pedal around the city. Checking out the cute sidewalk cafes is also on the agenda and perhaps eating some raw herring with onions. “Brown cafes” are the Dutch version of a British Pub and I’m hoping to spend some quality time there just chilling and enjoying the sights.


We will then shimmy on down to Heidelberg, Germany where I spent my High School years. Go Lions! I’m so looking forward to showing Ben and Autumn my old stomping grounds and eager to see how much the city has changed (or not changed!). We are staying in a small little hotel that is above an Irish pub and a 10 minute walk down the Hauptstrasse, which is a pedestrian only street. Thinking about this trek down cobblestone is ensuring that I pack light.

From there we take a train to Munich for Oktoberfest! We had to book our hotel way back in January for this portion of the trip. And at $300 a pop, we decided to share a room with Ivan and Autumn. We are going to attempt Oktoberfest twice – on a Thursday and hopefully again on Saturday. Being that this is the 200th anniversary of this crazy beer fest, the crowds might be more than I can take. But we survived the congestion of Taipei so I think we’ll manage.

Next up is Prague in the Czech Republic. There is so much interesting history in Prague along with amazing architecture – I almost feel like 3 full days won’t do the city justice. We are staying in an apartment in Stare Mesto (Old Town) with Ivan and Autumn. This apartment includes a washing machine – BONUS!! Ten days of traveling will dirty clothes make!

And to end our little sojourn, we will head to Berlin. Ben picked out our hotel there (Circus Hotel) but despite the name seems like it is quite fancy. At least for our budget and in comparison to the other places we will be staying. Our agenda for Berlin includes seeing some of the old Wall. There is still a stretch of intact Wall in Eastern Berlin. I’ve also heard that there is a Ramones Museum paying tribute to the Ramone brothers!

I’m so excited and am counting down the days until we leave! If anybody has any suggestions on things we can do while there or travel tips, let me know! And perhaps most importantly, what are we going to do about our iPhones? We can’t live without them but are overseas charges going to be astronomical?

It's A Boy!!

The "Pregnant Man" (PM for those in the know) aka Thomas Beatie gave birth to his second child yesterday. His first child, a girl, was born last November.

I don't know about you, but I'm using all my fingers and counting out the months and this seems almost impossible. If he gave birth in November 2008 and just had another baby then I'm counting 7 months!! Am I counting wrong? Is there something I don't know about the gestation time of your typical homo sapien? Or is this just another case of a MAN trumping a woman. At our own game, too! What am I SAYING? That can't possibly be it. Maybe the baby was born early - you know, premature like. I've looked at all the usual sites trying to get info but to no avail.

Forget about how long it took him to grow this baby...He's a man! Or she's a man! Either way, he/she is a man now! Or a woman now! I need a drink!

Anyways, if any of you have ideas on how he had another baby so quickly, please let me know. I want to share the information with some reproductively challenged friends.

Hey, I resemble that!!!

When I was living in the Philippines, there was this chick that was a few grade levels above me named Maria. For my entire middle school life, I was always being asked if Maria was my older sister. That was until I chopped off all my hair in order to channel Watts from the movie Some Kind of Wonderful. Then I was asked if I was a girl or a boy! How humiliating! I'm sure Mary Stewart Masterson never had to verify her gender.

I found this picture of Maria on the internet - yes,I'm a cyber stalker!!

How cool was Watts??

Then while Picket Fences was on the tube, I was told that I looked like Holly Marie Combs. I didn't even realize she was on that show. Actually, I didn't know who she was until Charmed came out.

Charming.

A few weeks ago while imbibing with some friends, I was told by a guy that I looked just like Lisa Loeb. Remember her? I think it must be the glasses because I don't sing and I have these monstrous freckles that I notice Lisa doesn't have. Anyways, this prompted a conversation with my buds over the different celebrities that I have been told I resemble.

Lisa Loeb has cute glasses.

Now, granted, I know that I am a radiant beauty but I am far from the stellar reaches of grace and sexiness that these celebrities embody.

I was going through a taco bell drive thru when the drive-thru guy told me I looked like Sandra Bullock. I love Sandra Bullock so I thought this was a very nice compliment!

yo quero taco bell!

My old college roomies found a picture of Rosario Dawson sporting some reading glasses and I apparently looked just like her. They put the pic on our refrigerator where I was greeted daily by Rosario whenever I needed another beer. I looked all over the World Wide Web and could not find the exact picture. I even got onto the Information Super Highway.

she must be wearing contacts now.

Several peeps have told me I look like Lucy Liu but I think it's just ignorance. Come on people! NOT ALL ASIANS LOOK ALIKE!!

I love Lucy

And one of my all times favorite stories took place last October. The TSA security guy at the Las Vegas airport told me that I looked just like Sarah. I was baffled and asked, "Sarah who?" To which he replied, "Sarah Palin - of course." In front of me in line was a woman loading her stuff into the bin to be x-rayed and she was carrying Barack Obama's book The Audacity of Hope. She immediately turned around and told me that I should be offended by this comparison and that just because I was a brunette with spectacles that I looked nothing like Mrs. Palin. I guess my up-do was not conservative enough!

I don't see it.

Elephant Trekking in Khao Lak

Heading Home

Just got back into Bangkok from Siem Reap, Cambodia and will be in Bangkok for less than 8 hours before heading BACK to the airport for home. We were in Siem Reap for two nights and two days. Angkor Wat was cool but I highly suggest not going there in the middle of the day! I was miserably hot and everything was dry and dusty. There's only so many temple ruins I can see in this condition.

Siem Reap was a fun little town. On one street corner, there were 5 foot massage places and on our last day, Autumn and I got our tootsies rubbed for a whopping $4. Here's a fun fact about Siem Reap - they LOVE Angelina Jolie here. Several bars have a special "Angelina" Cocktail and there are some bars that she herself had been to and you can pay extra to sit in the chair she had once sat in!! No, I didn't pay to sit in her old chair!

Maxin' and Relaxin'

Ahhhh...the relaxing part of our vacation! We headed for the beach. Khao Lak, to be exact. Khao Lak is about an hours drive north of Phuket on the Andaman Coast. Chuck and Heather recommended it as there are beautiful beaches but not a tourist trap like Phuket. This area was the hardest hit by the 2004 tsunami and because of this, many Thais considered it to be a town full of ghosts. Most of the area has been rebuilt and the resort was full while we were there. I don't know about ghosts, but this town was definitely full of Germans!

One Night In Bangkok...

Technically we were in Bangkok for two nights but as my luck would have it, my slight cold has turned into the real deal. By the time we arrived to Chuck and Heather's house, I was miserable! So, on our first night in Bangkok, I stayed in and slept! How lame!

The next day, I tried to nut up and not let this cold bring me down. We saw the Wat Pho Temple where the Reclining Buddha is well...reclining. Took a TukTuk around the city as well as a boat on the river. Then what is a trip to Bangkok without eating and shopping? The price of everything here is really cheap but you forget and start haggling over what turns out to be a few dollars! While in Khoa Lak, I was able to save a whopping 40 cents on a pair of sunglasses for Ben.

Ivan, Autumn and Chuck in a TukTuk in front of us