This morning we went out for a walk to explore the area. We didn't see much of interest. We did find a small taco place that even had a "vegetarian" section of three different type of tacos. Those were pretty good. We even missed the hardest part of the raining (which still wasn't exactly a drenching rain). In the afternoon we headed to the beach. There we mostly just walked around checking stuff out. We did find a public beach access. It was super windy and cloudy, but the water was still crazy blue and there were pretty decent sized waves. I can see the appeal of the beach. It was pretty nice. We found dinner around the time it started sprinkling again then eventually caught the bus back to the hostel.
Cancun has been pretty uneventful for us, but tomorrow we're headed to Cozumel where we can hopefully start some fun activities.
-Miranda
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On Monday we leave for Mexico! We're flying down to Cancun. The plans are to stay there for a couple days then take a bus, then a ferry to Cozumel where we'll do some scuba diving. So, we'll start updating the blog regularly again. It will definitely be nice to be in some warmer weather for a bit.
-Miranda
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Ever since we got back from our trip we've been looking for a new place to live. We both enjoyed the house near Port Wing and living on 40 acres, but it was just too far from town. We kept finding ourselves having to drive to Duluth and the hour drive was just getting to be too much. Especially in winter when it gets dark earlier and deer seem suicidal.
So, we looked around Duluth and weren't having much luck. We then decided to make a drive out to Montana to visit Pat and Nancy and then continue the drive to Washington to look there. Again, we didn't have much luck, so back to Minnesota we went.
Eventually we found a place not far from Pike Lake. It's a bit farther out of town than we were hoping, but it's on 4.7 acres on a dead end road, which is great for the kitties. Right now we don't really have furniture, but it will be great once we get things set up better.
-Miranda
The house.
The kitchen. This is the only room that's really put together.
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We only stayed in Bangkok a few nights. Our intention was to do some sight seeing, but it never really happened. We did some shopping, but that was really it. Our last night in the hotel, we had trouble sleeping anyway, but at 1am, the toilet started bubbling. When it wouldn't stop, Joe went and talked to someone so they moved us to a different room. We finally fell asleep. The next day we were hoping to go to Wat Pho and then come back to the room to nap and shower. Since the toilet was disgusting we asked if we could stay past check out time so we could nap. They would not budge on it. So crazy. So, no nap time.
Anyway, Sandra's flight was leaving at midnight. We decided to just head to the airport with her and hang out in the arrival area to wait until we could check in. After saying goodbye to Sandra we tried to nap, but were pretty much unsuccessful. Around 3am, we headed to the check-in counter which looked completely different than it did when Sandra had checked in. Delta completely took over the area. We waited in line to talk to a security person who asked us the normal "Who packed your bags", "Did anyone give you anything" etc etc. After we got past that, we waited in another line where we finally got to check-in and check the bags. We then walked to immigration, where we waited in line again. After that, we went to security. No line there really. I guess immigration took longer than security, so that was quick.
Once we were in the airport, we walked for a while towards our gate. Then waited in line yet again to go through more security. Here they patted everyone down and looked in our carry on bags... What would have changed from the time we went through the first security to there is beyond me. Then we waited in line to get on the plane. It took basically 2 hours.
Our first flight was 6 hours to Tokyo. Once there, we got off the plane, went through security again with our carry on bags (again, what changed since we got on the plane?) then found our gate and hopped on that plane. That flight was 9 hours. Woohoo! We were able to sleep a little on the first flight and even less on the flight from Tokyo to Portland.
Once in Portland, we had to get our bags to go through immigration and customs. No problems there. The officer was very friendly. We chatted a little about the trip while he processed stuff. Customs was no problem. He just looked at the sheet, asked if we had food and off we went to recheck the bags and find our gate. There we had a couple hours of sitting before we boarded the plane.
We arrived in Minneapolis at 5:30pm. It was a full 24 hours of traveling, arriving 12 hours after we left (because of the international date line). Mom and Papa picked us up. We stopped for dinner at Good Earth and then headed home. I don't think we're going to have too much trouble with jet lag because not really sleeping made it easy for us to sleep even though our bodies thought it was 11am, not 11pm.
We were awake again at 7:30am. So we didn't really sleep in. We're heading to the house today after running some errands. So nice to be home.
-Miranda
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For our last day, we spent about three hours in Angkor Wat. The views from the top were amazing. Out the west gate were a number of monkeys which we watched for a bit. After walking around and having lunch, we walked around the third enclosure which is covered with bas-reliefs telling different stories. It was incredibly detailed and fascinating to study.
Once we were done with Angkor Wat we headed into Angkor Thom, which was the ancient capital city with Bayon at the center. That temple is famous for its many towers with faces facing most of the cardinal directions. It was quite a maze as it has been changed and added to a lot since it was originally built in the 12th century.
We enjoyed the temples quite a bit and Siem Reap is a neat city to explore. Our day today was mostly a relaxing one and we're headed to Bangkok tomorrow.
-Miranda
;)
Inside Angkor Wat.
;)
View of Angkor Wat from the north.
;)
Checking out the bas-reliefs of Angkor Wat.
;)
Faces of Bryon.
;)
Bayon reflecting in the surrounding moat.
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