post for justin

i have taking pictures of almost every meal i have eaten so you can see justin and i think i am bringing back some traditional thai recipes. but it will be questionable whether or not we can find the true incedients in the states. and as for the crazy fruit did you mean durian? with an N at the end because if you did then im pretty sure your description was right. i bought some yesterday and have yet to eat it but everytime i open the refrigerator the fruit stinks up our whole apartment. you cant it on the porch outside with the door closed, its terrible. but durian actually grows in a really spiky kind of shell. the spiky shell is quite hard and if you were to throw one at somebody they would probably have multiple puncture wounds. but yeah im am gonna write a long update now.

comments on your comments

to whoever volleyball_chick is. the first best thing that i have eaten is taro filled buns.

to laura drewyor the three person scooter ride was cancelled and we had to drive one person then go back for the other. there is not a whole lot of new construction other than houses. some hotels are new and look somewhat lavish but thats about it. people are sortof friendly its kind of a yes and no type answer. yes the university is in session right now, all of the students wear uniforms so you can always tell which ones are students. and there will be food descriptions and pictures as soon as i get this thing to work.

and to graham wall......... grow six inches by the time i get back. post card should come in the next 2-2 1/2 weeks.

comment questions

ok im gonna answer some questions u guys had here and just add whatever i can. ok dad you asked about jackfruit and mangosteens. i have no tseen any signs of jackfruit. but mangosteens are everywhere. i will try to remember to get one at a market today because i have yet to eat one. aunt carol you wanted to know about the cheerleader thing. ok save the cheeleader save the world is the motto of that tv show heroes. the turth is out there is from a tv show..um firefly i think. and then may the force be with you is a gimmick but star wars. Fez's uncle is a very goofy guy and for fez's birthday that was on the card instead of otehr stuff so i recycled it. aunt carol the mango dessert with stick rice was very good but yellow mangos are going out of season so it will be harder and harder to find it as my trip progeses. and yes the first part of rambo and shiny objects comment was allabout my safety. thanks for participating and if you have anymore questions be sure to ask.

my first full day

as most of you who read my post from yesterday know it was an extra long day since i was up way too early. we this morning is really no different. i beat my wakeup time from yesterday by an hour. so at this rate in a week i will be waking up when the sun is actually up. yesterday was kind of a explore the city and try and learn some of the landmarks. bill is leaving us to go get a knoxville rotarian this weekend. so the purpose of showing us around was his hope that we would venture out into the city ourselves... which may or may not occur. right now i think i have a moderately good hold on the citys layout since it is a simple grid. but the truth is there are no street names and everything looks the same because well all of the shops have pretty much the same stuff and almost the same semi rundown exterior. but yesterday chris and i finally got up and decided it was time to go explore the city at around 10:30. so we ventured over to bill's room where he was finishing uup some laundry in his wash bucket. we grabbed him and made for the main part of campus where we could catch a #8 truck/bus into town. we walked along the road waiting for one but none came so we just explored one of the buildings on campus for a little while. the building we went into was alarge 3 story building that had food vendors, shops and a post office. which reminds me anyone other than cousin erin who wants a post card or letter please leave commenti and i will be sure to get it too you. a letter or post card by air mail is somewhere around 50-70 cents. so i will have no problem sending a good number if necessary. we left the building and found a #16 truck/bus taht goes into town but not to the exact location we wanted to go but we jumped on it anyway and road into town no problem. we got off the bus and bill began to show us some of the good places to rest if you are hot, and a large decrepid building that was never finished. the large building itself plays a role in our navigation because it is the tallest and it is for the most part in the middle of the city making navigation somewhat easier when you can see it. there are two hotels neither of which i can remember the name of that do not mind if foreigners come in and rest in the air conditioning. both of the hotels have english newpapers that they allow you to read for free. we stopped at both of these yesterday but both times i wrote in my journal. yesterday had 4 pages of entry so i do believe it was a good day. another thing he showed us are the machines that refill your bottle for 1 baht. which to me is very important i go through water like a camel.we stopped to eat at the same grocery store we had eaten the day before. the grocery has a small but clean food vendor in the back where for 80 25 baht or 80 cents you can get a full plate of rice topped with whatever dish you want. today i got somekind of chicken with mussels type thing, and it was very good but the museels were a little too chewy for me
i really hope i dont get sick from the mussels either. we finished lunch and walked upstairsout of the grocery. the grocery is fit into a building where all the top floors are clothing and other vendors and the bottom floor is the grocery. if that makes sense?. but we wallked upstairs out of the grocery to see what there was and i never thought that khon kaen would be infected enough to have a starbucks(hssssss). its the devil. other than that the upstairs had a kfc which i am suprised to learn thai people absolutely love. but other than those stores there were the usual traditional thai food,clothing,and ice cream vendors. we left the builing and headed
toward the nicer hotel where you can sit in the AC. We cane in through the bakery
which just so happends to be the best bakery in town. and let me tell you it is well deseerved. we had just eaten lunch before we arrived and i ate a piece of orange mousse cake. definitely the second greatest thing i have eaten while i have been here. we left there and basically walked arounda little while stpping in little shops to just procure what they had for the most part. on the way back to the road to catch a #8 back to the university bill stopped to get a traditionally brewed thai coffee that they mix with two kinds of condensed milk and is supposed to be more like a dessert than anything. considering the price of what he bought was 20baht, and taking into account how much he got and how elegantly prepared it was. i say we burn down all the starbucks. we sat at a picknick table under a tarp and talked as Bill and Chris drank their coffees. by the time we left the table the clouds had rolled in and it lookled like it was going to rain. we were lucky to finda #8 quicly because about 2 minutes after we had gotten on it started absolutely pouring. it rained very hard for the whole ride back to the university but by the time we had gotten off the truck the rain had slowed and become very light and comfortable to walk home in. Chris and I wanted to go back to the bokstore so bill headed on back to the room. we explored the KKU accessories and such. KKu being Khon Kaen University. we left without buying anything and from there Chris went back to the apartment and i just explored campus for another 40 minutes. i just started my walk back to the apartment but explored all of the side streets along the way. there are many internet cafes where students can rent a computer for a set amount of time and play online game with their friends. something like world of warcraft? i stopped at a little conveinence store on the last leg home and got a soday and candy bar to tide me over till dinner and then walked the rest of the way with the rain still coming. i got back to the room and put the candy and drink in our room's minifridge. then i laid down and after that i woke up. and what do you know its 4:40 in the morning. well i will write again tonight or tomorrow. but today we are going to meet Bills connection in water purification. I dont know how to spell is but im going to sound out his name. chu-lum-chai. aparently he is very wealthy here and for a thai increadibly rich. he drives a BMw which is very diffeicult being affording the car would be hard enough but thailand has a luxury car tax. which here means the price of teh car just tripled. so imagine paying $40,000 for a Bmw in america. we here would be $120,000. and if you multiply that by thirty. that is about how much it would cost in baht. but yeah i just thought that was a fun fact. oh and to get to we will call him Mr. C. to get to his buisness we have to take a 2 person motor scooter. so wish us luck. last thing i got a phone card so i will call soon.

after my 4 hour nap

i have a somewhat new found strength although i have been up since what would be 3:50am in khon kaen. the jet lag stinks but i will hopefully stay awake and get to sleep at the right time tonight. but back to what all of you really care about. i got on the plane out of knoxville with my day pack and backpacker. the first flight to chicago i had the very first seat on the plane which meant not only did i have absolutlely no leg room but i also had no space to put either the guitar or the backpack. i got out my journal and blanket before they put my other things in a storage closet and then from there i really dont remember anything except the plane landing. i woke up with the tires hitting the runway in chicago. from there we (chris and I) had a few hours to walk around. it was enough time to find food, find a pencil to write in my journal with and, meet another traveller who was on her way to shenzen. we jumped on our next flight which would be the most painful. the dreaded 11 and a half hour flight to tokyo. i managed to watch all of the interesting looking movies within the first half of the flight and then broke out the ipod for most of the rest of the trip. i spent the last two hours of the trip writing in my journal making simple notes i would like to remember. The girl who was oin her way to Shenzen offered to let me look at her english to chinese dictionary and from that i copied some what i hope will be helpfull phrases for when i get there later next month. but we finally reached the tokyo airport and from there our friend going to shenzen(allison) had to go a separate way. we exchanged emails and she said she would write me telling if there was anything good to do in shenzen. we cleared through the japanese security checkpoints and from there i had to get the ticket for my last flight which i had failed to get for unknown reasons back in knoxville. i was able to aquire it in about 10 minutes and from that point our flight was delayed about 50 minutes. which still gave us a little over 2 hours to enjoy the little of japan we would see. i bought a simple keychain and pin at a gift shop just to say i had gotten somthing from the land of the rising sun. i went back to the bench which we had been holding and from there i completely sacked right up untill the time when we were supposed to leave. i got on the plane and was able to sleep for another 2 or so hours which was ehaven after how long i been without it. after waking up i watched a movie or two. i stopped watching when i realized that it was lightning outside my window. i spent the last 45 minutes of the flight watching the lightning and writing in my journal about it. we arrived in bangkok and cleared customs very quickly. walking out of the security area was mr. zierer who continually reminds us to call him bill. he was easy to pick out in a bright yellow homer simpson shirt. we left the exit area and went to a kind of in amll food stand where i got checken sandwich and after that we simply sat and talked for a short time. after we had eaten and explored the small convenience shop next to the stand the time being after midnight. the only thing to do was rack out in the check in area of the airport. wait wait back up and let me say that the buns with teriaky chicken in them that i bought at the little store were about a nickel a piece and were sooo good. i went back 3 times. ok back on track. the entrance area to the airport is on the 5th floor so we headed upstairs where was found two benches and where chris and mr. zier..... bill laid down and went to sleep. i couldnt sleep since i was simply wired and hungry still. so i went back downstairs to get some more to eat and after i had eat about 3 more buns. i travelled back upstairs to play gutiar and fall asleep. we woke up early. which had to have been around 4-5. and took a shuttle bus to a bus station where we would catch another bus into town. we waited on the shuttle bus for about 30 minutes abd we waited at the actual bus staion for at least another 40. oh and let me also say that the airport in bangkok is the worst place for peaple trying to hustle you. no matter wht time of day. there are always nywhere from 5-15 people trying to get you to ride in their taxi. we finally got on one of the buses and made it into town. from there we had to take a short taxi ride to get to the main bus station which runs the distance buses. we were able to get a cheap ticket to khon kaen without even waiting. we walked in and there just so happend to be a bus leaving that would take us to khon kaen for what bill said would be cheap. so we bought tickets and jumped on the bus right as it was about to pull out of the station. this bus trip however would take us another 6 hours. the bus made a few stops along the way to let other passengers on. early on the trip we got complementary bottles of water and a bun that had this pink kind of jelly in it. it was very good but the jelly had the consistency of a mashed sweet potato so although it was tasty the felling your mouth got you a little bit. i was able to sleep for most of the rest of the rest of the trip. we got off the bus and made a immediate bathroom break and from there was able to meet one of the local roatary members. from there we had to get on what can only be described as buses. they are isusu pickup trucks that had had covered benches put in the back. the trucks all have numbers painted on them and depending on the number thatshows which route it will take throughout khon kaen. the number we had to take to get to the university where we were staying was 8. it was a short trip and while we were on the bus/truck local schools were being let out so it was interesting to see the children in uniforms. unlike america where some schools where uniforms and some do not. all schools here have their own uniforms, and all of the school children wore them to perfect specification. we got on the campus of the university and our bus began to take a different route so we had to get out and walk about a mile to our apartment. we made the short walk on the side of the busy roads which are mainly occupied by scooters and motorcycles. there is a water purification machine outside our hotel where it costs 1 baht to fill a 1 liter bottle. so imagine if you will paying a third of a penny to get 1 nalgene bottle full of water. yeah i was suprised too. after getting the key to my room and taking a shower. we watched some discovery channel which is awesome since it is 1 of only 3 channels we have in english. i slept for two hours and then chris and bill woke me to go out to check the street venders. but before i give my explanation of them i got some good pictures of what it looked like. ok nvr mind pictures arent working right now if i can i will make a post with just pictures and the description for each one. ok for now it is about 7:40am and i have been writing this and playing ont he internet for about 3 hours. i will write again tonight if i can. mr. zie...... bill's friend loaned us a laptop that works in all of our rooms. and untill further notice i have it so i think updates will come quite often. we are goign to explore town today probably look through the shops and such. ohh and we are goign to a large fuit market where im gonna buy some fresh green mangos. the green ones are kinda sours but really really good. alright well i will check in later and as fez greens uncle once wrote to him in a birthday email..... may the force be with you, the truth is out there, and..... save the cheerleader save the world.... dont forget to comment....

long flights 3 hrs of sleep and then a 6 hr bus trip

i am worn out and my internal clock is all screwed up with how much i didnt sleep on the planes. i will write a more extensive check in when i am able to think correctly.

saturday june 7th departure date june 9th

I hank holleman being of somewhat sound mind and moderately lazy body do hereby swear to tell all the goings on of every area i visit, to a mature and acceptable extent. i am also swearing to go ahead and take about a million pictures.

i am making the final preparations for my trip and unlike when i visited hungary last year, or when i have ever left home before i generally fearful of where i am going. especially since Mrs. green tried to get me to watch the first 45 minutes of rambo one. I am not sure whether or not where i will be going will be like that. but i refuse to take anything even remotely shiny for the safety of myself. since this is really just a preliminary writing just to test this webblog. i am going to try to enable so that anyone who is reading this may leave comments. but please during the next few days all of you who aquire this site and want to participate. ask any questions you want me to try to answer or if there is something i should look for/take a picture of. i want this site to not only be a way for me to tell my story but a way for people to interact as well.
and with that i am going to go to my friends birthday party. i mean after all it is still saturday night. and always remember may the force be with you, the truth is out there and save the cheerleader save the world.