Fly Fishing

Hello Awesome everybody!!!
Rachael and Micah again.  That was awesome, we just checked my inbox after not using the internet for quite some time and we had something like 25 new emails.  thanks everybody for writing back, it is great to hear what yalls up to.
 
I was really glad to see that anyone had actually read the last email as after sending it i felt kind of bad.  I know exactly what it is like to get messages from friends and family boasting about how much dam fun their having traveling while you read the email at work and think, 'those bastards'. Yes i did say bastards, i know this email is going to a variety of age groups and that maybe the word 'bastard' is not entirely approprate but what the hell, yes i said hell, i cant help my self, that is how my mind thinks.  (if you dont like it you'll have to write to my parents and consult them about my unruly upbringing, the'll love that)  I actually tried erasing the word bastard and yes the word hell as whell and replacing them with words like baddies and heck but it just sounds like shit when i do that, so bastards, hell and shit it is.
 
Back to it...i was saying i felt bad writing my last email.  Today i tried thinking about how to fix that, should i write an email, down playing just how much fun we are having, should i lie and say Rachael got her leg removed after getting gang-green and that last night we were robbed at gun point, not to mention the melaria.  Hum...naa that really wouldn't be right, i'd be lying and swaring at the same time.  Instead i've decided i'm gunna tell it just how it is and if you don't lik it ...well then you can go online and order a guide book to Thailand your self and get your ars over here!!
The little of southeast asia we've seen so far is amazing, the people are the friendliest on the plant, the food is utterly amazing and conviently it is guitfully cheap, almost to cheap.  You can eat for $1 a meal and get hour messages on the beach for $5.  Wooooooo
 
Right now wé are sitting in a park on the edge of the major water way through the city of Bangkok at dusk.  Relaxing on a park bench watching the most rediculous display of arobics you have ever seen. The instructor, a young man, looks like a jumping bean on speed while 40 mothers struggle to mimic even a single one of his eratic moves.  It is so funny i've just jumped up and taken a video clip i'll try and attach to this email. (this is a journal excert so obviously the term 'right now' which the paragraph begins with is actually a different right now then you may be living, Right Now.) ha
 
After spending 2 weeks on Thailands southern islands we made our way back north to Bankok, 5 days there getting our visas for Vietnam and now we are in Cambodia.  Spent our first night in  Battembang, a town close to the Thai boarder.  At first we were like...ewww...it is so dirty and dusty and poor and everyone looks like they are struggling, what have we gotten oursleves into, maybe we should have skipped this country.  But the next day we rented a motorbike and headed our into the country side, puttering down country roads sourounded by farms, farmers and Huge Smiles.  It was beautiful, the dirt and dust were gone and people didnt' look so poor, they were just happy farmers living off the land like thed been doing for the past couple thousand years.  Randomly we turned down a dirt track following the edge of the river.  It wasn't a road but we saw another motorbike drive down it so we figured we check it out.  Rachael insisted it wasn't going to take us where we wanted to go and that we were going to end up in someones back...
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
(TO BE CONTINUED)
 
Thanks again to everyone who wrote back, it made our day
 
 
Love Rachael and Micah!!!

Southeast Asia

Hum...It's Micah here if you hadn't already guessed...I've been wanting very much to write an email to all me friends and family, and its not that i havn't had a chance, i've had pleanty, infact all we've been doing for the past two weeks is relaxing on the beach and chowing down on amazing food.  

Typically while Rachael and I are traveling my emails are about among other things, getting altude sickness on my birthday on a 6000m peak in mexico, loosing 25 lbs from ecoli, getting stung by a sting ray on a deserted beach in elsalvador and havning locals poor boiling water on the wound...you get the idea, narrawly excaping death, disaster and disease.  Those are the things i like writing about.  Its easy, all i have to do is tell the story, maybe embelish it a bit to make Rachael and i look like super heroes, but its easy.  

This on the other hand, basking in the sun, getting messages, hiking in the jungle, snorkeling, eating out 3 meals a day, living the high life.. how am i suppoed to write about that. haha

Maybe first i'll jump back to the beginning and clue everyone in to where we are writing from.  

Lets start at the beginning...i was born in Rumney, NH, my parents were ostrage farmers selling eggs at the local...maybe not that far back.

After getting married this summer Rachael and i stayed around NH working for the family.  Kept ourselves busy driling hundreds of holes in the outside of the apartment buildings and blowing in celulose insulation (thats chopped newspaper coated with fire retardant if you didn't know).  Really it wasn't that bad, infact it was even fun at times.  Especially sicne we were failrly sure we were going to leave right after christmas...right after Rachael passed her NCLEX (US national nursing exam).  She studdied for months and unfortunatly didnt' pass.  It wasn't the end of the world (although it felt like it for Rachael for quite some time) she was allowed to retake the test 6 weeks later after giving them another 500 buck.  Only problem was this meant we couldn't leave, arrr.  

In the long run i am glad, not that she failed her exam but that we were able to stick around NH for a good part of the winter.  It was awesome, lot of snow, lots of friends, insane amounts of back country sledding and we bought new backcountry ski setups that we used 3 or 4 days a week.  WooHoo go winter.

Back to the current story.  After another couple months of studding Rachael retook her exam...and bloody passed.  It was quite a sight, we hooted and hollared and danced around for days.  The dark cloud that had been looming over our heads for so long had lifted, we were free again!!!

The winter was great but the temptation for warmpth and something was different greater.  

A couple of days after passing her exam Rachael and I bought return plane tickets to Bangkok, Thailand.  THree and a half months in southeast asia sounded like just what we were looking for...

Thirty six hours later we landed... (TO BE CONTINUED)

 hope everyone is awesome!!!

Love Micah and Rachael

Careful i think an El Salvadorian may live on your street, watch your b-l-s!‏

Why hello out there!  Guess i have to say Happy New Year as its that time.

Here for you i have a special story that i think you´ll enjoy. 

 

Getting the permit on the Guatemalan side was easy, it just took a while to process all the paperwork.  While standing around waiting we witnessed a very curious thing.  A group of 6 or 8 scraggly looking men, stacks of documents in hand, crowded around 2 of the office windows.  At first it didn’t seem like they knew each other and were simply crowding around the window hoping to be the next in line.  But as we watched more closely we noticed they certainly weren’t acting like normal business men.  Every few minutes one of them would grab the crotch of the man beside or behind him and give a good chuckle, in return the man who’s balls had been squeezed, along with the rest of the group, would chuckle back.  It wasn’t just a one time deal either, the more we watched the more balls we saw grabbed, and if the man who’s turn it was to be the aggressor wanted to squeeze the guys balls ahead of him he simply reached between the mans legs to get there.  We decided that they must have been a travelling group of gay El Salvadorian car importers, then it got even weirder, we started to wonder if possibly ball grabbing was simply part of their culture.  

            A new guy approached and it was obvious he wasn’t part of the travelling group of gay El Salvadorian car importers.  Immediately one of the GESCI turned around as if to introduce himself to the man but instead just grabbed his balls.  The new guy jumped and we could see he was taken aback by the unproved attack but he didn’t do anything other then simply smile while the group chuckled. What the hell was going on?  Just then an official boarder employee walked past the group, of course one of the men stepped out of the mob to great him, the man must have been special as he got the full treatment, a pat on the head a slap on the ass and then a nice big ball grab.  Again the official didn’t do anything but turn around and smile before walking through a doorway.  Who grabs stranger’s ball and gets a response like that?  I was ready to run if the mob approached which gladly they didn’t, guess gringos are exempt from cultural ball grabbing tradition.  

Micah and GRACHEL the pirate