I'm able to update this so frequently because my schedule is about 2 hours ahead of the schedules of my traveling companions. Luckily, the 5am wakeup is more tolerable when you go to sleep at 10:30.

Anyway, the itinerary for yesterday was 2 tombs, and a temple. I'll leave off the food updates for now, as I can't recall the names and the pics are all on my other camera. Flickr also takes forever to process my photos from this computer, so blahh...

Anyway, this is a view of the first tomb we saw. There are 130 steps from the base to the main temple room.


This is a painting on the ceiling of the main temple room. Su and Khanh told me a story wherein the painter who was hired to paint the ceiling had his hands chopped off by the emperor afterward, so that he may never reproduce the work. He then learned to paint with his feet.


The first altar in the tomb, awash with symbols I won't go into in depth right now.


Many of the walls were intricate mosaics formed by various broken materials. Some had bottlenecks, other had shards of pottery (used to make a mosaic of a pot).


This is from the second tomb we saw. Lotus flowers floating in a pond surrounding a building.


Incense sticks at the second tomb.


Lotus flowers!


Incense at the final tomb of the emperor. This guy was, if I remember right, an emperor who was more artistically inclined. Also, he had like 100+ wives and concubines, yet no children.


One of the buildings before the final tomb. Zane called this one "Spider Tomb," as many, many spiders were visible on the walls and ceiling.


This had me worried, after the ride through the storm yesterday. It never hit us, though.


We hiked through a jungle near a theravada temple.


We ran across a monk practicing tai chi. Even watching him was relaxing. It was also incredibly impressive. Were I to try to copy him, I'm sure my muscles would have been burning in less than a minute. He finished his routine with a jumping spin kick at least a foot above his head. He landed in a crouch and swept his foot out in a full circle. When he rose from the crouch, he put extended his hands in front of his head and above it by a foot, and kick them. These three motions took a couple of seconds.


We ended the night with a boat tour. By this time (about 9:00), I was absolutely exhausted.

So, yeah, I'm a day behind now, but don't really have the time or energy to go through day 3 pictures yet. Today we visited the home of the emperor's mother (done in a french style), visited an old bridge, took a boat ride up a river, and visited the square in front of the citadel (filled with people flying kites and playing soccer). We were invited back to Su's family's house for another meal. It was a veritable banquet, and more than we deserved. I hope to expand on this at some point, but I need to head up to get some sleep now - tomorrow we're taking a boat tour through a cave attached / in proximity to the biggest cave system in the world. 6am departure time, though.