Speaking of bad environmental practices, today we saw a young Turkish mom throw her baby’s dirty diaper in a black plastic trash bag out the bus door into a beautiful valley. We were pretty shocked and disappointed about that one.

Luckily the more east we move, the less tourism has had a negative impact. Hopefully you’ll see this progression as we update more! As for checking up on us, thank you for your excellent diligence.

Love ya too!

it is such a shame, though, to hear that they are having problems keeping the environment from being spoiled by tourism- that is such a hard thing to see happen/ have happened.

we felt that way about halong bay in northern vietnam. everybody raves about it, but in reality, while beautiful and magical, it IS really depressing to see all of the vietnamese people living in floating villages out in the bay because the ocean there is SO polluted- directly due to the tourism, their desperate “need” for tourism that leads them to destroy the water just to get one more boat of tourists out there.

at one point, the boat (”junk” as they are called) stopped so people could jump off into the water and swim around. the oil slicks and the used condom we saw earlier while kayaking kept us on the boat- i don’t need a third arm.

the “best” part- last night they highlighted halong bay on “the amazing race”… and everyone raved about how beautiful and “unspoiled” it was, blah blah blah. *rolls eyes*.

anyway, yeah… lotsa love to you both. safe travels.