City by the River

Okay, I am just going to go ahead and warn you, this is going to be a long blog with a lot of pictures!  So, I've been delaying writing a blog about our recent travels because I wanted to make a video and just post it, but quite frankly, I have felt overwhelmed by the task of making a video so I thought to just write a post.  Unfortunately, when I went to my photos to narrow them down and figure out which ones to blog, I was overwhelmed by the sheer amount of photos I had to sort through.  The result, I am going to write two blogs and both will have a tremendous amount of photos and information :)  I have decided to start from the back and work my way forwards, so we're starting with the last leg of our trip, our possible future city (because lets be honest, that's what you want to hear about the most anyway right?).

We stayed for three nights in this city.  We were all by ourselves so we didn't have anyone to show us around or explain the currency or how things work in this city/country, so we really did just get an initial first impression of things, so when we go back for another visit, we'll have a better grasp on things and be able to explore the city better.

We were on foot, so most of the things we got to see where right around our hotel, but to be perfectly honest, we didn't do a whole lot of walking either because the moment you step foot outside your hotel men storm you wanting to know if you want to take a taxi or a carriage ride or a boat ride or buy something from their store.  And they do not just let you go when you tell them no, they walk next to you for five minutes or more telling you why you should take the ride and don't you want to know how much it cost and if you ride with them you won't have anyone hassling you (hello, we're not going to get in your carriage now that you've been hassling us for 10 minutes!).  It was definitely a testing and trying experience especially since these people are from our pg.

On the positive side though, once we got out of the carriage/taxi area, the local people didn't hassle us at all!  No one stared at me or hooted and hollered (quite the change of pace from our current city) and everyone was extremely friendly (granted a lot of times they just wanted a tip, but they were friendly none the less).  In our city now, I get lots of "wow," "oh my god," and comments like that, but in this city, Andrew got "you are a lucky man," and I got "my Queen."  I'll take a lucky man and my queen any day over the stuff I get here :)

Okay, without further ado, the pictures:

Andrew and I at 4:30 in the morning getting ready for our Hot Air Balloon ride!

Fire them up!

I'm not sure how much you can see in these two pictures (above), but these men are from our pg

Sunrise

Because there is a river in the middle of the city, there is a distinct line of irrigation

The bridge to cross the river is I think 15 to 20 minutes up river, so you have to take a boat or ferry to get across.  I think the more populous side is the other side, what do you think?

There's a city, but there are all these small groupings of houses in all directions up and down the river.

From the top of our hotel

On the river, these are the little boats people take across.

Well, that's all.  Hopefully you enjoyed and stuck around for all of it :)  Next time we go back we're going to get a rental car and that will help us explore even more!