THE HONEYMOONERS

Neither of us are too politically inspired, but we've now met people from Ireland, Australia, London, Manchester, South Africa, Canada, Denmark, Holland and probably some other places, and the overall sentiment is that the world hates us or more sensitively said, very disappointed with us right now. Almost with trepidation do we ADMIT we are Americans. It is very very sad, and truly appears to be due to our President. As a disclaimer to those that are pro-Bush and pro-war, all we are trying to convey is that everyone aroun the world desires peace and an end to the unrest. Nobody likes war, nobody likes innocent people dying or people's children being deployed and at risk.

In fact, Emma from Amsterdam won't even visit her sister in Oregon (who married an American) until Bush is out of office. Other countries are upset at their leaders. The Mom of the Australian family we met disappointingly said that "Johnny Howard is up Bush's bum" and her 17-yr old son told us that "we've fought four wars for you guys." The people from England say that Blair is Bush's little do-boy basically, and they are not happy either.

It wasn't until we got on a ferry headed to Ko Phangan, where we are now, awaiting the Full Moon Party on the 12th, that we met another family, this time from Sweden, who loved America - Manhattan, D.C., the food etc. Honestly, never before have we been so relieved because up til then, we were traveling the world feeling wrongfully like villains. And last night, we sat around coincedentally with some young, fun Swedes playing Jenga, hangin, and having fun.

On a trip like this, you quickly learn that the opening pleasantry of "How are you" is replaced with "Where are you from" and from that usually stems some sort of political banter if the conversation gets that far. We obviously didn't expect this, but are getting used to it. Unfortunately, neither of us care too much for politics nor are too well-versed in the subject. But we are adapting andI think have done a good job of disarming those with contempt for our government and the global mess that is perceived to be all our fault. "We don't like war either, we don't like Bush, etc."

We apologize if we hurt anybody's feelings and definitely do not want to initiate some type of political commentary on our blog because we LOVE all our readers, but we wanted to let everyone know what we have experienced thus far. And to that, not one American have we met. Not one. We thought yesterday maybe, but the kids ended up from Canada and one of them threw out some stat that the U.S. has the least amount of passports issued, something like 18% of population. Who knows if that is true, but what is true is that we are having an awesome time on this island meeting fun, chill people from literally all around the world. Holla.

Below is the link to some more pictures. Hope it works. I just sat here for 1 1/2 hr uploading. You shouldn't have to log in to view the slideshow.

http://www.kodakgallery.com/ShareLandingSignin.jsp?Uc=gs6bou3.2hmzbj3j&Uy=cbscos&Upost_signin=Slideshow.jsp%3Fmode%3Dfromshare&Ux=0