While Mer was taking pics of critters, I booked a day trip to go check out Chieow Laan Lake. A little past 9am, our guide showed up and we hopped into a pickup truck and headed towards the lake.
Driving back to Faisal's house we passed this huge mural of Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the current president of the UAE the ruler of Abu Dhabi. (Or at least I think that's him. Sometimes it's hard to tell with all the beards and headwear!)
After stuffing our faces, we hopped in the rental car and headed north on the parkway! We got back to NYC a little before 7pm! Thanks so much for inviting us out, Matt!
Atlantic City is like the 90% discount-version of Vegas. All the casinos are lumped together right next to one another with hundreds of pawn shops interspersed between them.
I had to check out of my hotel at noon and realized that I had seven hours to kill in the Greater Orlando area before I had to head to the airport to catch my flight. So I used the hotel lobby's wifi to do a little interweb research and was delighted to discover that Orlando is home to a Jesus-themed Christian amusement park called "THE HOLY LAND EXPERIENCE!"
I jotted down directions and hopped in my rental, giddy about the prospect of getting to play cultural anthropologist for the day hoping to observe the not-rare-enough species fundamentalignoramus americanus in its natural habitat!
I found the right exit off the highway, but then for the life of my couldn't find the place! I was pulled over in a strip mall parking lot trying to look at the tiny map that was in my rental car's glove compartment when I saw a minivan with a "BUSH CHENEY 04" bumper sticker. Half-kidding, I decided to follow it figuring it would lead me to the "promised land," and sure enough, I-shit-you-not...
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