I’m sitting here eating “natural frozen yogurt” at Red Mango—a trendy new dessert shop that sells all-natural yogurt in the frozen form. I’m hoping the good bacteria and probiotics that comes in cultured milk can curb the gastronomic blow-up that is currently bubbling in my tummy.

My stomach is vainly fighting a losing battle with the St. Bernard size of a hot dog I ate earlier for lunch.

For most of my body-conscience life I’ve shunned this American sausage, fearing the composition of pork butt, hooves, stomach lining and whatever other body part grinded sealed in a skin-like casing made of sheep’s intestine is the worst thing for my body and jeans size.

Many times I would haughtily fold my arms and turn up my nose to a warm hot dog offered to me, whether it be a ball game, church BBQ, or camping trip.

But about two or three years ago, in an event I can’t remember, in a moment when my hypoglycemia must have been at an all-time low, a juicy, plump frankfurter unconsciously passed my lips, and flavor of cooked swine flooded my taste buds, and I was instantly hooked.

I had no idea these hot dogs tasted so good.

From then on pork chops, ham sandwitches, and crispy bacon have become regulars in my diet. Oh, how I love my bacon crispy.

But despite the excitement of this new romance, these items have often pushed my stomach’s peaceful equilibrium off balance.

For years I avoided pork foods for their volatile risk of abhorrently high amounts of saturated fat and eclectic mash-up of what you thought were inedible body parts. But with power-packed flavor that starts my salivary glands’ engines just by thinking about it, I’ve ventured off track where my stomach juices have told me not to.

I should have listen because today they’re screaming at me, and I can ignore them no longer. After downing a six-inch hot dog covered with onions, peppers, and special sauce, my tummy is twisting and turning in a similar fashion I’d imagine Gumby would if he were tazed by a highway patrolman.

Neither carbonation nor Tums have been able to appease the horrific battle in my belly, but while clutching my stomach admist its roars of disconent, I saw an Activa commercial advertising the digestion benefits from live cultures in yogurt, I headed to the trendy yogurt shop.

So far, it’s working. The cool, smooth texture of cultured cow’s milk is neutralizing the acidic pains of indigestion while the live bacteria destroy its culprit.

No more hot dogs, please….at least until I feel better.

Recently, the hand of a nice young man was around my waist when it accidentally made contact with my skin. Whether he was dropping a line or making an honest assessment, he told me he has never felt softer skin in his life.

Thanks, I said. I stopped showering so much.

Hold on a minute. You don’t shower everyday?

Nope. Once every two days usually, and sometimes once every three.

The idea of not showering daily shocked him in a way that was more confusing than gross—like I was a charity stripper at the Hickville Barn Bar on weekends. It didn’t make sense.

I tried to explain that showering everyday wasn’t necessary. It strips your hair and skin of natural oils—drying it out. And not to mention the time/energy drying and styling hair, cost of shampoo products everything. It clearly balances in my favor to go granola every other day.

Still unable to convince him, I ask if I’ve ever smelled bad.

No.

Well, there ya go, then.

I always suds up when I need it.

But there is one thing on which I never cut corners: oral hygiene. I religiously floss my teeth everyday, so when I learned he rarely did, my face grimaced as if he just ate an unwrapped tootsie roll off a public bathroom floor.

I mumbled how I’d much rather push the limits on body odor than tooth decay.

And to think I’ve kissed that mouth.

He flosses now—every OTHER day.

Crickets. That’s all I heard when I went to my site to see how my recent post looked. It looks so alone, with so much time elapsed since the last one was posted, and even more time since someone read one.

And crickets all I hear in my head—chirping their rhythmic chirp—echoing in the vast emptiness that currently occupies my brain.

There is only one way to kill them. Write everyday. It’s the only pesticide that will kill the locus of the brain, aka writer’s block. It’ll sting—at least until the words start to flow again.

So fasten your seatbelts, datejenny readers, you’ll have something (almost) everyday from here on out.

**So this is the third-person voice that used to give you datejenny.com readers tips on dating Jenny. I’m back again. First tip of the comeback: if you want to date Jenny, give her something to write about on datejenny.com.

Hello? Heelloooo? Anyone there? Guess not. Serves me right. People stop listening when you stop talking. I haven’t written a blog post in about 4 months. The datejenny Web page is boarded up and overran by weeds like a foreclosed house in suburban Detroit.

My mind feels fat and out of shape like a Biggest Loser loser, and every time I try to motivate myself, I find some lame activity to do first: organizing my books by color, scavenging my parent’s cars for loose change to stuff into coin rolls, or looking up words that end in “uek” for my next online Scrabble move.

I’ve let my brain go so much that it doesn’t fit into it’s “writing jeans” anymore…and instead it hides away in stretchy sweatpants and oversized college t-shirts day after day, stuffing itself with “Lost” theories and daily celebrity quotes from People.com, only wishing it were donning those fabulous skinny jeans of a successful mutant/vampire/zombie novelist it dreams of someday wearing.

I’m not sure how to kickstart a brain diet and fitness plan—and get my ten datejenny.com reader’s back. A few have emailed me asking what happened. I make up lies saying I’m setting up a dramatic comeback to improve ratings and make money on a book about my time away from datejenny.com. I’m going to try and throw a vampire in there somewhere. They seem to make money.

But honestly, I’m out to clean things up—dig up those weeds, repaint the wood, and kick out all the sex spammers clogging my blog’s comment inbox. Datejenny.com is back on the market.

(Whew…writing these 232 words felt like my 12-minute mile run for my 5^th grade physical fitness test. Fat and slow. Let’s hope they get easier.)

I wonder what it would be like to do a Drive-Thru getaway. I’m not talking about living a Boyz-in-the-Hood fantasy and running from an inner-city gang fight; I’m talking about running away from a Drive-Thru window after you placed your order.

I considered doing this the other day after I agreed to order a raspberry milkshake at Heber City’s renowned Dairy Keen. (Not a Blizzard from another burger joint with an oddly similar name.) I originally wanted a raspberry “yogurt”-shake—but when a squeaky adolescent voice told me they no longer offered frozen yogurt, I found myself in a difficult situation: do I order a normal milkshake, even though I don’t want one? Normal people would have opted for a regular milkshake (or would have just ordered it in the first place) but I’m not normal; I’m a girl. And as a girl, I worry about fat and calories and shoes and celebrity gossip and fitting into my jeans.

With no appetizing alternative on the menu, and three other cars idling impatiently in line behind me, I reluctantly agreed to a regular raspberry milkshake. But within seconds of that decision, I felt a pit land in my second as guilt set in: an ice cream milkshake at 2:00 p.m. on a meaningless Thursday wasn’t a good enough excuse for indulgence.

Although such reasoning is illogical and out-right silly to many, especially 15-32 males with high metabolisms, it wasn’t as silly as how I was trying to plan my getaway from the drive-thru line so I wouldn’t have to pay for 800 calories I don’t need.

But the real crime I was committing was thinking frozen yogurt is any better/healthier than the real thing.
Frozen yogurt has been a mystery to many since its inception in the early 90s. It was created to help fat people “think” they are choosing a healthy substitution when they are still feeding their bodies with loads of sugar and taking step closer to Type 2 diabetes. Although this misperception was caught on early by Dr. Atkins and comedy screenwriters (see Seinfeld episode #71 titled “The Non-Fat Yogurt”), the frozen dessert still fools many.

Anyway, I didn’t run. I paid the four bucks for something I took two bites of and then dumped it on the side of the road like a gangsta would dump a dead body. I quickly sped away without ever looking back.

They’re everywhere. The streets Hanoi, Phnom Penh, and Ho Chi Minh are constantly filled with swarms of pint size motorbikes buzzing around like a mad hive defying the written rules of society. In other words, drivers don’t particularly obey traffic laws.

But after some time navigating the streets either by foot, in a tuk tuk (small carriage pulled by a motorbike), or on a motorcycle myself, I discovered there is actually some order in this chaos.

Below are some tips Jeff suggested on how to navigate the streets of Southeast Asia.

On foot.

-There is never a perfect time to cross the street, so you just have to step out into the road and pretend it’s a game of Frogger. However, you cannot make like a deer in headlights; you cannot hesitate. Suddening stopping is more dangerous than moving thru the traffic.

On motorcycle.

- Act indifferent towards other drivers on the road. If you are courteous, no one will be courteous to you.

- Do not check blind spots. For if they see that you see them, they won’t feel they need to stop.

-When passing via oncoming traffic, flashing your lights is essentially an invitation for a game of chicken, for if you flash your lights, you’re essentially communicating to the oncoming driver that won’t be the one that’s moving out of the way.

- When turning left, you do not cross the street then redirect in your own lane. Instead, turn left into oncoming traffic, staying off the side of the road until you have an opening to merge right into the correct direction of traffic.

- A horn is often used to let other motorists know where you are, so it’s used everytime you pass anything–car, kids, water buffalo. Also, there are lots of other horns you’re competing with, so the louder the better.

All of this was too much for me to take on my own, so I spent most of the time riding on the back of Jeff’s rental bike.

I did, however, finally get my own on our second-to-last day in the small beach town Mui Ne.

Other than a little bit of carbon monoxide poisoning, I’m still alive.

Cambodia. Wow. I wasn’t expecting I’d really like this place. First, the weather has been quite nice–not the sticky humidity I was preparing myself for. Granted, it’s the winter season, but the current weather is definitely increasing my affinity for the place.

For the last two days, Jeff and I have been visiting the various temples in the northwest-ish region of the country. Angkor Wat, the most famous of these temples, is considered one the world’s seven ancient wonders (Can someone actually fact check that, please? Not sure if it is, but sounds good in my post.). It’s a source of large national pride for Cambodians, and although it’s filled with tourists, you still feel like you’re experiencing the real Cambodia.

At each of the temple and ruins sites, you are immediately approached by a battallion of vendors to buy their scarves, bracelets, or meals. These vendors are often little kids who robotically repeat English phrases such as “Want a cold drink? Best price for you” until it feels like a natural sound like a bird in the trees. I express no interest in buying any trickets from them, but they all try their best to sell their products. My favorite has been a little boy who ran up and broke thru the crowd of kids around us jumping and shouting, “Buy something from me! Buy something from me!” and he didn’t even have anything to sell.

But they sure are cute kids, and with Jeff who speaks Cambodian, we can have a little more fun with them.

I would, however, love to buy something from them and send them away with a smile instead of defeat, but I don’t know if that’s the best way to do it.

While driving along a country road, passing little wooden homes with dirt floors and tin roofs, Jeff turned to me and asked, “Is it hard for you to see all this poverty?”

I said yes and no. Yes for obvious reasons–I hate seeing sickness and poor sanitary conditions. That can be hard to see. But for the most part, a lot of these kids seem very happy, and I don’t know if I want them to know a life of video games, SUVs and designer clothes. As long as they have good health, living conditions and education, they can have a meaningful life. Am I totally out of place saying this?

Anyway, I’m still trying to figure out the best way to solve the world’s problems, and the more I think thru this, the more I realize how important schools ate in these developing countries. The next day we were eating breakfast when another cute little girl of about 8 yesrs came up to us with a basket of postcards, wooden flutes, and what looked like the friendship bracelets I made as a kid. I was expecting the same mantras I had heard before, but I was delightfully surprised when she said “I’ll tell you the capital of Madagascar if you buy something from me.” It made us laugh!

The girl then asked where I was from, to which I responded America, and she told me how much she likes our new president. She then asked me what state I lived in, to which I responded Utah, and she told me the capital of Utah is Salt Lake City. Impressed, we then quizzed her on other state capitals, and she answered each one correctly (for the most part) with a big, toothy grin.

I asked her if she had made any of the items in her basket, and she shook her head. Good, I thought, the items were crap, and this girl showed a lot more potential than making cheesy souvenirs. I politely declined her last offer to buy something, and I wished her luck on her way.

But now I kind of regret not buying anything from her. For one, I don’t actually know the capital of Madagascar; and two, I like how she tried to use her education to get ahead. Maybe a purchase would have reinforced the importance of education in her mind, or maybe it would have just reinforced that tourists are just suckers for a puppy-dog face. Either way, she was pretty cute.

When you visit a place that’s full of old people, you know you’re ON the beaten path.

Right now we’re on a little cruiser in Halong Bay, a beautiful enclove in the South China Sea known for its huge limestone cliffs that shoot straight up out of the water.

I was more excited to see this place over any other on my trip here based on the pictures I saw on the Internet.
And apparently so was everyone else.

This place is packed with tourists, which is fine. There are some touristy things you just gotta do when you travel. But when I was in a long line of 70-year-old Euro-looking people wearing bright white Reebok sneakers and navy blue windbreakers waiting my turn to walk thru one of the caves within these cliffs, I realized how commercialized Vietnam has become.

I kind of I feel that because I’m carrying a backpack on my back and staying in cheap guesthomes where I have to leave the nights on at night to deter the bedbugs from coming out to feed on me while I sleep, that I deserve more of the “real” Vietnam experience over someone with a more credit on their AmEx dragging a Samsonite suitcase on wheels. But if someone with a cane can visit the same places I want to visit, I don’t feel like I’m really being that adventurous.

But I don’t know if I’m really all that gutsy. Language, standards on acceptable sanitary conditions, and my blonde hair seems to always keep me on the beaten path. Last Spring when I ws traveling South America, my Spanish helped me connect with the locals and spend time away from the “What To Do” recommendations in the guidebook. That’s not the case here.

But I’m fine with it. The Vietnamese people are very warm and friendly; I have never seen faces smile so big. Sure, some are just trying to get me to buy a used John Grisham novel from their pile of books, but I appreciate the smile nontheless.

Below is a list of some interesting things I’m noticing about Vietnam:

-Very safe. Have never sensed any eyeballs on me. Granted, I’m with a dude who is 6′5, but I imagine the consequences of attacking a tourist are pretty severe in a communist country.

-Not a lot of smokers, compared to what I’ve seen in other countries.

-This is a spa lovers paradise. Hour massages for ten bucks. Ninety minutes for $17. And they are the best massages I’ve ever had. (But the beds are awfully hard. Like sleeping on a brick. A country needs cheap massages if they sleep on stuff like this.)

-Although the traffic is crazy, they don’t drive that fast, so it doesn’t feel that dangerous really when we pass people on the opposite side of the road through oncoming traffic.

-Hanoi, and Northern Vietnam right now, is cold and dry. I’ve been freezing the last few days. Definitely needed a parka at Halong Bay.

-And some others I can’t think of right now. I’ll throw them in later.

Next I’m off to Siem Reap in Cambodia to visit the temples of Angkor Wat. My fantasy of becoming Lara Croft Tomb Raider are finally going to come true! (Movie was filmed there, if you didn’t know.)

During all this, I kept my watch on Utah time so I could log the exact amount of hours it took from leaving my garage in Park City to finding a place to sleep in Hanoi–our first stop. 36 friggin’ hours!

Whatever. I’m finally here and ready to get rolling.

First, some background info. I’m traveling here with a young man named Jeff. I met Jeff about a year and a half ago thru my BFF Kat in SLC. He’s a 26-year-old kid from Arizona who has some boring business-y job in Salt Lake (he said it, not I). Jeff and I played golf a few times the summer we met then lost touch and didn’t see each other until last June. We again played some rounds until Jeff threw out the idea of going to Vietnam. I told him don’t invite me to go, because I’ll really do it, and…well…yadda yadda yadda…here we are.

Right now I’m sitting at a cafe somewhere in the middle of the city typing away on my iPhone. It’s a totally Americanized restaurant, which I really try to avoid while abroad, but I’ve been traveling for so long, eating nothing but airline food and granola bars, that I’m anxious to eat before a hypoglycemic headache sets in. Also, I’m just not mentally ready to eat some of the sketchy stuff I’ve passed on the side of the street.

I feel I should try the local food, but I need to psyche myself up for it. Jeff, who loves the stuff, graciously agreed to settle on this cafe.

So as I’m typing right now, I’m looking out the window at this scene I feel perfectly captures what I’m feeling right now.

It’s an intersection where everything from cars, motorbikes, push-carts, bicycles and humans are all criss-crossing at once admist the noise of horns, motors, and yelling vendors.

I had to cross this street earlier (to get to the restaurant) and jeff told me the key was to not stop whatsoever in the middle of the street, for if you hesitate, you throw the caotic order of the whole system off. So I just put my head down (Actually, don’t put your head down. That would be stupid. But be unwavering in your stride) and walked steadily across the street. If I felt any deer-in-headlights reaction at the sight of an oncoming motorist, I forced myself to keep my feet moving.

This is likely a good analogy of what this brief trip to southeast Asia will be like: sheer caos. But if at any moment I feel like I’m gonna get run over, I’m just going to stay pace with my step and hope I make it across the street.

Today I’m on my way to Vietnam. For the next two weeks I’ll be touring Ho Chi Minh City, Ha Noi, Ha Long Bay, Phu Quoc island, as well as Angkor Wat and Phenom Penn in Cambodia.

My parents think I’m all-out crazy. I think it’s a slight chemical imbalance as a result of the two head injuries I sustained as a toddler because my mom was too busy supporting our family with her craft business while my dad was in med school to adequately watch me. I just point to the two huge scars on my forehead and mouth the words, “Not my fault. You should have kept a better eye on me.”

Despite my disability from child neglect, my compulsive travel may simply be an addiction to adrenaline. I get the same high jumping on an airplane that some people do jumping off one. And the more exotic the destination, the higher the jump.

So I can’t really say if this is ever going to stop. Maybe when I get really sick, or I run out of money, or when I’m finally kidnapped into the Albanian slave trade. (I hope I at least got for a high price.)

But just as the skydiver always has an inner feeling of relief and gratitude when his feet safely touch the earth, so do I when I look out the window and I see the Wasatch mountains as the plane starts it’s decent to the Salt Lake City airport. I love making it back home safely. Maybe that’s what I’m really addicted to.