Though it's really surreal to be saying that. I'd sort of decided that if I couldn't be home for Christmas, then I'd rather Christmas just didn't happen. So the original plan was to head out of Luang Prabang and go up north somewhere that most people have never heard of Christmas. But then I got sick the night of our gourmet dinner which was a bit disappointing as well. It was good and as close to gourmet as I've seen traveling, but maybe I just hyped it up in my head too much. Ah well, it was even worse the second time around when I was sick all that night, then fevered and feeling crappy all the next day and couldn't get out of bed. I'm worlds better now, eating again, fever is gone and all, though I've still got a bad head cold. Grrr. Ah well, it kept me here which is probably good because now I'm with friends for Christmas. It's just so funny in Luang Prabang because it's such a tourist town, and the locals have put up trees and laid out decoratively wrapped boxes, and hung wreaths and Santas. But it's warm here, and I'm in a Buddhist country along the Mekong river surrounded by coconut trees. My friend Gen had an interesting observation. She said even the time she spent Christmas in Hawaii still felt like Christmas, so it must be something to do with having the holiday celebrated consistently for decades in a country that makes it feel more like Christmas. Here it just feels like the glitzy material part of Christmas without the spirit, and it's sort of like just another accomodation for tourists, which granted is in itself very sweet of the Laos people.
But that said, Merry Christmas to all!! I hope you're all able to be with family and friends and feel warm and loved this holiday season. Thank you to everyone who has written their holiday greetings to me on the road. It means a lot to me to have you all here virtually if I can't be there with you physically. Take care!!
Sunday, December 25, 2005
Thursday, December 22, 2005
I'm having a marvelously Laosy time!
Never fear to all of you who worry for my liver and personal safety - I have more than learned my lesson on the local drinking customs. The funny thing is that many many of the travelers here have very similar stories, so this must be a favorite Laos local activity - get the foreingers tossed on their bad strong booze. I've moved on to a much healthier activity, cycling! I'm in Luang Prabang now, which is a nice little French colonial town wrapped up by the Mekong river. It's quaint with great architecture and lots of fancy shops and restaurants. Not exactly my cup of tea though, so we'll see how long I last here. There are several functioning wats, here, and the young monks are itching to practice their English with foriengers, even though the locals don't seem to approve much. I actually woke up at 3:30 am yesterday to go listen to the monks in their morning chants, which was totally surreal. NO ONE is up that early besides the monks. So once they finished their chants, I walked around town for an hour or so waiting for sunrise, watching the old men do their excercises (and hack their morning phlegm) and watching people set up for the morning food market. At around 6:15 or so, the novices leave the wat to collect alms, so for an hour or so before that, there are all of these women walking around with baskets of food pachages and sticky rice trying to sell to tourists so that we can "feed the monks" like they're a bunch of monkeys (insert Michael's wise-assed comment here). Against my gut instinct and better judgement, I did buy a little bit just because I didn't have any sort of offering and wanted to be prepared if I felt the need to give. However when the monks come out, it's quickly obvious that we foreigners have no part in this ritual (other than to become completely obnoxious and stick huge telephoto lenses and video cameras right up in people's faces). In Bangkok, people just walk out of houses and shopfronts to place their food offering in the monk's bowl, but here it's much more of a ritual. It's mostly older Lao, the women kneel or sit on low stools, the men stand, and all are wearing a white scarf. There is some sort of prayer to bless the food before the monks come around, and the whole thing is very ceremonial with a devout respect. Some of these little novices are only maybe 8 years old, and you've got an 80 year old man treating this little guy with great reverence.
After breakfast, a friend and I rented bicycles and cycled around some of the villages around Luang Prabang. He's very proud of having been invited to a wedding in every country that he's traveled, so I figured it could be great fun. No weddings, but it was great fun. Toward the end of the day, we ended up at a more modern wat up on a hill (built between about 1960 and 1987). It was really strange because there were paintings of the life of the Buddha circling the top of the main hall, which is normal, but then below that were what seemed to be images of hell. Circling the entire room. And they were very graphic and disturbing. Scenes of people being staked, beheaded, tossed up on rocks to break their backs, eaten alive by wild animals, and the most disturbing was a scene of dozens of people cannibalizing themselves and each other. I knew that Buddhism (at least a modern interpretation of it) included a concept of hell, but it seems that it's not a prevalent motivating concept (as it is in more evangelical protestant religion), and this wat really surprised me. I'm going to ask one of the monks here in Luang Prabang to explain it to me. Let me know if any of you folk have insight. My best estimation is that it must have something to do with the fact that the wat was built in a really turbulent political time for Laos, so it might just be a manifestation of that.
I'm excited for tonight. A few of us are going to eat at the restaurant called 3 Nagas. It was apparently written up by the NYTimes as "perhaps the best restaurant in all of Asia" and yet I can afford it. Entrees are $5 or so, so we figure we could eat our fill and have a nice bottle of wine without breaking the budget too much. It should be a unique culinary experience at the least.
After breakfast, a friend and I rented bicycles and cycled around some of the villages around Luang Prabang. He's very proud of having been invited to a wedding in every country that he's traveled, so I figured it could be great fun. No weddings, but it was great fun. Toward the end of the day, we ended up at a more modern wat up on a hill (built between about 1960 and 1987). It was really strange because there were paintings of the life of the Buddha circling the top of the main hall, which is normal, but then below that were what seemed to be images of hell. Circling the entire room. And they were very graphic and disturbing. Scenes of people being staked, beheaded, tossed up on rocks to break their backs, eaten alive by wild animals, and the most disturbing was a scene of dozens of people cannibalizing themselves and each other. I knew that Buddhism (at least a modern interpretation of it) included a concept of hell, but it seems that it's not a prevalent motivating concept (as it is in more evangelical protestant religion), and this wat really surprised me. I'm going to ask one of the monks here in Luang Prabang to explain it to me. Let me know if any of you folk have insight. My best estimation is that it must have something to do with the fact that the wat was built in a really turbulent political time for Laos, so it might just be a manifestation of that.
I'm excited for tonight. A few of us are going to eat at the restaurant called 3 Nagas. It was apparently written up by the NYTimes as "perhaps the best restaurant in all of Asia" and yet I can afford it. Entrees are $5 or so, so we figure we could eat our fill and have a nice bottle of wine without breaking the budget too much. It should be a unique culinary experience at the least.
Friday, December 16, 2005
This place rules
Yeah, so I'm in Vang Vieng, which is cool - other than the fact that all the bars and restaurants play non-stop "Friends" episodes all day and all night long, which I just can't understand. The scenery is amazing with sheer limestone cliffs everywhere on mountains jutting up from the Mekong river. I'm staying in a nice and cheap guesthouse right on the river. Today four of us hiked about 6 km out of town through a couple of teeny little villages with oxen, cattle, pigs, and dusty little kids swimming in ponds. It's a lot like rural Cambodia actually, though maybe not quite as poor. The kids all get excited to see us and run right up to say Sahbaidee!! (hello) and give us high fives and big smiles. It's funny - kids in other places ask for candy or money if they ask for anything, but all of these kids were asking for pens - way better if you ask me. So I'm going to head to the market tomorrow to get a big bag of cheap ballpoints. The hike led us up to a really cool big cave with a reclining buddha.
So yeah, three days ago, I left Bangkok on the night train to Nong Khai, then crossed the border with no troubles. Got into Vientiene midday and checked into a $1.50 dorm bed (can't beat that!) It's a dusty small city with a huge expat community, and yet it's the capital of the country - so I knew I'd like Laos immediately if that's as frantic as it gets. Yesterday, 6 of us made our way up to Vang Vieng on the local bus (after crisscrossing the city and overpaying tuk tuk drivers just to "save" money on our bus ticket ;), and here we are! I think we're going innertubing on the Mekong tomorrow, then I'm going to head up to Luang Prabang on Sunday. I'm itching to get out into the countryside where there aren't so many other travelers and just chill on the river for a few days watching the locals fish. Sounds like bliss...
So yeah, three days ago, I left Bangkok on the night train to Nong Khai, then crossed the border with no troubles. Got into Vientiene midday and checked into a $1.50 dorm bed (can't beat that!) It's a dusty small city with a huge expat community, and yet it's the capital of the country - so I knew I'd like Laos immediately if that's as frantic as it gets. Yesterday, 6 of us made our way up to Vang Vieng on the local bus (after crisscrossing the city and overpaying tuk tuk drivers just to "save" money on our bus ticket ;), and here we are! I think we're going innertubing on the Mekong tomorrow, then I'm going to head up to Luang Prabang on Sunday. I'm itching to get out into the countryside where there aren't so many other travelers and just chill on the river for a few days watching the locals fish. Sounds like bliss...
Thursday, December 15, 2005
I'm in Laos!
And so much happier now. I think that a large portion of my pissiness was due to the fact that I HATE Bangkok, I miss Darren, and I'm starting to look forward to being home. So now I'm out of Bangkok and in a cool new place hanging out with cool new people (albeit not as cool as Darren), and not looking quite as forward to going home. I'm in Vang Vieng on the Mekong river. We're going to go tubing tomorrow, then I'll probably rent a bicycle and cycle around the villages in the area. I'll write more later when I've got a bit more time but here's a heads up that I'm alive and happy :)
Monday, December 12, 2005
Darren's gone and my leech bites itch
Whah. It's all good though because I'm getting the hell out of Bangkok tomorrow and heading for Laos!!! Should be a good time. I'm just planning to take it easy and go wherever my mood takes me, making my way back south again as it gets close to Jan 5th. I don't know where I'll be for Christmas or New Year's. It's kind of weird thinking that Christmas is less than two weeks away because it's over 90 degrees here, and there's not much of a sign of the holidays. The pharmacy was playing Christmas carols yesterday, and there are the odd Christmas lights around. However, it's difficult to tell how many of those are out for Christmas or leftover from the King's Birthday. I think that I've decided to buy a whole mess of cheap bracelets to give to people, wear a santa hat, and sing carols all day to put myself in the spirit.
Onto other randomness - Darren and I had decided that it would suck more than anything to be a dog in this country. Buddhist tradition doesn't allow the killing of animals, and it seems that expense prohibits them from getting fixed. So there are dogs everywhere. Most of them are mangy and missing much of their hair, lots are lame or missing limbs, and some are really scary vicious things. I've seen more than one with really nasty hernias, and we saw what must be the absolute ugliest (unitentionally) hairless dog in the world.
An actual conversation between me and Darren in Pak Chong on the way to the train station. Me: "Wanna stop here and get some fresh pineapple for the train ride?" Darren: "Is that a dead cat?" (in the rubbish basket at the fruit stall) Me: "Um, yeah, let's just go get on the train"
So yeah, that's about it for me. I've got to get my solo groove on and get on with things here. Write to me, folks, cause it's a little lonely on this side of the world ;)
Onto other randomness - Darren and I had decided that it would suck more than anything to be a dog in this country. Buddhist tradition doesn't allow the killing of animals, and it seems that expense prohibits them from getting fixed. So there are dogs everywhere. Most of them are mangy and missing much of their hair, lots are lame or missing limbs, and some are really scary vicious things. I've seen more than one with really nasty hernias, and we saw what must be the absolute ugliest (unitentionally) hairless dog in the world.
An actual conversation between me and Darren in Pak Chong on the way to the train station. Me: "Wanna stop here and get some fresh pineapple for the train ride?" Darren: "Is that a dead cat?" (in the rubbish basket at the fruit stall) Me: "Um, yeah, let's just go get on the train"
So yeah, that's about it for me. I've got to get my solo groove on and get on with things here. Write to me, folks, cause it's a little lonely on this side of the world ;)
Saturday, December 10, 2005
Leeches suck
We've spent the last 4 days tucked peacefully away in the Khao Yai National Park, which was uber cool. Ayutthaya was really cool, too. We cycled around a bunch of the temple ruins, then hung out at the King's birthday party. The streets were full of people and killer vendor food. I finally got a nice big plate of sweet sticky rice and fresh mango that made me very happy...and lots of stuff on sticks. They even have something remarkably similar to a corn dog. So right around 9 pm or so, everyone lights up these yellow candles and sings the Thai equivalent of Happy Birthday as well as a bunch of other songs. A whole crowd of several thousand people all together in the streets, followed by fireworks, and partying into the night. It was a really neat community experience because this is one of their biggest holidays of the year.
So the next day, we made our way to Khao Yai. We caught the train in the morning to Pak Chong, and pick up to the park gates, then hitch hiked our way into the park to our campsite. That's how you get around this park, because there's not much in the way of public transportation. You can pay about $25 or more for 1 1/2 day package tours with a bunch of other white folk, or you can hoof it on your own with the Thais. Guess what we did. IT WAS SO MUCH FUN!!! The people here are super nice, and they get a big kick out of stopping to give us poor farang backpackers a ride. So we get to our campsite, set up camp, go for a hike, and sleep in our rented tent on the hard ground with just a wool blanket (we upgraded to thin foam pads and sleeping bags for the next few nights). When we got up the next morning and headed our way to the restaurant for breakfast, we said hello to a group of 10 thais who were having their morning coffee and were quickly invited to join them. So we had coffee, then breakfast with them, then hiked with the whole bunch to swim in a waterfall. This was just the first of many such invitations. It seriously got to the point where if we really wanted to go to the restaurant, hike by ourselves, or even make a trip to the bathroom, we couldn't make eye contact with ANYONE. Even to the point where we were so obviously packing and breaking down our tent to leave this morning and were invited to have coffee with another whole big group. Half our meals were with people camping near us. They're sooooo nice. It's funny too that when we got there on Wednesday, the campground was relatively empty with a dozen or so tents. Today it was shoulder to shoulder - I slept with two bits of nylon and 2 feet of space between me and the snoring dude in the tent next to us.
The macaques rule too. They were all over around our campsite and making off with stuff that people stupidly left sitting outside their tents. Sort of like marmots in Washington, but a lot smarter. For that matter, we saw tons of cool animals - birds, giant squirrels, monkeys. We didn't see the gibbons because they never come out of the trees, but its super cool to wake up in the morning to the sound of them whooping and howling to each other. We hiked on a couple of days through the monsoon rainforest, and we were the only people on the trail for most of it. It was fun - except for the freaky looking spiders and constant fear of leeches. We were hiking along on Thursday and lost the trail for a bit, jumped a stream, then were walking along a little animal track through some tall grass when I felt a sting on my ankle and looked down to see two leeches on me. I tweaked, which sent Darren tweaking, and we dropped everything to coat ourselves with DEET and rub our legs down with tobbacco. It's a trick I learned from Dan Gottschling and heard from some of the Thais here. Don't know if it works, but those are the last leech bites we got. I was also super paranoid of them after that, which may have contributed. They're nasty suckers - we had one appear out of nowhere in the candlelight on our mat last night while we were happily sipping whiskey with some of our new Thai friends.
Anyway, hiking was really cool - we were making our way along the trail when Darren suddenly stopped because there was a huge pile of fresh elephant poo on the side of the trail. Khao Yai has about 200 wild elephants living in the jungle. We didn't see any, but that pile of poo made us a little nervous about what we'd do if we did run into an elephant in the middle of nowhere. The whole experience puts hiking in a new perspective - as we were leaving the park we saw a sign that read "Beware Tiger Area", then "Beware Elephant Crossing", then "Beware Guar Territory", then "Beware Cobra Crossing". But it was really nice hiking, and all of the colorful tropical birds were awesome.
We're on our way back to Bangkok today to spend one day in the city, then Darren flys out to Seattle on Monday. Y'all have to hit him up for stories and some photos from our trip. I'm off to Laos after he leaves, so stay tuned for more stuff!!
So the next day, we made our way to Khao Yai. We caught the train in the morning to Pak Chong, and pick up to the park gates, then hitch hiked our way into the park to our campsite. That's how you get around this park, because there's not much in the way of public transportation. You can pay about $25 or more for 1 1/2 day package tours with a bunch of other white folk, or you can hoof it on your own with the Thais. Guess what we did. IT WAS SO MUCH FUN!!! The people here are super nice, and they get a big kick out of stopping to give us poor farang backpackers a ride. So we get to our campsite, set up camp, go for a hike, and sleep in our rented tent on the hard ground with just a wool blanket (we upgraded to thin foam pads and sleeping bags for the next few nights). When we got up the next morning and headed our way to the restaurant for breakfast, we said hello to a group of 10 thais who were having their morning coffee and were quickly invited to join them. So we had coffee, then breakfast with them, then hiked with the whole bunch to swim in a waterfall. This was just the first of many such invitations. It seriously got to the point where if we really wanted to go to the restaurant, hike by ourselves, or even make a trip to the bathroom, we couldn't make eye contact with ANYONE. Even to the point where we were so obviously packing and breaking down our tent to leave this morning and were invited to have coffee with another whole big group. Half our meals were with people camping near us. They're sooooo nice. It's funny too that when we got there on Wednesday, the campground was relatively empty with a dozen or so tents. Today it was shoulder to shoulder - I slept with two bits of nylon and 2 feet of space between me and the snoring dude in the tent next to us.
The macaques rule too. They were all over around our campsite and making off with stuff that people stupidly left sitting outside their tents. Sort of like marmots in Washington, but a lot smarter. For that matter, we saw tons of cool animals - birds, giant squirrels, monkeys. We didn't see the gibbons because they never come out of the trees, but its super cool to wake up in the morning to the sound of them whooping and howling to each other. We hiked on a couple of days through the monsoon rainforest, and we were the only people on the trail for most of it. It was fun - except for the freaky looking spiders and constant fear of leeches. We were hiking along on Thursday and lost the trail for a bit, jumped a stream, then were walking along a little animal track through some tall grass when I felt a sting on my ankle and looked down to see two leeches on me. I tweaked, which sent Darren tweaking, and we dropped everything to coat ourselves with DEET and rub our legs down with tobbacco. It's a trick I learned from Dan Gottschling and heard from some of the Thais here. Don't know if it works, but those are the last leech bites we got. I was also super paranoid of them after that, which may have contributed. They're nasty suckers - we had one appear out of nowhere in the candlelight on our mat last night while we were happily sipping whiskey with some of our new Thai friends.
Anyway, hiking was really cool - we were making our way along the trail when Darren suddenly stopped because there was a huge pile of fresh elephant poo on the side of the trail. Khao Yai has about 200 wild elephants living in the jungle. We didn't see any, but that pile of poo made us a little nervous about what we'd do if we did run into an elephant in the middle of nowhere. The whole experience puts hiking in a new perspective - as we were leaving the park we saw a sign that read "Beware Tiger Area", then "Beware Elephant Crossing", then "Beware Guar Territory", then "Beware Cobra Crossing". But it was really nice hiking, and all of the colorful tropical birds were awesome.
We're on our way back to Bangkok today to spend one day in the city, then Darren flys out to Seattle on Monday. Y'all have to hit him up for stories and some photos from our trip. I'm off to Laos after he leaves, so stay tuned for more stuff!!
Monday, December 05, 2005
I am queen of the road!!!
Well, maybe just a 100 m stretch of flat paved road with no traffic, but still... We rented another motobike in Sukothai to get around the temples there, and Darren gave me a driving lesson. I didn't get above second gear, and I did almost run through a fence and into a pasture, but all in all it wasn't so bad. The almost running off the road part is because someone brilliantly designed these things so that the gas and brake are on the same handlebar, so when I went to pull the break, I didn't do such a good job and pulled the gas instead. But I managed to calmly get myself stopped, switched into neutral, and backed away from the side of the road. Not too bad for a first lesson. It's going to come in handy in Laos if I can get comfortable driving one of those because it gives you so much more freedom to get away from other travelers. We took a nice little side road through a village along the canal, and I love the looks on people's faces when they realize we're foreigners. They get so excited to see us here and give us great big grins.
We're in Ayutthaya today, going to rent bicycles and cycle around to see the temple ruins here. Today is the king's birthday too, so there's all sorts of pomp and circumstance around the whole country. There's going to be a great big street party right around the corner from our guesthouse with fireworks and everything, so we're going to whoop it up with the locals tonight ;) Wish the whole country celebrated MY birthday ;)
We're in Ayutthaya today, going to rent bicycles and cycle around to see the temple ruins here. Today is the king's birthday too, so there's all sorts of pomp and circumstance around the whole country. There's going to be a great big street party right around the corner from our guesthouse with fireworks and everything, so we're going to whoop it up with the locals tonight ;) Wish the whole country celebrated MY birthday ;)
Friday, December 02, 2005
We got our shop on!
Chiang Mai is a pretty cool place. Darren and I spent yesterday on a Wat tour of the city - just walking around all day, saying "no" to every befuddled driver who wanted to take us somewhere and couldn't understand why we "with all out money" would want to walk. We stopped at Wat Chedi Luang and had a "Monk Chat". Seriously - you just walk up to these monks sitting under a tree with a sign that says "monk chat - free" and start chatting away about whatever. So we did for awhile. The guy was really nice, and he and his monk buddies were giving Darren Thai tongue twisters to practice his intonation and pronounciation. It was pretty funny. We went by Wat Pra Singh where the school kids were all in service for the holiday (it's the King's birthday this week). It was really cool listening to the monks chant - it's still one of the eeriest and skin tingling sounds, I think. The kids were just like kids in any church anywhere - listening to headphones, giggling and talking, taking pictures of each other with their camera phones, sleeping. It was really funny.
We spent the last two nights at the night bazaar and got a good bit of our christmas/souvenir shopping done. I've been on a pretty big shop fest this whole trip, but it's SOOOO cheap. I think the most I've spent on anything is about $12. But then again, we're not going for high end antiques and original artwork, either. It's nice stuff, though, and I've gotten my bargaining skills honed here :) Too bad there's no car or house shopping on my horizons. We're in Sukothai now, and we're going to spend the next couple of days cycling around ruins. Darren's only got 9 days left before he leaves, and still so much more to see!
We spent the last two nights at the night bazaar and got a good bit of our christmas/souvenir shopping done. I've been on a pretty big shop fest this whole trip, but it's SOOOO cheap. I think the most I've spent on anything is about $12. But then again, we're not going for high end antiques and original artwork, either. It's nice stuff, though, and I've gotten my bargaining skills honed here :) Too bad there's no car or house shopping on my horizons. We're in Sukothai now, and we're going to spend the next couple of days cycling around ruins. Darren's only got 9 days left before he leaves, and still so much more to see!
Wednesday, November 30, 2005
Harrumph
I'm having an "I want to be home" day. 95% of the people who you meet out here and really great, or at least totally innocuous. Then every once in awhile there is someone who just *really* gets under your skin. We rented a motobike on Monday at 5 pm for 120 baht per day and the guy said yes it would be fine for us to turn it in Wednesday morning. So we went to return it this morning, and he's humming and hawing over some scratches and thinks that we had an accident (which we didn't) and all of a sudden he wants payment for another full day because we didn't return it at 5 pm the night before. I argued saying that he had agreed that we could turn it in the morning, and at most we'd pay for an extra half day since we did keep it overnight, but he got all pissy, stopped talking to us, and pointed out the fact that he's keeping Darren's passport hostage, so pay or else. That just sucks, you know? It happens here all the time where people see dollar signs and know that they can weasle more out of you. And the reason we'd gone there in the first place was because the first shop we went to took our money and said wait half an hour, then 5 minutes more, then another half an hour. Because they told us we could rent a bike, but they didn't actually have any. They were making us wait, hoping that one would come in. Then said we could take an upgrade, but we'd have to pay more for it - never mind the fact that they'd kept us waiting so long already. So I got our money back and we went to grumpy man (who wasn't grumpy that night). But on the flip side, the woman running our bungalow is really really cool and hooked us up with coffee and bannanas this morning and gave us little parting gifts and lots of hugs and kisses. She's super super cool, and I'm trying my best not to let the old fart ruin my happiness for this morning.
Yesterday on the moto was really awesome. Darren's my hero. We went about 90 km yesterday - round trip to Sappong and back. It was a beautiful drive, and I wish we'd been able to spend more time in Sappong because it's an adorable little town. It took a lot longer to get over there than I thought it would because we had to go up over a mountain pass, and the road was being worked on for a long stretch of it. Lots of loose gravelly stuff on a steep road that was kind of difficult to navigate. But even though Darren hadn't driving a moto for about 15 years, he managed just fine.
We're doing out best to make it back to Chiang Mai today. The local bus costs just 70 baht and takes the same amount of time as the 160 baht private minibuses. The unfortunate thing is that there is NO orderly way of getting on this bus - the bus pulls in, everyone crams on, and if you don't make it, you don't make it. So we missed the one this morning, even though we were there way before most of the rest. We were even willing to stand in the aisle, but then a group of 6 french folk jumped on and the bus was crammed full to the point where they were standing in the stair well. For 4 hours. Now we know to shove up to the bus and hop on, hope to actually get a seat, then worry about our bags later. Wish us luck!
Yesterday on the moto was really awesome. Darren's my hero. We went about 90 km yesterday - round trip to Sappong and back. It was a beautiful drive, and I wish we'd been able to spend more time in Sappong because it's an adorable little town. It took a lot longer to get over there than I thought it would because we had to go up over a mountain pass, and the road was being worked on for a long stretch of it. Lots of loose gravelly stuff on a steep road that was kind of difficult to navigate. But even though Darren hadn't driving a moto for about 15 years, he managed just fine.
We're doing out best to make it back to Chiang Mai today. The local bus costs just 70 baht and takes the same amount of time as the 160 baht private minibuses. The unfortunate thing is that there is NO orderly way of getting on this bus - the bus pulls in, everyone crams on, and if you don't make it, you don't make it. So we missed the one this morning, even though we were there way before most of the rest. We were even willing to stand in the aisle, but then a group of 6 french folk jumped on and the bus was crammed full to the point where they were standing in the stair well. For 4 hours. Now we know to shove up to the bus and hop on, hope to actually get a seat, then worry about our bags later. Wish us luck!
Monday, November 28, 2005
Elephants rule
We're in Pai which is awesome. We were only planning to spend one day here, and it looks like it's turning into three. We met two Thai gals from Chiang Mai on the bus to Pai, which turned out to be our great fortune, because the town was all booked up, and we depended on their fluency to help us find a place to crash. So we're in the sweet little bungalow over the river on the other side of town and love it. This is a funny place - about every 2 years the river floods massively and wipes out a huge section of town and many of the tourist bungalows, but then they just rebuild and wait for the next big flood. The woman who runs our place is awesome - her name is Annie, and she's just one of those sweet tough gals who knows how to run the show. We spent yesterday walking all around town, and when my ankle swelled and looked like crap, we decided to head to the local hospital. $7 later, I've seen a doctor and am now on some sort of cillin to kill my unwanted flora. Yay.
Today we told Annie that we wanted to find a nice and humane place where we could ride elephants for awhile, so she called up a friend of hers who came to pick us up and took her back to her elephant camp. They've got two, a big mamma, and her little baby. Well, little by elephant standards at least. Still frickin huge, though. So for an hour, we rode around in the jungle on this bench tied to mamma's back. Then we went back and they took the chair off so that we could ride bare back. It's tough to wrap your legs around one of those behemoths. We rode around over the road, in the valley, past some water buffalo, through some fields, and to the Mae Pai river. We road out into the river for a bit, then one of the guys took my camera and glasses, so I knew something was up. The guy with us on mamma got her to kneel down in the water, then she rolled off onto her side and tossed us into the river. We managed to crawl back up again, and off she tossed again. And again. And again. She seemed to think that this was great fun :) Sweet thing - she kept poking at me with her trunk, and I splashed water in her face. She loved the water. She'd roll off onto her side and submerge her whole head under the river. So that's our big giardia exposure for the trip ;) On the way back to the camp, they had Darren hop off of mamma and jump onto baby. After about 5 attempts, he managed to clamber up onto her, and the two of us rode back sitting up behind our respective elephant's heads. It was cool. Mamma kept whacking me with her big assed ears.
We're going to hop on a little Honda Dream and get some sightseeing done this evening, imbibe some cheap Thai whiskey, then get up in the morning to get ourselves lost in the countryside. Should be lots of fun!!!
Today we told Annie that we wanted to find a nice and humane place where we could ride elephants for awhile, so she called up a friend of hers who came to pick us up and took her back to her elephant camp. They've got two, a big mamma, and her little baby. Well, little by elephant standards at least. Still frickin huge, though. So for an hour, we rode around in the jungle on this bench tied to mamma's back. Then we went back and they took the chair off so that we could ride bare back. It's tough to wrap your legs around one of those behemoths. We rode around over the road, in the valley, past some water buffalo, through some fields, and to the Mae Pai river. We road out into the river for a bit, then one of the guys took my camera and glasses, so I knew something was up. The guy with us on mamma got her to kneel down in the water, then she rolled off onto her side and tossed us into the river. We managed to crawl back up again, and off she tossed again. And again. And again. She seemed to think that this was great fun :) Sweet thing - she kept poking at me with her trunk, and I splashed water in her face. She loved the water. She'd roll off onto her side and submerge her whole head under the river. So that's our big giardia exposure for the trip ;) On the way back to the camp, they had Darren hop off of mamma and jump onto baby. After about 5 attempts, he managed to clamber up onto her, and the two of us rode back sitting up behind our respective elephant's heads. It was cool. Mamma kept whacking me with her big assed ears.
We're going to hop on a little Honda Dream and get some sightseeing done this evening, imbibe some cheap Thai whiskey, then get up in the morning to get ourselves lost in the countryside. Should be lots of fun!!!
Saturday, November 26, 2005
I think I have leprosy
Something nasty has gotten ahold of me. I have a blister on the back of my left ankle, a mosquito bite on the front of my right ankle, and a zit on my face that are all nasty infected. And two lymph nodes under my chin that are painfully swollen. There must be something awful in the water down in Pi Pi and Phuket, because I've never had this happen before. I've been using lots of neosporin, but I think I need to hit up a pharmacy for something stronger. Darren says I'm still pretty, and the one on my face can be mistaken for a beauty mark. I think he's lying, and I look like i have a hiddeous Siamese twin - one I'm not thrilled about, contrary to what you all might believe ;) I'm causing small children to run in fright. Anyway, we're in Chiang Mai waiting for the bus to Pai. I'd hoped to catch the 2pm bus, but it's full, so we're waiting for the 4 pm bus. Killing a bit of time meanwhile. The flights were alright - though we were delayed leaving Phuket, which put us even later getting into Bangkok. Flying was definitely better than the 24 hour train alternative, but it still took us longer to get up here than I'd have liked. Ah well - I'm just ready to wake up tomorrow morning and cycle through the hills around Pai. It sounds like it's going to be a lovely place, and it's been a few days since we've been able to just enjoy where we are.
Friday, November 25, 2005
Snorking fun
So we went for a hike up to the view point on Koh Pi Pi the other day, which was BEAUTIFUL. It's a really amazing island, even if it's over developed for our tastes. While we were up there, we ran into a couple of french canadian gals who were staying down on To Koh beach in a sweet little bungalow so we hiked down to that side of the island to check it out. Perfect! There were only 18 bungalows, a restaurant, and a bar that was more like this Kansas city/Huntington beach dude's private house party than an actual bar. He opens when people show up and closes when the last person leaves - apparently sometimes at 6 am. So for the next night (we'd already paid for a second night in town) we reserved a 500 baht ($12) bungalow that opens out onto the beach and moved over there the next morning. The access is either by an hour hike over the "mountain" or by longtail boat taxi. The boats in town generally won't take people there because the super cool family who runs the place won't pay the commissions, which is part of why we didn't hear about it before when everyone told us the entire island was booked up or super expensive. The boat ride is quite a trip, too. These are just little wooden boats, maybe 20 feet long at the most, and it was super windy since a storm was blowing through. We and all of our belongings got pretty soaked, but it was fun. The boat captains are pros at this thing, and laughed their asses off at us the entire way.
We also took a sunset snorkelling (snorking in Thai ;) cruise over to Koh Pi Pi Leh which is the relatively uninhabited second island of Pi Pi. There are some native folk who live in the caves and collect swallows nests to sell for birdsnest soup, but it's otherwise a national park. It's beautiful! I didn't snorkel much because the water was too choppy, but I did see some of the most amazing tropical fish - huge pink and turqouis things dozens of others. This is paradise for all your diving types. We moved over into Maya Bay, but only for a short bit, so I didn't snorkel much more. Darren decided to swim out to the boat, so he got to see a lot more and fell in love with the whole thing. It's too bad that we didn't get to do more, but the sun was setting. We'll definitely be back here someday, though - it's so beautiful.
We're catching a flight back to bangkok tonight, then on to Chang Mai in the morning. I think we're going to try to bus straight from there to a little town called Pai, and use that as our base to hike or cycle around some of the hilltribe villages. You can pay guides to take you trekking, but everyone does there - therefore I don't want to do that :) So we're going to try to find some of those places that don't get busloads of foreigners.
We also took a sunset snorkelling (snorking in Thai ;) cruise over to Koh Pi Pi Leh which is the relatively uninhabited second island of Pi Pi. There are some native folk who live in the caves and collect swallows nests to sell for birdsnest soup, but it's otherwise a national park. It's beautiful! I didn't snorkel much because the water was too choppy, but I did see some of the most amazing tropical fish - huge pink and turqouis things dozens of others. This is paradise for all your diving types. We moved over into Maya Bay, but only for a short bit, so I didn't snorkel much more. Darren decided to swim out to the boat, so he got to see a lot more and fell in love with the whole thing. It's too bad that we didn't get to do more, but the sun was setting. We'll definitely be back here someday, though - it's so beautiful.
We're catching a flight back to bangkok tonight, then on to Chang Mai in the morning. I think we're going to try to bus straight from there to a little town called Pai, and use that as our base to hike or cycle around some of the hilltribe villages. You can pay guides to take you trekking, but everyone does there - therefore I don't want to do that :) So we're going to try to find some of those places that don't get busloads of foreigners.
Tuesday, November 22, 2005
He finally did it :)
Big news from the two of us. Darren proposed last night. Don't ask us when the big day will be because we're not as on top of things as Josh and Kate, and it'll take some time to let our lives settle down after my move and his big things going on. As soon as we've had a chance to talk about things more, we'll let you know when and where it's going to be. He was very sweet - we made it to Koh Pi Pi yesterday after 13 hours on a train, 3 hours on a bus, and 2 hours on a boat. We got checked into a nice, but cheap place (no bungalow for us on this island - too expensive), and had a great dinner. After dinner, we found a nice quiet stretch of beach, and he suddenly just about stopped breathing, so I knew it was coming. He gave me a sweet little silver band to substitute for the real thing, which is safely in Seattle (and beautiful - he brought pictures :)
We're going for a hike around the island today and snorkelling this afternoon. This place is paradise, even after the tsunami, though about half of the island is still under reconstruction. I can't think of anything else to say right now, but I knew you'd all want to hear the big news. This is also how I'm going to find out just who is reading this thing ;)
We're going for a hike around the island today and snorkelling this afternoon. This place is paradise, even after the tsunami, though about half of the island is still under reconstruction. I can't think of anything else to say right now, but I knew you'd all want to hear the big news. This is also how I'm going to find out just who is reading this thing ;)
Sunday, November 20, 2005
We saw Harry Potter in Thailand
Yep. Last night, Darren and I made our way to a theater in Bangkok and saw the new Harry Potter movie. I'm pretty sure we were the only foreigners in the theater. The leadup to movies in Thailand is worse than it is in the states, which is already not good. 10 minutes of commercials, followed by 20 minute of previews. Seriously, you might as well not even walk into the theater until 20 minutes after the ticket says it starts. But you can't wait too long, or you risk walking in during the royal anthem and respects to the king, which is played before every film in Thailand. The movie was great for any of you who haven't seen it, yet. The fourth book was my favorite, so I'd been waiting for this one. We've got our tickets booked to get out of Bangkok tonight - headed off to Krabi, then maybe to one of the islands for a few days. Alright, this is too distracting. I should have written this blog while Darren was busy doing his email because now he's sitting outside the window making silly faces at me, and I can't remember any of what I meant to write when I sat down. Later!
Friday, November 18, 2005
Darren is here!! ;)
He flew in this morning, and we're just toodling around on the internet now waiting out the afternoon rain. It's so nice to have him here. And sort of surreal in a way, too. We're going to spend a couple of days here in Bangkok, then we're going to head down to Ko Phi Phi for some R&R in a nice little bungalow somewhere. Wheee!!
Alright, quick recap of my China impressions: basically it's a country with a huge identity crisis because the Chinese seem to constantly measure themselves by what others think. So the current trend is to be Western. Most of the country looks like it was built in the last 10 years or so, though you can still catch glimpses of some of the old communist blocks if you're paying attention. But they still don't seem to know quite what to do with all the new, fancy, shiny stuff. I met a very nice guy on the Yangtze boat trip who speaks great english and is a fellow biologist. He wrote me a long, frustrated email today about his fellow countrymen and their hiddeous manners, which really are bad. The hacking and spitting everywhere, the foul toilets, tossing litter into the river next to a perfectly good trash can, smoking 2 packs of 25 mg cigarettes per day, etc etc. If you ever get a chance to come to China, pay attention when you fly over the country. It really is the thick brown smog of somewhere like LA, only spread out over the ENTIRE country. I got a cold the other day that turned into an upper respiratory infection, and it's gone since being in the "clean" air of bangkok.
BUT all of that may be set to change really soon. China is going through some major growing pains in the process of revamping its international image. In the wake of the 2008 Olympics, 5 million households are receiving free "etiquiette" manuals teaching things like how to que up in a line, not to spit on people (accidentally or on purpose), and how long an appropriate handshake should last. It sounds funny, and at first I thought "but that's just how china is, and if people go there, they should expect to see the Chinese for who they are". They're dear sweet people, in general, who are really friendly and helpful, curious, and eager to learn as much as they can from all of us. But after 10 days in China, I'm thinking it's not such a bad idea after all :)
One last funny thing - there really is no concept of a lineup in China. So I was waiting with a gal named Claire to board my air asia flight from Xiamen to Bangkok. When it's time to board, a hundre chinese folk rush to the gate and stand three wide, chest to back for a good 10 minutes before they even opened the gate to let people through. Air Asia is one of these budget airlines that doesn't give seat assignements, so I thought they were all rushing to get good window or aisle seats, or get family together. So Claire and I line up last with the few Thai people who were also not about to join in the Chinese mosh pit. We get on the plane, and it looks full - the few empty seats were being saved for people who hadn't made it to the gate yet. Then I looked up to the back of the plane - the last HALF of the plane was EMPTY. So Claire and I each ended up with a row of three seats to ourselves with no one in front or in back of us, so we could stretch out as much as we wanted. Im sort of surprised the plane didn't nose dive from being so front heavy.
More later on our big Thai adventures!
Alright, quick recap of my China impressions: basically it's a country with a huge identity crisis because the Chinese seem to constantly measure themselves by what others think. So the current trend is to be Western. Most of the country looks like it was built in the last 10 years or so, though you can still catch glimpses of some of the old communist blocks if you're paying attention. But they still don't seem to know quite what to do with all the new, fancy, shiny stuff. I met a very nice guy on the Yangtze boat trip who speaks great english and is a fellow biologist. He wrote me a long, frustrated email today about his fellow countrymen and their hiddeous manners, which really are bad. The hacking and spitting everywhere, the foul toilets, tossing litter into the river next to a perfectly good trash can, smoking 2 packs of 25 mg cigarettes per day, etc etc. If you ever get a chance to come to China, pay attention when you fly over the country. It really is the thick brown smog of somewhere like LA, only spread out over the ENTIRE country. I got a cold the other day that turned into an upper respiratory infection, and it's gone since being in the "clean" air of bangkok.
BUT all of that may be set to change really soon. China is going through some major growing pains in the process of revamping its international image. In the wake of the 2008 Olympics, 5 million households are receiving free "etiquiette" manuals teaching things like how to que up in a line, not to spit on people (accidentally or on purpose), and how long an appropriate handshake should last. It sounds funny, and at first I thought "but that's just how china is, and if people go there, they should expect to see the Chinese for who they are". They're dear sweet people, in general, who are really friendly and helpful, curious, and eager to learn as much as they can from all of us. But after 10 days in China, I'm thinking it's not such a bad idea after all :)
One last funny thing - there really is no concept of a lineup in China. So I was waiting with a gal named Claire to board my air asia flight from Xiamen to Bangkok. When it's time to board, a hundre chinese folk rush to the gate and stand three wide, chest to back for a good 10 minutes before they even opened the gate to let people through. Air Asia is one of these budget airlines that doesn't give seat assignements, so I thought they were all rushing to get good window or aisle seats, or get family together. So Claire and I line up last with the few Thai people who were also not about to join in the Chinese mosh pit. We get on the plane, and it looks full - the few empty seats were being saved for people who hadn't made it to the gate yet. Then I looked up to the back of the plane - the last HALF of the plane was EMPTY. So Claire and I each ended up with a row of three seats to ourselves with no one in front or in back of us, so we could stretch out as much as we wanted. Im sort of surprised the plane didn't nose dive from being so front heavy.
More later on our big Thai adventures!
Tuesday, November 15, 2005
I survived the Yangtze river
I am once again writing from one of the nicest internet cafes in the world. And it's only 25 cents an hour, well, plus the $1.25 weird assed "apple juice" that ended up being some sort of warm milky green apple thingy. Not so bad, really.
Since I last wrote I have recovered from whatever food-borne sickness I contracted, hopped a bus from Yangshou to Guilin, then a flight from Guilin to Chongqing. As soon as we arrive in the airport, we were hit up by a woman trying to book us on a boat down the river, which is what we were in Chongqing to do, so convenient! The boats have first class (two beds, private bath), second class (4 beds private bath), and third class (6-8 beds private bath). This isn't as bad as some of the boats in Vicky's book that go as low as 5th class where you're sharing a toilet with 50 other people and have to fight for phlegm-free space on the floor for you and your bamboo mat. She told us that second class was full (which we later found to be a mistruth - she was trying to get us to book first class, which was about $200), so we surprised her by booking third class (for $80 including three entrance fees). We pay our deposit, she puts us in a van with one of the SCARIEST drivers in this part of the world, and we whiz off to drop the other passengers at their hotels. Since we didn't have enough money for the whole ticket, he took us to a Bank of China, but since it was an active construction site, we didn't want to get out of the van. So our comes his cell phone for the first of three calls to the woman to deal with the silly foreign girls who don't speak Chinese. We manage our way to the travel office, pay the balance on the boat, book a train and one flight for me, but I still had one more flight to book (and no money left to pay cash because NO ONE here takes frickin VISA!!)
So we went downtown to load up on enough snacks to feed an army, get cash, and gorge ourselves on McDonalds. I know, I know. I ordinarily wouldn't touch the stuff. But you know how good Chinese food is at home - well it's not like that in China. I'm losing some serious weight here, but will soon be back in Thailand to bulk it back up again ;) Anyway, so we finish our shopping and go to get a taxi, except that by this time, half of the 2 billion people in China are in the downtown area, and they're all literally throwing themselves in front of cabs. So after 20 frustrating minutes, I decide to do the same and successfully get the attention of one of the many female cabbies in Chine, only to be cut off by some dude. So I'm right behind him whinning "please please please, I don't speak chinese, and you could easily get another taxi, please please please." I don't think he understood a word of that, but he turned around and gave me the "okay crazy lady" look, and we got our cab!
We get back to the travel office, and the woman doesn't want to book my flight yet - instead we're supposed to rest. So over an hour later and 3 more attempts to get her to book my flight (from Xian to Xiamen to catch my already booked flight from Xiamen to Bangkok), a guy in the office is trying to usher us to the bus that will take us to the boat. So I flipped out, she finally realized that for the last hour I wasn't nagging her to get on the boat, but I needed my frickin flight, so she took my passport, and booked my flight by cell phone en route to some other travel office. Sweet!
We get to the docks with hundreds of Chinese tourist folk, and we're walking down this creepy dark stairway to the water, then across a totally rickety scary walkway that's just a bunch of metal planks spanning from floating platform to floating platform, and the river is RUSHING all around us. We both tweaked out when we saw what we thought was the ship, but fortunately it was just the docking platform. The lobby of the ship was pretty nice, so we thought, whew, we got lucky...until we got to our room. It's a 6 berth, me Vicky, three Chinese men, one chinese woman, and a two year old boy. Six bunks only four inches wider than my shoulder width with an inch thick mattress, a desk with a TV, and a TEENSY bathroom that was just big enough for a squatter and a sink. And it smelled. And it got worse over the next two days.
So we nearly cried, panicked for a bit, thought about trying to upgrade but didn't have the money between us, then decided to just tough it out and see how bad it was. Pretty bad. One of the men was smoking in the room, and gave me a snarky look when I asked him not to - the old woman looked absolutely astonished that I as a woman would have the balls to ask a man not to smoke. The lot of them ate every meal in the cabin, and as far as we could tell only left twice in the entire two days, so it ended up FULL of rubbish and SMELLY. To add to that, the woman was dumping the remaining contents of cup o noodles down the squatter (fortunately it never overflowed), and washing the cups to reuse. And since we could NEVER get the room to ourselves, changing was not an option, and I wore and slept in the same clothes for three days. My hair is nice and healthy though after the grease buildup. It made me really happy that I'd grown it out long enough to pull into a ponytail cause otherwise I would've gone mad. And, with the help of our Australian friends, we discovered an unmarked door in the hallway that was a broom closet with a squatter. MUCH cleaner and nicer than the one in our room, which is saying a lot since the sink was full of brown water. And the light was out, so I had to wear my headlamp while doing my business in a broom closet that was bigger than the bathroom in my designated cabin. Go figure. At least it gave the Chinese folk a better reason to stare at me when I came climbing out of the broom closet ;)
Speaking of which - this seems to be the national sport - tourist watching. Four of us were up on deck on day when three old men came up and TURNED THEIR CHAIRS to face us. Away from the beautiful scenery rolling past and directly at us. It was entertaining - so we just stared back for an hour or so :) The scenery really was fantastic. And the whole trip was so worth everything that we had to go through to get here. The Chinese tourists are a sight all to their own - watching the men all dressed in suits and people posing for very serious portrait-type photos with no smiles in front of whatever thing we're at. It did bother me, though, how they still hack and spit and smoke even at the temples, and there was even one place we saw where people had used the incense tray to put out their cigarettes. It's like these religious sites are really just tourist attractions to them as well.
So the three gorges dam project is the most amazing engineering feat ever. I'm glad that we came to see this, because there are parts of China that may never be seen again - that is unless the dam fails and all that water comes rushing out again. I'm not even sure how wide or tall the dam is, but it will eventually raise the water level by 115 meters when it is finished in 2009. The was has already risen about 40 meters, so there are things that we've already missed seeing. The first stop was at this down that is being entirely demolished and moved up onto this hillside above the eventual high water mark. 840,000 people who lived along this river have or are being relocated, sometimes across the country to entirely different provinces, and the Chinese government is apparently only minimally compensating them. There has been massive corruption with subcontracting, and the project has already cost tons more than it was intended to because of poor materials, and they've had to patch cracks. It's just crazy to see it all and think about how much more there is to go. We got to the dam and passed through the locks late last night which was incredible. Imagine the seattle locks times about 100,000. Because of the huge depth difference, there is a system of 5 locks that you have to pass through to get to the river below. The fifth one isn't even being used yet, so you cruise on through to the next one, and it takes about 3 hours to pass through the whole think. It's really intimidating too to look back and see a gate holding back 30 meters of water from crashing down on you. Eeesh.
We pulled in to Yichang this morning and offloaded to find the nearest cheapest hotel where we could just take showers and change clothes for the first time in DAYS, so we feel like real humans again. We've just been spending the day wandering around the city, which seems more poor than the other places that we've been but still nice and interesting. We were crossing a big park and stopped to watch a bunch of folks ballroom dancing. This seems to be a big thing in China - ballroom dance and karaoke, and they often come together. We apparently stood around a little too long because some old guy came over and asked us to dance. Of course Vicky goaded me on, so I danced with this very nice guy to the longest song EVER, which she chuckled her ass off and took photos and video. We've got our train our of here (soft sleeper, baby!) at about 5 pm, so we're killing time in this cafe which is why this is the longest blog posting in the world, but if you were going to complain, then why did you finish it ;)
Since I last wrote I have recovered from whatever food-borne sickness I contracted, hopped a bus from Yangshou to Guilin, then a flight from Guilin to Chongqing. As soon as we arrive in the airport, we were hit up by a woman trying to book us on a boat down the river, which is what we were in Chongqing to do, so convenient! The boats have first class (two beds, private bath), second class (4 beds private bath), and third class (6-8 beds private bath). This isn't as bad as some of the boats in Vicky's book that go as low as 5th class where you're sharing a toilet with 50 other people and have to fight for phlegm-free space on the floor for you and your bamboo mat. She told us that second class was full (which we later found to be a mistruth - she was trying to get us to book first class, which was about $200), so we surprised her by booking third class (for $80 including three entrance fees). We pay our deposit, she puts us in a van with one of the SCARIEST drivers in this part of the world, and we whiz off to drop the other passengers at their hotels. Since we didn't have enough money for the whole ticket, he took us to a Bank of China, but since it was an active construction site, we didn't want to get out of the van. So our comes his cell phone for the first of three calls to the woman to deal with the silly foreign girls who don't speak Chinese. We manage our way to the travel office, pay the balance on the boat, book a train and one flight for me, but I still had one more flight to book (and no money left to pay cash because NO ONE here takes frickin VISA!!)
So we went downtown to load up on enough snacks to feed an army, get cash, and gorge ourselves on McDonalds. I know, I know. I ordinarily wouldn't touch the stuff. But you know how good Chinese food is at home - well it's not like that in China. I'm losing some serious weight here, but will soon be back in Thailand to bulk it back up again ;) Anyway, so we finish our shopping and go to get a taxi, except that by this time, half of the 2 billion people in China are in the downtown area, and they're all literally throwing themselves in front of cabs. So after 20 frustrating minutes, I decide to do the same and successfully get the attention of one of the many female cabbies in Chine, only to be cut off by some dude. So I'm right behind him whinning "please please please, I don't speak chinese, and you could easily get another taxi, please please please." I don't think he understood a word of that, but he turned around and gave me the "okay crazy lady" look, and we got our cab!
We get back to the travel office, and the woman doesn't want to book my flight yet - instead we're supposed to rest. So over an hour later and 3 more attempts to get her to book my flight (from Xian to Xiamen to catch my already booked flight from Xiamen to Bangkok), a guy in the office is trying to usher us to the bus that will take us to the boat. So I flipped out, she finally realized that for the last hour I wasn't nagging her to get on the boat, but I needed my frickin flight, so she took my passport, and booked my flight by cell phone en route to some other travel office. Sweet!
We get to the docks with hundreds of Chinese tourist folk, and we're walking down this creepy dark stairway to the water, then across a totally rickety scary walkway that's just a bunch of metal planks spanning from floating platform to floating platform, and the river is RUSHING all around us. We both tweaked out when we saw what we thought was the ship, but fortunately it was just the docking platform. The lobby of the ship was pretty nice, so we thought, whew, we got lucky...until we got to our room. It's a 6 berth, me Vicky, three Chinese men, one chinese woman, and a two year old boy. Six bunks only four inches wider than my shoulder width with an inch thick mattress, a desk with a TV, and a TEENSY bathroom that was just big enough for a squatter and a sink. And it smelled. And it got worse over the next two days.
So we nearly cried, panicked for a bit, thought about trying to upgrade but didn't have the money between us, then decided to just tough it out and see how bad it was. Pretty bad. One of the men was smoking in the room, and gave me a snarky look when I asked him not to - the old woman looked absolutely astonished that I as a woman would have the balls to ask a man not to smoke. The lot of them ate every meal in the cabin, and as far as we could tell only left twice in the entire two days, so it ended up FULL of rubbish and SMELLY. To add to that, the woman was dumping the remaining contents of cup o noodles down the squatter (fortunately it never overflowed), and washing the cups to reuse. And since we could NEVER get the room to ourselves, changing was not an option, and I wore and slept in the same clothes for three days. My hair is nice and healthy though after the grease buildup. It made me really happy that I'd grown it out long enough to pull into a ponytail cause otherwise I would've gone mad. And, with the help of our Australian friends, we discovered an unmarked door in the hallway that was a broom closet with a squatter. MUCH cleaner and nicer than the one in our room, which is saying a lot since the sink was full of brown water. And the light was out, so I had to wear my headlamp while doing my business in a broom closet that was bigger than the bathroom in my designated cabin. Go figure. At least it gave the Chinese folk a better reason to stare at me when I came climbing out of the broom closet ;)
Speaking of which - this seems to be the national sport - tourist watching. Four of us were up on deck on day when three old men came up and TURNED THEIR CHAIRS to face us. Away from the beautiful scenery rolling past and directly at us. It was entertaining - so we just stared back for an hour or so :) The scenery really was fantastic. And the whole trip was so worth everything that we had to go through to get here. The Chinese tourists are a sight all to their own - watching the men all dressed in suits and people posing for very serious portrait-type photos with no smiles in front of whatever thing we're at. It did bother me, though, how they still hack and spit and smoke even at the temples, and there was even one place we saw where people had used the incense tray to put out their cigarettes. It's like these religious sites are really just tourist attractions to them as well.
So the three gorges dam project is the most amazing engineering feat ever. I'm glad that we came to see this, because there are parts of China that may never be seen again - that is unless the dam fails and all that water comes rushing out again. I'm not even sure how wide or tall the dam is, but it will eventually raise the water level by 115 meters when it is finished in 2009. The was has already risen about 40 meters, so there are things that we've already missed seeing. The first stop was at this down that is being entirely demolished and moved up onto this hillside above the eventual high water mark. 840,000 people who lived along this river have or are being relocated, sometimes across the country to entirely different provinces, and the Chinese government is apparently only minimally compensating them. There has been massive corruption with subcontracting, and the project has already cost tons more than it was intended to because of poor materials, and they've had to patch cracks. It's just crazy to see it all and think about how much more there is to go. We got to the dam and passed through the locks late last night which was incredible. Imagine the seattle locks times about 100,000. Because of the huge depth difference, there is a system of 5 locks that you have to pass through to get to the river below. The fifth one isn't even being used yet, so you cruise on through to the next one, and it takes about 3 hours to pass through the whole think. It's really intimidating too to look back and see a gate holding back 30 meters of water from crashing down on you. Eeesh.
We pulled in to Yichang this morning and offloaded to find the nearest cheapest hotel where we could just take showers and change clothes for the first time in DAYS, so we feel like real humans again. We've just been spending the day wandering around the city, which seems more poor than the other places that we've been but still nice and interesting. We were crossing a big park and stopped to watch a bunch of folks ballroom dancing. This seems to be a big thing in China - ballroom dance and karaoke, and they often come together. We apparently stood around a little too long because some old guy came over and asked us to dance. Of course Vicky goaded me on, so I danced with this very nice guy to the longest song EVER, which she chuckled her ass off and took photos and video. We've got our train our of here (soft sleeper, baby!) at about 5 pm, so we're killing time in this cafe which is why this is the longest blog posting in the world, but if you were going to complain, then why did you finish it ;)
Friday, November 11, 2005
China is going to take over the world
This place is really something else. We got up this morning, made our flight arrangements for Chongqing, and inquired about my flight to Bangkok, then caught a bus back to Guilin (we're flying out of here in the morning). Immediately after we get off the bus we encoutered a woman who wants to show us a "beautiful hotel, very cheap for you". So we follow her, decide no, meet another woman and say no, find that the place we were planning to stay at has been knocked down, ended up in a creepy building with no outside indication that it's a hotel then ended up back at the place where we started. It's not bad, really - smells like an ashtray but otherwise reasonably clean. When I got back into the elevator, I got snarky with some dude who was smoking in the elevator right under a no smoking sign, so he tossed his lit cigarette out of the elevator and onto the tile floor in the hallway. Grrr. But all in all people have still been SUPER nice and eager to practice their english. All we have to do is stop for 10 seconds and someone will come up to see if we need anything.
Right, so back to China taking over the world. We're on a street right now that is a REALLY posh shopping area. Not like high end Tiffany, etc stuff like what's considered posh in the states, but really nice classy shops like you'd see at the University Village. In fact, it's EXACTLY like the U Village, but about twice the size stretched down a pedestrian walkway. Super nice, but not at all what I'd expected of China. And the internet place that we're in right now has got HUNDREDS of computers in a bunch of different rooms, all quite well updated and running Windows XP - tons of money to run this place, but they only charge about 40 cents an hour for internet! I know that China is a huge country, and not all of it is going to be like this. Yangshou wasn't this posh, but was quite nice for a teeny little mountain village - aside from the sewage issue which is apparently prevalent in China. So yeah get to China while you can before it looks just like the rest of the world...
Right, so back to China taking over the world. We're on a street right now that is a REALLY posh shopping area. Not like high end Tiffany, etc stuff like what's considered posh in the states, but really nice classy shops like you'd see at the University Village. In fact, it's EXACTLY like the U Village, but about twice the size stretched down a pedestrian walkway. Super nice, but not at all what I'd expected of China. And the internet place that we're in right now has got HUNDREDS of computers in a bunch of different rooms, all quite well updated and running Windows XP - tons of money to run this place, but they only charge about 40 cents an hour for internet! I know that China is a huge country, and not all of it is going to be like this. Yangshou wasn't this posh, but was quite nice for a teeny little mountain village - aside from the sewage issue which is apparently prevalent in China. So yeah get to China while you can before it looks just like the rest of the world...
Thursday, November 10, 2005
China rules
I'm in CHINA!!!! I love this place. Vietnam was kind of crap. We all got the feeling that we were being looked at with great disdain, and all anyone wanted was to get our money and get us out of their country. No one was ever mean to us but you just get that general feeling that you aren't welcome. But China RULES! Every person that we talked to yesterday was very very helpful. We got on a train Tuesday night in Hanoi, changed trains at 11 pm at the border, and got of at 7 am in Nanning. The woman at the bus station didn't speak a word of english, but she made a line of 6-8 chinese people wait while she did her very best to sell us a ticket to Guilin (which we thought went all the way to Yangshou), then left her post (and all the chinese folk) to walk us all the way around the block to a local bus that took us to the other bus station across town. On the bus, we weren't sure where we were going, and two old ladies pointed "further, further", so we made our bus just fine. We got off in Guilin where two people pointed us in the direction of the bus terminal, and perhaps the only english speaking person in the area came up to ask if we needed anything (I guess we looked lost and confused). Then a woman at the ticket window got us tickets and ushered us to our bus. The trains and buses are FANTASTIC - clean and nice. The sleeper train from the border was better than any of the hotels that we've stayed at - by far, like 500 thread count bedding and carpets on the floor.
We walked around Yangshou a bit last night, which Vicky aptly described as an apline sort of village, if the weather weren't hot and humid. So far China has been GENERALLY cleaner than Vietnam, but that's just on the surface. Apparently the whole country has a massive sewage issue. As in their infrastructure doesn't really support the need. Our hotel, for instance, is a reasonable place - clean beds at least, and the walls aren't TOO filthy compared to some of our previous accomodations. But we're having a MAJOR problem with the bathroom. The toilet is a squatter, which doesn't bother me at all anymore. In fact, I've decided that if you've got to use a public toilet, it's best not to have to touch anything. EXCEPT that in this case the toilet is in the middle of the floor (rather than a step up like most in Cambodia were, and it doubles as the shower drain. And the contents don't leave the premises. So imagine for a moment, hot shower water stirring up that lovely concoction. Then add on top of that a bout of food poisoning that we both seem to have managed to contract from the fried duck we had last night - at least that's what we *think* it came from. Not too bad, but we're both feeling a little "unsettled" and tired.
We dragged out of bed this morning and did a countryside tour on bikes with a woman that we met when we got off the bus yesterday. It was really nice. You know how you always see Chinese paintings of dramatic limestone mountains that seem to rise out of nothing? Well, that's what it really looks like here. We took a bamboo raft "cruise" down the dragon river. There's some serious entreprenurialship (sp?!) going on out here. The rafts are two bamboo chairs strapped to a raft of big bamboo poles. The "captain" steers by poling you down the shallow river. There are other rafts that are mobile markets where you can get fruit or hot soup, and some of them even have refridgerators onboard. The river drops in a few places, and the raft just gets pushed over a 3 ft drop (with us on board), and there are rafts at the lower level with people taking digital photos of you as you drop over the edge, and they have a full on desktop computer set up with color photo printer so that you can buy your pictures right there on the water!!! I have no idea where the electricity is coming from for this, but it's frickin cool!
Alright, I'm going to continue passing the night away and hope to wake up feeling better tomorrow. Probably doesn't help that the tea I drank before bed kept me up all night, but I'd just be happy to get my stomach to settle itself down. No worries, though, I'm a mobile pharmacy, and we've agreed to start a course of antibiotics tomorrow if we aren't feeling better. Take care!
We walked around Yangshou a bit last night, which Vicky aptly described as an apline sort of village, if the weather weren't hot and humid. So far China has been GENERALLY cleaner than Vietnam, but that's just on the surface. Apparently the whole country has a massive sewage issue. As in their infrastructure doesn't really support the need. Our hotel, for instance, is a reasonable place - clean beds at least, and the walls aren't TOO filthy compared to some of our previous accomodations. But we're having a MAJOR problem with the bathroom. The toilet is a squatter, which doesn't bother me at all anymore. In fact, I've decided that if you've got to use a public toilet, it's best not to have to touch anything. EXCEPT that in this case the toilet is in the middle of the floor (rather than a step up like most in Cambodia were, and it doubles as the shower drain. And the contents don't leave the premises. So imagine for a moment, hot shower water stirring up that lovely concoction. Then add on top of that a bout of food poisoning that we both seem to have managed to contract from the fried duck we had last night - at least that's what we *think* it came from. Not too bad, but we're both feeling a little "unsettled" and tired.
We dragged out of bed this morning and did a countryside tour on bikes with a woman that we met when we got off the bus yesterday. It was really nice. You know how you always see Chinese paintings of dramatic limestone mountains that seem to rise out of nothing? Well, that's what it really looks like here. We took a bamboo raft "cruise" down the dragon river. There's some serious entreprenurialship (sp?!) going on out here. The rafts are two bamboo chairs strapped to a raft of big bamboo poles. The "captain" steers by poling you down the shallow river. There are other rafts that are mobile markets where you can get fruit or hot soup, and some of them even have refridgerators onboard. The river drops in a few places, and the raft just gets pushed over a 3 ft drop (with us on board), and there are rafts at the lower level with people taking digital photos of you as you drop over the edge, and they have a full on desktop computer set up with color photo printer so that you can buy your pictures right there on the water!!! I have no idea where the electricity is coming from for this, but it's frickin cool!
Alright, I'm going to continue passing the night away and hope to wake up feeling better tomorrow. Probably doesn't help that the tea I drank before bed kept me up all night, but I'd just be happy to get my stomach to settle itself down. No worries, though, I'm a mobile pharmacy, and we've agreed to start a course of antibiotics tomorrow if we aren't feeling better. Take care!
Monday, November 07, 2005
I've decided that this is a quirky and hilarious country, and I sort of like it now. Well, I loved the countryside, but I think it's easier to love the countryside of many countries. Hanoi is interesting, though, and we've had a great time here once we started to look for all of the things to just sit back and laugh at.
1. Scales rolling through the street that play the theme song from "Titanic".
2. Popcorn-sellers on bicycles that play "Jingle Bells, Santa Claus is Coming to Town, and We Wish You a Merry Christmas" or "Happy Birthday".
3. Mobile markets of women selling their wares, from produce to meats, to cleaning supplies, to worms (yes, to eat) They carry flat wicker basket suspended from each end of a stick over their shoulders and wear the connical hats.
4. The dude who set up a table to sell cigarettes and play board games with his buddies - RIGHT UNDER the only ATM in our neighborhood that takes international cards. I had to lean over his head to take money last night because he refused to move - then got pissy when we decided to take photos of the whole hilarious scene.
5. When Vicky asked for orange juice and a cup of hot water (she insists on making her own tea and coffee), and she got a glass of hot orange juice.
6. The Ho Chi Minh Museum is the coolest place in the world. Who knew that Uncle Ho was a surrealist who was inspired to save his country by the works of Gustav Klimt? And did you realize that paintings by Picasso, Matisse, and Dali symbolize the struggle against fascism? For awhile I wasn't sure if I was in a history and political museum or a modern art museum. There is one installation that looks nothing like a brain or a cave, but it's supposed to symbolize a brain that symbolizes the cave where Ho Chi Minh planned the Vietnamese revolution of 1946. Interesting...
7. The book that I bought after leaving the HCM Museum with a fried brain not knowing if HCM thought he was democratic, socialist, or communist. It's still a mystery to me. But at least I have entertaining reading now with "Ho Chi Minh Thought Will Light Our Path Forever". An excerpt for your enjoyment:
"In daily life, President Ho is a very simple and honest man. A great man, a really great man is always simple and honest. A mannered man always lacks capability; his play acting is for deceiving people and future generations. King Nghieu, King Thuan, Jesus Christ were simple and honest men. Lenin, Sun Yat Sen and Mahatma Gandhi were also simple and honest men. So are great scientists and great writers. On the contrary, Hitler was a perfidious man. Besides Hitler, Mussolini was but a clown."
Heheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheh
1. Scales rolling through the street that play the theme song from "Titanic".
2. Popcorn-sellers on bicycles that play "Jingle Bells, Santa Claus is Coming to Town, and We Wish You a Merry Christmas" or "Happy Birthday".
3. Mobile markets of women selling their wares, from produce to meats, to cleaning supplies, to worms (yes, to eat) They carry flat wicker basket suspended from each end of a stick over their shoulders and wear the connical hats.
4. The dude who set up a table to sell cigarettes and play board games with his buddies - RIGHT UNDER the only ATM in our neighborhood that takes international cards. I had to lean over his head to take money last night because he refused to move - then got pissy when we decided to take photos of the whole hilarious scene.
5. When Vicky asked for orange juice and a cup of hot water (she insists on making her own tea and coffee), and she got a glass of hot orange juice.
6. The Ho Chi Minh Museum is the coolest place in the world. Who knew that Uncle Ho was a surrealist who was inspired to save his country by the works of Gustav Klimt? And did you realize that paintings by Picasso, Matisse, and Dali symbolize the struggle against fascism? For awhile I wasn't sure if I was in a history and political museum or a modern art museum. There is one installation that looks nothing like a brain or a cave, but it's supposed to symbolize a brain that symbolizes the cave where Ho Chi Minh planned the Vietnamese revolution of 1946. Interesting...
7. The book that I bought after leaving the HCM Museum with a fried brain not knowing if HCM thought he was democratic, socialist, or communist. It's still a mystery to me. But at least I have entertaining reading now with "Ho Chi Minh Thought Will Light Our Path Forever". An excerpt for your enjoyment:
"In daily life, President Ho is a very simple and honest man. A great man, a really great man is always simple and honest. A mannered man always lacks capability; his play acting is for deceiving people and future generations. King Nghieu, King Thuan, Jesus Christ were simple and honest men. Lenin, Sun Yat Sen and Mahatma Gandhi were also simple and honest men. So are great scientists and great writers. On the contrary, Hitler was a perfidious man. Besides Hitler, Mussolini was but a clown."
Heheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheh
Friday, November 04, 2005
I'm going to China!!!
So after paying $56 to get express service for my visa to China, plus the $20 "it sucks to be American because everyone assumes that you have more money to pay for the EXACT same thing" tax, I'm going to China!! In Hue, in the bar, in the middle of the typhoon, it took me all of 10 seconds to agree to spend the first 10 days tagging along on Vicky's trip to China. It works out perfectly, really, because we're both sick and tired of Vietnam, wanting to get out of here, and I needed something to do until Darren flies into Bangkok on the 18th. So the plan is to do the Li river trip, then fly up to take a three day boat trip up the Yangtze before it's due to be flooded, then I'll fly back to Thailand from either Wuhan or Xian, depending on how far we get by that point. Whoo hoo!!!
And on a different topic - our bus trip from Hue to Hanoi SUCKED!!! It's an over night bus, so it leaves Hue at about 6:30 pm and gets into Hanoi at 8:30 am. First hitch is that the company we were booked with for the open ticket all the way from Saigon to Hanoi was over booked for this leg because so many people stayed the extra night in Hue to weather out the storm. (DON'T do these open ticket things if you ever come here. People say it's the best way to travel, but it's so miserable, corrupt, and a ridiculous waste of time and money that there's GOT to be a better way). So we had to pay an extra dollar for the privelege of being rebooked on a Vietnamese bus. All was okay except that we got on the tourist bus first, drove around for half an hour, got dropped back at the office to change to the Vietnamese bus, then drove around Hue for another half hour. For the first three hours or so after our dinner stop, we pulled off every 20 minutes for a half a dozen men to get off and piss on the side of the road. Why they couldn't just all go in the same stop is beyond me, really. The WORST of it is that Vicky was sitting next to a woman originally who kept falling asleep and elbowing her in the boob, so after dinner, she decided to move to an empty seat. Immediately around the corner, we stopped to pick up more people in this rat trip itty bitty town, so a nice-looking early 30s Vietnamese man with his young son moved to sit next to her. She fell asleep at some point and woke up to his open palm in the same place the woman's elbow had been before!!! She says that when she shifted to move away from him, and he dug in more, so she told him to F*&k off, and he put his little boy between them and left her alone. But the nerve of him!! He's lucky to still have all of his fingers intact, really.
Hanoi seems nice, though, so we're going to spend the next few days here before catching the train to China. First item on the agenda today is to find a real massage place. I think we all need it after that bus trip. Blech. Oh, and stop tweaking so much about the bird flu!!! ;)
And on a different topic - our bus trip from Hue to Hanoi SUCKED!!! It's an over night bus, so it leaves Hue at about 6:30 pm and gets into Hanoi at 8:30 am. First hitch is that the company we were booked with for the open ticket all the way from Saigon to Hanoi was over booked for this leg because so many people stayed the extra night in Hue to weather out the storm. (DON'T do these open ticket things if you ever come here. People say it's the best way to travel, but it's so miserable, corrupt, and a ridiculous waste of time and money that there's GOT to be a better way). So we had to pay an extra dollar for the privelege of being rebooked on a Vietnamese bus. All was okay except that we got on the tourist bus first, drove around for half an hour, got dropped back at the office to change to the Vietnamese bus, then drove around Hue for another half hour. For the first three hours or so after our dinner stop, we pulled off every 20 minutes for a half a dozen men to get off and piss on the side of the road. Why they couldn't just all go in the same stop is beyond me, really. The WORST of it is that Vicky was sitting next to a woman originally who kept falling asleep and elbowing her in the boob, so after dinner, she decided to move to an empty seat. Immediately around the corner, we stopped to pick up more people in this rat trip itty bitty town, so a nice-looking early 30s Vietnamese man with his young son moved to sit next to her. She fell asleep at some point and woke up to his open palm in the same place the woman's elbow had been before!!! She says that when she shifted to move away from him, and he dug in more, so she told him to F*&k off, and he put his little boy between them and left her alone. But the nerve of him!! He's lucky to still have all of his fingers intact, really.
Hanoi seems nice, though, so we're going to spend the next few days here before catching the train to China. First item on the agenda today is to find a real massage place. I think we all need it after that bus trip. Blech. Oh, and stop tweaking so much about the bird flu!!! ;)
Tuesday, November 01, 2005
I have cholera on my legs
And I should be wearing a T-shirt that says "I survived typhoon Kai-Tak" Well, maybe I shouldn't jump the gun just yet. And it is only a catagory 1 by now. There's about a meter of water in the street, and the eye is passing us right now. We tried to go to the citadel today because we said, "ain't no stinkin' typhoon gonna keep us from seeing the sights" then quickly retreated back to our hotel with our tails between our legs. So then we ventured out in ankle deep water to the B4 bar to visit our friend Bruno and throw back a few whiskey cokes. Well, ankle deep turned to knee deep, and Bruno's dear sweet little bar is probably under about 6 inches of water by now. But my legs probably are actually coated in cholera, typhoid, and whatever other nasty bacterial/ameboid diseases one might be able to think of, so I'm going to see if Vicky is out of the shower yet so that I can clean my narsty self. We're in a nice safe place, though, and while there is a lot of rain, the wind isn't so bad. If you want to see a satellite photo, just google search Kai-Tak. This is kind of fun, really...
Monday, October 31, 2005
Happy Halloweenie!
Not only did I not carve any semblance of a pumpkin-like gourd (I really would have settled for a bitter melon, YECH!!!!), but the only night that I actually care about what's on television here, my options are Blue Crush, Joan of Arc (with Mila Jovovich, who I know many of you men are fond of, but I can't handle her blithering whininess in this movie), and Condoleeza Rice speaking at the UN. Guess who is the scariest with her "I will suck out your soul while looking creepily at you from the tops of my eyeballs". The last few days have been nice though. The weather at China Beach (and all of Vietnam, for that matter) has been crap and rainy, but "Hoa the Dude" more than made up for it in personality and hospitality. We stayed an extra day because "Hoa's Place" feels so much like home. Pull up a chair, get yourself a beer from the fridge, and plan to stay for the family style dinner which his wife prepares with mastery. I got recipies for her spring rolls and her stuffed tomatoes which are both to die for. No measurements for anything though (of course), so this is going to take a bit of trial and error - or will provide excess and unnecessary motivation to return to Hoa's in the future for the real thing. So after hanging out and listening to Hoa's profound statements late at night over candles and a few beers, I have "chilled out", have "no worries", and feel confident that "we'll settle it all out later". Hoa really is a dude.
Friday, October 28, 2005
Please stop smacking my behind
Yes, I know that I have a reasonably well endowed hind end. And now a significant portion of Hoi An has repeatedly pointed this out to me. I had clothes tailored in Hoi An - a lot of them. Three pair of casual pants and a nice skirt, a brown courderoy jacket, and two button up dress shirts. The coup de grace, though, is this outfit that I had made from the red silk that I bought in the silk village in Cambodia. I found a nice little shop run by a woman who spoke really good English, was patient, and listened to me. This is a rarity in SE Asia where everyone is just SO DESPERATE to sell something to you that they often tell you what you need and want rather than listen to your explanation. So I told her that I wanted a nice fitted sleeveless camisole type shirt and simple, elegant straight-legged pants, and I explained to her how important it was that this came out perfectly since I only had 3 1/2 meters of this very special and irreplaceable silk. And she did a magnificent job, even down to the detail in the embroidered bamboo detail on the top and pants cuff. Yeeheee!!! So this is what I will be wearing to Josh and Kate's wedding, and all the rest of you better pair up and get hitched because I want lots of other opportunities to wear this - soon enough you'll be saying, "God Kim, please just buy a new nice outfit and stop wearing this one and making us listen to the story over and over again about how you bought the silk in Cambodia and how it was tailored in Vietnam!" But for now, I'm going to go on being quite pleased ;)
Which leads me back to my bum. The women measuring me in the two shops that I had things made in were very entertained by my rear measurements. The woman in my favorite shop (the other shop was crap)was in her early twenties, and teensy tiny itty bitty. She didn't even come up to my shoulder. And she developed an obsession with my rear. So everytime I walked past her, she swatted me. She kept saying she wanted to take some out of mine and put it into hers. She's very cute, though, and we had a laughing, joking good time. The other great thing is that they keep your measurements on file. So if there is anything else that I want to have made when I get home, I can email her, and she'll send it on to me. Yay!
So now we're on China beach, which is lovely, at the base of the Marble Mountains, which are also lovely, and we plan to just chill out for a couple of days. I think the three of us are pretty tired of go go go. Which also reminds me that I still have to update the first 3 days of our motobike tour - later, you'll just have to be patient and wait for that one. Ta ta!!
Which leads me back to my bum. The women measuring me in the two shops that I had things made in were very entertained by my rear measurements. The woman in my favorite shop (the other shop was crap)was in her early twenties, and teensy tiny itty bitty. She didn't even come up to my shoulder. And she developed an obsession with my rear. So everytime I walked past her, she swatted me. She kept saying she wanted to take some out of mine and put it into hers. She's very cute, though, and we had a laughing, joking good time. The other great thing is that they keep your measurements on file. So if there is anything else that I want to have made when I get home, I can email her, and she'll send it on to me. Yay!
So now we're on China beach, which is lovely, at the base of the Marble Mountains, which are also lovely, and we plan to just chill out for a couple of days. I think the three of us are pretty tired of go go go. Which also reminds me that I still have to update the first 3 days of our motobike tour - later, you'll just have to be patient and wait for that one. Ta ta!!
Wednesday, October 26, 2005
Hello from Hoi An!
Hi All! We made it into Hoi An this afternoon, safe and sound. It looks like a nice little town. Lots of shops, so I'm going to do lots of shoppING! I think that we're going to have a few things tailored while we're here, too. You can pick a style, colors, fabric, and in 2 hours have a new skirt! I'm also going to start this evening with an update of the last week on the motobike, but it may take a couple of days to catch up.
So I'll start with the last 24 hours. Our drivers are dear, sweet, wonderful, nice men. Linda (the Dutch gal)'s birthday is tomorrow, so last night they brought us 2 bottles of red wine, three bunches of flowers, and a card for her. We went to another fabulous dinner where we finished one bottle of wine (the second is being saved), then headed back to our hotel. Our accomodations for this trip have actually been really good (for the backpacker traveler budget), and they were SOOOOO excited about booking the place last night because it has a BATHTUB!! (which is a rarity in SE Asia). Unfortunately the 5 liter hot water tanks aren't quite big enough to fill a bath, and having the bath was not quite enough to make up for the large family of cockroaches that had moved into our room to escape monsoon season. So we returned from dinner, turned on our light, and two roaches (one of which was IN MY BED) skittered under furniture. So we decided to sleep with the lights on to discourage them from coming out of hiding. This is after killing two - one of which was a poor, deformed, "Timmy" roach. Didn't make killing it any harder, though. I should clarify that Vicky (the British gal)is our roach killer - Linda and I sat with our feet up on the beds and squealed like the girls we are. So I finally fell asleep with my sleep sheet over my head to keep the roaches our of my eyes, ears, and nose. We woke up at 1 am because Linda had to pee, the electricity in the entire city was out, there were roaches in the room, and she wanted someone to provide light. So we argued for a bit over who had to brave putting a foot on the floor to find our lamps (thank god for headlamps!) Managed our "business", and fell back to sleep - this time with headlamps on. What a LONG night!!!
Woke up to more rain - rain all day. Heavy rain. When you hear that rainy season in SE Asia consists of the 2 hour afternoon storm blowing through, bear in mind that this does NOT apply to Vietnam. Here, the rainy season is 3 months of nearly continual rain. Fortunately Seattle has prepared me for this. So I found it quite enjoyable - from inside my helmet and happy rain gear. I was a bit nervous about landslides, and there was one point that we had to get off the bikes and walk on a hillside along the new "toll road" that some of the local villagers were building around the landslide. No joke - our drivers had to pay these dudes to let my feet get cut up by bamboo grass (I somewhat stupidly decided to ride in flipflops today). Meanwhile, our drivers were sunk in 10 inches of red mud trying to maneuver through the slop. But we made it all in once peice, and the drive through the cloud-shrouded, jungle-coated mountains is really amazing.
On a last monsoon note - does anyone remember that old Mac Classic game, Oregon Trail? Bad 10 pixel green graphics? When you get to a river and have to decide to ford it, pay for the ferry, or go looking for a bridge? The river here is so overflowed that it's covering the road into HoiAn, and there are actually people with little canoes ferrying motobikes from one side to the other. It was only about 10 inches deep, and fortunately, our motobike engines didn't flood. This time, no oxen, and no family members drowned in the crossing.
So I'll start with the last 24 hours. Our drivers are dear, sweet, wonderful, nice men. Linda (the Dutch gal)'s birthday is tomorrow, so last night they brought us 2 bottles of red wine, three bunches of flowers, and a card for her. We went to another fabulous dinner where we finished one bottle of wine (the second is being saved), then headed back to our hotel. Our accomodations for this trip have actually been really good (for the backpacker traveler budget), and they were SOOOOO excited about booking the place last night because it has a BATHTUB!! (which is a rarity in SE Asia). Unfortunately the 5 liter hot water tanks aren't quite big enough to fill a bath, and having the bath was not quite enough to make up for the large family of cockroaches that had moved into our room to escape monsoon season. So we returned from dinner, turned on our light, and two roaches (one of which was IN MY BED) skittered under furniture. So we decided to sleep with the lights on to discourage them from coming out of hiding. This is after killing two - one of which was a poor, deformed, "Timmy" roach. Didn't make killing it any harder, though. I should clarify that Vicky (the British gal)is our roach killer - Linda and I sat with our feet up on the beds and squealed like the girls we are. So I finally fell asleep with my sleep sheet over my head to keep the roaches our of my eyes, ears, and nose. We woke up at 1 am because Linda had to pee, the electricity in the entire city was out, there were roaches in the room, and she wanted someone to provide light. So we argued for a bit over who had to brave putting a foot on the floor to find our lamps (thank god for headlamps!) Managed our "business", and fell back to sleep - this time with headlamps on. What a LONG night!!!
Woke up to more rain - rain all day. Heavy rain. When you hear that rainy season in SE Asia consists of the 2 hour afternoon storm blowing through, bear in mind that this does NOT apply to Vietnam. Here, the rainy season is 3 months of nearly continual rain. Fortunately Seattle has prepared me for this. So I found it quite enjoyable - from inside my helmet and happy rain gear. I was a bit nervous about landslides, and there was one point that we had to get off the bikes and walk on a hillside along the new "toll road" that some of the local villagers were building around the landslide. No joke - our drivers had to pay these dudes to let my feet get cut up by bamboo grass (I somewhat stupidly decided to ride in flipflops today). Meanwhile, our drivers were sunk in 10 inches of red mud trying to maneuver through the slop. But we made it all in once peice, and the drive through the cloud-shrouded, jungle-coated mountains is really amazing.
On a last monsoon note - does anyone remember that old Mac Classic game, Oregon Trail? Bad 10 pixel green graphics? When you get to a river and have to decide to ford it, pay for the ferry, or go looking for a bridge? The river here is so overflowed that it's covering the road into HoiAn, and there are actually people with little canoes ferrying motobikes from one side to the other. It was only about 10 inches deep, and fortunately, our motobike engines didn't flood. This time, no oxen, and no family members drowned in the crossing.
Tuesday, October 25, 2005
Vietnam motobike tour - Day 5
You know that it's going to be an interesting day when it starts with a three rice wine breakfast. We were toodling along and stopped for a break in this little village where we immediately became the main attraction. A group of men taking their midmorning "work break" invited us up to a longhouse for some ricewine, and once again, it's rude to say no, right? I'm glad we did that, because there's no way I would have done the next activity otherwise. You know when you see those pictures of rickety old narrow bridges spanning high over a torrential flood swelled river with boards ready to snap under your weight at any moment? Yeah, we crossed one of those. For the "experience of how local villagers commute to the main road". More like, "for kicks and giggles of seeing the three I-can-do-anything stubborn Western women wet their pants." So we get across this horrible thing, then back across to the motobikes, and to show off, these two local guys go across this thing ON A MOTOBIKE!!! I mean, it was like being on fear factor with no safety harness when it's just you're own weight and dexterity, but on a motobike?!?! Insanity.
The road that we traveled yesterday was a former section of the Ho Chi Minh trail that winds through the jungle mountains, and it's idylically BEAUTIFUL. It's my first jungle experience, and it was made even better by the whispy clouds rolling through. Then at one point, we stopped to walk a section of the original HCM Trail that is still being used by some of the jungle villagers. Our sweet, funny Linda stepped squarely in the middle of a 3 inch cow pile thinking it was a rock :) Then, my driver warned us that we shouldn't follow the trail any further or we'd be covered in leeches!!!! Fortunately, he's the only one who managed to get one - right between his toes. Disgusting little buggars!
The road that we traveled yesterday was a former section of the Ho Chi Minh trail that winds through the jungle mountains, and it's idylically BEAUTIFUL. It's my first jungle experience, and it was made even better by the whispy clouds rolling through. Then at one point, we stopped to walk a section of the original HCM Trail that is still being used by some of the jungle villagers. Our sweet, funny Linda stepped squarely in the middle of a 3 inch cow pile thinking it was a rock :) Then, my driver warned us that we shouldn't follow the trail any further or we'd be covered in leeches!!!! Fortunately, he's the only one who managed to get one - right between his toes. Disgusting little buggars!
Monday, October 24, 2005
Vietnam motobike tour - Day 4
We spent all day today in Kuntom, which is a nice little town. There is a lot to do here. And fortunately, it was a short driving day - especially after yesterday. We rolled into town at about 11 am, checked into the hotel, had lunch, and headed for a museum with a bunch of local hilltribe art, tools, baskets, and stuff. It's in an old church, which is kind of nice - even though the French Catholics have moved in and turned much of the countryside Catholic, they have at least preserved some of the history and culture. And not in an "isn't this quaint how they used to live" sort of way either, because a lot of these ethnic minorities still live as they always have.
Next, we went to the market to collect things to take to an orphanage. The children are so precious!!! We arrived, and they all gathered to sing for us, which was a bit of a strange and staged performance, but I know they were just showing appreciation for the visit. Then they all broke out playing with the balls and kites that we'd brought for them. I had a line of 3 year-olds standing on a low wall so that I could pick them up and make them fly. It's fantastic how a language barrier never matters with children. Somewhere along the way, we as adults seem to forget how to communicate nonverbally. Anyway, they took us on a tour of their place, which is sparse. They seem fairly well cared for, though, if a little dirty, shabbily clothed, and slightly sick and snotty. But they're such happy kids when they've got visitors. They range in age from 10 months (a boy who was a triplet - his parents kept the two girls) to several teens. About 200 in all in dormitory style housing separated by age and gender. Someone has come and painted their walls with cartoon animals, which they were all very excited to show us. At one point, I had one on each hand, and two more that wanted in on their own fingers to grab on to. One 3-year old in particular kept trying to climb my legs and just grinned at me the whole time that I was there. It was really hard to drive away without them, and I think all three of us gals had tears in our eyes.
Next, we went to the market to collect things to take to an orphanage. The children are so precious!!! We arrived, and they all gathered to sing for us, which was a bit of a strange and staged performance, but I know they were just showing appreciation for the visit. Then they all broke out playing with the balls and kites that we'd brought for them. I had a line of 3 year-olds standing on a low wall so that I could pick them up and make them fly. It's fantastic how a language barrier never matters with children. Somewhere along the way, we as adults seem to forget how to communicate nonverbally. Anyway, they took us on a tour of their place, which is sparse. They seem fairly well cared for, though, if a little dirty, shabbily clothed, and slightly sick and snotty. But they're such happy kids when they've got visitors. They range in age from 10 months (a boy who was a triplet - his parents kept the two girls) to several teens. About 200 in all in dormitory style housing separated by age and gender. Someone has come and painted their walls with cartoon animals, which they were all very excited to show us. At one point, I had one on each hand, and two more that wanted in on their own fingers to grab on to. One 3-year old in particular kept trying to climb my legs and just grinned at me the whole time that I was there. It was really hard to drive away without them, and I think all three of us gals had tears in our eyes.
Wednesday, October 19, 2005
Vietnam is okay with me
I'm a little drunk on ricewine, so maybe that's part of it ;) Having a hard time typing at the moment. Linda, Vicky, and I (a dutch and a brit) traveled from Saigon to Mui Ne on Monday and hated Mui Ne. It's a sleepy little resort town with disgustingly polluted beaches. At that point, none of us were all that enthusiastic with Vietnam, and I was really resisting the urge to flee back to Cambodia to spend the next month working in an orphanage. But we kept saying "maybe Dalat will be better", and fortunately it is. It's up in the central highlands, and the weather is like seattle, so it feels sort of like I'm home - cold and rainy. As soon as we landed in town, we met three men who are part of the EasyRider's group. They a group of moto drivers (many are Vietnam vets) who have an organization to take tourists out into the countryside to see the real Vietnam. So the three of us agreed to a three day trip to Nha Trang, and if by day two we really like it, we may extend to 6 days to Hoi An. I figure I'll do a big motobike tour in ever country in SE Asia, but I think that Cambodia will always have my heart.
We had dinner at a local restaurant up the street from our hotel where they serve soup that you cook at your table. It's really good - Heang and I had some our last night in Phnom Penh, so I knew what to do with all of the stuff. The the men at two tables near us started offering us rice wine (like sake), and we figured it's rude to refuse, right? So we started drinking with them, but my two lovely companions decided they'd had enough, and I stupidly kept drinking. So this email is written in a bit of a drunked stupor, and fortunately you all have no idea how many times I'm had to hit the backspace key ;)
We had dinner at a local restaurant up the street from our hotel where they serve soup that you cook at your table. It's really good - Heang and I had some our last night in Phnom Penh, so I knew what to do with all of the stuff. The the men at two tables near us started offering us rice wine (like sake), and we figured it's rude to refuse, right? So we started drinking with them, but my two lovely companions decided they'd had enough, and I stupidly kept drinking. So this email is written in a bit of a drunked stupor, and fortunately you all have no idea how many times I'm had to hit the backspace key ;)
Saturday, October 15, 2005
Safely in Vietnam
But I miss Cambodia. It's just different here, and hard to adjust when you fall in love with a country and have to leave it. It's funny here, though. Things are so regimented. As soon as we crossed the border things changed. I paid $4.50 for a bus from Phnom Penh to HCMC (10 hours). It wouldn't have taken that long except that you get delivered to the border and told to spend 40 minutes in a cafe before the crossing. It makes it all sounds like this is planned, right? So after lunch, some guy comes along and ushers us toward the departure and arrival line. We enter Vietnam, and it is the absolute most complicated border crossing I've ever experienced. We start at one window where they check the visa, stamp the passport, and give us our departure card. Then to a table where they look at the passport, fill out some other form, then send you to a third person who looks at the form and demands 1000 riel (25 cents). For what, who knows because the form is ENTIRELY in Vietnamese. Then on to the fourth person who puts our baggage through X-ray, and a 5th person who checks everything again and sends you out the door. So we walk out of this building (a group of about 14 of us), and wander a bit to a short row of cafes that look like the tour bus type. No one has a list with our names on them, and we're the mysterious "yellow ticket" group. One guy says he'll take care of us and call a bus from HCMC to come get us (from 2 hours away, mind you). He seems like he's just some dude being helpful, but then we figure out that he actually works for the company that's responsible for getting us to HCMC in the first place (partnership between the Narin Guesthouse in Phnom Penh and Happy Tours - his company - in HCMC). So he says it's going to be at least an hour, and just as we get settled in and accept the fact that this is going to be a painfully long travel day, he returns to take us to a back parking lot where a bus has *MAGICALLY* appeared - driver sleeping shirtless on spread out newspapers in the luggage compartment. En route, he goes on and on about how Happy Tours is the best, cheapest, and most reliable tour company in Vietnam. HA! Funny too, while we were waiting in the cafe, I moved my chair forward a bit to get closer to the fan, and the lady running she shop rushed over to move me back against the wall. The chairs seemed sort of haphazardly placed around this little room, but apparently they were EXACTLY where she wanted them :) And today in the Reunification Palace, a group of men were arranging chairs for some big military meeting that they're having tomorrow. They tied a bit of string from on chair all the way down the row to the end chair, then lined up all of the back exactly perfectly straight along the string. Welcome to the Socialist Republic of Vietnam!!
Thursday, October 13, 2005
Genocide
I visited Tuol Sleng (S-21) and Cheuol Ek (the Killing Fields) today. That was really tough. Tuol Sleng was a high school before the Khmer Rouge turned it into a torture and interrogation prison in 1976. Of more than 14,000 people that passed through those gates, only 7 survived. Many were killed and buried on the grounds, but most were transferred to the "extermination camp" at Cheuol Ek, about 15 km outside of Phnom Penh. Tuol Sleng is still relatively intact as it was when it was a prison - many of the school rooms were walled off into 0.8 X 2 meter rooms, several hundred of them. The Khmer Rouge photographed each person as they came in, took their biography, then tortured false confessions from them of how they had betrayed the organization and the revolution. The real sick thing is that the american government supported this (whether intentionally or not is debatable) by bombing the crap out of the eastern (bordering vietnam) side of the country and bringing about the end of the civil war between the khmer rouge and the government run by Lon Nol. That started a mass evacuation of the cities into the countryside and the formation of a communistic agrarian state where there was no individuality, no personal ownership of property, and all effort was focused on the "independence of the state of Democratic Kampuchea". The Khmer Rouge was anti Vietnam, Thailand, and China, therefore the US supported it, but ironically they were also anti western and executed all foreigners and all educated cambodians. Uneducated people are easier to control - as we're still seeing today. Ironically, it was the vietnamese invasion of cambodia in 1979 that brought about the end of the genocide, though the Khmer Rouge was still the UN recognized governing party of Cambodia until 1993 when they had their first free election. Alright, there's my political rant.
The most moving thing about the museum is the scores of photographs of all of those who were slaughtered. Then to go to the killing fields and see the giant stupa containing over 8,000 exhumed skulls and realize that those are all of the people whose faces you've just seen vacantly staring from photographs. In 86 mass graves, they've recovered the corpses of 8,985 victims, many naked and blindfolded, and many beaten to death to "save precious bullets". You know how you aren't supposed to step on a grave because it's disrespectful? Well it's hard to avoid it there. There are dirt paths skirting the holes in the ground where bodies were recovered from these mass graves, but even in the walkway are bones, fragments of clothing, and a few strewn teeth. It's a really disturbing place to visit. And to think that nearly 3 million people of a population of just over 7 million were wiped off the earth, it's even more amazing to see this country pick up the peices and try to rise from poverty - especially since the current government is so corrupt that it's taking 7 of every 10 dollars coming from the world donations, and all relief organizations or businesses that want to set up in Cambodia have to register with the government and pay huge fees.
The other thing that strikes me is, why did so many people let it happen? When we were in Anlong Veang (night 3 of the mototrip - last stand of the Khmer Rouge) the owner of our guesthouse was a former Khmer soldier. Heang had a really long chat with him about his time as a soldier, and he said that not all of the people involved in the KR were as heinous as the mass murderers. Many truly believed in the communistic ideal of sacrificing individuality for the good of all, and didn't use their power for personal gain and murder. But I wonder if that's really true, or if he also has done such horrible things in his past that the guilt has put him in denial. He seemed like such a kind man, that I'd love to believe the former, but you don't know. And no one has ever been brought to trial for this - 3 million dead and no one punished. Even Pol Pot died in his home in 1998 from malaria. Sickening.
The most moving thing about the museum is the scores of photographs of all of those who were slaughtered. Then to go to the killing fields and see the giant stupa containing over 8,000 exhumed skulls and realize that those are all of the people whose faces you've just seen vacantly staring from photographs. In 86 mass graves, they've recovered the corpses of 8,985 victims, many naked and blindfolded, and many beaten to death to "save precious bullets". You know how you aren't supposed to step on a grave because it's disrespectful? Well it's hard to avoid it there. There are dirt paths skirting the holes in the ground where bodies were recovered from these mass graves, but even in the walkway are bones, fragments of clothing, and a few strewn teeth. It's a really disturbing place to visit. And to think that nearly 3 million people of a population of just over 7 million were wiped off the earth, it's even more amazing to see this country pick up the peices and try to rise from poverty - especially since the current government is so corrupt that it's taking 7 of every 10 dollars coming from the world donations, and all relief organizations or businesses that want to set up in Cambodia have to register with the government and pay huge fees.
The other thing that strikes me is, why did so many people let it happen? When we were in Anlong Veang (night 3 of the mototrip - last stand of the Khmer Rouge) the owner of our guesthouse was a former Khmer soldier. Heang had a really long chat with him about his time as a soldier, and he said that not all of the people involved in the KR were as heinous as the mass murderers. Many truly believed in the communistic ideal of sacrificing individuality for the good of all, and didn't use their power for personal gain and murder. But I wonder if that's really true, or if he also has done such horrible things in his past that the guilt has put him in denial. He seemed like such a kind man, that I'd love to believe the former, but you don't know. And no one has ever been brought to trial for this - 3 million dead and no one punished. Even Pol Pot died in his home in 1998 from malaria. Sickening.
Tuesday, October 11, 2005
A much better day of SNORKELING!
I snorkeled for the first time today :) Kathryn and I each paid $10 for a boat tour of three islands. This included transport to and from the beach, breakfast, the boat tour, snorkeling, and a delightful lunch of fresh fish cooked right on the beach. And I SNORKELED! It was really cool. Our guide was such a nice young guy who spoke really good english. He was lots of good fun - playing around and teasing everyone. He took my hand and swam me around the reef showing me all sorts of cool things in the water because I was the only newbie to the event. He even brought up this GIANORMOUS sea urchin that he de-spined and cracked open on the beach. So I've had the freshest uni available - don't like it all that much ;)
I know that I still have a fair bit of blogging to catch up on - I managed to get at least the first half of the motobike trip logged in, but there's even still so much to tell you all. I've been online for over an hour already, and my fingers are getting a bit sore. So once I get back to Phnom Pehn tomorrow, I'll do my best to finish with the catch up - and get pictures posted. I burned everything that I currently have to CD, and this computer doesn't have a drive to be able to pull them off to share with you. Soon, though!
I know that I still have a fair bit of blogging to catch up on - I managed to get at least the first half of the motobike trip logged in, but there's even still so much to tell you all. I've been online for over an hour already, and my fingers are getting a bit sore. So once I get back to Phnom Pehn tomorrow, I'll do my best to finish with the catch up - and get pictures posted. I burned everything that I currently have to CD, and this computer doesn't have a drive to be able to pull them off to share with you. Soon, though!
Monday, October 10, 2005
A very bad day
I got into Sihanoukville yesterday (Sunday) for a couple of days of relaxing on the beach after such a long week on the motobike. Met up with a nice british gal, Kathryn, and we're sharing a room here in town. We went down to the beach today to get some sun and read our books, and didn't listen to the expat who told us to go to the ritzy private beach of a hotel where you don't get hassled as much. So we went to one of the main beaches and OH MY GOODNESS, the kids and women there are horrible. They've got good maniputlative marketing skills, but it's all very upsetting. They try and try to sell you string bracelets with you're name woven in them, and cut fruit, and hair removal, and massages, and manicure, and you name it! You say no no no, they say maybe later, then they give you a "free" bracelet so that you'll remember them. But then they keep coming by to remind you that they gave you that bracelet, and you have to buy something from them. So we agreed to have our leghair "threaded" off, Kathryn had a quick halfhearted massage, and I got the worst manicure on the planet. So when we started to negotiate what we thought were reasonable prices for things, they flipped out on us that it wasn't enough. Here we are surrounded by a dozen people, half of them pissed off that they didn't get to sell us something, and the other half pissed that they aren't getting 20 dollars for a sucky massage! One little boy actually threw the dollar in the sand that Kathryn had given him for a little string bracelet. So after all the time in the countryside seeing these dear sweet children who really have nothing but still play and laugh like children, I just couldn't handle the corruption and manipulation anymore. So we paid them what we thought was fair and booked it out of there. I was just left feeling so objectified and used. It's tough being here and always feeling like a walking dollar sign and an opportunity for everyone to make some money. I guess it is just the bad side of that survival spirit that I love so much, but it's hard to handle sometimes.
Friday, October 07, 2005
My arse is chaffed
Hi all! This is going to be a quick post just to say that I arrived safely in Phnom Penh, though I think the skin on my bottom has left me somewhere along the way. And I'm more disgustingly dirty than I think I've ever been in my life. I'm seriously contemplating burning all of my clothes and shopping for more. It was an amazing week, and I'll set up shop somewhere tomorrow to input a more detailed report. Suffice it to say for now that this is an incredible country that you should all come visit at the first opportunity. The people are beautiful and have such an amazing spirit, especially considering everything that they've been through and all that they still have to overcome.
Cambodia motobike tour - Day 7
Today was a straight shot down to Phnom Penh with a stop to visit Heang's family. We bought a Buddha statue carved from pink sandstone to give to his grandmother. His family is really kind. I wish that I'd had the energy to stay longer, but by that point I was so tired and ready to be in Phnom Penh. His mother had made a huge and tasty lunch for us. He's got so much family everywhere. That's what has helped people here to survive all that they have - even the extended family bonds out to 3rd and 4th cousins in strong. All along the way he'd say, "let's stop here and visit my mother's brother's wife's brother and his family".
This is an incredible country, and I feel blessed to have had the opportunity to make this trip. It was sort of random that I met Heang in the first place - he tried to deliver me to the guesthouse the night that we rolled in (he gets a dollar commission for bringing in tourists), and when I told the guesthouse that I wanted a guide, he's the one that they called. So many people come to Cambodia on package tours, and you can tell who they are. They fly into the airport, get picked up by a camry, and delivered to their 4 or 5 star hotel. Then they get into a tour bus to see the sites, often for just a day, whisked off to a fancy restaraunt, then off to their next destination. It's so sterile, and they never actually have to see the people, and see the country for what it really it. Heang says they're "wrapped in plastic". Even of the tourists who come here, most only ever go to Phnom Pehn and Siem Reap, which are wealthy cities by comparison to the majority of the country. And it's just not the same to see dusty faces staring back from the 2-dimensional glossy pages of a National Geographic sitting in a pile on your glass-topped coffee table. This is reality for the majority of the world's population, where they live in huts with palm leaf walls and grass roofs, no water or electricity, no bathroom or kitchen, no furniture, a family of 7-10 sleeping on the bamboo floor without even mosquito nets. Where they live amongst signs that remind them "Danger Mines", the main purpose of schools is to educate the children to be aware of the dangers of mines, and one of the few English words that just about every child knows is "bomb". So many young faces with so much potential, and they're surrounded by so much political corruption. If only given an honest opportunity they would flourish, and it's so hard to always hear "I want to move to American someday" and know that for most of them, it's just a dream. It makes you realize what great fortune we all have to be born somewhere that we have more of a chance. Because at our core, none of us are any different. Some of us just got extremely lucky. And we should never forget that. I've never been much of a "things" person, but I've decided that from now on for every birthday and Christmas, I'd much rather see those who care about me donate to charity in leu of giving me gifts. There's really nothing that I need all that much, and it would make me so much happier knowing that something kind and generous was done in my honor. I hope that you all with think about doing the same.
This is an incredible country, and I feel blessed to have had the opportunity to make this trip. It was sort of random that I met Heang in the first place - he tried to deliver me to the guesthouse the night that we rolled in (he gets a dollar commission for bringing in tourists), and when I told the guesthouse that I wanted a guide, he's the one that they called. So many people come to Cambodia on package tours, and you can tell who they are. They fly into the airport, get picked up by a camry, and delivered to their 4 or 5 star hotel. Then they get into a tour bus to see the sites, often for just a day, whisked off to a fancy restaraunt, then off to their next destination. It's so sterile, and they never actually have to see the people, and see the country for what it really it. Heang says they're "wrapped in plastic". Even of the tourists who come here, most only ever go to Phnom Pehn and Siem Reap, which are wealthy cities by comparison to the majority of the country. And it's just not the same to see dusty faces staring back from the 2-dimensional glossy pages of a National Geographic sitting in a pile on your glass-topped coffee table. This is reality for the majority of the world's population, where they live in huts with palm leaf walls and grass roofs, no water or electricity, no bathroom or kitchen, no furniture, a family of 7-10 sleeping on the bamboo floor without even mosquito nets. Where they live amongst signs that remind them "Danger Mines", the main purpose of schools is to educate the children to be aware of the dangers of mines, and one of the few English words that just about every child knows is "bomb". So many young faces with so much potential, and they're surrounded by so much political corruption. If only given an honest opportunity they would flourish, and it's so hard to always hear "I want to move to American someday" and know that for most of them, it's just a dream. It makes you realize what great fortune we all have to be born somewhere that we have more of a chance. Because at our core, none of us are any different. Some of us just got extremely lucky. And we should never forget that. I've never been much of a "things" person, but I've decided that from now on for every birthday and Christmas, I'd much rather see those who care about me donate to charity in leu of giving me gifts. There's really nothing that I need all that much, and it would make me so much happier knowing that something kind and generous was done in my honor. I hope that you all with think about doing the same.
Thursday, October 06, 2005
Camodia motobike tour - Day 6
Today we made our way to Kampong Thom - and it rained almost ALL DAY. Not just a drizzly seattle rain, either. Buckets of full on monsoon rain. Whatever posessed me to make this trip in the rainy season, you know, when it RAINS!!! I've never been so wet in my life, but at least it's a warm rain. And it feels better than the blistering hot sun. We stopped for awhile in a little village to have a drink and wait it out, and there was the cutest little girl (probably about 5 or 6) who was playing with me. She's hide around a corner, peek out, and giggle and run away when she saw me look at her. I pulled my camera and got a really cute picture of her. After she saw that she could look at the screen, she wanted more and more pictures, so I shot a few good ones of her. The rain subsided a bit when we got to the Ker Kek temple complex. There was a swarm of giggly girls and one boy herding them with a stick. They giggled even more when I got the stick from him and started poking at him with it to let him see how it felt ;) Heang picked his favorite curly haired little girl and kept scaring her and making her laugh. We gave out the last 18 or so books and pens. They're all so polite and grateful. I'm just about templed out, though, so while Heang poked around the ruins, I learned a few Khmer words. I remember that the word for rain is "plean". We made it to Kampong Thom for the night - nice little town. On the way in, we passed food stalls selling huge platers of roasted tarantulas. I was so tweaked out that I made Heang take my camera to get pictures. Even looking at the photos give me the willies.
Wednesday, October 05, 2005
Cambodian motobike tour - Day 5
I wandered around the village of Preah Vihear this morning by myself while Heang was getting himself up and around. It's funny - he's really not a morning person at all, and until he's had his first cup of coffee, he has great difficulty with English. Makes it fun to taunt him ;) I kind of enjoy the curious stares from the villagers, especially the children. I played a good game of kick the can with an adorable little 3 year old boy - with about a dozen pairs of eyes on me.
The road from Preah Vihear to Tbeng Meanchey is the WORST road on the planet - hands down. It started with us having to go back down the mountain the way we came, and in the process I got glued in mud up to my ankles. Heang had to come pull me out. I was walking across a rough spot so that he could pass easier on the bike. I sloshed through a stream to clean myself up - big waste of time since I was 50 times worse in about an hour. We had maybe 10 kilometers of mud to drive through - potholes the size of a volkswagon bug full of water from the storm the night before. The only people who seemed to be having an okay time of it was the family in the ox cart - I longed for an ox cart about then.
Some of the drive also took us through a wild life preserve that was full of amazing tropical birds - these little green guys with bright red heads, and dozens of different sorts of brightly colored butterflies. After many attempts, I have decided that butterfly photography must be one of the most difficult tasks in the world - thought I guess it would help to have better than 6X zoom. They tend to take off when you get too close.
Tuesday, October 04, 2005
Cambodia motobike tour - Day 4
Today we moved on from Anlong Veang (last stand of the Khmer Rouge until Pol Pot died there in 1998) to Preah Vihear (amazing temple complex on top of a mountain. It's an amazing place, and a complete pain in the ass to get to. We got to the village at the base of the mountain, and everyone says "you need me to take you to the top! Very steep! You need my motobike!" when we are already on a motobike (albeit without quite as much power, which we quickly discovered) So with my pack, Heang, and me on this poor bike up a huge grade, it was pretty difficult. I had to hope off a few times as he started out in third, slipped down to second, then first, then the bike refused to move with us. So huff puff up a ways until it flattened and we could start up again. The road winds for about 4 hm. We managed to get to the first little village on the mountain and left the bike there. It took some pretty strong convincing to get Heang to let me carry my own pack at this point. He took a little too much concern for my health, safety, and wellbeing and started to treat me like too much of a "girl" for my own independent Laura Croft tastes ;) But I showed him by scampering ahead of his out of breath, pack-a-day self - with my own pack. We made it to the top of the temple just in time for sunset. What an amazing view! You can see Cambodia, Thailand, and Laos all at the same time from up there since it is the border for Cambodia and Thailand, and near the Laotian border. The really striking thing is that you can tell where the Thai-Cambodia border is a night because the cambodia side is all lit up with cities and villages with electricity, and the Cambodian side is completely dark. You know that there are people living there because you see them all day long, but there's no power outside of the provencial towns, so the entire country just looks pitch black.
We stayed in a simple little guesthouse the village of Preah Vihear and ended up staying up late drinking "Special Muscle Wine" (cheap cambodian headache whiskey) with the owner (also the chief of police) and two of his friends. Heang was busy cooking our dinner since the owner of the only restraunt in town was too sick to cook, so the three men and I sat staring at each other and exchanging smiles and Khmer/English words for gecko. Grand conversation ;) Once Heang re-entered the conversation, it was a bit easier since he could translate, and this very kind guesthouse owner started asking all about my home and family, and how big america is relative to cambodia. I wish I'd traveled with a little world map because it would have been so useful on multiple occaisions already. I ended up drawing (very poorly) on the back of my journal. And OH MY GOD the crickets here are ENORMOUS - a good 2 inches long at least. And they're so loud that they are literally deafening. It was quite beautiful to stand up at the temple and listen to the symphody of crickets and frogs with lightening rolling in from the distance.
Monday, October 03, 2005
Cambodia motobike tour - Day 3
I had my first REAL 3rd world experience today. We got up and off this morning, delivered some books, pens, and candy to children along the way, and came across a guy who had been totally tossed from his motorbike and was unconcious in the road. It was really scary because at home, you'd just call 911 and get an ambulance to the hospital, but here the nearest hospital may be half an hour down a bad road, and no one in the village has a car! Luckily an Aussie woman who works in an orphanage near Siem Reap was passing by as well (westerner number 2 of 2 on the trip), and she had a good first aid kit with her. We got him cleaned up a bit and bandaged, but his left pinky was gashed nearly to the bone and needed stitches badly. I wanted to pull my sewing kit and try to stitch him up, but Heang was already freaking out about me touching him in the first place with all of the blood. But what can you do really, but be as careful as you can and do anything possible to help. I had no cuts on my hands, and we used lots of alcohol and peroxide. It took him a good 15 minutes to come to, and another 20-30 to be interactive and responsive. I shined my headlamp (thanks lab!) in his eyes to see if they reponded well to light, and thank god they did because what would I have done if they didn't! We stressed to the villagers the importance of making sure he is able to wake up and be responsive ever 2-4 hours or so, left him with some ibuprofen and powdered penicillin, and hoped for the best that he'd be okay. He was able to sit up and drink some water, though, so i think he'll be alright. And the look on his face when he first opened his eyes and saw me was pretty priceless ;)
Sunday, October 02, 2005
Cambodia motobike tour - Day 2
OMFG it hurts so badly to sit! The roads suck, and I'd rather eat moldy eyeballs than spend 5 more days doing this. Okay, maybe not the moldy eyeballs part. What makes this all worthwhile is the stopping points. We bought 4 school uniforms, more books, and some candy to deliver to kids along the way. It's so wonderful seeing their faces light up with joy. At first they're really scared of me, because i don't think they see many westerners out here (note: we met two others in the entire week). But after 10 minutes or so, they're laughing and playing with me. We stopped first at a buddhist pagoda to pray, and a lot of people were inside chatting (a group of old men and a couple of families.) heang showed me some of the ritual so that I felt like I was genuinely participating. I felt really funny in such a sacred place, being stared at so because I'm a foreigner, but not in any sort of bad way. I had my forture read - all good. Heang's was first bad, then good. Sounds about right. Along the way, we stopped at Banteay Chhmar temple to see the ruins. Well, first to eat something because I was losing steam. We had the best sweet sticky rice and red beans packed in bamboo and a bunch of bananas. A group of boys waited and played while we ate (mimicking WWF which is on ALL OF THE TVs here!) Then they followed us around all over the place - they were so CUTE! The ruins are amazing, better than Ta Prohm in Angkor, and we were the only visitors. Heang took my camera and got a lot of pictures. Good thing, too because the heat was getting to me pretty badly.
Saturday, October 01, 2005
Cambodia motobike tour - Day 1
Finally in Sisophon. Heang overslept and didn't meet me until 8 am - we were supposed to leave by 6. All good, though. We stopped at a market on the way and bought notebooks and pens for the village school kids and a krama (cotton scarf) to keep the sun and dust off my neck. Over breakfast this morning, we started talking about our earliest childhood memories. I told him mine was when my sister was born (I was about 3 1/2). His first memory is of being in the hospital in Phnom Pehn in late 1979, after the end of the Pol Pot regime. He told me that his mother worked in the rice fields, and they were only allowed to eat rice soup - basically a little of rice in the cooking water. His mother would smuggle small bits of rice home for him, and she would have been killed if she was caught. He said he was skinny and malnourished with the pot belly that you see on photographs of starving children. After that, we headed off to the "Killing Lake" which I don't remember the name of. It's this huge irrigation project developed by the Khmer Rouge to increase rice production in the region (rice that was sold to china and thailand for profit). The entire enormous lake was dug out by hand, and somewhere between 2-3,000 people died there. While we were there, a man drove up in a Lexus SUV with his enture family. He'd been one of the workers digging the lake in the 70s and wanted to show his family.
From the lake we went to a silk faming village - so cool! I spent about $50 on two scarves and about 4 meters of beautiful ruby-colored silk. I'm going to have mom make pants for me (plus a bunch of other things, I'm sure). It's incredible fabric, and it's really strange to buy beautiful 100% silk from people living in wood shacks amongst cows, chickens, pigs, etc. The houses are basic stilt houses with palm leaf walls and grass roofs, and the fam animals live beneath the houses, then there's this amazing silk. We got to visit where they raise the silk worms and see the cocoons. The woman who I bought the scarves from was pulling silk - they boil the cocoons, then spin the silk thread from the surface of the water. So there was this basket of beautiful yellow raw silk. Then I stood for awhile and watch two girls weaving some amazing pieces. It doesn't get more authentic than this - and you know that the money is going to the people who need it and deserve it rather than to 5 middle men for profit.
For about half of the day, I really needed to pee, but couldn't quite bring myself to squat along the road in front of everyone. So once dark came, we pulled off, and I crept off the road a bit in the dark searching for a bit of privacy and promptly fell into a hole full of water up to my waist!! Turns out it was someone's washing hole, so while I was covered toe to hip in muddy water, at least it was soapy muddy water!
From the lake we went to a silk faming village - so cool! I spent about $50 on two scarves and about 4 meters of beautiful ruby-colored silk. I'm going to have mom make pants for me (plus a bunch of other things, I'm sure). It's incredible fabric, and it's really strange to buy beautiful 100% silk from people living in wood shacks amongst cows, chickens, pigs, etc. The houses are basic stilt houses with palm leaf walls and grass roofs, and the fam animals live beneath the houses, then there's this amazing silk. We got to visit where they raise the silk worms and see the cocoons. The woman who I bought the scarves from was pulling silk - they boil the cocoons, then spin the silk thread from the surface of the water. So there was this basket of beautiful yellow raw silk. Then I stood for awhile and watch two girls weaving some amazing pieces. It doesn't get more authentic than this - and you know that the money is going to the people who need it and deserve it rather than to 5 middle men for profit.
For about half of the day, I really needed to pee, but couldn't quite bring myself to squat along the road in front of everyone. So once dark came, we pulled off, and I crept off the road a bit in the dark searching for a bit of privacy and promptly fell into a hole full of water up to my waist!! Turns out it was someone's washing hole, so while I was covered toe to hip in muddy water, at least it was soapy muddy water!
Friday, September 30, 2005
What the hell am I doing?
I'm about to get on the back of a honda crotch rocket motorbike for a week in the Cambodian countryside. A motorbike, not a motorcycle, and part of this trip back down the godawful road that brought me here in the first place. For $5 and 6 hours on a bus, I could be in Phnom Penh by early afternoon tomorrow. But no. I have to be frickin Angelina Jolie (I wish) and head out to see the real Cambodia. I'm excited about it and panicking at the same time. Today was the worst torrential downpour that I've ever seen in my life. Buckets of rain for about 6 hours. Hopefully that means that the next week will be completely rainless, right? I know that this is going to be one of the most amazing experiences of my life, and what the hell do I have to complain about when I can rent myself a posh splurge room for a night to rest and recover while most of the people around me here are still left with nothing, sleeping in the rain. We're making a big loop of northwestern cambodia, returning this way to head south for phnom penh after visiting Heang's family. He is excited for me to help his sister to practice her english. He's a super smart guy - eager to learn and knows a lot about cambodian history. He's quick with a gentle pat on the shoulder when it all gets too much for me to bear emotionally, and he unintentionally makes me feel guilty for my minor complains and issues. I swear to all of you - you would never complain about anything else in your life if you spent just one week in a place like this. There is more poverty here than you can image if you haven't seen it, yet few people (usually only the amputees) ask for a simple handout. Everyone works so hard for anything that they can get, and from sunrise to sunset, laying roads in the most miserable of humid heat, and selling what trinkets they can to tourists. Sure it can get annoying to be seen as a wallet with legs, but they're trying so hard that it's only fair to do what you can to help. We're going to load up in Sisophon with what I can afford and deliver food and clothes to some of the villages. Hopefully I won't break the bank in just this one week...
I'm off in the morning. I'm sure I'll have a series of long blogs to catch up with when I get back to a computer. Wish me luck.
I'm off in the morning. I'm sure I'll have a series of long blogs to catch up with when I get back to a computer. Wish me luck.
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