Wushen Zhao Temple

What started out as a very frustrating day turned into an amazing experience. We haven't had much to do lately because the capture rate has been pretty low. The chair of the field station is self-appointed to be in charge of collecting our animals, and he hasn't wanted to accept the offers of several of the locals to help catch more. He insists on taking the same two young guys with him every night, and with the full moon interfering, it's just not enough. He's a very nice man, but he seems to want to keep most of the control and money for himself. As a result, we had only 4 females to dissect yesterday and were done by 9 am. We've been engaging in the dance of convincing him that he wants to get more people to help us get more animals – in part by visiting the Ministries of Forestry, Husbandry, and Conservation to get them to gently light a fire under his rear.

Since there wasn't so much to do yesterday, we visited a nearby temple that we were just told about. It's about 20 miles away and is a complex consisting of four temple buildings, a pagoda, and a stupa as well as living quarters for some of the monks. It's walled in concrete with bronze prayer wheels encircling the complex. The site dates back to 1577, but most of the construction was finished in the 1700s. It's been damaged three times in history – most recently during the tragically ironic "Cultural Revolution" in the 1960s when two of the temple buildings, including the three story memorial hall, and over 200 memorial stupas were destroyed. The oldest temple from 1577 survived because it was being used as a school for the commune at the time, and the pagoda and stupa are still standing because their height made them perfect places for flying the Communist flag. Go figure. Fortunately the newest powers that be are supporting the
reconstruction of the two destroyed temples and the restoration and preservation of the entire site.

We walked around the temple complex for about 20 minutes before an old man climbed the stairs at the front gate to ring a gong that called the monks and faithful lay people to the noon service. Shaoyuan and I entered the main hall of the temple that is currently in use (the first of the two to be rebuilt) and were standing along the side when a woman from across the room waved us over to join her and her family. The temple layout and services here are a little different from temples I visited in Southeast Asia. The branch of Buddhism here is Tibetan, whereas it's Theravada in SE Asia. In SE Asia, the monks sit on the floor whereas the temples here have rows of low benches that run from the front to back. About 60 monks, most 60+ years old, sat at the low benches with one bench on the far side reserved for lay people. The monks were dressed in brown, black, and yellow robes in order of seniority, and all were wrapped in cloth of various hues of plum to red. The noon service was also lunch time, so we sat as each received their meal to the sound of chants and the occasional outburst of cymbals, drums, and conch shell horns. Two head monks wore elaborate multicolored vests and tall headdresses that resembled bright yellow mohawks and walked around serving the meal while the faithful lit butter candles and filed up and down the rows receiving blessings from each of the monks.

After awhile, we decide to go to the nearby larger town for our lunch where the woman serving us took one look at me and ran out the door to collect her baby and camera. Her little girl is about 1 year old and cute as can be, but really didn't want to have much to do with me. I posed for a few photos with them, which turned out to be the first of many in these two days. The funniest has been today when we went to another county town, and six young women working in a grocery store all wanted to snap photos of me and them with me using their cell phone cameras. They were so giggly and funny, and I think I smiled through about 30 photos.

After lunch, we returned to the temple to have ice cream on the steps of the temple well shaded by the branches of a large old tree wrapped in prayer flags. As we sat, a younger monk approached us and spoke a little bit of English with me before asking if I would take a look at their signs. The temple has just recently opened for guests, and I think I may be the first foreigner to visit due to its remoteness, but they are prepared with signs at all of the sites in Mongolian, Chinese, and English. He wanted to be sure that the signs are correct since they were translated to English by a Chinese-native English teacher from a school about 300 km away. For the most part, they were well done in the sense that I understood the meaning. Some of the grammar was incorrect, and they'd squared up the text to match the linear form of Chinese characters by word-wrapping and using hyphenation in all sorts of incorrect ways. So I happily agreed to follow him all over the temple complex and with the assistance of my Chinese-speaking colleagues, we got all of their signs translated into native English. The amazing part of this experience is that in addition to a personalized tour of the entire complex, he took us into the living quarters of the highest monk to meet and have tea with him. I got a quick crash course in appropriate customs, and we were given blue silk scarves to drape over our hands an offer to him as we greeted entered. He's a very pleasant older man, but not at all what I expected. While the other monks were all dressed in traditional robes, he was wearing trousers, a long-sleeved red undershirt, and a white button up shirt. The funniest thing is that this holiest of holy men of this temple was wearing a silver ring with the Playboy bunny. Apparently since pornographic magazines are banned in China, Playboy has turned to marketing the bunny as a line of clothing and accessories. So a lot of men in China wear Playboy clothing without even knowing that it is a corporation that thrives on female nudity.

We were served a generous array of dried cheeses, cookies, dried beef, and some sort of thick yeasty yoghurty thing with yellow rice – all very traditional Mongolian food. They were so kind and kept pushing food on us, so I continued to eat even though I was stuffed from lunch and ice cream and wondered how floral the food was. But that's why one should always travel with a good supply of antibiotics – you never know when you might be given the honor of an audience with a high monk. At the end of our visit with him, he presented us each with his blessing and a while silk scarf identical to the blue ones we'd offered him as well as a small gold amulet. We each gave him 100 yuan (about $12) as a donation to the restoration of the temple and were
surprised when we were presented with red fabric-covered boxes holding two stone and silver-plated cups as a thank-you for our gifts. They had us write our names in their ledger because when the restoration is completed in 2 years, they will place our names on a wall listing
their major contributors. Mine will be the first English name at the temple.

Our monk friend then finished leading us around the temple to each of the buildings to finish the sign translations. We developed quite an entourage including a teenage boy with a ponytail who kept snapping photos of me with his cell phone, and I surprised and entertained the painters at the main temple hall. Construction of the three-story main hall has been completed, and there is a team of painters from Tibet who are completing the ornate and spectacularly colorful paintings on the entire structure inside and out. They're funny guys with blue faces from the paint, and it looked like they may have intentionally colored themselves since one young man had deliberately blue outlined eyelids.

We were then taken to another of the temple buildings that houses 103 of the 108 Buddhist sutras. Each sutra is a volume of pages that covers a particular subject, such as math, astronomy, ethics, etc., which one must study to become a well-educated monk. They're housed
in two cabinets with cubicals that measure about 6 inces square and 2 feet deep. The texts are delicately wrapped in yellow cloth with embroidered flaps covering the number of the volume and title of the subject. It's quite an impressively colorful library that makes libraries of ordinary books seem stodgy by comparison. They're written in Tibetan, therefore in addition to Chinese and Mongolian, all of the monks read and speak Tibetan. Even before learning of his formal
education, it was easy to tell that our new friend is very intellectual and spiritual. He has a presence about him that seems older and wiser than his 28 years, and his calm and kind way of
speaking makes you feel very peaceful. The sutras are also taken by the most faithful of worshippers in a sort of walking meditation around the outer wall of the complex. After the evening service, we saw several women who each had a sutra wrapped in a sort of sling hanging over her shoulders and across her back. They walked around the entire perimeter of the wall spinning each of the 108 prayer wheels. One frail older laid walked hunched over and had great trouble with the occasional doublets of steps, but she continued on in her ritual devotion.

Lastly, he took us to the pagoda which is a very interesting looking structure topped with a bronze spire suspending wind chimes. There are apparently only 2 similar pagodas in the world – one in Thailand and one in Nepal. The middle section is square and yellow with pairs of blue piercing eyes painted on each of the four sides. The bottom section is white with an elaborately painted wooden-columned patio and huge sliding doors that were padlocked shut. Our guide held the mighty keys and slid the doors back to reveal a short tunnel with several relics and a huge canvas painting of what the complex was like in its original splendor. This was where he explained to us how much destruction there was under Mao's rule and their hopes for rebuilding.

The whole day had an air of serene significance that is one of those moments for which one could travel for years and never be so fortunate to experience. It's something that you can't find in a guidebook because it's a series of chance occurrences and the people you meet who make the moment special.

The Myth of Trousers

I bet none of you had to kick aside a tumble weed and bat away swarming flies to get to your toilet this morning, now did you? Things here are going pretty well. We tried to go out to the field the other night to learn the rodent trapping techniques but our trapping experts don't seem to want us around. So when we're not offing animals for specimen preparations or building cages to house some of them, we're just sort of sitting around. I'm glad I brought two 400+ page books to read because I'm flying through them. Internet is agonizingly slow, so I've been checking email and posting here once every 2 days or so, and can't tolerate doing anything else online. Today we made a big trip to the county city, which is bigger than the one street town where we shower and only about half an hour away. We got some supplies and feed for housing rodents and fed ourselves a hearty Sichuanese lunch. Apparently one of the diners in the restaurant exclaimed "I didn't know foreigners like spicy food" when we walked in the door, which I thought was kind of funny. People are really curious about me. Most stare with a blank look that borders on disdain, but there are often smiles when they realize uneasily that they've been staring. Older women and children smile the most, and the children are fun to play with. They're really curious and a little afraid of me at the same time, so I played a few games of peek-a-boo with some girls who looked to be about 9-ish. One woman in her early 20s almost got hit by a car because she was gawking at me while trying to cross a busy street. I felt kind of bad about that one. There are no tourist destinations here, so the folks in the smaller town have never had a foreigner come through, and the city only rarely sees foreigners.

I think I'll also take this as an opportunity to introduce you to our "cast of characters". Shaoyuan is a graduate student at Harvard who works with our colleague over at Organismal and Evolutionary Biology on the Cambridge campus. He's a bit taller than me and skinny as a
rail, but you wouldn't believe how much food that guy can put back. He's super enthusiastic about everything and talks a mile a minute, always getting himself a bit ahead of the task at hand. He's from a town in southern China that is apparently known for its quick people.
We've been having nightly lessons to practice his English pronounciation. His vocabulary is quite good, but his tongue gets caught up on a lot of words. When I want him to slow down and listen
to me, I just get him to try to repeat the word "Thursday". Yesterday his favorite word was "anesthetization", and he has a curious habit of whistling "The Star Spangled Banner".

Ms. Xia is a graduate student and also my roomate for the duration of this trip. She's very pleasant and smiley and loves poking fun at the guys with me. Her English is quite good, but she's so quiet sometimes that it can be a challenge to figure out if she's understood me without assuming she didn't and risking offending her. She's the one who made sure we were prepared for the apocalypse out here by packing snacks and bottled water to supply a small nation.

Mr. Liang is our group leader. He's in his 50s, smokes 2 packs a day, and has a fabulous comb-over. In the beginning he was always joking around and laughing, but within the last few days he's turned into a grump and has cast a cloud over the mood of our whole group. He was
apparently having difficulty getting his daughter moved to a good school in Beijing, but fortunately that's been resolved. I think we're starting to see a bit of his jovial side again. He speaks no English, so it's a bit tough on me when he's in a bad mood and growls in my direction, but it sounds from the others that it's probably better that I can't understand the words coming from his mouth. He just turned and smiled at me, though, so I think things are getting better.

Mr. Bayor is the chair of the field station. He's a bit of a rotund guy with deep dimpled cheeks. He also speaks no English and more or less ignored me for the first week, but since my birthday he's been making more of an effort. Through Shaoyuan he told me last night that he's going to be traveling this fall to 8 European countries for an agriculture and environmental conservation trip, and he's been making more eye contact with me lately. It's little things like that that make it a bit easier to connect with people here.

Mr Sidi is our cook. He's got to be one of the kindest people on the planet - very quiet and gentle. He's probably in his early 60s and has three grown sons and a daughter. He lives just a little bit up the road, and he's here with our meals on the table breakfast, lunch, and dinner and runs a farm in the in-between hours. He rolls out dough and makes handmade noodles and dumplings. I love dumpligs - they're like little silky pillows of secret yumminess. You never know what's going to be inside of one, and they're quite thrilling if you're an adventurous eater. His have been filled with lamb, garlic, green onions, and lots of yummy spices. They're great dipped in a bit of vinegar and pepper sauce.

So those are the major players. Oh yeah, I just realized that I titled this "The Myth of Trousers" without explaining why. That was on a sign on the side of a building in the city we visited today.
Don't know what the sign was for since the rest was in Chinese, but I love the funny and random uses of English here. And I wanted to let you all know that your pants are not real. Sorry...

My First Chinese Birthday!

Today has been a great day, and I'm very touched by the hospitality of our hosts. I woke up this morning to a breakfast of noodles for "longevity", and was soon wished a happy birthday by my colleagues. Soon after that, 6 men from the Ministries of Forestry and Conservation arrived to check in on us and see how our progress with the field work is going. I'd known for a week or so that something was in the works for my birthday, because my colleagues kept dropping little hints, but I had no idea what. Turns out that in addition to checking on our work progress, all of these people had come here to celebrate with me :) We all loaded into 3 cars and drove further up the road to a farmhouse where a huge spread of food was waiting. Lamb, dried beef, dried
cheeses and yoghurt, dumplings, blood sausages (which I didn't ask about until I'd eaten one - Natazsa: I've eaten dorsal mesentery :) and lots and lots of fruit. And lots and lots of alcohol. We were about 12, and I think we went though at least 6 bottles of Baijun. I didn't fare too badly - everyone else is sleeping it off right now, and I think i paced myself just right so that I don't feel as rotten as they all do. The plate with two glasses went round and round the room, and we all made little speeches about how much we appreciate each other's support and collaboration in this project. They were all so warm and kind to me, and I actually teared up a bit when the cake came out. They'd even gotten candles and a crown for me! Then more people entered the room, and it turned out they were performers! There was a man with a traditional Mongolian stringed instrument and another man with an accordian. I got a little bit of video of them playing to share with you all when I get back. It's really fantastic music, and so much fun with everyone singing along. Then appeared the third performer - a woman in an ornate green satin dress with a beautiful headdress that had two strands of pearl beads draping from the temples. Her role seemed to be to sing and make us all drink more. At this point, we'd been doing rounds from small shot-glass sized cups, but this woman wasn't messing around and produced a silver bowl. She held a blue scarf draped between her hands and balanced the bowl in one palm. She sang a traditional ceremonial tune and bowed to each of us in our turn, offering the bowl. The expectation is that you finish the bowl at the end of the song, but you can sip bits while she sings. Dr Yang's young graduate student made the mistake of emptying the bowl before she'd finished the song, so he got a second pour to finish as well. I was allowed to just take little sips, which is probably what saved me from the fate of my companions. While I'm up typing this, my colleagues are all sleeping it off. Poor Shaoyuan had the worst of it. He insisted on drinking what was offered him, even knowing that he's not capable of drinking that much. I'm checking in on him every once in awhile, and he's doing alright. He's going to feel pretty rotten when he awakens, but fortunate it's only 5 pm, so he's got a chance to recover by dinner. The weather has turned a bit better, and I think we may be able to get out and do some of our own collecting tonight. We did wake up to an unexpected surprise this morning - the locals who have been helping us with the collections went out last night and caught about 19 animals. So I got a couple more litters of embryos dissected this morning as a great present!

Friendly Rodents

So we're in the desert. We arrived on Thursday and were immediately welcomed buy rounds of the local rotgut. It's called baijun, and it's distilled from some sort of desert fruit. It's strong but not too bad. The tradition is that the host pours two thimble-sized shots.You're only expected to take one of the two unless you want to flaunt your "manhood" and do a double. One is more than enough. After a few rounds that set a nice buzz, we retreated to the rooms that will be home for the next month. The bed's not too bad. More like a wooden platform with an inch of padding, but I tripled a comforter to made it more padded. The toilets definitely leave something to be desired. It's an outhouse of sorts with a brick enclosed concrete platform suspended about 12 feet above your "nature". There is a slit cut in the concrete about 5 inches by 2 1/2 feet through which to do one's "business". I'm becoming one with my hand sanitizer these days .

The first night we set out with our cook and another local man. The locals are of Mongolian descent and are very calm and reserved people. My favorite is the oldest of the bunch. He's tall and thin and wears a sweater vest. He's got dark leathery skin and eyes that disappear behind huge square-framed glasses when he smiles. You can tell that he's excited about catching the rodents - probably sort of takes him back to his boyhood. So the first night we drove out into the sand
dunes and stopped along the way to cut 12 foot branches from some tall shrub growing along the side of the dirt road. For those of you who laughed when I used the term "whacking rodents", I'll have you know that's exactly what happened. They shine a flashlight at the jerboas, and when they're stunned by the light they get whacked with the leafy branches at the end of the stick. It's enough to stun them just long enough to catch em. It's apparently also a semi-lethal blow, because
of the 3 we caught, one came to an untimely demise in the process and the other two died in transit back to the field station. Night two was much better. The local guys attached wire loops that strung a cloth bag to the end of long sticks. They used the car headlights to drive around the dunes, and when they spotted a jerboa, the guys on foot trapped it in the net. They caught 17! Of the 7 females that I dissected, we got 2 litters of 3 pups each, so not to bad for a night's work.

We kept several of the adults to put them in cages and try to house them in captivity. First they spend the night in live traps in our ad hoc procedure room. Several escaped in the night which made us worry that they'd be impossible to catch, but they're remarkably tame! They're wild rodents, but you can reach right down and pick them up. They even climb up on your feet, and one hopped up into my hand when I placed it in front of him! They're soooo cute. They walk and hop around on their enormous hindlegs and only use their forelegs to eat and dig. I want to bring one home!!!

Pickled People

It's real, but it isn't what you think. Someone out there is out to keep me from seeing the preserved remains of the world's famous communist leaders. When I was in Hanoi, Uncle Ho was "on vacation" in Moscow, and this time the mausoleum that holds the body of Mao is closed for reconstruction until September. Boo. Ah well. We spent most of the afternoon walking around the Forbidden City which was amazing and probably more fulfilling than seeing a dead guy. I can't get over how huge that place is. It stretches for maybe a mile or so north south and reportedly has over 9,000 rooms. The whole thing isn't open to the public, but the majority of it is, and it looks pretty cool. It's fun to imagine the emperor perched high at his post watching the formation of his troops and ministers in the courtyards. Everything looks like is has recently been or is currently being freshly painted - probably in preparation for the throngs of foreigners that are expected to descend upon the city next year. Another interesting little tidbit - the opening ceremony of the Olympics is slated to begin at 8 pm on august 8th 2008. Apparently 8 is a very lucky number in chinese tradition, so they're milking this one for all they can.

This is going to be a long entry since it's been a couple of days, and with the speed of this internet connection, I'm not sure how often I'll have the patience to wait for this. As it is I'm typing in Notepad so that I can just copy and paste when the stupid thing finally loads.

I had my first "wow" moment on this trip yesterday, and it wasn't nearly as beautiful as the one from my last trip. It did almost bring me to tears, though. We drove yesterday for about 6 hours, and the sky was thick brown with dust from the desert plains. Really quite nasty. Even in the car with the windows up and the AC off, my eyes, nose and throat were getting gritty with sand. At one point it started to rain, but the rain was actually coming down as mud. I can only imagine what a month in the desert is going to do to my mucus membranes. Anyway, that wasn't the wow moment. That came as we rounded a corner and crested a hill into a small town that had a major coal burning power plant. I'd already seen a bunch of mines and towns with huge piles of coal, and he dust from that adds to the nastiness that's already in the air. But seeing this coal burning plant was something else. Several square miles of smokestacks billowing plumes of black smoke. It was figuratively breathtaking in a very not so good way and did almost make me cry. The sky in that immediate area was even darker than where we'd been through already. And then as if by some ethereal coincidence, the sky cleared right over the site of a nuclear plant with 3 reactors generating thick white plumes of steam. One would think nuclear energy would be a nice, clean alternative to the coal burning plants that predominate in China, but given their history of safety standards, maybe not so much. I'm a huge advocate of wind power for this country. That's a resource that is in absolutely no short supply. Holy cow the winds can whip you right off your feet here. It is pretty amazing, though, how many nuclear plants there are in China. I think I've seen about a dozen already. The largest had 8 active reactors, and the city of Baotao alone had at least 7 independent plants with no fewer than 3 reactors at each one. It's incredible, really. Hopefully they're all for power...

So we're spending the night in a city called Erdos (or Urdos, depending on the sign). The cool part about this part of the country is that in and around Beijing the signs are in Chinese and English, but soon after you cross the border into Inner Mongolia, the signs switch to Chinese and Mongolian. Not so useful to me, but interesting nonetheless. I am also witnessing firsthand the mass migration of people from the countryside to the cities. Everywhere you look in the countryside, there are ghost towns of villages that you can tell once had active storefronts. Of the dozens of houses, maybe half a dozen or so still
look occupied and pretty run down at that. Then you get to a city of any significant population, and greater than 80% of the structures are new construction - as in the last 5 years or so. I'm convinced that this country must have about 99% of the construction cranes in the world. Shaoyuan claims (and I haven't seen the numbers myself) that in the last 20 years, 200 million people have relocated from rural areas into the cities. It's almost creepy to drive into a city that looks like it just sprung up overnight. So that's Erdos in a nutshell. We spent the day here so that we could grease the palms and bellies of some local officials. We had the most obscene amount of food for both lunch and dinner today with some folks from the Forestry Ministry, the Wildlife preservation group, and some guy who is apparently a hot shot discrict secretary. He was clearly the most imporat person at the table, as well as the most self-important, if you ask me. He sauntered into the room, sat down, yammered on and on while people fake-laughed at his jokes, and didn't look anyone in the eye at all. Just a weird vibe. However, I couldn't understand a word of the conversation at either meal, so what do I know? :) All I could do was sit and eat and drink and be told to eat more and drink more. It's really isolating and kind of strange to be in a room full of animated conversation and be of no part in it at all. And a little frustrating since I would like to know what their thoughts and plans are on this whole project and how they forsee accomplishing our goals. And additionally, I can tell that Shaoyuan is explaining the purpose of our work, and when he tells me what he's said all I can do is smile and nod since the translations in both directions are so difficult. I'm just feeling a bit intellectually distanced, but I think it'll all get much better when we're in the field actually doing the work and I can at the very least get my hands busy again. That's it for now. The blog page still isn't loading, so I think I'll be having Darren log into my account and post these for me. I seem to be able to access gmail but not blogspot so well. Take care and write to me when you can. I miss everyone - most especially my coffee crew! Oh yeah, and Jenna - if you're reading this (or if someone is who points here this way): I have found Shoe Mecca. Each department store in this town has an entire huge floor of the absolute cutest shoes ever that puts DSW to shame. And remember that this is coming from a woman who doesn't get so excited about shoes! Shaoyuan says that Beijing has the same shoe selection but cheaper than here, so I think I may come home with a new pair of shoes :)

An early birthday for me..

... and a bit unexpected. I have to buy myself a new camera because mine in fried :( Not exactly the best way to start a trip, but at least it happened in Beijing and not in the middle of nowhere. The chip seems busted. Ah well. It lasted a good 4 years. Probably time for an upgrade anyway.

Yesterday I made enough paraformaldehyde to fix a horse. That probably doesn't mean much to a whole lot of you, but it excites me in a weird way. We're pretty much ready to go now. Traps, lots of food (for us and rodents), DEPC water, PFA, tubes and tubes and tubes... After the prep work, I caught the train downtown and walked for about 2 hours to get down to the Forbidden City to meet Shaoyuan (he took his wife to catch the train to her hometown). If it's true that the best way to learn a city is to get lost in it, then I must know Beijing pretty well by now. I had no idea how EVERYTHING on the map is very very very tiny compared to real life. And to you Texans out there - you aint got nuthin on China. Nothing is bigger in Texas compared to this place.

I was doing fine on time until I got to Tianmen Square. The Chinese flag in the square is lowered every day at sunset and is cause for a huge spectacle. They shut down all foot traffic past the flag as a crowd of several thousand forms. I had to take the underground passages to get around everyone. But not until after I snapped a fantastic shot of a guy posing in front of the police formation. That's one thing I love about Asia. People here will pose for a picture in front of just about anything. As a result, I've started a bit of a collection of my own pictures of people having their pictures taken in front of random things :) So after a bit of a walk around, Shaoyuan took me to some famous restaurant where we had the most AMAZING duck I've ever eaten in my life. That line ought to make Darren jealous since duck is one of our favorites. It was so juicy, and the skin was the most perfect brown crispy deliciousness. And we had a beer with dinner which only the tiniest sip made Shaoyuan turn the brightest shade of red. Ahhh, the glories of alcohol dehydrogenase :) That's it for now. I'm going to help get things ready to leave tomorrow and then we're going back down to see the inside of the Forbidden City and visit Chairman Mao's pickled bits. Later...

Good morning!

All I've managed to do so far is eat and sleep, and I have been wonderful at that. Ms. Xia (a research associate in our collaborating lab) brought me to lab yesterday morning to get started on the preparations for the field work. That didn't take very long, so she took me to an outdoor recreation store (like REI) and then to a tourist souvenir market. I quickly decided that I needed lunch and sleep, so after trying to choke down a bacon, egg, and pickle (!) sandwich, she took me back to the hotel for a "nap". Said "nap" turned into a 5 hour sleep. I woke up in time to catch dinner, read a bit of my book, and go back to sleep for a full night. I think I've shown that jetlag what's for though. I will have to say that Shaoyuan knows good food. With the exception of that questionable sandwich (for which he wasn't present, and I should have known better since the menu was in english), all of our meals have been fantastic. I had a really fantastic pork and tofu dish last night, and brunch today was a bowl of spicy chow mein noodles with mushrooms and chicken. I may still lose a little weight on this trip, but it won't be for lack of trying to keep myself full at all times. I've also learned from every country I've visited that it's better to go to places with no english menus and point if you have to. If you're willing to risk eating calf intestine, you're likely to get a fantastic meal.

I feel like my english is a bit strained from speaking so slowly and simply to everyone. Our collaborators do speak pretty good english, but I'm trying to simplify my vocabulary to get my point across. It seems like that's carrying over a bit to writing here and in my emails to people. Ha!

I woke up in China today

Which is good since that's where I went to sleep last night. The flight was frickin long, but uneventful. I didn't find out until I got to Logan airport that my flight was to La Guardia and then out of JFK, so I had to catch a cab across Brooklyn. Then it was a bit of a game of musical chairs to get my seat. I boarded late so that I didn't have to take part in the herd of chinese folks. Read some of my past trip to China to see what I mean about people "lining up". So I was supposed to be in Seat 42A, but there was a guy in that seat. He was supposed to be in 41A, but there was someone in his seat who was supposed to be in 40A. I decided "screw it" and ended up in 40A. That apparently very much confused Shaoyuan when he came looking for me midflight and I was not the person in 42A. I was dead to the world for most of the flight anyway, so I didn't notice much of a thing. My brain is sort of mush right now from the jetlag, and we've started right to work in Dr. Yang's lab getting things ready. I'm taking a quick break to update you all. I got to see the Olympic stadiums this morning. They're super cool. And the institute of zoology is really nice. It's a new building with new lab space. I love new lab space. We're going to finish getting things ready today and tomorrow and maybe have a bit of time to see the Great Wall and the Imperial Palace before we head off for Inner Mongolia. No Jerboas yet, but there is a great big Tibetan rabbit sitting in the corner of the desk watching me type. It's Dr. Yang's pet, and it's a little snotty and keep sneezing. Kind of funny to see a rabbit sneeze. I'll try to keep you all updated. Thanks for the emails!

I'm off again

Hello all,
I leave town again tomorrow morning (May 10th) for China. I'm going to be spending a couple of days in Beijing and about 4 weeks in the desert in Inner Mongolia. I'll be working with a team of colleagues to collect rodents of the family "Jerboa". Image search them - they're cool. If you're interested in looking at the satellite image of where we'll be - it's roughly 38 degrees N 108 degrees E. I've developed a new fascination with Google Earth :) I'm not sure exactly where we'll be and how well connected we'll be, but I'm going to do my best to update this as often as I can get online. If you look at that satellite image, you'll get the correct impression that it probably won't be often. Also, I remember from my last trip that China has this pesky little habit of blocking access to any "opinion" sites, so while I can access my email and post to this blog, I won't be able to see what I've written once it's posted. Please forgive me if I repeat myself!

long awaited photos

I finally got photos posted. It's enough to keep you busy for awhile, but I haven't gotten to China, yet. Stay tuned for more. You'll find them organized into albums by country at photos.yahoo.com/zebrafish96

I'm safely home!

It was a long trip back, but I've made it and am recovering well. You'd be amazed how much easier it is to get public internet access when travelling that it is when at home. Anyway, I left Luang Prabang on the second to take an 11 hour bus ride to Vientiane, then the 12 hour train from Nong Khai (on the Thai side of the border) to Bangkok, spent all day walking around Bangkok (which I like much better since I avoided the trashy backpacker ghetto this time), slept at the airport, and flew home in about a 16 hour journey. The train ride was nice, but the light shines all night into the top bunk. I tried to duct tape the curtain hooks to the ceiling so that I could block out more of the light, but the curtain was too heavy for the tape :( A nice Thai guy travelling with his family gave me two bottles of water as they got off the train - that was really nice. After I got off the train and put my pack into left luggage, I was walking toward the shopping and financial district of Bangkok when I passed an older monk collecting food. He stopped me and handed me a little bag of fruit jellies and wouldn't accept one of my bottles of water in return. It was all in all a really nice send off for Asia. So I walked around looking at a bunch of clothes and stuff, went to see Narnia (I'm going to miss $2.50 movies and 75 cent popcorn) and dropped into a department store to buy new clothes that cost more than at the market, but I got to try them on!!! I felt disgusting from not showering the two days, so a new change of clothes sounded lovely. I cleaned myself up with a pack of babywipes and changed into fresh clothes at the airport, then discovered that the massage place offers showers for $4.50. Oh well. With my mat on the floor and my travel pillow under my head, I managed to catch a couple hours of sleep (along with several dozen other backpackers - that's a busy airport at all hours of the day and night!) I think the worst of the jetlag is over now. I'll be in Seattle until Jan 17th, then in Texas and off to Boston on the 23rd. I've enjoyed this whole blog thing, and maybe I'll even continue one after I get moved. I'll definitely post again in about a week to let you know where I post my pictures. Can't wait to see as many of you as I can while I'm around.

A long blog to catch up on the last week...

So I'm actually going to make it to Bangkok to catch my flight at godawful early o'clock on Thursday. That was questionable for a bit this morning. When I asked, all trains and buses were booked, so I crossed the border and went to the train station. Fortunately I picked up someone elses cancelled ticket, so I've got my sleeper for tonight!!! Now to book myself into a posh (for my budget standards) hotel near the airport for a good night's sleep before returning home.

On the 26th, I made it by songtheaw (little pickup truck packed full of people, produce, packages, puppies and pigs) 4 hours from Luang Prabang to Nong Kio. It's a nice little town on the Nam Ou river. The first night, I was walking along and was invited by a nice family to join them around their fire (no Lao Lao this time, whew!) They got a good laugh when I toppled over backwards off the little stool that my friend Mark rightfully calls the "wooden enema". The next day, I rented a bicycle and went about 10 out through a few villages, the last of which seems to rarely see farang. You can tell because the children that do see foreigners (closer to town) run up yelling "Sabaidee, hello, pen?!" I took a bunch of great photos along the way, in part to entertain people because they all LOVE to see themselves on the digital screen. BTW, I've had no luck getting photos posted here (tried several times), so when I get home, I'll sort through my 6 CDs of images and post the best ones on a free online photo album somewhere. I'll send a link when I get a chance to do that.

So the second night in Nong Kio, I met the MOST OBNOXIOUS traveller on the PLANET!! He's an older, retired German guy who is arrogantly and earnestly travelling the world. He's got the next 2 years of 6 month trips planned already. I say obnoxious because a bunch of us were in a restaurant, and at about 9:30 the owner's family was getting ready for bed on the balcony about 20 feet from our table. This town shuts down at about 10 pm. We (with the exception of obnoxious man-OM) were quieting down, trying to be respectful and just finish the last of our beers, when OM started rapping on the floor to get the attention of the cat. The owner politely asked him to stop, and OM started loudly ranting about how he was a paying customer, and if the guesthouse and restaurant wanted to stay in business, he should be allowed to make as much noise as he wanted. So I got up and left immediately, not wanting to part of that scene anymore.

On the 29th, I hopped a boat up river through some amazing scenery to Muang Kwa, which is itself a complete pit of dingy buildings and trash everywhere. I've had some pretty nasty rooms along the way, but this is the first time that I've woken up to the sound of rats in the walls. I slept with the mosquito net tucked in even though there were no mossies, just to make it a little more difficult for anything else to land in bed with me. I met a woman along the way who had a rat fall through her ceiling in the middle of the night and scurry across her forehead. Ew.

I ran into this guy, Mark, who I'd met in Vang Vieng. He's super cool and a lot of fun to hang out with. His 51st birthday was on the 29th, so we had a mediocre dinner to celebrate and spent the next day hiking about 12 km entirely uphill (about 3000 ft elevation gain) to a village called Omaak. Most foreigners just blow through Muang Kwa in one night and don't spend any time in the surrounding area, plus the dirt motobike road that we followed termininates about 24 km out of Muang Kwa, so most of the people along the way really rarely see foreigners. We felt like travelling minstrels because we'd dance around and make funny noises to entertain the kids, then entertain them with photos of themselves. We met a random english speaking guy at the last village, which was a bit unexpected way out there. He was super nice and offered for us to stay the night in his village, but we both wanted to get moving on again early the next day, so we just made the full 12 km back. Too bad, though. I bet that would have been a great experience.

So the morning of the 30th, I went down to the boat dock to get my ticket back down the river to Muang Ngoi, only to find out that 5 other seemingly richer short term travellers had stupidly chartered the scheduled boat for $70. The official price for the boat is 60,000 kip (about $6 per person), and when I told them that they said the boat guy told them that if they paid for the whole boat, they could take pictures along the way. Dumbasses!!! I watched this guy hand over a crisp new $50 and $20, and about a dozen Lao people gathered to drool over them like kids with candy. A few minutes later a little girl came along with a few bottles of Beer Lao, and they celebrated their successful scam. So then of course the ticket for me to get on a boat went up to $15 since I was alone, and they wouldn't just let me pay the stupid tourist my 60,000 to get on "their" boat. So I set my pack down and just got really politely and sweetly obnoxious saying "who's going to put my on a boat for 60,000 kip?" After about 45 minutes, I finally got a guy who begrudgingly put me on his boat and took what I was willing to offer. But that really irritates me about travelling - so many travellers are willing to toss around money without doing just a little bit of research to find out how much things SHOULD cost. The result is that prices skyrocket for everyone else. And in a country where the average Lao person earns about $1 per day, that either raises prices to where locals can't afford goods and services anymore, or it makes it difficult for them to get what they need because everyone would rather cater to the "rich" foreigners. Argh!!

Anyway, I made it to Muang Ngoi, which is a sweet little village where the power is cut at about 10 pm, and there is no phone or internet anywhere in town. It was lovely. A couple of guys and I hired a guide who took us down the river by boat and led us up into the hills to an Hmong tribal village. They were celebrating the new year, so everyone was decked out in their traditional dress. I played catch with a couple of sweet little girls and entertained a group of boys by taking short videos of them with my camera. It's really really beautiful up there. And since it was the holiday, I decided to stay an extra night in Muang Ngoi to spend New Year's with my new friends. There were 4 of us staying in bungalows for $1 each (whoo hoo!!), and the woman who runs the place (Mama Tjuum) had invited us to join her and friends and family for a pig roast for the holiday. We asked how much we should pay them for our share, and she said about $3, so we thought that was fair enough. When we get to the table, almost no one spoke english which shouldn't matter since there are many ways to welcome people across the language barrier, but no one at the table tried. Then we find out that the other foreigner at the table, a 40 some-odd year old woman from San Francisco who was dating a 20 someodd Lao guy, had bought the pig for $30. Her boyfriend tells us that we should buy a couple of ducks and a chicken for the table. We're suddenly feeling like this is an opportunity for them to take advantage of us and try to get us to pay for their holiday meal, and don't feel very welcome in the first place. So to avert the akwardness, the woman buys a case of beer for the table. We're being shunned, and she's getting loads of attention. When one of the guys that I was with decided to buy a couple of beers for the table, he suddenly got more attention, and we quickly realized that the only way to be welcomed by these folks was to show them the money. So we politely made out exit. There were plenty of other parties in town where the people were absolutely lovely and warm, and we joined with them in dancing an bought rounds of beers for people, but it was out of our hearts and not by demand. Although I gave in at about 11:00 and missed New Year's. Too bad too, because the town kept the generator running until midnight just for the special occaision ;)

So now I'm mid travel back to Bangkok. I caught the boat/bus to Luang Prabang day before yesterday, and made the 11 hour journey by bus from LP to Vientiane yesterday. Barely, at that. The bus station was in mayhem because all these foreigners had bought "tickets" from travel agencies in town for VIP bus that was over booked. Basically, you pay $12 (instead of $10) for a useless piece of paper that you then have to take to the bus station in the morning and hope that they have a seat for you. Since no one seemed to know this, there were a lot of pissed off people who got to the bus station and were told they couldn't get on the bus that they were "booked" for. I managed to hustle for a seat on the $8 bus that everyone was jammed into (complete with plastic chairs down the aisle) and finally got into Vientiane last night. Laos is a beautiful place with some really amazingly nice people, but I see that it's been marred by the greed that comes with tourism, and I don't think it's quite the place that it was even just 3 years ago. That's too bad, too, because I bet it was really wonderful. Not I'm on a quest to find the place that is now what Laos once was and get there before it's ruined as well. I'm starting to think the best places to visit are post war torn countries right after their safe again but before they become corrupted by over tourism. Any ideas anyone?

Happy New Year!

Yes, I'm still alive and here. Sorry I disappeared for a bit. I went up the Nam Ou river for a week without realizing that there is no internet or phone anywhere up there. In fact, there's limited electricity, which made it wonderful. I've never seen so many stars in the sky. This is going to be a short one for now since I've got a ton on internet stuff to catch up on, but I'll write a longer post tomorrow from Vientiane. Toodles!

Merry Christmas from Laos!

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!!

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.

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...

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 :)

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 ;)

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!!

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 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!

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!

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!!!

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.

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.

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 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!

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!

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 ;)

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...

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!

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

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!!! ;)

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...