Though it's really surreal to be saying that. I'd sort of decided that if I couldn't be home for Christmas, then I'd rather Christmas just didn't happen. So the original plan was to head out of Luang Prabang and go up north somewhere that most people have never heard of Christmas. But then I got sick the night of our gourmet dinner which was a bit disappointing as well. It was good and as close to gourmet as I've seen traveling, but maybe I just hyped it up in my head too much. Ah well, it was even worse the second time around when I was sick all that night, then fevered and feeling crappy all the next day and couldn't get out of bed. I'm worlds better now, eating again, fever is gone and all, though I've still got a bad head cold. Grrr. Ah well, it kept me here which is probably good because now I'm with friends for Christmas. It's just so funny in Luang Prabang because it's such a tourist town, and the locals have put up trees and laid out decoratively wrapped boxes, and hung wreaths and Santas. But it's warm here, and I'm in a Buddhist country along the Mekong river surrounded by coconut trees. My friend Gen had an interesting observation. She said even the time she spent Christmas in Hawaii still felt like Christmas, so it must be something to do with having the holiday celebrated consistently for decades in a country that makes it feel more like Christmas. Here it just feels like the glitzy material part of Christmas without the spirit, and it's sort of like just another accomodation for tourists, which granted is in itself very sweet of the Laos people.
But that said, Merry Christmas to all!! I hope you're all able to be with family and friends and feel warm and loved this holiday season. Thank you to everyone who has written their holiday greetings to me on the road. It means a lot to me to have you all here virtually if I can't be there with you physically. Take care!!
Sunday, December 25, 2005
Thursday, December 22, 2005
I'm having a marvelously Laosy time!
Never fear to all of you who worry for my liver and personal safety - I have more than learned my lesson on the local drinking customs. The funny thing is that many many of the travelers here have very similar stories, so this must be a favorite Laos local activity - get the foreingers tossed on their bad strong booze. I've moved on to a much healthier activity, cycling! I'm in Luang Prabang now, which is a nice little French colonial town wrapped up by the Mekong river. It's quaint with great architecture and lots of fancy shops and restaurants. Not exactly my cup of tea though, so we'll see how long I last here. There are several functioning wats, here, and the young monks are itching to practice their English with foriengers, even though the locals don't seem to approve much. I actually woke up at 3:30 am yesterday to go listen to the monks in their morning chants, which was totally surreal. NO ONE is up that early besides the monks. So once they finished their chants, I walked around town for an hour or so waiting for sunrise, watching the old men do their excercises (and hack their morning phlegm) and watching people set up for the morning food market. At around 6:15 or so, the novices leave the wat to collect alms, so for an hour or so before that, there are all of these women walking around with baskets of food pachages and sticky rice trying to sell to tourists so that we can "feed the monks" like they're a bunch of monkeys (insert Michael's wise-assed comment here). Against my gut instinct and better judgement, I did buy a little bit just because I didn't have any sort of offering and wanted to be prepared if I felt the need to give. However when the monks come out, it's quickly obvious that we foreigners have no part in this ritual (other than to become completely obnoxious and stick huge telephoto lenses and video cameras right up in people's faces). In Bangkok, people just walk out of houses and shopfronts to place their food offering in the monk's bowl, but here it's much more of a ritual. It's mostly older Lao, the women kneel or sit on low stools, the men stand, and all are wearing a white scarf. There is some sort of prayer to bless the food before the monks come around, and the whole thing is very ceremonial with a devout respect. Some of these little novices are only maybe 8 years old, and you've got an 80 year old man treating this little guy with great reverence.
After breakfast, a friend and I rented bicycles and cycled around some of the villages around Luang Prabang. He's very proud of having been invited to a wedding in every country that he's traveled, so I figured it could be great fun. No weddings, but it was great fun. Toward the end of the day, we ended up at a more modern wat up on a hill (built between about 1960 and 1987). It was really strange because there were paintings of the life of the Buddha circling the top of the main hall, which is normal, but then below that were what seemed to be images of hell. Circling the entire room. And they were very graphic and disturbing. Scenes of people being staked, beheaded, tossed up on rocks to break their backs, eaten alive by wild animals, and the most disturbing was a scene of dozens of people cannibalizing themselves and each other. I knew that Buddhism (at least a modern interpretation of it) included a concept of hell, but it seems that it's not a prevalent motivating concept (as it is in more evangelical protestant religion), and this wat really surprised me. I'm going to ask one of the monks here in Luang Prabang to explain it to me. Let me know if any of you folk have insight. My best estimation is that it must have something to do with the fact that the wat was built in a really turbulent political time for Laos, so it might just be a manifestation of that.
I'm excited for tonight. A few of us are going to eat at the restaurant called 3 Nagas. It was apparently written up by the NYTimes as "perhaps the best restaurant in all of Asia" and yet I can afford it. Entrees are $5 or so, so we figure we could eat our fill and have a nice bottle of wine without breaking the budget too much. It should be a unique culinary experience at the least.
After breakfast, a friend and I rented bicycles and cycled around some of the villages around Luang Prabang. He's very proud of having been invited to a wedding in every country that he's traveled, so I figured it could be great fun. No weddings, but it was great fun. Toward the end of the day, we ended up at a more modern wat up on a hill (built between about 1960 and 1987). It was really strange because there were paintings of the life of the Buddha circling the top of the main hall, which is normal, but then below that were what seemed to be images of hell. Circling the entire room. And they were very graphic and disturbing. Scenes of people being staked, beheaded, tossed up on rocks to break their backs, eaten alive by wild animals, and the most disturbing was a scene of dozens of people cannibalizing themselves and each other. I knew that Buddhism (at least a modern interpretation of it) included a concept of hell, but it seems that it's not a prevalent motivating concept (as it is in more evangelical protestant religion), and this wat really surprised me. I'm going to ask one of the monks here in Luang Prabang to explain it to me. Let me know if any of you folk have insight. My best estimation is that it must have something to do with the fact that the wat was built in a really turbulent political time for Laos, so it might just be a manifestation of that.
I'm excited for tonight. A few of us are going to eat at the restaurant called 3 Nagas. It was apparently written up by the NYTimes as "perhaps the best restaurant in all of Asia" and yet I can afford it. Entrees are $5 or so, so we figure we could eat our fill and have a nice bottle of wine without breaking the budget too much. It should be a unique culinary experience at the least.
Friday, December 16, 2005
This place rules
Yeah, so I'm in Vang Vieng, which is cool - other than the fact that all the bars and restaurants play non-stop "Friends" episodes all day and all night long, which I just can't understand. The scenery is amazing with sheer limestone cliffs everywhere on mountains jutting up from the Mekong river. I'm staying in a nice and cheap guesthouse right on the river. Today four of us hiked about 6 km out of town through a couple of teeny little villages with oxen, cattle, pigs, and dusty little kids swimming in ponds. It's a lot like rural Cambodia actually, though maybe not quite as poor. The kids all get excited to see us and run right up to say Sahbaidee!! (hello) and give us high fives and big smiles. It's funny - kids in other places ask for candy or money if they ask for anything, but all of these kids were asking for pens - way better if you ask me. So I'm going to head to the market tomorrow to get a big bag of cheap ballpoints. The hike led us up to a really cool big cave with a reclining buddha.
So yeah, three days ago, I left Bangkok on the night train to Nong Khai, then crossed the border with no troubles. Got into Vientiene midday and checked into a $1.50 dorm bed (can't beat that!) It's a dusty small city with a huge expat community, and yet it's the capital of the country - so I knew I'd like Laos immediately if that's as frantic as it gets. Yesterday, 6 of us made our way up to Vang Vieng on the local bus (after crisscrossing the city and overpaying tuk tuk drivers just to "save" money on our bus ticket ;), and here we are! I think we're going innertubing on the Mekong tomorrow, then I'm going to head up to Luang Prabang on Sunday. I'm itching to get out into the countryside where there aren't so many other travelers and just chill on the river for a few days watching the locals fish. Sounds like bliss...
So yeah, three days ago, I left Bangkok on the night train to Nong Khai, then crossed the border with no troubles. Got into Vientiene midday and checked into a $1.50 dorm bed (can't beat that!) It's a dusty small city with a huge expat community, and yet it's the capital of the country - so I knew I'd like Laos immediately if that's as frantic as it gets. Yesterday, 6 of us made our way up to Vang Vieng on the local bus (after crisscrossing the city and overpaying tuk tuk drivers just to "save" money on our bus ticket ;), and here we are! I think we're going innertubing on the Mekong tomorrow, then I'm going to head up to Luang Prabang on Sunday. I'm itching to get out into the countryside where there aren't so many other travelers and just chill on the river for a few days watching the locals fish. Sounds like bliss...
Thursday, December 15, 2005
I'm in Laos!
And so much happier now. I think that a large portion of my pissiness was due to the fact that I HATE Bangkok, I miss Darren, and I'm starting to look forward to being home. So now I'm out of Bangkok and in a cool new place hanging out with cool new people (albeit not as cool as Darren), and not looking quite as forward to going home. I'm in Vang Vieng on the Mekong river. We're going to go tubing tomorrow, then I'll probably rent a bicycle and cycle around the villages in the area. I'll write more later when I've got a bit more time but here's a heads up that I'm alive and happy :)
Monday, December 12, 2005
Darren's gone and my leech bites itch
Whah. It's all good though because I'm getting the hell out of Bangkok tomorrow and heading for Laos!!! Should be a good time. I'm just planning to take it easy and go wherever my mood takes me, making my way back south again as it gets close to Jan 5th. I don't know where I'll be for Christmas or New Year's. It's kind of weird thinking that Christmas is less than two weeks away because it's over 90 degrees here, and there's not much of a sign of the holidays. The pharmacy was playing Christmas carols yesterday, and there are the odd Christmas lights around. However, it's difficult to tell how many of those are out for Christmas or leftover from the King's Birthday. I think that I've decided to buy a whole mess of cheap bracelets to give to people, wear a santa hat, and sing carols all day to put myself in the spirit.
Onto other randomness - Darren and I had decided that it would suck more than anything to be a dog in this country. Buddhist tradition doesn't allow the killing of animals, and it seems that expense prohibits them from getting fixed. So there are dogs everywhere. Most of them are mangy and missing much of their hair, lots are lame or missing limbs, and some are really scary vicious things. I've seen more than one with really nasty hernias, and we saw what must be the absolute ugliest (unitentionally) hairless dog in the world.
An actual conversation between me and Darren in Pak Chong on the way to the train station. Me: "Wanna stop here and get some fresh pineapple for the train ride?" Darren: "Is that a dead cat?" (in the rubbish basket at the fruit stall) Me: "Um, yeah, let's just go get on the train"
So yeah, that's about it for me. I've got to get my solo groove on and get on with things here. Write to me, folks, cause it's a little lonely on this side of the world ;)
Onto other randomness - Darren and I had decided that it would suck more than anything to be a dog in this country. Buddhist tradition doesn't allow the killing of animals, and it seems that expense prohibits them from getting fixed. So there are dogs everywhere. Most of them are mangy and missing much of their hair, lots are lame or missing limbs, and some are really scary vicious things. I've seen more than one with really nasty hernias, and we saw what must be the absolute ugliest (unitentionally) hairless dog in the world.
An actual conversation between me and Darren in Pak Chong on the way to the train station. Me: "Wanna stop here and get some fresh pineapple for the train ride?" Darren: "Is that a dead cat?" (in the rubbish basket at the fruit stall) Me: "Um, yeah, let's just go get on the train"
So yeah, that's about it for me. I've got to get my solo groove on and get on with things here. Write to me, folks, cause it's a little lonely on this side of the world ;)
Saturday, December 10, 2005
Leeches suck
We've spent the last 4 days tucked peacefully away in the Khao Yai National Park, which was uber cool. Ayutthaya was really cool, too. We cycled around a bunch of the temple ruins, then hung out at the King's birthday party. The streets were full of people and killer vendor food. I finally got a nice big plate of sweet sticky rice and fresh mango that made me very happy...and lots of stuff on sticks. They even have something remarkably similar to a corn dog. So right around 9 pm or so, everyone lights up these yellow candles and sings the Thai equivalent of Happy Birthday as well as a bunch of other songs. A whole crowd of several thousand people all together in the streets, followed by fireworks, and partying into the night. It was a really neat community experience because this is one of their biggest holidays of the year.
So the next day, we made our way to Khao Yai. We caught the train in the morning to Pak Chong, and pick up to the park gates, then hitch hiked our way into the park to our campsite. That's how you get around this park, because there's not much in the way of public transportation. You can pay about $25 or more for 1 1/2 day package tours with a bunch of other white folk, or you can hoof it on your own with the Thais. Guess what we did. IT WAS SO MUCH FUN!!! The people here are super nice, and they get a big kick out of stopping to give us poor farang backpackers a ride. So we get to our campsite, set up camp, go for a hike, and sleep in our rented tent on the hard ground with just a wool blanket (we upgraded to thin foam pads and sleeping bags for the next few nights). When we got up the next morning and headed our way to the restaurant for breakfast, we said hello to a group of 10 thais who were having their morning coffee and were quickly invited to join them. So we had coffee, then breakfast with them, then hiked with the whole bunch to swim in a waterfall. This was just the first of many such invitations. It seriously got to the point where if we really wanted to go to the restaurant, hike by ourselves, or even make a trip to the bathroom, we couldn't make eye contact with ANYONE. Even to the point where we were so obviously packing and breaking down our tent to leave this morning and were invited to have coffee with another whole big group. Half our meals were with people camping near us. They're sooooo nice. It's funny too that when we got there on Wednesday, the campground was relatively empty with a dozen or so tents. Today it was shoulder to shoulder - I slept with two bits of nylon and 2 feet of space between me and the snoring dude in the tent next to us.
The macaques rule too. They were all over around our campsite and making off with stuff that people stupidly left sitting outside their tents. Sort of like marmots in Washington, but a lot smarter. For that matter, we saw tons of cool animals - birds, giant squirrels, monkeys. We didn't see the gibbons because they never come out of the trees, but its super cool to wake up in the morning to the sound of them whooping and howling to each other. We hiked on a couple of days through the monsoon rainforest, and we were the only people on the trail for most of it. It was fun - except for the freaky looking spiders and constant fear of leeches. We were hiking along on Thursday and lost the trail for a bit, jumped a stream, then were walking along a little animal track through some tall grass when I felt a sting on my ankle and looked down to see two leeches on me. I tweaked, which sent Darren tweaking, and we dropped everything to coat ourselves with DEET and rub our legs down with tobbacco. It's a trick I learned from Dan Gottschling and heard from some of the Thais here. Don't know if it works, but those are the last leech bites we got. I was also super paranoid of them after that, which may have contributed. They're nasty suckers - we had one appear out of nowhere in the candlelight on our mat last night while we were happily sipping whiskey with some of our new Thai friends.
Anyway, hiking was really cool - we were making our way along the trail when Darren suddenly stopped because there was a huge pile of fresh elephant poo on the side of the trail. Khao Yai has about 200 wild elephants living in the jungle. We didn't see any, but that pile of poo made us a little nervous about what we'd do if we did run into an elephant in the middle of nowhere. The whole experience puts hiking in a new perspective - as we were leaving the park we saw a sign that read "Beware Tiger Area", then "Beware Elephant Crossing", then "Beware Guar Territory", then "Beware Cobra Crossing". But it was really nice hiking, and all of the colorful tropical birds were awesome.
We're on our way back to Bangkok today to spend one day in the city, then Darren flys out to Seattle on Monday. Y'all have to hit him up for stories and some photos from our trip. I'm off to Laos after he leaves, so stay tuned for more stuff!!
So the next day, we made our way to Khao Yai. We caught the train in the morning to Pak Chong, and pick up to the park gates, then hitch hiked our way into the park to our campsite. That's how you get around this park, because there's not much in the way of public transportation. You can pay about $25 or more for 1 1/2 day package tours with a bunch of other white folk, or you can hoof it on your own with the Thais. Guess what we did. IT WAS SO MUCH FUN!!! The people here are super nice, and they get a big kick out of stopping to give us poor farang backpackers a ride. So we get to our campsite, set up camp, go for a hike, and sleep in our rented tent on the hard ground with just a wool blanket (we upgraded to thin foam pads and sleeping bags for the next few nights). When we got up the next morning and headed our way to the restaurant for breakfast, we said hello to a group of 10 thais who were having their morning coffee and were quickly invited to join them. So we had coffee, then breakfast with them, then hiked with the whole bunch to swim in a waterfall. This was just the first of many such invitations. It seriously got to the point where if we really wanted to go to the restaurant, hike by ourselves, or even make a trip to the bathroom, we couldn't make eye contact with ANYONE. Even to the point where we were so obviously packing and breaking down our tent to leave this morning and were invited to have coffee with another whole big group. Half our meals were with people camping near us. They're sooooo nice. It's funny too that when we got there on Wednesday, the campground was relatively empty with a dozen or so tents. Today it was shoulder to shoulder - I slept with two bits of nylon and 2 feet of space between me and the snoring dude in the tent next to us.
The macaques rule too. They were all over around our campsite and making off with stuff that people stupidly left sitting outside their tents. Sort of like marmots in Washington, but a lot smarter. For that matter, we saw tons of cool animals - birds, giant squirrels, monkeys. We didn't see the gibbons because they never come out of the trees, but its super cool to wake up in the morning to the sound of them whooping and howling to each other. We hiked on a couple of days through the monsoon rainforest, and we were the only people on the trail for most of it. It was fun - except for the freaky looking spiders and constant fear of leeches. We were hiking along on Thursday and lost the trail for a bit, jumped a stream, then were walking along a little animal track through some tall grass when I felt a sting on my ankle and looked down to see two leeches on me. I tweaked, which sent Darren tweaking, and we dropped everything to coat ourselves with DEET and rub our legs down with tobbacco. It's a trick I learned from Dan Gottschling and heard from some of the Thais here. Don't know if it works, but those are the last leech bites we got. I was also super paranoid of them after that, which may have contributed. They're nasty suckers - we had one appear out of nowhere in the candlelight on our mat last night while we were happily sipping whiskey with some of our new Thai friends.
Anyway, hiking was really cool - we were making our way along the trail when Darren suddenly stopped because there was a huge pile of fresh elephant poo on the side of the trail. Khao Yai has about 200 wild elephants living in the jungle. We didn't see any, but that pile of poo made us a little nervous about what we'd do if we did run into an elephant in the middle of nowhere. The whole experience puts hiking in a new perspective - as we were leaving the park we saw a sign that read "Beware Tiger Area", then "Beware Elephant Crossing", then "Beware Guar Territory", then "Beware Cobra Crossing". But it was really nice hiking, and all of the colorful tropical birds were awesome.
We're on our way back to Bangkok today to spend one day in the city, then Darren flys out to Seattle on Monday. Y'all have to hit him up for stories and some photos from our trip. I'm off to Laos after he leaves, so stay tuned for more stuff!!
Monday, December 05, 2005
I am queen of the road!!!
Well, maybe just a 100 m stretch of flat paved road with no traffic, but still... We rented another motobike in Sukothai to get around the temples there, and Darren gave me a driving lesson. I didn't get above second gear, and I did almost run through a fence and into a pasture, but all in all it wasn't so bad. The almost running off the road part is because someone brilliantly designed these things so that the gas and brake are on the same handlebar, so when I went to pull the break, I didn't do such a good job and pulled the gas instead. But I managed to calmly get myself stopped, switched into neutral, and backed away from the side of the road. Not too bad for a first lesson. It's going to come in handy in Laos if I can get comfortable driving one of those because it gives you so much more freedom to get away from other travelers. We took a nice little side road through a village along the canal, and I love the looks on people's faces when they realize we're foreigners. They get so excited to see us here and give us great big grins.
We're in Ayutthaya today, going to rent bicycles and cycle around to see the temple ruins here. Today is the king's birthday too, so there's all sorts of pomp and circumstance around the whole country. There's going to be a great big street party right around the corner from our guesthouse with fireworks and everything, so we're going to whoop it up with the locals tonight ;) Wish the whole country celebrated MY birthday ;)
We're in Ayutthaya today, going to rent bicycles and cycle around to see the temple ruins here. Today is the king's birthday too, so there's all sorts of pomp and circumstance around the whole country. There's going to be a great big street party right around the corner from our guesthouse with fireworks and everything, so we're going to whoop it up with the locals tonight ;) Wish the whole country celebrated MY birthday ;)
Friday, December 02, 2005
We got our shop on!
Chiang Mai is a pretty cool place. Darren and I spent yesterday on a Wat tour of the city - just walking around all day, saying "no" to every befuddled driver who wanted to take us somewhere and couldn't understand why we "with all out money" would want to walk. We stopped at Wat Chedi Luang and had a "Monk Chat". Seriously - you just walk up to these monks sitting under a tree with a sign that says "monk chat - free" and start chatting away about whatever. So we did for awhile. The guy was really nice, and he and his monk buddies were giving Darren Thai tongue twisters to practice his intonation and pronounciation. It was pretty funny. We went by Wat Pra Singh where the school kids were all in service for the holiday (it's the King's birthday this week). It was really cool listening to the monks chant - it's still one of the eeriest and skin tingling sounds, I think. The kids were just like kids in any church anywhere - listening to headphones, giggling and talking, taking pictures of each other with their camera phones, sleeping. It was really funny.
We spent the last two nights at the night bazaar and got a good bit of our christmas/souvenir shopping done. I've been on a pretty big shop fest this whole trip, but it's SOOOO cheap. I think the most I've spent on anything is about $12. But then again, we're not going for high end antiques and original artwork, either. It's nice stuff, though, and I've gotten my bargaining skills honed here :) Too bad there's no car or house shopping on my horizons. We're in Sukothai now, and we're going to spend the next couple of days cycling around ruins. Darren's only got 9 days left before he leaves, and still so much more to see!
We spent the last two nights at the night bazaar and got a good bit of our christmas/souvenir shopping done. I've been on a pretty big shop fest this whole trip, but it's SOOOO cheap. I think the most I've spent on anything is about $12. But then again, we're not going for high end antiques and original artwork, either. It's nice stuff, though, and I've gotten my bargaining skills honed here :) Too bad there's no car or house shopping on my horizons. We're in Sukothai now, and we're going to spend the next couple of days cycling around ruins. Darren's only got 9 days left before he leaves, and still so much more to see!
Wednesday, November 30, 2005
Harrumph
I'm having an "I want to be home" day. 95% of the people who you meet out here and really great, or at least totally innocuous. Then every once in awhile there is someone who just *really* gets under your skin. We rented a motobike on Monday at 5 pm for 120 baht per day and the guy said yes it would be fine for us to turn it in Wednesday morning. So we went to return it this morning, and he's humming and hawing over some scratches and thinks that we had an accident (which we didn't) and all of a sudden he wants payment for another full day because we didn't return it at 5 pm the night before. I argued saying that he had agreed that we could turn it in the morning, and at most we'd pay for an extra half day since we did keep it overnight, but he got all pissy, stopped talking to us, and pointed out the fact that he's keeping Darren's passport hostage, so pay or else. That just sucks, you know? It happens here all the time where people see dollar signs and know that they can weasle more out of you. And the reason we'd gone there in the first place was because the first shop we went to took our money and said wait half an hour, then 5 minutes more, then another half an hour. Because they told us we could rent a bike, but they didn't actually have any. They were making us wait, hoping that one would come in. Then said we could take an upgrade, but we'd have to pay more for it - never mind the fact that they'd kept us waiting so long already. So I got our money back and we went to grumpy man (who wasn't grumpy that night). But on the flip side, the woman running our bungalow is really really cool and hooked us up with coffee and bannanas this morning and gave us little parting gifts and lots of hugs and kisses. She's super super cool, and I'm trying my best not to let the old fart ruin my happiness for this morning.
Yesterday on the moto was really awesome. Darren's my hero. We went about 90 km yesterday - round trip to Sappong and back. It was a beautiful drive, and I wish we'd been able to spend more time in Sappong because it's an adorable little town. It took a lot longer to get over there than I thought it would because we had to go up over a mountain pass, and the road was being worked on for a long stretch of it. Lots of loose gravelly stuff on a steep road that was kind of difficult to navigate. But even though Darren hadn't driving a moto for about 15 years, he managed just fine.
We're doing out best to make it back to Chiang Mai today. The local bus costs just 70 baht and takes the same amount of time as the 160 baht private minibuses. The unfortunate thing is that there is NO orderly way of getting on this bus - the bus pulls in, everyone crams on, and if you don't make it, you don't make it. So we missed the one this morning, even though we were there way before most of the rest. We were even willing to stand in the aisle, but then a group of 6 french folk jumped on and the bus was crammed full to the point where they were standing in the stair well. For 4 hours. Now we know to shove up to the bus and hop on, hope to actually get a seat, then worry about our bags later. Wish us luck!
Yesterday on the moto was really awesome. Darren's my hero. We went about 90 km yesterday - round trip to Sappong and back. It was a beautiful drive, and I wish we'd been able to spend more time in Sappong because it's an adorable little town. It took a lot longer to get over there than I thought it would because we had to go up over a mountain pass, and the road was being worked on for a long stretch of it. Lots of loose gravelly stuff on a steep road that was kind of difficult to navigate. But even though Darren hadn't driving a moto for about 15 years, he managed just fine.
We're doing out best to make it back to Chiang Mai today. The local bus costs just 70 baht and takes the same amount of time as the 160 baht private minibuses. The unfortunate thing is that there is NO orderly way of getting on this bus - the bus pulls in, everyone crams on, and if you don't make it, you don't make it. So we missed the one this morning, even though we were there way before most of the rest. We were even willing to stand in the aisle, but then a group of 6 french folk jumped on and the bus was crammed full to the point where they were standing in the stair well. For 4 hours. Now we know to shove up to the bus and hop on, hope to actually get a seat, then worry about our bags later. Wish us luck!
Monday, November 28, 2005
Elephants rule
We're in Pai which is awesome. We were only planning to spend one day here, and it looks like it's turning into three. We met two Thai gals from Chiang Mai on the bus to Pai, which turned out to be our great fortune, because the town was all booked up, and we depended on their fluency to help us find a place to crash. So we're in the sweet little bungalow over the river on the other side of town and love it. This is a funny place - about every 2 years the river floods massively and wipes out a huge section of town and many of the tourist bungalows, but then they just rebuild and wait for the next big flood. The woman who runs our place is awesome - her name is Annie, and she's just one of those sweet tough gals who knows how to run the show. We spent yesterday walking all around town, and when my ankle swelled and looked like crap, we decided to head to the local hospital. $7 later, I've seen a doctor and am now on some sort of cillin to kill my unwanted flora. Yay.
Today we told Annie that we wanted to find a nice and humane place where we could ride elephants for awhile, so she called up a friend of hers who came to pick us up and took her back to her elephant camp. They've got two, a big mamma, and her little baby. Well, little by elephant standards at least. Still frickin huge, though. So for an hour, we rode around in the jungle on this bench tied to mamma's back. Then we went back and they took the chair off so that we could ride bare back. It's tough to wrap your legs around one of those behemoths. We rode around over the road, in the valley, past some water buffalo, through some fields, and to the Mae Pai river. We road out into the river for a bit, then one of the guys took my camera and glasses, so I knew something was up. The guy with us on mamma got her to kneel down in the water, then she rolled off onto her side and tossed us into the river. We managed to crawl back up again, and off she tossed again. And again. And again. She seemed to think that this was great fun :) Sweet thing - she kept poking at me with her trunk, and I splashed water in her face. She loved the water. She'd roll off onto her side and submerge her whole head under the river. So that's our big giardia exposure for the trip ;) On the way back to the camp, they had Darren hop off of mamma and jump onto baby. After about 5 attempts, he managed to clamber up onto her, and the two of us rode back sitting up behind our respective elephant's heads. It was cool. Mamma kept whacking me with her big assed ears.
We're going to hop on a little Honda Dream and get some sightseeing done this evening, imbibe some cheap Thai whiskey, then get up in the morning to get ourselves lost in the countryside. Should be lots of fun!!!
Today we told Annie that we wanted to find a nice and humane place where we could ride elephants for awhile, so she called up a friend of hers who came to pick us up and took her back to her elephant camp. They've got two, a big mamma, and her little baby. Well, little by elephant standards at least. Still frickin huge, though. So for an hour, we rode around in the jungle on this bench tied to mamma's back. Then we went back and they took the chair off so that we could ride bare back. It's tough to wrap your legs around one of those behemoths. We rode around over the road, in the valley, past some water buffalo, through some fields, and to the Mae Pai river. We road out into the river for a bit, then one of the guys took my camera and glasses, so I knew something was up. The guy with us on mamma got her to kneel down in the water, then she rolled off onto her side and tossed us into the river. We managed to crawl back up again, and off she tossed again. And again. And again. She seemed to think that this was great fun :) Sweet thing - she kept poking at me with her trunk, and I splashed water in her face. She loved the water. She'd roll off onto her side and submerge her whole head under the river. So that's our big giardia exposure for the trip ;) On the way back to the camp, they had Darren hop off of mamma and jump onto baby. After about 5 attempts, he managed to clamber up onto her, and the two of us rode back sitting up behind our respective elephant's heads. It was cool. Mamma kept whacking me with her big assed ears.
We're going to hop on a little Honda Dream and get some sightseeing done this evening, imbibe some cheap Thai whiskey, then get up in the morning to get ourselves lost in the countryside. Should be lots of fun!!!
Saturday, November 26, 2005
I think I have leprosy
Something nasty has gotten ahold of me. I have a blister on the back of my left ankle, a mosquito bite on the front of my right ankle, and a zit on my face that are all nasty infected. And two lymph nodes under my chin that are painfully swollen. There must be something awful in the water down in Pi Pi and Phuket, because I've never had this happen before. I've been using lots of neosporin, but I think I need to hit up a pharmacy for something stronger. Darren says I'm still pretty, and the one on my face can be mistaken for a beauty mark. I think he's lying, and I look like i have a hiddeous Siamese twin - one I'm not thrilled about, contrary to what you all might believe ;) I'm causing small children to run in fright. Anyway, we're in Chiang Mai waiting for the bus to Pai. I'd hoped to catch the 2pm bus, but it's full, so we're waiting for the 4 pm bus. Killing a bit of time meanwhile. The flights were alright - though we were delayed leaving Phuket, which put us even later getting into Bangkok. Flying was definitely better than the 24 hour train alternative, but it still took us longer to get up here than I'd have liked. Ah well - I'm just ready to wake up tomorrow morning and cycle through the hills around Pai. It sounds like it's going to be a lovely place, and it's been a few days since we've been able to just enjoy where we are.
Friday, November 25, 2005
Snorking fun
So we went for a hike up to the view point on Koh Pi Pi the other day, which was BEAUTIFUL. It's a really amazing island, even if it's over developed for our tastes. While we were up there, we ran into a couple of french canadian gals who were staying down on To Koh beach in a sweet little bungalow so we hiked down to that side of the island to check it out. Perfect! There were only 18 bungalows, a restaurant, and a bar that was more like this Kansas city/Huntington beach dude's private house party than an actual bar. He opens when people show up and closes when the last person leaves - apparently sometimes at 6 am. So for the next night (we'd already paid for a second night in town) we reserved a 500 baht ($12) bungalow that opens out onto the beach and moved over there the next morning. The access is either by an hour hike over the "mountain" or by longtail boat taxi. The boats in town generally won't take people there because the super cool family who runs the place won't pay the commissions, which is part of why we didn't hear about it before when everyone told us the entire island was booked up or super expensive. The boat ride is quite a trip, too. These are just little wooden boats, maybe 20 feet long at the most, and it was super windy since a storm was blowing through. We and all of our belongings got pretty soaked, but it was fun. The boat captains are pros at this thing, and laughed their asses off at us the entire way.
We also took a sunset snorkelling (snorking in Thai ;) cruise over to Koh Pi Pi Leh which is the relatively uninhabited second island of Pi Pi. There are some native folk who live in the caves and collect swallows nests to sell for birdsnest soup, but it's otherwise a national park. It's beautiful! I didn't snorkel much because the water was too choppy, but I did see some of the most amazing tropical fish - huge pink and turqouis things dozens of others. This is paradise for all your diving types. We moved over into Maya Bay, but only for a short bit, so I didn't snorkel much more. Darren decided to swim out to the boat, so he got to see a lot more and fell in love with the whole thing. It's too bad that we didn't get to do more, but the sun was setting. We'll definitely be back here someday, though - it's so beautiful.
We're catching a flight back to bangkok tonight, then on to Chang Mai in the morning. I think we're going to try to bus straight from there to a little town called Pai, and use that as our base to hike or cycle around some of the hilltribe villages. You can pay guides to take you trekking, but everyone does there - therefore I don't want to do that :) So we're going to try to find some of those places that don't get busloads of foreigners.
We also took a sunset snorkelling (snorking in Thai ;) cruise over to Koh Pi Pi Leh which is the relatively uninhabited second island of Pi Pi. There are some native folk who live in the caves and collect swallows nests to sell for birdsnest soup, but it's otherwise a national park. It's beautiful! I didn't snorkel much because the water was too choppy, but I did see some of the most amazing tropical fish - huge pink and turqouis things dozens of others. This is paradise for all your diving types. We moved over into Maya Bay, but only for a short bit, so I didn't snorkel much more. Darren decided to swim out to the boat, so he got to see a lot more and fell in love with the whole thing. It's too bad that we didn't get to do more, but the sun was setting. We'll definitely be back here someday, though - it's so beautiful.
We're catching a flight back to bangkok tonight, then on to Chang Mai in the morning. I think we're going to try to bus straight from there to a little town called Pai, and use that as our base to hike or cycle around some of the hilltribe villages. You can pay guides to take you trekking, but everyone does there - therefore I don't want to do that :) So we're going to try to find some of those places that don't get busloads of foreigners.
Tuesday, November 22, 2005
He finally did it :)
Big news from the two of us. Darren proposed last night. Don't ask us when the big day will be because we're not as on top of things as Josh and Kate, and it'll take some time to let our lives settle down after my move and his big things going on. As soon as we've had a chance to talk about things more, we'll let you know when and where it's going to be. He was very sweet - we made it to Koh Pi Pi yesterday after 13 hours on a train, 3 hours on a bus, and 2 hours on a boat. We got checked into a nice, but cheap place (no bungalow for us on this island - too expensive), and had a great dinner. After dinner, we found a nice quiet stretch of beach, and he suddenly just about stopped breathing, so I knew it was coming. He gave me a sweet little silver band to substitute for the real thing, which is safely in Seattle (and beautiful - he brought pictures :)
We're going for a hike around the island today and snorkelling this afternoon. This place is paradise, even after the tsunami, though about half of the island is still under reconstruction. I can't think of anything else to say right now, but I knew you'd all want to hear the big news. This is also how I'm going to find out just who is reading this thing ;)
We're going for a hike around the island today and snorkelling this afternoon. This place is paradise, even after the tsunami, though about half of the island is still under reconstruction. I can't think of anything else to say right now, but I knew you'd all want to hear the big news. This is also how I'm going to find out just who is reading this thing ;)
Sunday, November 20, 2005
We saw Harry Potter in Thailand
Yep. Last night, Darren and I made our way to a theater in Bangkok and saw the new Harry Potter movie. I'm pretty sure we were the only foreigners in the theater. The leadup to movies in Thailand is worse than it is in the states, which is already not good. 10 minutes of commercials, followed by 20 minute of previews. Seriously, you might as well not even walk into the theater until 20 minutes after the ticket says it starts. But you can't wait too long, or you risk walking in during the royal anthem and respects to the king, which is played before every film in Thailand. The movie was great for any of you who haven't seen it, yet. The fourth book was my favorite, so I'd been waiting for this one. We've got our tickets booked to get out of Bangkok tonight - headed off to Krabi, then maybe to one of the islands for a few days. Alright, this is too distracting. I should have written this blog while Darren was busy doing his email because now he's sitting outside the window making silly faces at me, and I can't remember any of what I meant to write when I sat down. Later!
Friday, November 18, 2005
Darren is here!! ;)
He flew in this morning, and we're just toodling around on the internet now waiting out the afternoon rain. It's so nice to have him here. And sort of surreal in a way, too. We're going to spend a couple of days here in Bangkok, then we're going to head down to Ko Phi Phi for some R&R in a nice little bungalow somewhere. Wheee!!
Alright, quick recap of my China impressions: basically it's a country with a huge identity crisis because the Chinese seem to constantly measure themselves by what others think. So the current trend is to be Western. Most of the country looks like it was built in the last 10 years or so, though you can still catch glimpses of some of the old communist blocks if you're paying attention. But they still don't seem to know quite what to do with all the new, fancy, shiny stuff. I met a very nice guy on the Yangtze boat trip who speaks great english and is a fellow biologist. He wrote me a long, frustrated email today about his fellow countrymen and their hiddeous manners, which really are bad. The hacking and spitting everywhere, the foul toilets, tossing litter into the river next to a perfectly good trash can, smoking 2 packs of 25 mg cigarettes per day, etc etc. If you ever get a chance to come to China, pay attention when you fly over the country. It really is the thick brown smog of somewhere like LA, only spread out over the ENTIRE country. I got a cold the other day that turned into an upper respiratory infection, and it's gone since being in the "clean" air of bangkok.
BUT all of that may be set to change really soon. China is going through some major growing pains in the process of revamping its international image. In the wake of the 2008 Olympics, 5 million households are receiving free "etiquiette" manuals teaching things like how to que up in a line, not to spit on people (accidentally or on purpose), and how long an appropriate handshake should last. It sounds funny, and at first I thought "but that's just how china is, and if people go there, they should expect to see the Chinese for who they are". They're dear sweet people, in general, who are really friendly and helpful, curious, and eager to learn as much as they can from all of us. But after 10 days in China, I'm thinking it's not such a bad idea after all :)
One last funny thing - there really is no concept of a lineup in China. So I was waiting with a gal named Claire to board my air asia flight from Xiamen to Bangkok. When it's time to board, a hundre chinese folk rush to the gate and stand three wide, chest to back for a good 10 minutes before they even opened the gate to let people through. Air Asia is one of these budget airlines that doesn't give seat assignements, so I thought they were all rushing to get good window or aisle seats, or get family together. So Claire and I line up last with the few Thai people who were also not about to join in the Chinese mosh pit. We get on the plane, and it looks full - the few empty seats were being saved for people who hadn't made it to the gate yet. Then I looked up to the back of the plane - the last HALF of the plane was EMPTY. So Claire and I each ended up with a row of three seats to ourselves with no one in front or in back of us, so we could stretch out as much as we wanted. Im sort of surprised the plane didn't nose dive from being so front heavy.
More later on our big Thai adventures!
Alright, quick recap of my China impressions: basically it's a country with a huge identity crisis because the Chinese seem to constantly measure themselves by what others think. So the current trend is to be Western. Most of the country looks like it was built in the last 10 years or so, though you can still catch glimpses of some of the old communist blocks if you're paying attention. But they still don't seem to know quite what to do with all the new, fancy, shiny stuff. I met a very nice guy on the Yangtze boat trip who speaks great english and is a fellow biologist. He wrote me a long, frustrated email today about his fellow countrymen and their hiddeous manners, which really are bad. The hacking and spitting everywhere, the foul toilets, tossing litter into the river next to a perfectly good trash can, smoking 2 packs of 25 mg cigarettes per day, etc etc. If you ever get a chance to come to China, pay attention when you fly over the country. It really is the thick brown smog of somewhere like LA, only spread out over the ENTIRE country. I got a cold the other day that turned into an upper respiratory infection, and it's gone since being in the "clean" air of bangkok.
BUT all of that may be set to change really soon. China is going through some major growing pains in the process of revamping its international image. In the wake of the 2008 Olympics, 5 million households are receiving free "etiquiette" manuals teaching things like how to que up in a line, not to spit on people (accidentally or on purpose), and how long an appropriate handshake should last. It sounds funny, and at first I thought "but that's just how china is, and if people go there, they should expect to see the Chinese for who they are". They're dear sweet people, in general, who are really friendly and helpful, curious, and eager to learn as much as they can from all of us. But after 10 days in China, I'm thinking it's not such a bad idea after all :)
One last funny thing - there really is no concept of a lineup in China. So I was waiting with a gal named Claire to board my air asia flight from Xiamen to Bangkok. When it's time to board, a hundre chinese folk rush to the gate and stand three wide, chest to back for a good 10 minutes before they even opened the gate to let people through. Air Asia is one of these budget airlines that doesn't give seat assignements, so I thought they were all rushing to get good window or aisle seats, or get family together. So Claire and I line up last with the few Thai people who were also not about to join in the Chinese mosh pit. We get on the plane, and it looks full - the few empty seats were being saved for people who hadn't made it to the gate yet. Then I looked up to the back of the plane - the last HALF of the plane was EMPTY. So Claire and I each ended up with a row of three seats to ourselves with no one in front or in back of us, so we could stretch out as much as we wanted. Im sort of surprised the plane didn't nose dive from being so front heavy.
More later on our big Thai adventures!
Tuesday, November 15, 2005
I survived the Yangtze river
I am once again writing from one of the nicest internet cafes in the world. And it's only 25 cents an hour, well, plus the $1.25 weird assed "apple juice" that ended up being some sort of warm milky green apple thingy. Not so bad, really.
Since I last wrote I have recovered from whatever food-borne sickness I contracted, hopped a bus from Yangshou to Guilin, then a flight from Guilin to Chongqing. As soon as we arrive in the airport, we were hit up by a woman trying to book us on a boat down the river, which is what we were in Chongqing to do, so convenient! The boats have first class (two beds, private bath), second class (4 beds private bath), and third class (6-8 beds private bath). This isn't as bad as some of the boats in Vicky's book that go as low as 5th class where you're sharing a toilet with 50 other people and have to fight for phlegm-free space on the floor for you and your bamboo mat. She told us that second class was full (which we later found to be a mistruth - she was trying to get us to book first class, which was about $200), so we surprised her by booking third class (for $80 including three entrance fees). We pay our deposit, she puts us in a van with one of the SCARIEST drivers in this part of the world, and we whiz off to drop the other passengers at their hotels. Since we didn't have enough money for the whole ticket, he took us to a Bank of China, but since it was an active construction site, we didn't want to get out of the van. So our comes his cell phone for the first of three calls to the woman to deal with the silly foreign girls who don't speak Chinese. We manage our way to the travel office, pay the balance on the boat, book a train and one flight for me, but I still had one more flight to book (and no money left to pay cash because NO ONE here takes frickin VISA!!)
So we went downtown to load up on enough snacks to feed an army, get cash, and gorge ourselves on McDonalds. I know, I know. I ordinarily wouldn't touch the stuff. But you know how good Chinese food is at home - well it's not like that in China. I'm losing some serious weight here, but will soon be back in Thailand to bulk it back up again ;) Anyway, so we finish our shopping and go to get a taxi, except that by this time, half of the 2 billion people in China are in the downtown area, and they're all literally throwing themselves in front of cabs. So after 20 frustrating minutes, I decide to do the same and successfully get the attention of one of the many female cabbies in Chine, only to be cut off by some dude. So I'm right behind him whinning "please please please, I don't speak chinese, and you could easily get another taxi, please please please." I don't think he understood a word of that, but he turned around and gave me the "okay crazy lady" look, and we got our cab!
We get back to the travel office, and the woman doesn't want to book my flight yet - instead we're supposed to rest. So over an hour later and 3 more attempts to get her to book my flight (from Xian to Xiamen to catch my already booked flight from Xiamen to Bangkok), a guy in the office is trying to usher us to the bus that will take us to the boat. So I flipped out, she finally realized that for the last hour I wasn't nagging her to get on the boat, but I needed my frickin flight, so she took my passport, and booked my flight by cell phone en route to some other travel office. Sweet!
We get to the docks with hundreds of Chinese tourist folk, and we're walking down this creepy dark stairway to the water, then across a totally rickety scary walkway that's just a bunch of metal planks spanning from floating platform to floating platform, and the river is RUSHING all around us. We both tweaked out when we saw what we thought was the ship, but fortunately it was just the docking platform. The lobby of the ship was pretty nice, so we thought, whew, we got lucky...until we got to our room. It's a 6 berth, me Vicky, three Chinese men, one chinese woman, and a two year old boy. Six bunks only four inches wider than my shoulder width with an inch thick mattress, a desk with a TV, and a TEENSY bathroom that was just big enough for a squatter and a sink. And it smelled. And it got worse over the next two days.
So we nearly cried, panicked for a bit, thought about trying to upgrade but didn't have the money between us, then decided to just tough it out and see how bad it was. Pretty bad. One of the men was smoking in the room, and gave me a snarky look when I asked him not to - the old woman looked absolutely astonished that I as a woman would have the balls to ask a man not to smoke. The lot of them ate every meal in the cabin, and as far as we could tell only left twice in the entire two days, so it ended up FULL of rubbish and SMELLY. To add to that, the woman was dumping the remaining contents of cup o noodles down the squatter (fortunately it never overflowed), and washing the cups to reuse. And since we could NEVER get the room to ourselves, changing was not an option, and I wore and slept in the same clothes for three days. My hair is nice and healthy though after the grease buildup. It made me really happy that I'd grown it out long enough to pull into a ponytail cause otherwise I would've gone mad. And, with the help of our Australian friends, we discovered an unmarked door in the hallway that was a broom closet with a squatter. MUCH cleaner and nicer than the one in our room, which is saying a lot since the sink was full of brown water. And the light was out, so I had to wear my headlamp while doing my business in a broom closet that was bigger than the bathroom in my designated cabin. Go figure. At least it gave the Chinese folk a better reason to stare at me when I came climbing out of the broom closet ;)
Speaking of which - this seems to be the national sport - tourist watching. Four of us were up on deck on day when three old men came up and TURNED THEIR CHAIRS to face us. Away from the beautiful scenery rolling past and directly at us. It was entertaining - so we just stared back for an hour or so :) The scenery really was fantastic. And the whole trip was so worth everything that we had to go through to get here. The Chinese tourists are a sight all to their own - watching the men all dressed in suits and people posing for very serious portrait-type photos with no smiles in front of whatever thing we're at. It did bother me, though, how they still hack and spit and smoke even at the temples, and there was even one place we saw where people had used the incense tray to put out their cigarettes. It's like these religious sites are really just tourist attractions to them as well.
So the three gorges dam project is the most amazing engineering feat ever. I'm glad that we came to see this, because there are parts of China that may never be seen again - that is unless the dam fails and all that water comes rushing out again. I'm not even sure how wide or tall the dam is, but it will eventually raise the water level by 115 meters when it is finished in 2009. The was has already risen about 40 meters, so there are things that we've already missed seeing. The first stop was at this down that is being entirely demolished and moved up onto this hillside above the eventual high water mark. 840,000 people who lived along this river have or are being relocated, sometimes across the country to entirely different provinces, and the Chinese government is apparently only minimally compensating them. There has been massive corruption with subcontracting, and the project has already cost tons more than it was intended to because of poor materials, and they've had to patch cracks. It's just crazy to see it all and think about how much more there is to go. We got to the dam and passed through the locks late last night which was incredible. Imagine the seattle locks times about 100,000. Because of the huge depth difference, there is a system of 5 locks that you have to pass through to get to the river below. The fifth one isn't even being used yet, so you cruise on through to the next one, and it takes about 3 hours to pass through the whole think. It's really intimidating too to look back and see a gate holding back 30 meters of water from crashing down on you. Eeesh.
We pulled in to Yichang this morning and offloaded to find the nearest cheapest hotel where we could just take showers and change clothes for the first time in DAYS, so we feel like real humans again. We've just been spending the day wandering around the city, which seems more poor than the other places that we've been but still nice and interesting. We were crossing a big park and stopped to watch a bunch of folks ballroom dancing. This seems to be a big thing in China - ballroom dance and karaoke, and they often come together. We apparently stood around a little too long because some old guy came over and asked us to dance. Of course Vicky goaded me on, so I danced with this very nice guy to the longest song EVER, which she chuckled her ass off and took photos and video. We've got our train our of here (soft sleeper, baby!) at about 5 pm, so we're killing time in this cafe which is why this is the longest blog posting in the world, but if you were going to complain, then why did you finish it ;)
Since I last wrote I have recovered from whatever food-borne sickness I contracted, hopped a bus from Yangshou to Guilin, then a flight from Guilin to Chongqing. As soon as we arrive in the airport, we were hit up by a woman trying to book us on a boat down the river, which is what we were in Chongqing to do, so convenient! The boats have first class (two beds, private bath), second class (4 beds private bath), and third class (6-8 beds private bath). This isn't as bad as some of the boats in Vicky's book that go as low as 5th class where you're sharing a toilet with 50 other people and have to fight for phlegm-free space on the floor for you and your bamboo mat. She told us that second class was full (which we later found to be a mistruth - she was trying to get us to book first class, which was about $200), so we surprised her by booking third class (for $80 including three entrance fees). We pay our deposit, she puts us in a van with one of the SCARIEST drivers in this part of the world, and we whiz off to drop the other passengers at their hotels. Since we didn't have enough money for the whole ticket, he took us to a Bank of China, but since it was an active construction site, we didn't want to get out of the van. So our comes his cell phone for the first of three calls to the woman to deal with the silly foreign girls who don't speak Chinese. We manage our way to the travel office, pay the balance on the boat, book a train and one flight for me, but I still had one more flight to book (and no money left to pay cash because NO ONE here takes frickin VISA!!)
So we went downtown to load up on enough snacks to feed an army, get cash, and gorge ourselves on McDonalds. I know, I know. I ordinarily wouldn't touch the stuff. But you know how good Chinese food is at home - well it's not like that in China. I'm losing some serious weight here, but will soon be back in Thailand to bulk it back up again ;) Anyway, so we finish our shopping and go to get a taxi, except that by this time, half of the 2 billion people in China are in the downtown area, and they're all literally throwing themselves in front of cabs. So after 20 frustrating minutes, I decide to do the same and successfully get the attention of one of the many female cabbies in Chine, only to be cut off by some dude. So I'm right behind him whinning "please please please, I don't speak chinese, and you could easily get another taxi, please please please." I don't think he understood a word of that, but he turned around and gave me the "okay crazy lady" look, and we got our cab!
We get back to the travel office, and the woman doesn't want to book my flight yet - instead we're supposed to rest. So over an hour later and 3 more attempts to get her to book my flight (from Xian to Xiamen to catch my already booked flight from Xiamen to Bangkok), a guy in the office is trying to usher us to the bus that will take us to the boat. So I flipped out, she finally realized that for the last hour I wasn't nagging her to get on the boat, but I needed my frickin flight, so she took my passport, and booked my flight by cell phone en route to some other travel office. Sweet!
We get to the docks with hundreds of Chinese tourist folk, and we're walking down this creepy dark stairway to the water, then across a totally rickety scary walkway that's just a bunch of metal planks spanning from floating platform to floating platform, and the river is RUSHING all around us. We both tweaked out when we saw what we thought was the ship, but fortunately it was just the docking platform. The lobby of the ship was pretty nice, so we thought, whew, we got lucky...until we got to our room. It's a 6 berth, me Vicky, three Chinese men, one chinese woman, and a two year old boy. Six bunks only four inches wider than my shoulder width with an inch thick mattress, a desk with a TV, and a TEENSY bathroom that was just big enough for a squatter and a sink. And it smelled. And it got worse over the next two days.
So we nearly cried, panicked for a bit, thought about trying to upgrade but didn't have the money between us, then decided to just tough it out and see how bad it was. Pretty bad. One of the men was smoking in the room, and gave me a snarky look when I asked him not to - the old woman looked absolutely astonished that I as a woman would have the balls to ask a man not to smoke. The lot of them ate every meal in the cabin, and as far as we could tell only left twice in the entire two days, so it ended up FULL of rubbish and SMELLY. To add to that, the woman was dumping the remaining contents of cup o noodles down the squatter (fortunately it never overflowed), and washing the cups to reuse. And since we could NEVER get the room to ourselves, changing was not an option, and I wore and slept in the same clothes for three days. My hair is nice and healthy though after the grease buildup. It made me really happy that I'd grown it out long enough to pull into a ponytail cause otherwise I would've gone mad. And, with the help of our Australian friends, we discovered an unmarked door in the hallway that was a broom closet with a squatter. MUCH cleaner and nicer than the one in our room, which is saying a lot since the sink was full of brown water. And the light was out, so I had to wear my headlamp while doing my business in a broom closet that was bigger than the bathroom in my designated cabin. Go figure. At least it gave the Chinese folk a better reason to stare at me when I came climbing out of the broom closet ;)
Speaking of which - this seems to be the national sport - tourist watching. Four of us were up on deck on day when three old men came up and TURNED THEIR CHAIRS to face us. Away from the beautiful scenery rolling past and directly at us. It was entertaining - so we just stared back for an hour or so :) The scenery really was fantastic. And the whole trip was so worth everything that we had to go through to get here. The Chinese tourists are a sight all to their own - watching the men all dressed in suits and people posing for very serious portrait-type photos with no smiles in front of whatever thing we're at. It did bother me, though, how they still hack and spit and smoke even at the temples, and there was even one place we saw where people had used the incense tray to put out their cigarettes. It's like these religious sites are really just tourist attractions to them as well.
So the three gorges dam project is the most amazing engineering feat ever. I'm glad that we came to see this, because there are parts of China that may never be seen again - that is unless the dam fails and all that water comes rushing out again. I'm not even sure how wide or tall the dam is, but it will eventually raise the water level by 115 meters when it is finished in 2009. The was has already risen about 40 meters, so there are things that we've already missed seeing. The first stop was at this down that is being entirely demolished and moved up onto this hillside above the eventual high water mark. 840,000 people who lived along this river have or are being relocated, sometimes across the country to entirely different provinces, and the Chinese government is apparently only minimally compensating them. There has been massive corruption with subcontracting, and the project has already cost tons more than it was intended to because of poor materials, and they've had to patch cracks. It's just crazy to see it all and think about how much more there is to go. We got to the dam and passed through the locks late last night which was incredible. Imagine the seattle locks times about 100,000. Because of the huge depth difference, there is a system of 5 locks that you have to pass through to get to the river below. The fifth one isn't even being used yet, so you cruise on through to the next one, and it takes about 3 hours to pass through the whole think. It's really intimidating too to look back and see a gate holding back 30 meters of water from crashing down on you. Eeesh.
We pulled in to Yichang this morning and offloaded to find the nearest cheapest hotel where we could just take showers and change clothes for the first time in DAYS, so we feel like real humans again. We've just been spending the day wandering around the city, which seems more poor than the other places that we've been but still nice and interesting. We were crossing a big park and stopped to watch a bunch of folks ballroom dancing. This seems to be a big thing in China - ballroom dance and karaoke, and they often come together. We apparently stood around a little too long because some old guy came over and asked us to dance. Of course Vicky goaded me on, so I danced with this very nice guy to the longest song EVER, which she chuckled her ass off and took photos and video. We've got our train our of here (soft sleeper, baby!) at about 5 pm, so we're killing time in this cafe which is why this is the longest blog posting in the world, but if you were going to complain, then why did you finish it ;)
Friday, November 11, 2005
China is going to take over the world
This place is really something else. We got up this morning, made our flight arrangements for Chongqing, and inquired about my flight to Bangkok, then caught a bus back to Guilin (we're flying out of here in the morning). Immediately after we get off the bus we encoutered a woman who wants to show us a "beautiful hotel, very cheap for you". So we follow her, decide no, meet another woman and say no, find that the place we were planning to stay at has been knocked down, ended up in a creepy building with no outside indication that it's a hotel then ended up back at the place where we started. It's not bad, really - smells like an ashtray but otherwise reasonably clean. When I got back into the elevator, I got snarky with some dude who was smoking in the elevator right under a no smoking sign, so he tossed his lit cigarette out of the elevator and onto the tile floor in the hallway. Grrr. But all in all people have still been SUPER nice and eager to practice their english. All we have to do is stop for 10 seconds and someone will come up to see if we need anything.
Right, so back to China taking over the world. We're on a street right now that is a REALLY posh shopping area. Not like high end Tiffany, etc stuff like what's considered posh in the states, but really nice classy shops like you'd see at the University Village. In fact, it's EXACTLY like the U Village, but about twice the size stretched down a pedestrian walkway. Super nice, but not at all what I'd expected of China. And the internet place that we're in right now has got HUNDREDS of computers in a bunch of different rooms, all quite well updated and running Windows XP - tons of money to run this place, but they only charge about 40 cents an hour for internet! I know that China is a huge country, and not all of it is going to be like this. Yangshou wasn't this posh, but was quite nice for a teeny little mountain village - aside from the sewage issue which is apparently prevalent in China. So yeah get to China while you can before it looks just like the rest of the world...
Right, so back to China taking over the world. We're on a street right now that is a REALLY posh shopping area. Not like high end Tiffany, etc stuff like what's considered posh in the states, but really nice classy shops like you'd see at the University Village. In fact, it's EXACTLY like the U Village, but about twice the size stretched down a pedestrian walkway. Super nice, but not at all what I'd expected of China. And the internet place that we're in right now has got HUNDREDS of computers in a bunch of different rooms, all quite well updated and running Windows XP - tons of money to run this place, but they only charge about 40 cents an hour for internet! I know that China is a huge country, and not all of it is going to be like this. Yangshou wasn't this posh, but was quite nice for a teeny little mountain village - aside from the sewage issue which is apparently prevalent in China. So yeah get to China while you can before it looks just like the rest of the world...
Thursday, November 10, 2005
China rules
I'm in CHINA!!!! I love this place. Vietnam was kind of crap. We all got the feeling that we were being looked at with great disdain, and all anyone wanted was to get our money and get us out of their country. No one was ever mean to us but you just get that general feeling that you aren't welcome. But China RULES! Every person that we talked to yesterday was very very helpful. We got on a train Tuesday night in Hanoi, changed trains at 11 pm at the border, and got of at 7 am in Nanning. The woman at the bus station didn't speak a word of english, but she made a line of 6-8 chinese people wait while she did her very best to sell us a ticket to Guilin (which we thought went all the way to Yangshou), then left her post (and all the chinese folk) to walk us all the way around the block to a local bus that took us to the other bus station across town. On the bus, we weren't sure where we were going, and two old ladies pointed "further, further", so we made our bus just fine. We got off in Guilin where two people pointed us in the direction of the bus terminal, and perhaps the only english speaking person in the area came up to ask if we needed anything (I guess we looked lost and confused). Then a woman at the ticket window got us tickets and ushered us to our bus. The trains and buses are FANTASTIC - clean and nice. The sleeper train from the border was better than any of the hotels that we've stayed at - by far, like 500 thread count bedding and carpets on the floor.
We walked around Yangshou a bit last night, which Vicky aptly described as an apline sort of village, if the weather weren't hot and humid. So far China has been GENERALLY cleaner than Vietnam, but that's just on the surface. Apparently the whole country has a massive sewage issue. As in their infrastructure doesn't really support the need. Our hotel, for instance, is a reasonable place - clean beds at least, and the walls aren't TOO filthy compared to some of our previous accomodations. But we're having a MAJOR problem with the bathroom. The toilet is a squatter, which doesn't bother me at all anymore. In fact, I've decided that if you've got to use a public toilet, it's best not to have to touch anything. EXCEPT that in this case the toilet is in the middle of the floor (rather than a step up like most in Cambodia were, and it doubles as the shower drain. And the contents don't leave the premises. So imagine for a moment, hot shower water stirring up that lovely concoction. Then add on top of that a bout of food poisoning that we both seem to have managed to contract from the fried duck we had last night - at least that's what we *think* it came from. Not too bad, but we're both feeling a little "unsettled" and tired.
We dragged out of bed this morning and did a countryside tour on bikes with a woman that we met when we got off the bus yesterday. It was really nice. You know how you always see Chinese paintings of dramatic limestone mountains that seem to rise out of nothing? Well, that's what it really looks like here. We took a bamboo raft "cruise" down the dragon river. There's some serious entreprenurialship (sp?!) going on out here. The rafts are two bamboo chairs strapped to a raft of big bamboo poles. The "captain" steers by poling you down the shallow river. There are other rafts that are mobile markets where you can get fruit or hot soup, and some of them even have refridgerators onboard. The river drops in a few places, and the raft just gets pushed over a 3 ft drop (with us on board), and there are rafts at the lower level with people taking digital photos of you as you drop over the edge, and they have a full on desktop computer set up with color photo printer so that you can buy your pictures right there on the water!!! I have no idea where the electricity is coming from for this, but it's frickin cool!
Alright, I'm going to continue passing the night away and hope to wake up feeling better tomorrow. Probably doesn't help that the tea I drank before bed kept me up all night, but I'd just be happy to get my stomach to settle itself down. No worries, though, I'm a mobile pharmacy, and we've agreed to start a course of antibiotics tomorrow if we aren't feeling better. Take care!
We walked around Yangshou a bit last night, which Vicky aptly described as an apline sort of village, if the weather weren't hot and humid. So far China has been GENERALLY cleaner than Vietnam, but that's just on the surface. Apparently the whole country has a massive sewage issue. As in their infrastructure doesn't really support the need. Our hotel, for instance, is a reasonable place - clean beds at least, and the walls aren't TOO filthy compared to some of our previous accomodations. But we're having a MAJOR problem with the bathroom. The toilet is a squatter, which doesn't bother me at all anymore. In fact, I've decided that if you've got to use a public toilet, it's best not to have to touch anything. EXCEPT that in this case the toilet is in the middle of the floor (rather than a step up like most in Cambodia were, and it doubles as the shower drain. And the contents don't leave the premises. So imagine for a moment, hot shower water stirring up that lovely concoction. Then add on top of that a bout of food poisoning that we both seem to have managed to contract from the fried duck we had last night - at least that's what we *think* it came from. Not too bad, but we're both feeling a little "unsettled" and tired.
We dragged out of bed this morning and did a countryside tour on bikes with a woman that we met when we got off the bus yesterday. It was really nice. You know how you always see Chinese paintings of dramatic limestone mountains that seem to rise out of nothing? Well, that's what it really looks like here. We took a bamboo raft "cruise" down the dragon river. There's some serious entreprenurialship (sp?!) going on out here. The rafts are two bamboo chairs strapped to a raft of big bamboo poles. The "captain" steers by poling you down the shallow river. There are other rafts that are mobile markets where you can get fruit or hot soup, and some of them even have refridgerators onboard. The river drops in a few places, and the raft just gets pushed over a 3 ft drop (with us on board), and there are rafts at the lower level with people taking digital photos of you as you drop over the edge, and they have a full on desktop computer set up with color photo printer so that you can buy your pictures right there on the water!!! I have no idea where the electricity is coming from for this, but it's frickin cool!
Alright, I'm going to continue passing the night away and hope to wake up feeling better tomorrow. Probably doesn't help that the tea I drank before bed kept me up all night, but I'd just be happy to get my stomach to settle itself down. No worries, though, I'm a mobile pharmacy, and we've agreed to start a course of antibiotics tomorrow if we aren't feeling better. Take care!
Monday, November 07, 2005
I've decided that this is a quirky and hilarious country, and I sort of like it now. Well, I loved the countryside, but I think it's easier to love the countryside of many countries. Hanoi is interesting, though, and we've had a great time here once we started to look for all of the things to just sit back and laugh at.
1. Scales rolling through the street that play the theme song from "Titanic".
2. Popcorn-sellers on bicycles that play "Jingle Bells, Santa Claus is Coming to Town, and We Wish You a Merry Christmas" or "Happy Birthday".
3. Mobile markets of women selling their wares, from produce to meats, to cleaning supplies, to worms (yes, to eat) They carry flat wicker basket suspended from each end of a stick over their shoulders and wear the connical hats.
4. The dude who set up a table to sell cigarettes and play board games with his buddies - RIGHT UNDER the only ATM in our neighborhood that takes international cards. I had to lean over his head to take money last night because he refused to move - then got pissy when we decided to take photos of the whole hilarious scene.
5. When Vicky asked for orange juice and a cup of hot water (she insists on making her own tea and coffee), and she got a glass of hot orange juice.
6. The Ho Chi Minh Museum is the coolest place in the world. Who knew that Uncle Ho was a surrealist who was inspired to save his country by the works of Gustav Klimt? And did you realize that paintings by Picasso, Matisse, and Dali symbolize the struggle against fascism? For awhile I wasn't sure if I was in a history and political museum or a modern art museum. There is one installation that looks nothing like a brain or a cave, but it's supposed to symbolize a brain that symbolizes the cave where Ho Chi Minh planned the Vietnamese revolution of 1946. Interesting...
7. The book that I bought after leaving the HCM Museum with a fried brain not knowing if HCM thought he was democratic, socialist, or communist. It's still a mystery to me. But at least I have entertaining reading now with "Ho Chi Minh Thought Will Light Our Path Forever". An excerpt for your enjoyment:
"In daily life, President Ho is a very simple and honest man. A great man, a really great man is always simple and honest. A mannered man always lacks capability; his play acting is for deceiving people and future generations. King Nghieu, King Thuan, Jesus Christ were simple and honest men. Lenin, Sun Yat Sen and Mahatma Gandhi were also simple and honest men. So are great scientists and great writers. On the contrary, Hitler was a perfidious man. Besides Hitler, Mussolini was but a clown."
Heheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheh
1. Scales rolling through the street that play the theme song from "Titanic".
2. Popcorn-sellers on bicycles that play "Jingle Bells, Santa Claus is Coming to Town, and We Wish You a Merry Christmas" or "Happy Birthday".
3. Mobile markets of women selling their wares, from produce to meats, to cleaning supplies, to worms (yes, to eat) They carry flat wicker basket suspended from each end of a stick over their shoulders and wear the connical hats.
4. The dude who set up a table to sell cigarettes and play board games with his buddies - RIGHT UNDER the only ATM in our neighborhood that takes international cards. I had to lean over his head to take money last night because he refused to move - then got pissy when we decided to take photos of the whole hilarious scene.
5. When Vicky asked for orange juice and a cup of hot water (she insists on making her own tea and coffee), and she got a glass of hot orange juice.
6. The Ho Chi Minh Museum is the coolest place in the world. Who knew that Uncle Ho was a surrealist who was inspired to save his country by the works of Gustav Klimt? And did you realize that paintings by Picasso, Matisse, and Dali symbolize the struggle against fascism? For awhile I wasn't sure if I was in a history and political museum or a modern art museum. There is one installation that looks nothing like a brain or a cave, but it's supposed to symbolize a brain that symbolizes the cave where Ho Chi Minh planned the Vietnamese revolution of 1946. Interesting...
7. The book that I bought after leaving the HCM Museum with a fried brain not knowing if HCM thought he was democratic, socialist, or communist. It's still a mystery to me. But at least I have entertaining reading now with "Ho Chi Minh Thought Will Light Our Path Forever". An excerpt for your enjoyment:
"In daily life, President Ho is a very simple and honest man. A great man, a really great man is always simple and honest. A mannered man always lacks capability; his play acting is for deceiving people and future generations. King Nghieu, King Thuan, Jesus Christ were simple and honest men. Lenin, Sun Yat Sen and Mahatma Gandhi were also simple and honest men. So are great scientists and great writers. On the contrary, Hitler was a perfidious man. Besides Hitler, Mussolini was but a clown."
Heheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheh
Friday, November 04, 2005
I'm going to China!!!
So after paying $56 to get express service for my visa to China, plus the $20 "it sucks to be American because everyone assumes that you have more money to pay for the EXACT same thing" tax, I'm going to China!! In Hue, in the bar, in the middle of the typhoon, it took me all of 10 seconds to agree to spend the first 10 days tagging along on Vicky's trip to China. It works out perfectly, really, because we're both sick and tired of Vietnam, wanting to get out of here, and I needed something to do until Darren flies into Bangkok on the 18th. So the plan is to do the Li river trip, then fly up to take a three day boat trip up the Yangtze before it's due to be flooded, then I'll fly back to Thailand from either Wuhan or Xian, depending on how far we get by that point. Whoo hoo!!!
And on a different topic - our bus trip from Hue to Hanoi SUCKED!!! It's an over night bus, so it leaves Hue at about 6:30 pm and gets into Hanoi at 8:30 am. First hitch is that the company we were booked with for the open ticket all the way from Saigon to Hanoi was over booked for this leg because so many people stayed the extra night in Hue to weather out the storm. (DON'T do these open ticket things if you ever come here. People say it's the best way to travel, but it's so miserable, corrupt, and a ridiculous waste of time and money that there's GOT to be a better way). So we had to pay an extra dollar for the privelege of being rebooked on a Vietnamese bus. All was okay except that we got on the tourist bus first, drove around for half an hour, got dropped back at the office to change to the Vietnamese bus, then drove around Hue for another half hour. For the first three hours or so after our dinner stop, we pulled off every 20 minutes for a half a dozen men to get off and piss on the side of the road. Why they couldn't just all go in the same stop is beyond me, really. The WORST of it is that Vicky was sitting next to a woman originally who kept falling asleep and elbowing her in the boob, so after dinner, she decided to move to an empty seat. Immediately around the corner, we stopped to pick up more people in this rat trip itty bitty town, so a nice-looking early 30s Vietnamese man with his young son moved to sit next to her. She fell asleep at some point and woke up to his open palm in the same place the woman's elbow had been before!!! She says that when she shifted to move away from him, and he dug in more, so she told him to F*&k off, and he put his little boy between them and left her alone. But the nerve of him!! He's lucky to still have all of his fingers intact, really.
Hanoi seems nice, though, so we're going to spend the next few days here before catching the train to China. First item on the agenda today is to find a real massage place. I think we all need it after that bus trip. Blech. Oh, and stop tweaking so much about the bird flu!!! ;)
And on a different topic - our bus trip from Hue to Hanoi SUCKED!!! It's an over night bus, so it leaves Hue at about 6:30 pm and gets into Hanoi at 8:30 am. First hitch is that the company we were booked with for the open ticket all the way from Saigon to Hanoi was over booked for this leg because so many people stayed the extra night in Hue to weather out the storm. (DON'T do these open ticket things if you ever come here. People say it's the best way to travel, but it's so miserable, corrupt, and a ridiculous waste of time and money that there's GOT to be a better way). So we had to pay an extra dollar for the privelege of being rebooked on a Vietnamese bus. All was okay except that we got on the tourist bus first, drove around for half an hour, got dropped back at the office to change to the Vietnamese bus, then drove around Hue for another half hour. For the first three hours or so after our dinner stop, we pulled off every 20 minutes for a half a dozen men to get off and piss on the side of the road. Why they couldn't just all go in the same stop is beyond me, really. The WORST of it is that Vicky was sitting next to a woman originally who kept falling asleep and elbowing her in the boob, so after dinner, she decided to move to an empty seat. Immediately around the corner, we stopped to pick up more people in this rat trip itty bitty town, so a nice-looking early 30s Vietnamese man with his young son moved to sit next to her. She fell asleep at some point and woke up to his open palm in the same place the woman's elbow had been before!!! She says that when she shifted to move away from him, and he dug in more, so she told him to F*&k off, and he put his little boy between them and left her alone. But the nerve of him!! He's lucky to still have all of his fingers intact, really.
Hanoi seems nice, though, so we're going to spend the next few days here before catching the train to China. First item on the agenda today is to find a real massage place. I think we all need it after that bus trip. Blech. Oh, and stop tweaking so much about the bird flu!!! ;)
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