Vietnam

We took a night bus from Siem Reap bound for Ho Chi Minh (alias Saigon) in Vietnam. In Phnom Penh (our stop en transit) we were the last 3 people to get off the bus, and ended up not getting seats on the bus to Saigon. The next one left 4 hours later. Knowing that it wouldn't work, I spent the next half an hour berating the bus driver, trying to convince him that it was his responsibility to get us on a bus. He disgustedly avoided eye contact and shuffled papers in a self-important manner. I knew this works. It never works abroad. Even if you are in the right, following someone around and demanding something in a loud voice with a slightly crazy look in your eyes will shut down the bargaining. This air of entitlement does work, however, in airports in the US. I think that this is why a lot of Americans get a bad rap abroad (aside from our foreign policy).

In Saigon, 10 hours later, we were intercepted by a plump woman in pajama like clothing who insisted enthusiastically that we go see her guesthouse. The buildings seemed so tall and skinny after all of the other places we have been on this trip. Our little guesthouse was down a skinny alley in the tourist district. I spent an afternoon alone wandering the city and getting used to the traffic. The traffic is primarily motorbike traffic. This is actually scarier than cars, because there aren't just 2 lanes of traffic - there are 15 ever-changing lanes of traffic. The trick is to find a Vietnamese "bodyguard." I wait until a local is crossing the streets, and then get on the opposite side of them (so that I am away from oncoming traffic) and walk slowly and steadily through the weaving bikes in step with my bodyguard.














I went to the giant Ben Thanh Market - a big indoor one with numbered stalls and lots of coyly aggressive saleswomen. "You buy from me!" they demand. "Why you no buy?" they pout. And then when someone inevitably says, "Maybe I'll come back later," they say, "Ok, I remember you [specific identifying trait, usually a shirt color]" and they ALWAYS do remember you. It is a fun game when you are in the mood to play. It's a little dance of disinterest, and then smiles and handshakes all around when a deal is made.

The next day, we went to the Army Remnant Museum. It was very strange - this was an entire market devoted to the resale of war relics, from what they call the "American War" and what we call the "Vietnam War." There were personal photos from wallets, old gear and corroded but functional compasses, canteens from all sides, army cots, gas masks, and dog tags... of dead soldiers... There were a lot of knock-off relics, too. Interspersed with all of these military items were occasional stands selling sequined bathing suits and Vegas girl dresses. To get back, Craig and I took cyclos - which are these tall bicycles with little padded single seats in front (kind of like a child's seat on an adult's bike, except way bigger and more plush). We hired two scrawny Vietnamese men to pedal us across crazy boulevards on their fixed gear bikes. When we got to the last few blocks, I convinced my cyclo driver to let me drive him the rest of the way and he agreed. Craig switched places with his driver as well, and we road through the streets with lots of Vietnamese people pointing and laughing at us. I had a Japanese tourist with a huge camera run out in front of me to take a photograph.

Our third day, we decided to take a bus 4 hours north of HoChiMinh to visit Cat Tien National Park. We were dropped off by the bus at an intersection, 25 km from the park. There was a group of 3 moto drivers waiting for tourists to arrive. Motos are motocycles taxis - you hop on the back of the driver's motorbike and pay them to drive you somewhere. At first they tried to charge us 300,000 dong apiece to take us to the park. (18,000 dong = $1). Our book had told us this ride should be about 50,000 dong. We negotiated long and hard and just when we had resigned ourselves to a 15 mile walk in the midday heat, they said, "Okay. 80,000" and we each coupled with a driver. I jumped on my moto and was given a too-small helmet, which awkwardly flopped between my eyebrows where it had a vice grip on my forehead, and the middle of my head, where it protected a quarter of my head and the chinstrap choked me.














The park was "a la carte" as Bobby says. Everything that we wanted to do cost something. The first morning, Craig and I went for a free walk down the road, looking for birds. Even though it was well after dawn, we saw a lot of birds. We spotted a ground bird creeping through the underbrush and a SE Asian pheasant that looked like a mutated chicken escaped to the forest. We also saw hornbills! They are huge, beak-heavy, magnificent birds. There were about five of them, and lots of unidentifiable smaller birds chattering in the bamboo and treetops. After lunchtime, we met up with our English-speaking guide named Trong. Bob, Craig, and I walked briskly behind Trong, until he would stop suddenly and rapid-fire identify a bird/ scare a bird away before we had a chance to see it. Before long, we arrived sweatily at the Crocodile Lake, where all of the structures were on stilts to allow for the seasonal changes in water level. At night, the forest rangers cooked us a huge feast, and we heard about their battles with poachers. The rangers are armed with AK-47s. They made us a special treat of fried pig skin, which was like bacon gum but thicker and gross. At night, a group of Vietnamese college kids spot-lighted the lake to look for creatures. There was a crocodile stalking a large antelope-like animal grazing on the shore. Numerous eyes glowed in the water. These were not swimming waters. Trong rushed us to bed so that we could wake up early and go on a nature walk. Animals (especially birds and mammals) are most active at dawn and dusk.














The next morning, we woke up on our own at 6 am. Trong had slept in, and "by now," he explained, "it is too late and too loud." We are pretty sure that he was just being lazy and didn't want to get up early. Trong was getting on our nerves. He commanded that Craig wear shoes instead of sandals (which of course he did not). On the walk back, he made us stop to rest. He informed us that if we wanted to visit the promised lava tubes - caves made during the surface cooling of lava, when the deeper lava continued to flow and formed smooth-walled tunnels underground - we would have to pay another extra fee. He continued to scare off every interesting animal in the forest. I think that we were all a bit relieved to have the trip end - Trong included, who I am sure could sense our mild hostility.

We rode motos back to town, by a different route. We dodged the thousands of potholes, and passed fields and a cemetary and rode through the middle of a herd of cows, and past a couple of water buffalo. We landed on the other end of town, where we were sort of kidnapped by a minivan driver who would not let us walk away and find a different ride. I was placed up front with the van driver, who was overweight, and kept leeringly trying to make conversation with me entirely in Vietnamese (which no one translated). It was a long 5-hour hot and sweaty ride, my body sticking to the leather seats and my right arm sunburnt from the setting sun. We were dropped off on the outskirts of Saigon, and had to walk 3 miles to our promised destination in the backpacker ghetto.













Our last day in Saigon, we went to the Race Track, and met up with Matt! our friend from the 4,000 islands. The jockies were maybe 12 years old, or maybe 10. After a race, we watched them walk past, and one of the boys who came in last place was crying. "Not going to eat tonight," I said sardonically. Craig countered, "No, he's just upset because his best friend in the world is going to the glue factory." Nobody won a bet at the track, all of them hoping to become a dong millionaire. On the way back, we stopped and combed through the deliciously fertile electronics black market. We spent the rest of the day and night watching an illegal copy of Dexter in the hotel. I don't think that I slept until 3 am.

Cambodia - Siem Reap & Angkor Wat

We arrived in Siem Reap after a REALLY hot bus ride from Phnom Penh. We booked our bus from a window in the backpacker ghetto, and to our surprise, we were shipped off in a mini bus to an Express Bus filled with Cambodians. We had the last three seats in the bus with defunct air conditioning. It was pretty miserable.


























We visited Angkor Wat on rented bicycles. It was a day of adventure - we biked 25 miles from 10:30 am to sunset, taking a loop that passed by a bunch of old temples. The temples were really spectacular. We visited about ten of them, and they were all different. Angkor was the capital of the Khmer Empire for a long time - which at its peak stretched west across Burma and Thailand, north to Laos, and east to Vietnam: most of Southeast Asia. The temples were built for religion and for prestige: a funny dichotomy that seems to be found throughout history. For example, Angkor Wat - the largest religious building in the world - was built for a Hindu god, for Buddhism, and as the king's tomb and part of the legacy of his rule.

The temples were in the second growth jungle and in varying states of disrepair: the ones that we saw dated back to the tenth century or after. The temples and statues had been put back together sometimes - with plaster that fit the ancient archeaological puzzles back together - transforming rubble into elephants or pillers or walls or Buddhas.













I liked the temples that had some mystery - enough to allow you to look at the wreckage, squint your eyes, and imagine that you are back in the jungle a hundred years ago. Just knowing that these fallen walls and piles of rocks had meaning at one point in time.

There were an astounding number of kids selling things outside and in the temples. One girl was able to recite the capital of every US state. "Kentucky!" we said triumphantly, no clue what the answer was. She thought for a second and then said, "Frankfurt!" I am a college graduate, and I do not know the capital of Kentucky. I do not even know how to say "thank you" in Khmer, and this 12-year-old girl knows idioms in English.














Not being an archeaology buff, and not having a guide at the temples, I cannot tell you much more than the temples were beautiful, fascinating, and all different. We ended our day at Angkor Wat as it closed at sunset. We were still able to walk around the grounds and admired it for what it was - a very large and old religious building. By this point in the day, we were finished looking at temples in the heat, and Bob was somewhere in a tuk tuk with 2 French guys. He got a flat tire halfway through our ride, and ended up hitching onto another temple tour, all of them crammed into a little tuk tuk.













I like watching the street vendors and market saleswomen close up shop for the night. I like to think about them going home for the night, all of their goods neatly stored away for the next day as it begins to get dark. At the end of the day, I saw children less than ten years old, doubled up on bicycles with giant canvas bags attached to the sides like panniers, out collecting plastic bottles from the ground, tourists, and the trash. What would childhood be like if you started working at age 6?

We ran into a very friendly tuk-tuk driver in Siem Reap who asked (like they all ask), "Where you from?" and we answered awkwardly, "U.S.A." (careful to say that and not "the states" or "America" aware that outside of the US, "america" can meet any country in two continents and "the states" is just confusing). He started smiling and said, "oh you from U.S.A.? I like Americans." This was confusing. I asked, "Why?" And he said, still smiling, "You good tippers." And this is true. For all the bad we do to the world, Americans are good tippers.

Cambodia - Phnom Penh

We spent all day traveling by boat, bus, & bus to arrive in the capital of Phnom Penh from the 4,000 islands. On Mr. Ney's boat, we sped past the coconut tree-lined islands and past bushes coming out of the water (forming dry season islets and far more than 4 grand islands). On the mainland, we mounted a tourist-filled bus bound for the Laos-Cambodia border 40 minutes away. At the border, we easily exited Laos, and then stood in several lines on the Cambodian side, paying systematic bribes, totaling $5 per person. They even took each traveler's retinal temperature for some unknown health reason.














Once on our Cambodian bus, we traveled until 9 at night. On all of these long bus rides, there are music videos playing on a TV at the front. Some are Asian pop songs about love, but the best ones are a "best of karaoke"series, which are Western songs sung with Asian accents and amateur music videos featuring (what we can only guess are) the karaoke stars themselves. We arrived in Phnom Penh in its extremely sweaty glory with aggressive tuktuk drivers lining the curb.














The next day, we hired a tuk tuk driver to take us around - to the s-21 prison - aka the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum - and the Killing Fields. Prior to the rise of the Khmer Rouge in 1967-1971, the prison was a high school. When the Khmer Rouge took power, they converted it into a prison and torture facility, through whose doors passed 20,000 civilians, supposedly only 7 of whom ended up alive. It was an extremely moving place to visit - the site was virtually unchanged since its days as a prison. In the first building, the rooms were each a cell, fairly large in size and containing rusty metal beds with large, grainy B&W photos of the occupants of the room. The windows were lined with bars, and supposedly plated with glass to muffle the sound of tortured screams. In the second building, the rooms were divided into approximately 6'by 3'cells, that each held a prisoner. There was also a display of photographs of all of the inmates of the prison - ranging from mothers and babies to small children, to puckered old faces. They mostly looked resigned and dejected, some were beaten up and had swollen faces, and a couple were actually smiling. I couldn't understand for a minute why any of them would be smiling, and when I asked Craig about it, he said, "That would probably be me if I were a prisoner here." It made all of the faces seem very real - to think about how I would have reacted if I had been born halfway across the world 30 years earlier.

Upstairs, the genocide was described. After the Holocaust, it was the worst genocide in the 20th century. It is strange - we are so familiar with the Nazis and the Holocaust, but other than some vague name recognition, the Khmer Rouge largely lies outside of our national consciousness. The strange part (of course) is that the genocide was precipitated by our involvement in that region - as a part of our commie-killing crusade in SE Asia. We didn't bomb Cambodia like we bombed Laos, but there are definitely "do not forge your own path" warnings because of UXO dropped by the US. More indirectly, as a counter-VietCong strategy, the US backed the Khmer Rogue's leader Pol Pot, in his overthrow of the Vietnamese-supported Cambodian government. Anything to stop the spread of communism...

When the Khmer Rouge seized power in Cambodia, especially under Pol Pot, they sought to establish a Maoist country overnight. To do this, they attempted to abolish civil liberties and virtually all free choice. Everyone was to live in the countryside and farm rice, which would be used for domestic consumption, seed, and as export to China is exchange for agricultural equipment. Any percieved opposition to this revolution was systematically killed - this included anyone educated (doctors, lawyers, academics, glasses-wearers, anyone who spoke a language other than Khmer, etc). Anyone who looked Vietnamese, spoke Vietnamese, associated with Vietnamese, etc, was killed. Medical personal trained for 3 months were housing hospitals and making homemade medication, while trained doctors were killed.

In the courtyard of the school, there was a large wooden goal post, used originally for exercise by students. It was later employed to get "counter revolutionaries" to confess by lifting them up with their arms tied behind their backs and lifted up until they lost consciousness. They were beaten with anything that could be found - machetes, bludgeoning items, electric wires, bamboo... They were starved, and hooked up to electric currents. And most of those at S-21 ended up at the Killing Fields - maybe the largest mass killing site during the rule of the Khmer Rouge.

The Killing Fields are outside of town, and our tuk tuk driver drove us the half hour to it. On the way, we passed by a small group of Cambodians digging through a dump for salvaged goods or materials. It reminded me that I am from such a different world - one where we take for granted our freedom, and discard useful items on a daily basis for newer, better, or just more attractive things. It's just built into our culture to throw away perfectly funtional things. Traveling always reminds me of this and gives me this inspired, jaded, and self-righetous kick in the ass to change my lifestyle for a while when I return - until I start to forget why I am bothering when I am just inconveniencing myself and annoying others. Ít's really sad, actually.

The Killing Fields were essentially an extermination camp - people would be trucked in and shot or bludgeoned (to save bullets) on the edge of shallow graves they were forced to dig themselves. The actual site was beautiful and peaceful. It was tree-speckled grassy compound pock-marked with shallow exhumed graves. Dominating the site is a tall, white stuppa to honor those killed. It was eerily filled to the top with skulls of those killed. They were lined up systematically, staring out of glass cases. Around the graves were occasionally "leftover" artifacts, bone pieces and clothes found since the graves had been exhumed.

One of the popular Phnom Penh tourist destinations is a shooting range, were you can pay to shoot AK-47s at targets like ... cows and throw hand grenades. Can you imagine visiting the genocide museum, killing fields and then deciding that you wanted to shoot an automatic weapon at a famished cow?

Vientiene and southern Laos

We arrived in the capital of Laos - Vientiene - after another day long bus ride. Vientiene was nicer than I had expected. At least the small portion of it that I saw through bleary eyes on the extremely hot day we spent getting things done there. It was really BLOODY hot and we spent the day looking for a bus, shoes, shorts, laundry, books, food, ATMs.

That night, we left Vientiene to try and get a sleeper bus to southern Laos, to the town of Pakse. All of the travel agencies had been telling us that sleeper buses were sold out for the night, but we were determined to leave, so we took a tuk-tuk to the bus station. We were thrilled when we were able to get bus tickets at the station. The bus was huge - two levels high, and had crammed small beds in each side, both levels. Each bed held two people. Two small people. Being fat Westerners, this meant that we were wedged into the seat, like two sweaty sardines in can. The air conditioning was intermitant. Waiting for the bus, we were joking about where Bob would have to sleep, thinking that there was no concievable way that they would actually place 2 grown men - strangers - doubled up in a little bed for an all night trip. Turns out, they would and they did. Bob spent the night sleeping alongside some young Laos guy (who looked equally pissed about having to share with a hairy sweaty Westerner). To top the evening off, Bob had left his bag with all of his clothes in it in our tuk-tuk, so he was stuck with the clothes on his body. The trip was relatively painless (for me at least!) and we arrived in Pakse in the morning.














Pakse was a weighpoint on the way to the 4,000 Islands, in the Mekong River, which are a kind of cheap tourist paradise. We booked a bus to the largest of the islands for that morning. The bus turned out to be a long-bed pick-up truck with three rows of skinny benches from the cab to the hatch. At one point, there were 30 adults and 3 children, all crammed in and hanging off of the back. All of our bags were strung to the top of the truck. It was hot and close and uncomfortable - you couldn't stretch out at all - but kind of in a fun way. It was mostly locals (except us and a young European couple), who we surmised were going home for the New Year holiday (the Vietnamese and Chinese New Year were on Valentine's Day this year). The locals were joking and got snacks at the many stops we made. My favorite stop was the turnip town. When the pick-up stopped, they came sprinting towards the truck in rice-paddie hats (conical and made of dried grass), carrying neat bunches of white turnips in each fist. From inside of the truck, there were turnips pressed into all of the crevices from the outside, all vying to be boAfter breakfast and internet, we very very groggily headed to a different bus station to get on a different bus to the 4,000 islands. The islands are an archipelago on the Mekong River, just north of the Cambodia border, famous as aught and competing for business. The amazing thing was that ALL of the women at that stop sold turnips. At other stops, there were misc. meat skewers, cold drinks, smashed and grilled bananas, and banana leaves folded Russian doll style (many layers of banana leaf) with raw fish inside. Everyone in the truck was snacking.














Four hours or so later, we arrived at Done Khong - the largest island. The island was very quiet and seemed almost bare of tourists. We saw a few guesthouses, the obligatory wat with a giant golden Buddha statue and accompanying orange-robe-clad monks. Across the street was a field with water buffalo grazing on it. Children were swimming / bathing and playing with the toy of choice - mudballs. There was a giant pig on a little rope. It was peaceful. We ate dinner by the river as a herd of goats grazed next to us.

The next day, we caught a boat to Don Det - a very touristy little island with topless girls tanning on the makeshift beach and hungover tourists sitting next to us for breakfast - at noon. It was the typical tropical beach island that has been overrun by western tourists - sand everywhere and lots of Vang Vieng tubing tanktops (this is evidentally a rite of passage if you are a douchey young tourist in Laos - being older, less-douchey, world-weary, and low on time, we abstained). We rented bicycles for $1/day and biked a few kilometres to the adjacent island of Don Khon, which was much less populated by tourists. Less Vang Vieng tank tops, at least. We found these little bungalows on the Mekong - with balconies and hammocks facing the sunset. We shared our bungalows with two other men. On our south side was Matt - a cynical, smart, and funny Brit who teaches English in HoChiMinh. On the north side was a German hippy-gypsy-wanderer on a trip of indeterminate direction or length, with his graying, moustached, shortleg-longbody, curly-tailed dog named Casimiro.

We spent the next 2 days of our stay biking around the islands, sampling all of the local fruit shakes, playing gin rummy for hours under fans, swimming in the Mekong and visiting 2 waterfalls. It was so relaxing after the almost constant travel to get to southern Laos. I first saw the waterfall when Craig and I woke up early to run to it. The landscape is flat, sandy, and vegetated with coconut trees and scrubby bushes. The waterfall came out of nowhere in the landscape. All of a sudden, we were at a cliff and below, jagged dark-colored boulders and white water rushing between them in a series of falls. We all biked back that evening, frantically, to catch the sun setting on the Cambodian hills across the river and swim in a pool below the falls. Our last night on the island, I had a phone interview for an ecology research position in Raleigh, North Carolina (which I got!). It was strange - I was swatting at mosquitoes, sweating in the dark at 9pm, on an island in Laos - and my interviewer was in Massachusetts in an office. Very strange.

Phonsavanh and the Plain of Jars

Early the next morning, we caught a bus to Phonsavanh, which was to the southeast of Luang Prabong, and a 8-9 hour ride away. On the bus, we met a couple of new friends - Denver from (is that irony?) Ontario, and a couple of professors from Oz. The ride gave me a chance to hash out what I have been learning in my book - Collapse, which is a continuation of the environmental history thesis of Jared Diamond, from his better-known book Guns, Germs, and Steel. I had just read a case study of Australia - being on the brink of a gradual ecological collapse. More relevant to this trip, as a result of reading Collapse, I have been thinking a lot about Ecology and human impact on the environment since I have been on this trip in SE Asia.














The part that I was getting to in the book focuses primarily on what we can DO to prevent collapses - or steady declines in life quality. The thing that Diamond keeps coming back to in his book is the fact that the current population (much less a rapidly increasing population) cannot sustain its current resource use for much longer - much less take the increase in consumption that is expected as developing countries modernize. It is not as though modernizing countries (eg. China) are going to settle for being "less developed" by choice - everyone wants aspects of the First World like good education and medical options, personal transportation, a television, and generally to improve the lot for his or her children. The question is how to do two things: curb population numbers and decrease material intake. Unfortunately, curbing population growth is tragically matched against a biological drive to procreate and pass on your genes (family name, land) to the next generation (not to mention cultural prestige and religious restrictions on limiting conception). Our material intake includes our resource use, energy use, and product consumption. First world countries are not going to stand for a lowering of living standards, and third world countries won't be held back by a feeling of "global responsibility".














All of this has been on my mind as I travel through SE Asia, particularly in the countryside, where it appears as though children as everywhere, and hillsides are increasingly cleared to grow food (until the rainy season comes and washes soil off of the exposed field and it is no longer a productive plot of land in a few years). [Note from the future of this trip: as of 2008, 40% of Cambodia's population is under the age of 15. Wow]

Phonsavanh was a heavy place to be. It is worlds away from Luang Probang's elegance and clean exterior. Phonsavanh, for one, is not beautiful. It is a provincial capital, and most buildings in town are concrete and efficient-looking (not a world heritage site, like Luang Probang!). We checked into a simple guesthouse, where Bob holed up for the whole of our time in town to be close to a toilet. We went to dinner at a restaurant called (satirically?) "Craters", whose patio entrance was marked with two bomb shells stood up like urns.














Xieng Khoung (the region around Luang Probang) has had a bloody history. It was one of the most bombed locations in the country, in the most bombed country in the world. That was one reason why we wanted to come to town, actually. The other reason was to visit the mysterious Plain of Jars - a hillside with dozens of large stone jars of unknown use in prehistoric Laos.

We spent our time in Phonsavanh socializing with the Aussies and Denver. We went to MAG - which is a British run organization that organizes the safe removal of landmines. At the center, we learned more about UXO - which stands for "unexploded ordinances" or landmines of different varieties. There were cluster bombitos, pineapple style bombs, and phosphorus gas bombs that burned human flesh. And they were all dropped by the United States, during the 1967-1971 "Secret War" carried out by the executive and military branches of the government. Laos, a neutral country, was bombed to try and stop the advancement of the Vietnamese Army along the Ho Chi Minh trail and its feared "spread of communism". The Secret War bombing went against the treaty that we had signed through international diplomacy, and even Congress (much less the American people) was unaware of the bombing campaigns in Laos.














The craziest part about the whole situation is that we dropped more bombs on Laos than Japan and Germany COMBINED - which is insane because we weren't even fighting against Laos as a country. An estimated 30% of the bombs never exploded when they hit the ground - because they were dropped too low and didn't rotate enough times to explode. To this day (and probably for hundreds of years in the future), UXO are littering the countryside everywhere and exploding when hit (by hoes of farmers) or picked up. We watched some great videos at MAG, fell into a temporary depression (which is apt to happen when you are visiting a war-wrecked site and not living the realities of daily life there), and left Phonsavanh after two nights on another day-long bus to Vientiene - the capital of LAOS.

Luang Prabong, LAOS

Luang Prabong is BEAUTIFUL and so relaxed. We arrived off of our two day boat ride ready for some walking and doing just about anything but sitting on hard wooden benches for hours, like on the boat. Something that has struck me about Laos people since we have arrived is how much everyone seems to laugh and joke around and take things lightly. For example, in the Thai cities that I visited, when you told a tuk-tuk driver that you didn't need a ride, they wouldn't take no for an answer. They would follow you down the street and make you name a price (to a destination that you weren't interested in visiting, like the giant reclining Buddha in Bangkok). In Luang Prabong, if you tell tuk-tuk drivers "no" they just let it go! and drive off.













There is a night market in town, targeted to tourists, like in every town. The difference is that this market sells nice, well-made, desirable handicrafts (like slippers made out of old mattress pads and embroidered with elephants - who WOULDN'T want those? - Craig bought a pair). The town is heavily French-influenced from colonial times' legacy, which probably endures due to its charm as a tourist town. The benefit to us is that there are beautifully-constructed French buildings, and they sell delicacies on the street like baguettes and crepes, served in the best of stands with Nutella and mixed tropical fruits. They are REAL baguettes which has been amazing after rice, rice, rice in everything.

























We rented bicycles for a day to explore the small town and its surroundings, and visited the government palace museum. The best part of the museum, which housed model rooms of the royal family of years ago and various Buddha, drum, sword, etc. artifacts, was the display case with international gifts. There was china from China, an ice-bucket looking thing from Canada, a chunk of moon-rock from the US (a diplomatic stab at cold war Russia, perhaps?), and a used boomerang from Australia. Can't you just imagine the king of Laos throwing a boomerang to himself?














That afternoon, we went swimming in the Pham Kha River, a large tributary of the Mekong River that edged the city. It was warm and deep enough to swim in, which we all did in our clothes. We have seen Laos people bathing in the river since we have been following it - the women wear sarongs wrapped above their chests, the men wear shorts, and the children jump in naked. We even saw some Buddhist monks bathing by the river. Most Laos men have at some point lived as monks - it is sort of a coming-of-age experience. Some of the monks look as young as 10 years old, all cloaked in stylish over-the-shoulder orange robes and carrying umbrellas to keep them out of the sun. Monks behave as most other Laos people. They smoke, laugh, talk on cell phones, and ride on the back of motorbikes. It really does feel like paradise here.

The next day, Craig and I woke up early to go to Cooking Class! During our class (which was just us, and a couple of teachers), we went to the Phousy Market, which we had stopped by the day before. We wove through the covered building, stopping to ask our guide what all of the mysterious things were. Yes, the bloody tofu-looking block was indeed congealed blood. The bundles of sticks were spicy wood (which is added to soups to give them a peppery taste). The giant purple flower buds were from certain banana plants, which are edible. The paste in bags was the special "Luang Prabong sauce" with chili paste, and cooked with water buffalo skin. We learned to cook 4 Laos dishes, and sticky rice, which will hopefully prove beneficial to some of you when I return to the states!

Our third morning in Luang Prabong, we woke up at 6 am for the SUPERBOWL! We had a TV in our room, and watched the Saints win! which was a fun upset, but also semi-devastating for Bob, a hardcore Vikings fan, who had (as you may remember) watched the Saints barely beat the Vikings in the finals. After the game, we decided to check out the local big attraction - the KhangSi Waterfall, touted by all of the local tuk-tuks. At the base of the falls, we visited a moon bear (aka. Asianic Black Bear) rescue operation. There were a bunch of adorable fuzzy mini black bears with light bellies, doing adorable things like balancing balls on all 4 feet, doing back bends off of tires, and eating watermelons.

The waterfall itself was amazing. It truly lived up to its reputation. The pools were turquoise, from minerals in the water, and there were cascading pools along a path with swimming holes. The main waterfall was maybe 200 feet tall. If you climbed up a steep path to the side, you could walk all of the way to the top of the falls and away from most of the tourists. From the top, we saw some pools just below and decided to do our best to find them, and our own isolated swimming hole. We reached them by climbing up another waterfall and were welcomed by a group of Americans who had also watched the superbowl that morning, and all met at a bar in town. There was a large, glistening perfect pool, fed by a bowl of falls, which was in turn fed by tall waterfalls lining the above cliff. When you swam to the edge of the pool, you could see the same cascading pattern repeating hundreds of feet downwards. We jumped and swam and took all kinds of inadequate photos. That night - our last in Luang Prabong - Bob got a bad case of traveler's diarrhea (which would continue for the next couple of days) and Craig and I went out to dinner alone, and went to watch the amazing sunset on the river.

the journey to Laos

There have been so many things happening and so much on my mind, that I am going to try to split up these thoughts into a few entries. When I left off last, I was about to leave Thailand, the hippie wasteland of Pai, and the day-devouring comfort of Tacomepai - the organic farm.

As a send off, our last night at Tacomepai, a large group of us took our motorbikes and Sandot's truck to a secret hotspring along a river. You could smell the sulfur from the roadside. The sand was so hot that when Bob accidentally stepped in it, his feet blistered and he had to stand in the adjacent cold river while we all clambered to the "warm" spot of the river, dug into the sand to release the warmth from below the sand. Colin, the boisterous Scotsman, dug up some black mud and we all rubbed it all over our faces and bodies. Sandot gathered us all from the river and hurried us up to an overlook to watch the sunset over the mountains while eating fresh pineapple.


























Colin, Craig, and I scootered back to the river on a rescue mission - to find Maren (our wonderful Norwegian friend) and the Swede, who never showed up. We scootered back through what was now a raging forest fire, flames licking the sides of the pavement. It was all very exciting. Apparently forest fires have become a big problem in the highlands during the dry season, in an ecosystem that is not adapted to frequent fires. Back at the farm (where we found the northern Europeans) we arrived to a FEAST around a campfire. They had skewered chicken and fish on mango wood, and grilled them over the coals. There was also corn and sweet potatoes in the fire, and rice, vegetables, potatoes... for the first time since I had arrived at the farm, we had leftovers. A girl from Georgia was playing the guitar and everyone was happy. I found another Appalachian Trail thruhiker (from 2008)! who knew Kevin and his AT friends.















The next evening, Craig, Bob, Maren, and I left on a night bus for the Thai-Lao border, arriving in a state of tired confusion at 3 am, tossed into a guesthouse and given 4 hours to sleep before our wake up call in the morning, when we jumped into canoe like boats and were transported to LAOS! We had decided to spend two days on the Mekong River - a river that travels through Tibet, China, Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia, and ends in Vietnam when it dumps into the ocean. So the three of us clambered onto a long skinny boat, with about 40 others - mostly tourists like us. We spent two days straight on the boat. The scenery was amazing. The river was wide and slow, sandwiched between tall mountains stretching in every direction, cloaked in tropical forests. Occasionally a stretch of beach would be planted with crops. In the river, large jagged boulders ("crags" Craig says, haughtily) jutted out. If I knew about geological terms, I could probably tell you more specifics. I was caught up in childlike ignorant wonder, tapping Craig furiously on the shoulder everytime we passed something remotely new. We passed by fishermen fishing with bamboo poles attached to nets - we even saw a fisherman who was pulling up a net bouyed in the water with recycled water bottles.














We stopped for the night in a small town whose livelihood was obviously centered around the daily arrival and departure of the tourist boats. We were met at the shore with dozens of children carrying posters of guesthouses, and whispering, "You want some opium?". At the end of our two day boat journey, we arrived in the beautiful (somewhat gentrified) Luang Prabong.

More later!

northern Thailand

In Chiang Mai, picking off where I stopped last time, we spent a day visiting local wats (Buddhist temples). As western lovers of all things simple and classy, we were assaulted by the gaudy displays in the wats - golden roofs, giant Buddha statues and small Buddha statues, fake flowers decorating the Buddha "alters", and bowls for collecting alms for each day of the week - you are apparently supposed to put money on the day that you were born for good luck. Outside were beautiful gardens and often ruins of the original wats on that site - one complete with huge elephant statues. I got an hour-long Thai massage for $6.


























Our last day in Chiang Mai started early - at 5 am, to be precise. We woke up at first cockcrow (Craig insists that this is an actual compound word). Bob's mission for our time in Asia was to see every Vikings game, live on television. Before I arrived in Thailand, they had stayed at a four-star hotel in Bangkok to watch a game. Since being in Chiang Mai, we had spent a lot of our wandering time stopping by hotels and asking, "Do you have cable TV that plays American Football? You know, Dallas Cowboys?" It turns out, ironically, that we found a bar in town owned by a Brit with a friend who was from New Orleans, and had convinced him to open his bar at 6 am for the Saints vs. Vikings game. Craig, Fish and I arrived at the bar at 5:30 am, and found Bob sitting outside, waiting for the bar to open. He had been awake since midnight, too excited about the game to sleep. It was a spectacle. I mean, just think about it - we were in Thailand, at a British bar, watching a football game at six am, with this guy from Louisiana wearing overall shorts, a big straw hat and sunglasses and his geriatric fan club. It was actually a good game to see, and we all drank beer and left feeling a little bit sad and a little bit drunk to catch a bus to PAI.

























Pai is not very pleasant. We stumbled off of the mini-bus after 3 hours of harrowing mountain curves and vomiting in a plastic bag. Pai is FULL of tourists, which seem more present because it is such a small town. We escaped town after a night to go to Tacomepai - an organic permaculture farm that Roxy stayed at last year. Since we arrived (a week ago?) time has flown by. Every morning, I have woken up three times - once from the late night cacophony of dogs and roosters, once from the strange sound of cowbells in the rice patties, and a third time from the hot sun coming through the bamboo walls of the bungalow. Everything is made out of bamboo here! The spoons, cups, plates, buildings, bridges, baskets, machete sheaths, everything! Bamboo is apparently the fastest growing plant in the world - it has been measured to shoot up 48 inches in 24 hours.














We rented these little scooters in town, and have been buzzing around the region, visiting all of the amazing sites around here - waterfalls to swim in, including one that we hiked 10 miles to and back, Pai Canyon with its spectacular views in all directions (especially at sunset), and cave exploring. We went to an art opening - a little hippie tourist thing - and saw some great fire dancing and a Thai woman singing Norah Jones. We also went to the Pai Reggae festival for a night. Each day is kind of melting into the next.














We are leaving Thailand in a few days, for Laos and a 2-day boat trip down the Mekong River, which I think that we are all looking forward to. The problem with trying to describe travel is that there are funny little ironies everywhere, and they slip by unless you write them down. Today, for example, we were stopped at an overlook and some Thai men ran over and asked for Bob to be in a photo with them, shirtless. They thought his hairy chest was REALLY funny.