geography lesson

For those of you who may not be so geographically inclined, I've made up a map of the places we go! You can find it here. I'll update our route (red line) as we continue our journeys.

The internet cafe I'm in smells like fish. Probably the large fish in the front door.

the wilds of laos

Hoo boy, it's been a while, hasn't it? Laos made for great pictures and relaxing, but not so much for writing long periods of time, with the weather being much nicer than our previous countries.

My good friend Scott, who should be referenced here much more than he is (he's been our own personal Lonely Planet, really) had mentioned that Vientiane, the capital of this gem of a country, was pretty boring, so, frankly, we decided to skip it. This also meant skipping the green excitement of Vang Vieng, a collection of backpackers and activities nestled in wonderful-smelling jungle, but we were planning on doing other nature-based fun stuff up north, so it wasn't a huge disappointment. We did spend a day in Vientiane, however, sipping fresh, cheap fruit shakes and visiting the Laotian Arc de Triomphe (which describes itself as a concrete monster), before landing in a (thankfully) much cooler Luang Prabang.

This city is the capital of the Buddhism that carries most of the country through their lives. Every morning, hundreds of orange- and saffron-robed monks walk down the street shortly after sunrise, collecting alms in the form of food (a lot of sticky rice) and money from citizens hoping to increase their karma. The wats (temples) are huge triangles with roofs sweeping close to the ground with intricate glasswork and murals and huge paintings and gold enamel covering them on all sides. The Buddhas found here are not the big Buddha statues you see back home - they're standing in the dispelling fear pose, and thin as a beanpole!

We spent more than one afternoon resting the wonderful, relaxing atmosphere of this town, be it in the laid-back atmosphere of the environmentally-conscious tea room/bookshop/art gallery, the cheap and cool interneteries, or sitting in the shade with yet another fruit shake (SO DELICIOUS). Another cooking course was completed, though this one used such specialty ingredients as "some herbs from the jungle" and "galanga" and "tamarind" - awesome flavours, Laos-grown. Oh well, we still got a couple of delicious recipes to add to the repertoire. Really, the only disappointment was the day we went to go and see the museum and some traditional dancing, it was Royalty Day at the museum. And what do you know, the King of Cambodia was in town. Lucky guy. One day a year....! The kids had a blast - they got time off of school to sit on the fence and watch the motorcade go by.

Anyhoo, the real eye candy was the textiles around town. With the light of day seeping away in crimson rays (slash-and-burn season to clear land for more rice paddies made for hazy days and sanguine sunsets, with one day later on feeling like a pen-and-ink Christmas, with black and white ash falling from the sky), vendors set up stalls all along the main street for the night market. Scarves, skirts, wall-hangings, and t-shirts lay spread out on mats, bulbs floating above. A miniature galaxy winking into existence every day at dusk. The first night, a menacing wind blew up, and the entire market was packed up within fifteen minutes to avoid the storm that broke two hours later. The last night, another storm blowing in knocked out the electricity to the entire town, causing a mingled, single cry to fly up into the clouds, only to be followed by a mix between a cheer and a sigh when it came back on a minute later.

The nature of Laos is the real treat, however. We also took a trip further up north to Muang Ngoi Neua, a little village only accessible by water. The trip up was in a 'public bus', which consists of a long pickup truck with a bench on either side of the bed, covered over and filled with people, bags, food, stools, and even buffalo feet (no longer connected to the buffalo). There was power only from 7-10 pm, no vehicles at all, huts woven from thatch, and SO MANY CHICKENS. And roosters. I tell ya, you really don't need an alarm clock with dozens and dozens of roosters around.

We did a little trekking, with a local guide telling us Laos legends and showing us different jungle plants the locals collect, eat, sell, and use for medicine - many people still use traditional medicine, especially as the nearest Western medicine doctor can be some time away. We found even more evidence of the rich beauty of the natural tapestry - more greenery, caves, brooks, rivers, and butterflies of every shade (except red, I didn't see any red). There were times when we saw dozens of butterflies grouping together on the riverbank, a carpet of intricate wings and black bodies. Some of them were as big as my palm! With insects making all sorts of sounds (including a flying bug as big as my thumb whose buzz was at least an octave and a half lower than any bug I've heard before) and geckos creaking out their characteristic "geck-o", it was the noisy silence of nature all around. We also rented a couple of boats and paddled up the river to enjoy more of the pristine wilderness. The trip back to Luang Prabang was the aforementioned Day of Haze, and we also had a wonderful sawngthaew (a pick-up truck with two benches in the back) ride back in the company of 25 other people, not including sacks of rice, vegetables, and plastic stools! To top off the nature kick, we took a day to visit a waterfall just outside of Luang Prabang, taking a dip in its icy waters as they roared down from high above.

I'm sorry that I'm writing this so long afterwards, I just don't feel that I'm giving it justice. For more words in the form of pictures, check out the pictures.

beautiful, brassy bangkok

Coming into one of Asia's gateways early in the morning is definitely an interesting way to first see a city. Its cells are just rising and getting on their way, the economic cycle of another day beginning. People grabbing breakfast (anything from fruit to noodles to deep-fried bananas) and hopping on the Skytrain, trying to get to work beforethe day begins to heat up. And so we arrived in Bangkok on the train, taking it all in as we rode the subway and the skytrain (two of the four methods of public transit they have here - there's also the river taxis (large boats that traverse the river on the western side of the city that you basically just jump on and off of) and of course the bus system. And, of course, all of them had signs designating seats specifically for monks (if they were around). Even though we were at the beginning of our time here, we already felt spoiled - after so much walking around, to have so many ways to get around the city for a dollar or less! Of course, with so much to see in Bangkok, I know I needed it, or my legs would simply have stopped working.

Our travels took us to all sides of the city. In the north, there was the ginormous weekend market - a collection of 15,000 stalls and 200,000 people all smooshed together in one area. It's been around for a while, even having streets and sections with professionally-done signs. And the things one can find there! Clothing of all sorts. Pets. Buddha statues. Dried squid. Cutlery. Souvenirs. Flowers - real and fake. Leather. Home decorations. Fried insects. And so much more, all with the hum of haggling and at least four different bass beats echoing in your ears, the smell of sweat, animals, and commerce trickling through it all, and a rainbow at every turn. And, of course, all of it in the daily 30+ degree Celsius heat. Luckily it's all under a giant roof. I've never experienced a market like it before, and I'm not sure I will again. We wandered around for almost five hours, and I think we saw maybe 40% of it.

The south side of the city held the embassies (the location of my failed attempt at getting extra passport pages - darn Canada!) and the key to the river taxis. The riverside was also the choice location for all the fancy-pants hotel, meaning you needed fancy pants to get it. We stopped at one to inquire about a cooking course, and I wasn't even allowed in the hotel to ask about it. Needless to say, it was a bit out of our budget. It also held the main post office, which, like the Saigon post office, deserves special mention. These big city Asian post offices really know their stuff. We also encountered another beautiful market down here - a flower market. Blocks and blocks of just flowers - bunches of roses for $1US. Flower petals and parts strung, sewn and arranged for Buddhist offerings for the next day, to be placed in front of statues all over the city. Sometimes they were garlands, sometimes they appeared as animals, and sometimes they looked like buildings. We also happened on an amulet market one night, with hundreds of tiny little Buddhist amulets for sale, none of them bigger than my thumb.

The west held the real treasures. The biggest draw (where, of course, biggest crowds were found) were the temples. We explored the incredibly ornate Wat Pho, home to the largest reclining Buddha in the world - 46 m long, all of that gold plated. The monks that are found throughout the country may take a vow of poverty, but that doesn't mean that the temples do! All of the gold and coloured glass and intricate architecture and hand-painted murals and wallpaper (there was one temple that had what must have been a kilometer of murals around the outside walls, all done by hand) brought to mind the Temples of Angkor in Cambodia. The sheer wealth and manpower it must have taken to accomplish this formidable task is at times overwhelming. One day, a friendly Thai guy approached us and told us that it was a special Buddhist holiday, and though some of the temples were closed, the ones we could find were open. Also, the government had some promotion going on to boost tourism. Needless to say, we got to visit more temples (including a 32 m tall golden Buddha that took 60 years to build and a temple made out of marble), and a bunch of shops where we had to pretend to be interested in buying suits and jewelery. (Final score: Shops 5, Temples 3. Well, the whole afternoon only cost a pittance.)

We also found time to visit the Royal Palace (I needed to rent pants, as the long shorts I had worn everywhere else weren't enough), whose weapons museum must've had dozens of knives, spears, guns, and more crammed into a room not much bigger than the little internet cafe I'm sitting in now, and see the Emerald Buddha. This little guy, who's actually made of jade is only about two feet tall, is a very important figure in the history of Buddhism here. He's been all over the country and even to Laos, and there's a museum dedicated to just him. After seeing the 46m long and 32 m tall Buddhas, this guy was just buried in all the finery around him - a 20 foot tall tower supporting him, statues kneeling in prayer to him, hand-painted wallpaper surrounding him.

Not everything was on the beaten path. The Forensic Museum was a treat that was also probably the most bizarre museum I've ever been in. Mummified bodies of murderers, pieces of bodies with various injuries demonstrated, pictures of grisly murder victims, organs, fetuses, a whole section on parasites that could easily convince a few people I know into veganism, and snakes and insects aplenty, frozen in plastic. We went and saw a musical created from a Thai folk tale and done entirely in Thai at a theatre opened by one of the most famous Thai actresses ever (she also acts in the plays), and took a bit of traditional Thai dancing at a shrine right beside an enormous hotel and shopping center that people prayed at to help them win the lottery (there were tickets sold outside. Needless to say, it wasn't the highest quality dancing.) I even got some time to just sit and listen to some jazz at a terrific downtown jazz bar, something I haven't done for ages and found myself missing more than I had thought when I first heard it.

The last memory of Bangkok for us was brought by the people. Elections were right around the corner when we arrived in Bangkok, and when transferring between trains downtown, we encountered a huge protest against the corrupt prime minister. I don't know how big it was at the time, but it swelled later in the day to over 100,000. And these people were protesting. Organized cheers, shouts for resignation, flags waving everywhere - these people were proud of their country and embarrassed by their leader and were showing it. It was really a neat sight to see and experience, and people even stopped by to explain what was going on to us.

Of course, there are many more things that occurred - from the exotic, like elephants we saw on the corners of streets carrying things around - to delicious - like most here, we ate as much Thai as we could find - to mundane - I got a haircut that will last me perfectly for the rest of the trip, thanks to Scott, who knows all the tricks. I'll save those for future posts. Really.

quiet ko phangan

Yes, after six weeks of go-go-go style traveling, trying to see everything with no time to do it, it was time for a break, and the quiet beaches of the island of Phangan seemed the place to do it. The eastern side of the island is actually legendary for its full moon parties, but we headed to the other side of the island for some tropical solitude.

And tropical it was. Stepping into the aquamarine waters off the shore was like walking into a giant, salty bath. Fine white sand laid right outside our almost beach-side bungalow. We could lunch at the restaurant to the sight of...well, a dry bed, actually (the tide was low during the day). Still, that didn't stop the time on Ko Phangan from being enjoyable.

Being halfway through our trip, recharge time was necessary from all the go-go-go and city life, especially after Bangkok. A lot of good reading in hammocks was accomplished (that midday sun was like a blast furnace) and I managed to get rid of some of this running-around-with-a-shirt-on whiteness. Being me, however, I still had to do stuff - many days lying on the beach doing nothing was simply too much. I took in a full day of diving (three for me, including the night dive, my new favourite adventure, and snorkeling for Chris) at the nearby marine park, seeing plenty of terrific fish, rays, crabs, corals, and more. We also did manage to catch our cooking course at a wonderful little restaurant run by an American who had fallen in love with the island and his wife (he also had fallen in love with her). We pounded, fried, and mixed while the rain tapped on the roof and the flies came in for cover and scraps. (We went back another night just to eat their heavenly curry, it was so good).

One of our main purposes on coming to Ko Phangan was to visit our friends from Taiwan, Brad and Lee-ann. They had been teachers in Taiwan, but they had saved up to be able to come and live in this paradise for a year, writing. What a life! Unfortunately, due to a communication error by yours truly, we missed them for most of the time, only managing to catch them for our last couple of days there. We did catch up with them, though, sitting and sipping cheap (though expensive) wine at our hosts' house, telling stories, playing games, and even catching a couple of episodes of Family Guy. It was great to see them again, and I can't thank them enough for being there for us to visit. They are there for the rest of the year (well, approximately - visas are oh so fun things to take care of) as we head off onto the long road again.

jungle camp

We finished our jungle camp (at the amazing Uncle Tan's) last week, and man, what an experience. We started seeing things (real things, no jungle hallucinations) almost as soon as we got on the boat. Our boatman, Tony, was equipped with both jungle knowledge and a dry sense of humour ("And that over there is a....dog. Storm's Stork. Long-tail macaque. Dog."), making the journey up the river an enjoyable one. We got a range of explorations while we were at the camp - night, morning, and late afternoon safaris on the river and morning and night treks through the jungle. Whew. We also booked ahead and did the jungle camping, where we headed off into the forest for the hardcore experience. Given a machete (that we got to keep! I have a machete!), we assisted in creating a shelter for ourselves - cutting down a couple of trees (reusing a bunch that had already been cut down, which was good. They're really keen on the environment, and it's damn hard work, all that chopping!), then constructing a mini-building to keep the beds off the grounds (there are poisonous snakes and spiders and other creepy-crawlies looking for dinner at night, after all) and the rain off the beds.

And the things we saw! Hornbills, orang utans (including a recovery reserve for them), a wild tarantula, frogs, lizards, a mock pit viper, a huge centipede and some ginormous millipedes, bearded pigs, a million kinds of butterflies, and so very much more. In the camp, we also got to pick edible ferns for our dinner and (my favourite) go fishing with a net!

There were a couple of oxbow lakes nearby that were perfect for it. Hard work, too - those weights are heavy, and throwing it properly takes practice. The result was worth it. Obviously, our amazing guide, Remy, caught most of our dinner, but I managed to catch a few things. The freshwater prawn were the best - imagine a huge grey prawn coming out of the water, longer than your hand, with pincers almost as long as your forearm! Good eatin'! There was also a fish called a sleepy gobi that, when sold and used in dishes in Kota Kinabalu (the capital), could fetch a couple hundred ringgit ($1US=4 ringgit)! And, after sampling it that night, it was easy to see why.

It was such an amazing experience to be in this primodial rain forest, so wild and untouched. I had butterflies landing on me at times - something I have never had (though it may have been the sweat). I saw animals that are incredibly rare (the Storm's stork can only be seen here and in Kashmir, and the proboscis monkey can only be found on this island) and animals that are indescribably beautiful (the kingfishers were a personal favourite, though I didn't see as many as I would have liked). I really think that it's something everyone should see, that this is worth keeping, protecting, fighting for. This brought home the need, the wonder, the magic of a rain forest for me. I'd go back in a heartbeat. With a better camera, though.

how travel can kick your ass and leave you crying

Well, not that bad, and it's the first time in two months, but it still isn't fun at all.

After such a wonderful time in the jungle, we arrived in Kota Kinabalu (KK), the capital of Sabah (northern Borneo) hoping for a couple of exciting days before taking off to Brunei. We skipped climbing Mt. Kinabalu (highest peak in SE Asia) due to time, cost, and the fact that a cut on my ankle was infected - not the best climbing condition). In three days, we managed to miss dinner with friends of friends (neither of our faults - they were leaving town soon and had previous appointments, but still sad to miss, especially as she's reputed to be an amazing chef), miss seeing the rafflesia plant (biggest plant in the world) and miss a day of diving.

The second two I blame the individual businesses/organizations and not the island, which I still love. The Rafflesia reserve keeps track of bloomings of the largest plant in the world within the (rather large) area of its domain. To find out if any are blooming, you call a number. Which we did. Which told us one was blooming for another couple of days. Fine. We headed out (getting wrong directions at the start, costing us an hour, but eventually getting on the right bus) to the reserve, which was an hour out of town, but definitely worth it. However, when we get out there, the guide tells us that one is just finishing up blooming and is starting to die, and besides which, he's TOO TIRED to go out. Man, I wish I could just say I'm too tired to work. That'd be sweet. Then, to top it off, two buses that we're supposed to be able to wave to pick us up pass us right on by. Luckily, a wonderful guy named Christopher stopped off and picked us up and gave us a ride into town. It did piss me off, though. I mean, volunteer? Fine (though if you don't want to, don't volunteer). But we were ready to pay this guy. Oh well. We can catch it in Indonesia.

The diving was just stupid, though. I had arranged everything beforehand, they just needed to pick us up, which they said they'd do. Well, we waited for an hour, and no show. We couldn't even call, as there was no phone that would take coins around, and the hostel's phone was locked with a key that was not at the hostel that morning. When I did call later, they said that the van had gone out and come back with some other guy, then they went out. What?! Well, it was no lost money, but still, I didn't get my diving.

Small things, but when chances are lost, disappointment in inevitable.