Life has a way of circling back...

Great storm-watching on the porch in Montana this summer.

I looked back recently on my July 19th, 2009 post. At that time I was on a road trip heading north after leaving Colorado. After a particularly long and arduous day of hiking in the Tetons, driving north, and finding no camping in Yellowstone, we ended up exhausted at a campground at 9pm in a beautiful valley, between the Park and Livingston, called Paradise Valley. I remember thinking, "Wow, what a spectacular place!"

Well, life is funny. How could I have known that a year later I would be back in that same valley, spending a whole summer there, and adoring it completely? The hiking and backpacking opportunities there are numerous, easy to get to, and for the most part - uncrowded. The house I lived in abutted the Gallatin National Forest to the west, the Absaroka mountains to the east, and the Beartooths just beyond that. They all became my playground. Here I encountered bears, spires, glacial lakes, Alaska-esque mosquitos, sudden storms, trout, owls, and much more.

A young elk in Yellowstone chills out.

Moonrise over Emigrant Peak, from the back porch.


Backpacking in Lakes Plateau in the Absarokas.



The Beartooth Mountains east of Yellowstone.

An early summer hike up to Pine Lake in the Absarokas.

Granite Lake in the Beartooths.



Surveying pikas.

I also had the chance to volunteer at Yellowstone NP in the bear management office, helping to investigate problem bears in the backcountry, and more extensively, doing pika surveys. Pikas are small rodents in the rabbit family that live in scree fields, harvesting and drying out "hay" for winter food. They remain active in the wintertime, creating tunnels in snow. Super cute creatures, and subjects for long-term climate change studies in the Park.

Staying at a backcountry patrol cabin in Yellowstone. Each of the cabins are unique and dense in history, some of which is shared in the log books. It was nice to be in the backcountry doing work and having a roof to sleep under when night fell. The cabin shelves are loaded with expired can and dry goods that other people have left behind, making for some interesting dinners. I made some brownies from a ten-year old Betty Crocker box...and nobody even got sick.

American bison strolling in Park roads are a common sight in Yellowstone. When I got to the Park in early June, the bison calves were red balls, new and frisky. How they played! I sat by the side of the road and watched them.

It's a lesson I would learn over and over again: Yellowstone is at its best when you sit quietly and just watch. Maywe we can all use a little more time observing the life all around...

Listing Who I Am

I recently read an editorial post in the Mountain Gazette asking people to share "cool things" they've done that essentially encapsulates who they are, and it has to be generally mountain-related. Such a list would fit just one person in this whole world. I was inspired to try and capture some of my favorite experiences in life so far, big and little.

COOL THINGS I’VE DONE (that have made me who I am)
1. Spent a summer alone in a dark cabin in the woods, with an outhouse, in Alaska.
2. Quit my cushy job in a scary economy and went traveling for eight months.
3. Bottle-fed a newborn Great Dane.
4. Played a pub quiz with a German and four drunk Kiwi girls (we lost).
5. Climbed a fourteener in Colorado.
6. Kayaked through (and made up a children’s story about) icebergs.
7. Cleaned toilets in State parks (highly recommended for your kids!).
8. Napped on a mountainside in grizzly country.
9. Was a flower in a hometown parade.
10. Plucked contact lens from a bear spray victim’s eyes, and then fell into exhausted sleep at 2am on a snowbank.
11. Camped on a rocky beach near a glacier (and was almost washed away).
12. Drank Mojitos with an Aussie while a Filipino band played Johnny Cash in a Spanish bar in Vietnam.
13. Went two weeks without a shower.
14. Aced a tough environmental law final the day I found out I had cancer.
15. Made a calzone, from scratch, in the backcountry.
16. Helped my grandmother pass the U.S. citizenship test when I was a kid.
17. Climbed mountains alone in Tasmania.
18. Worked in pitch black Oregon forests in the middle of the night, calling for owls.
19. Took my Honda sedan four-wheeling on Utah back roads.
20. Ran away from a sorcerer.

America the Beautiful

Yosemite Falls in April.

To celebrate being back in the U.S. for exactly one month today, I thought I'd write and let those of you who are curious know that I am still alive and well. The rapid passage of time is scary, frankly. I heard that time slips even more silently by with age, so I gave it some thought, and eventually devised a method to combat speeding time. This is it: I enjoy what I am doing, and who I am doing it with. I try to listen, and really be there, whatever and wherever it may be. I pay attention. To life. It is the title of this blog, essentially. And it's a good thing I abide by this strategy, and it works so well, or otherwise you'd probably be reading this post six months down the road, with me wondering what happened between April and October.

Speaking of listening and paying attention to what is around us, I heard an interesting program on natural sounds, or rather, its rarity and endangerment, on NPR recently. http://www.onpointradio.org/2010/04/gordon-hemptons-silence

The month has been punctuated by a series of wonderful trips. As soon as I got back home, I left for a four day road trip with my parents and sister, exploring the triumphs of the natural and built worlds: Yosemite, Death Valley, Hoover Dam, and yes, Las Vegas. Some of you may not choose to use the word "triumph" to describe Vegas, but we'll just leave it at that. The new span bridge to permanently divert traffic from Hoover Dam itself is nearly complete, and it's looking pretty. Lots of quality family time, and plenty of time in the car to chat and catch up after an eight-month absence.

Next was a week of camping in northern Nevada with James. Neither of us knew the state well, so we were curious to explore and see what there was to see. Flexibility ended up being the Word of the Week, with Patience a close second, as we got there just about the same time the spring winds and snowstorms did. Neither of us are extremely fussy people, but battling gale force winds in the desert while trying to get a tent set up in those conditions would be ambitious, or laughable. So we stayed in Winnemucca for two nights, waiting for conditions to improve. In the meantime, we visited the extremely helpful folks at the Forest Service and BLM offices to learn about cool places to go, hit the culinary "jackpots" of the town, bought a Nevada Gazetteer, and strolled through the Buckaroo Hall of Fame. One thing is certain, Winnemucca is inhabited by lots of friendly people who are so happy to be living there, and want to encourage you to move there too! We really enjoyed the locals.

Finally the weather kinda sorta improved, so we headed out to Paradise Valley and the Santa Rosa Mountains. We couldn't make it all the way up to the summit on the Forest Service Road due to snow, but we got very close, and it was a beautiful drive. We camped in the Martin Creek canyon nearby. A warm evening fire after dinner was rudely interrupted by a mini-blizzard, dumping a couple inches of snow over fifteen minutes or so, as we scrambled to put things away and put out the fire in the driving winds and snow.

Camping by Martin Creek. Most of the snow was gone by morning.

Basin and Range.

The next day encompassed a beautiful drive over to the Black Rock Desert-High Rock Canyon Emigrant Trails National Conservation Area (NCA) in northwest Nevada. Basin and Range. That's what Nevada is. We did indeed see lots of isolated north-south trending mountain ranges (perfect to explore on another trip) separated by bucolic valleys. Sage country, canyon country. Playas or dried lake beds. If wildness and quiet were your thing, you could be very happy in Nevada. I did see a roadside sign (a little more professional than my rendering) illustrating a couple of important industries in this Silver, or Battle-Born, State.
The NCA is a starkly beautiful landscape. A highlight for me was part of its history: the Applegate Trail, used by the pioneers going to California in the 1840s as an alternative to following the Humboldt River, runs through it. I tried to picture covered wagons, teams of oxen, women in bonnets and heavy skirts, clouds of dust, crying children, the relentless sun. I could almost succeed. I admired the strong-willed who pushed through this tough landscape, and felt sympathy for those who perished under the desert sun.

We too might have perished that night in the NCA, were it not for the modern automobile, which we slept in, buffering us from the chilly wind. The stars were brilliant and then the full moon rose. The next morning we continued on to the Black Rock Desert, a playa famous for hosting the Burning Man Festival, but now empty, cracked, shimmering, splendid. We continued on to a leisurely afternoon and night in Pumpernickel Valley, then it was on to Elko, and eventually, home.

Outdoor enthusiasts, especially those of quieter pursuits, don't normally rank Nevada high on their list. It's kind of way out there, and there aren't many glamorous parks of the Yosemite or Grand Canyon ilk (excepting maybe Great Basin NP), but I think it has a lot to offer people who don't want to rub shoulders with a whole lot of other people. Given all the mountain ranges in Nevada, chances are good you'll have one all to your self.

Most recently I came back from an overnight snowshoeing trip into the Crystal Basin of the Western Sierra Nevadas, up to Robbs Hut, with a couple of friends. I was happy to be on snow, even crunchy snow punctuated by bare ground. I didn't have a proper winter this year on my travels, so this short hut trip hit the spot. Robbs Peak offered fantastic views of the Crystal Range to the east and ridge upon ridge to the west, including the Central Valley and Coastal Range. Sunset was gorgeous from the fire lookout, while happily eating a bowl of warm pea soup on the leeward side of the chilly east wind. We also explored the three reservoirs in the basin managed by SMUD, some of us crashing through ice on Loon Lake, and others of us slipping into chilly Union Reservoir. I am still cold thinking about it. But the sun was warm, the weather impeccable, and the company excellent. I am learning more about my home state, and there is much to like. It's a beautiful state in a superbly gorgeous country. It's good to be back.

Robbs Hut

This is my last night of an eight-month trip, not counting tomorrow night aboard an Air New Zealand plane. I go to the Cairns airport tomorrow morning, and 3 flights and 24 hours later, I will be in San Francisco! I am reading a good book - The Year of Living Biblically by AJ Jacobs - and with a newspaper, I should be set for travel entertainment. It is a quiet evening at the Northern Greenhouse Hostel in Cairns, not a very exciting end to the journey...but then again, it may be an accurate reflection of the tenor of my trip. I'll update with the rest of my journey since my last blog later!

...back to the the Sea (Saigon and the Mekong Delta)

Saigon - officially Ho Chi Minh City - is a bustling metropolis, the most modern in Vietnam, and its financial capital. Sometimes it's called the "motorbike city". Apparently there are nine million inhabitants and seven million motorbikes. The city has some fabulous museums where one can learn all about the Vietnam/American War, though from the communist perspective, inevitably. Learning about the War was one reason I had so looked forward to Saigon. And it didn't disappoint. The other reason for my interest in Saigon is a bit of family history. My maternal grandfather spent several of his teenage years in this city, as his family fled from the advancingJapanese in southern China during WW2. I am not sure where he lived, but yesterday I took the bus down to Chinatown to have a walk around. I heard Cantonese spoken by the old ladies on the bus. Chinese signs, old temples, herbal shops, a few little markets were some things I saw. I also had pearl milk tea. :) But it was a Vietnamese version, with other jellies and things along with the pearls - one in particular was a little red thing where as your teeth bit into it, a sour little burst of liquid came out as a surprise.

But, back to the museums. I started at the Reunification (or Independence) Palace, where in 1975 the Viet Cong rammed through the iron gates and soldiers ran up to the top to plant their flag, joining north and south Vietnam. Most of the palace is flash rooms with heavy carpets and curtains for entertaining foreign dignitaries, meeting rooms, conference rooms, living quarters for the President...The most interesting place was the basement, which was headquarters of the war for South Vietnam, with map rooms, radio rooms, and one oddly touching one with ten ancient typewriters lining the walls.

After the Palace, I walked over to the War Remnants Museum. It is being renovated, and even before I walked into the courtyard, I saw the piles of bricks and construction debris amongst the powerful tools of the Americans during the war: Army, Navy, and Air Force helicopters, planes, tanks, artillery machinery...all sitting around a big courtyard outside the museum building. Oddly fitting in a way. These once powerful vehicles wrecked destruction, but sitting harmlessly under the shade, they looked almost quaint. In the Museum, I learned about the history and escalation of the wars. How the Vietnamese fought the French for independence, then American intervention and civil war between North and South. The numbers. Number of soldiers killed by country, tons of bombs dropped. Some names were familiar (Tolkin, ships attacked, deceit)and I could trace them back to World History class in the tenth grade. But I am in Vietnam, not in a classroom, and everything feels real, closer to the present for me than they ever have. I know I am in a communist country, and nothing is without communist propaganda. This one-sided-ness is blatantly obvious in very single museum I have been to in Vietnam. I wanted to ask, so these are the people killed and the destruction wrecked by the Americans and the South Vietnamese "puppet" regime, and by no means do I mean to lessen the guilt of their crimes (Kissinger regrets the War in his book about Vietnam...), but show me "your" numbers. How many did the Viet Cong kill? How did they treat their prisoners? Show me the traps that took ankles, how many civilian casualties were killed by the communists? I want it all. Give me the whole picture. But despite its shortcomings, the museum vividly succeeds in documenting the attrocities of war in general. THIS is what happens to innocents. Look at it. Do you see? Everyone should, especially our decision-makers. I for one would be happy to support sending the US Congress to Saigon for the War Remnants Museum with tax-dollars. it would be money well spent...but they'll have to stay in budget hotels just like the rest of us.

The most touching exhibit at the museum was a collection of photos taken by photojournalists from 11 countries who all died documenting the war. One series by a Life photographer follows a tall, handsome young soldier, leader of a helicopter crew, as he strides confidently towards the aircraft before the battle, it shows the bombing, the gunfire, him manning the artillery, him cradling a dead pilot in the air, and the last photo, at the end of the battle and the day, he is sprawled out in a storage room, head down, weeping...You don't easily forget something like this. You also don't forget a photo of a US soldier holding a human head and entrails. I didn't want to look, but I saw it accidently while walking out of the museum. Now it is a part of what I have seen, what I have learned, about war.

But don't worry, I am not crying in my hotel room every day. Just last night, Ashleigh and I went out for shellfish cooked in a delicious tamarind-garlic sauce, then to this posh Cuban/Spanish place for live music, to celebrate her last night in Saigon. She's heading to Cambodia, which I, unfortunately, won't get to on this trip.

Today I went on a tour of the Mekong Delta, crusing the river in motorized and paddle boats and tasting coconut candy. The Mekong River is huge, and before it enters the sea, it splits into nine branches (each is probably the size of the Colorado, at least). It starts in Tibet and comes down through Burma, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam, a journey of 4500 km, before reaching the sea. The delta is has very rich soil deposited by the Mekong, so agriculture here is very fruitful. Also, if you're eating farmed catfish at home, chances are, they were farmed in the Mekong River. There are floating structures, houses, in the river, with nets underneath to rear catfish that are then exported. But there are too many farms on the river. The catfish are confined, and they are feed pellets, not their natural foods. Pollution is a problem.

We got some rain today. Tour guide said this is crazy, because monsoon season doesn't start until May, and it's only the end of March. Unseasonal things are happening everywhere I go. I'm supposed to go hiking tomorrow, my last day in Saigon. Hmm.

From the Sea (Nha Trang) to the Mountains (Dalat)...

Jeez, I can't believe it's been another week since I've updated. It's been a really great one for some serious learning and fun. From Nha Trang, "Vietnam's Beach", where I wrote from last time, I went to Dalat, a mountain town southwest of there that's supposed to remind folks of the Swiss Alps. I can't say I completely agree, but it was a pleasant couple of days and nights. Problem is, it's near the end of the dry season, and there are a lot of fires going on on the mountainsides ringing the town, so it's brown and smoky. Plus the large lake (reservoir) that's the focal point of Dalat, the apple of its eye, has been drained, and muck is being scooped out by large machinery.

But let me back up a little bit. When I got on the bus in Nha Trang, there was one other girl inside, and we just happened to be seatmates. So I met Ashleigh, another solo woman traveller, from Melbourne, and we ended up exploring Dalat and Saigon together the past five evenings. We rambled down and around Dalat's market and streets, including an old cobblestone lane lined with local street vendors selling sweets, shellfish, pho, etc. We tried bits of this and that, starting off with a kilo of dried yams! (half for Ashleigh and half for me, but I finished mine rather fast and Ashleigh gave me hers :).) I love dried yams. You can't find them like that, soft and chewy, without preservatives, in the States, not even at Trader Joe's. Many street vendors were selling three hot drinks, so I had to try them - soya milk, yellow bean, and peanut. Dalat was great for the street food and market. One night we had hot pot!

For a little something between the gastronomic explorations, I rented a mountain bike for 40K dong from a nice man who gave me a lock but no helmet. I was frankly a little nervous biking around with motorbikes and buses whizzing around, but I took a breath and took off. My goal was to bike to the trailhead for Lang Biang Mountain, 12 km outside of Dalat, and hike up one of its volcanic peaks. It was a sunny day, but not terribly hot because the elevation is around five thousand feet there. But boy, if you're planning to do this ride sometime, I should warn you about the hills. And about eating exhaust. At least it was a paved road. It was really exhilarating coming down the hills, with my big hat brim flopping franatically against my forehead. Got to the trailhead, which was actually an iron gate where you have to pay 10K dong to have the privilage of going up the mountain. Okay, so that's 50 cents. what irked me though was that there's a new road built to the top of the smallest peak, and no official trail for hikers.
So I hiked up 2/3 of the mountain on the shoulder of this road, with "safari"-looking jeeps carrying tourists passing me all along the way. It was actually not that terrible, because of the pine forest. I was in a real forest, not a jungle, a forest! And my feet were crushing pine needles. and I could smell them, and the rich organic debris of the forest floor. Nothing else like it.

The last third of the way up to the peak I chose to go up (not the roaded one - the mountain has five volcanic peaks) was an actual trail deviating from the road, and quite steep in parts. But it's all part of getting up a mountain, so I loved it. Now, I want to tell you that the peak was amazing... but I can't. It was past noon by the time I made it to the very top of this peak, after the biking and hoofing it. There were several fires going in the mountains all around, prescribed, I'm sure, for agriculture. so it was smoky, and visibility was poor, though I could see Dalat 12 km away, and even the road I took to get to the base of the mountain. On the peak itself, there was a large shallow hole, where people tossed their garbage - beer cans, plastic bags, food wrappers, etc. Imagine that. I was glad to be on the top, but after a few minutes of the less than scintillating sights, I was ready to head down to the shade and green.

Although I didn't catch Dalat at the height of its mountain beauty, and got no flavour of its "Swiss Alp"-ness, I am glad I went, because it really is different from the other parts of Vietnam. There's a lot of agriculture here, because of its elevation and cooler climate - flowers, onions, strawberries and mulberries - things that aren't rice, which is what most of Vietnam's agriculture consists of. There are no sprinklers for the crops, so we saw people standing with hoses, hand-watering all their crops! Acres and acres of it. All day.

I don't know what it's called, but it's really good!

I thought I knew Vietnamese food before I got here, but I was wrong. San Jose has a very large Vietnamese population, so I grew up eating pho (vietnamese noodle soup) and saw the proliferation of Vietnamese sandwich shops (Lee's sandwiches, anyone?) all over the city in recent years. Pho, Vietnamese sandwiches, fresh spring rolls, three bean drinks, and those green gelatinous squares were staples. When I moved away, to shall we say "less diverse" parts of the country, I looked forward to a big bowl of pho every time I went home for Christmas.

So I thought, Vietnam, no problem, I know my pho. Well, it turns out my relationship with pho wasn't as intimate as I thought it was. There are intruders to the party here: mint, water cress, other greens and herbs I can't identify. They don't give out basil and bean sprouts like back home. There's no hoisen sauce and red chili sauce to mix together to dip your meatballs in. There are no meatballs at all. I have found little squares of kidney in the broth though. And there are necks and bony pieces of chicken parts on display, but no tripe. I've had a few mediocre bowls of pho here, surprisingly, but only at pit stops and places where they know you've not got much choice in the matter. Most of the time it's excellent. I've had it for breakfast and lunch and dinner. Not all in the same day, of course. Nearly all of it has been on the street, sitting on a little plastic stool, bent over a little low table, trying to keep the broth confined to the table as I slurped, as opposed to my clothing and hair and purse. Not very easy to do.

What has really surprised me is the culinary world outside of pho. In Hanoi, there is a northern "dish" called "bun cha". As part of the meal, you are presented with a bowl of rice vermicelli, a bowl of fish sauce soupy deliciousness, a plate of fried spring rolls, a huge plate of greens and herbs, and a bowl of marinated meats sitting in more fish sauce broth. I didn't have a native to teach me how it all works, but I know that somehow they're all supposed to end up together. By whatever method, it's pure joy to eat! In Hoi An, their specialty is cau lau, which is broad chewy noodles with sprouts and greens, roast pork slices and fried pork skin squares, mixed with a slightly spicy sauce. The water used to make cau lau is supposed to come from one special well in Hoi An, which gives the dish its distinctive flavour.

The Vietnamese are genius at mixing disparate flavours and textures together. And it works, it really really works. Like for breakfast this morning, I had a plate of these white circular nooodle disk-like soft things, topped with crispy fried garlic slices, green onions, and a drizzle of fish sauce concoction. The one common denominator for most foods here is the fish sauce, mixed with other things - I'm not sure what- that reduce its fishy potency but add sour and sweet flaours that are superb. Yesterday evening on the street, I had a similar dish, but the white noodle-y thing encircled a litle shrimp.

Perhaps one of the best dishes I've had, which is an exemplary lesson on textures, was in Hoi Ann. I saw a corner stall crammed with school kids and other locals and went over to see what all the excitement was about. Turned out it is a type of salad...but unlike any I've ever had. She put down a bed of greens and herbs, then arranged these savory batter-fried crisps on top, put a little fried vietnamese sausage on the side, and drizzled the whole thing with, once again, a fish sauce and chili concoction of geniousness. One of the best things I've had, anywhere. A couple of tourists, the only other foreigners, said to the lady as they paid, "We'll be back tomorrow!"

The other memorable thing about street foods, other than the food itself, is the ladies who run them. Some of them have been so kind and patient with me, showing me how it's done, when I don't know a scrap of Vietnamese, nor they English. Best of all is when they laugh, even when they're laughing at me.

I haven't been exactly judicious about cleanliness in my selection of street foods. But usually I go where there's a regular flow of locals, so that's one safeguard. But I have been very lucky and have probably got an iron stomach as well, handy for travel in southeast Asia!

From Hanoi, I moved south to Hoi An, and now I am in Nha Trang, "Vietnam's Beach". Really excellent, cheap food here. Tomorrow I head to Dalat, another Vietnamese vacation spot in the mountains, once used by the French colonists to get away from the oppressive heat in Saigon. After Dalat, it's Saigon and the Mekong River delta before I take off for Singapore on my circuitous journey home. Lots more excitement and gastronomic delights yet before I land in SFO in a couple of weeks!

Vietnam: Hanoi and Ha Long Bay

Kids practicing a dance on a streetside stage.

French colonial architecture in Hanoi - this is the National Museum of History.

Hoan Kiem Lake in the Old Quarter of Hanoi.

Ha Long Bay

Over 3,000 mountains stand in Ha Long Bay. There's a legend about a dragon slapping his tail in the bay to reveal the mountains, so abundant that they created a maze making it difficult for the Chinese to enter and attack the Vietnamese.

I took a grueling 14 hour bus trip from Sam Neua, Laos, to Hanoi, Vietnam about five days ago. The border crossing that I worried about turned out to be nothing; the Laotians were laid-back as usual and the Vietnamese soldiers were even bordering on friendly. The extra "fees" that I'd heard about from other travellers entering Vietnam (up to 25 USD extra) didn't materialize, though I did have to pay one USD for a "health declaration". I'd gotten my Vietnamese visa in advance, as you have to, in Vientiane, for 50 USD, one of the steepest visa fees around. So, smooth sailing through the border. The border housed the compound where the soldiers live, with uniform shirts fluttering in the breeze to dry, and a grass volleyball court. Ah, so they're just like you and me...

On the other side, the two bus drivers bought me lunch - I was the only passenger. They turned out to be the mini-bus drivers of bad dreams, slimy and always ready to rip passengers off, but that was their job...they still had decent hearts. Here at lunch we picked up a Dutch girl also going to Hanoi. When I bought my bus ticket in Sam Neua, it only went as far as Thanh Hoa; there was no option to get straight to Hanoi. The price was a big rip off, but it was the only option as far as I could see, and it was direct from the bus station, so I took it. So I was planning to spend the night in Thanh Hoa and get on to Hanoi the next day. Well, turns out the bus drivers said the mini-bus does got Hanoi, and they wanted an arm and a leg for it. I knew it was a bad deal, so when we got to Thanh Hoa, I said I just wanted to get off. By this time it was evening - light fades around five o'clock. Here the drama escalates. The bus drivers said they'd take me to Hanoi, and kept driving around the streets of Thanh Hoa, not letting me off. I was getting really tired, of them, of the journey. I knew they didn't mean any harm, but they were being the aggressive Vietnamese bus drivers that I'd heard about. After a while, they knocked the price down a little, and I gave in. But the drama continues, as we stopped for a bathroom break in town, the driver informs me and the Dutch girl that we were switching buses. Except it was just me and the girl, and he put us on this local mini-bus crammed with people and said good-bye! So he took the 9USD I just gave him, and probably paid a small fraction of that for our passage on this local bus. This local mini-bus roamed the main drag of Thanh Hoa, up and down, with an employee hanging out the door, touting, trying to get more passengers on. After half an hour or more, we finally left for Hanoi...

We arrived in Hanoi at 10:30pm, got ripped off by a taxi even though the meter was on (glad I could share it with the Dutch girl), and started roaming the travellers district of Hanoi for accommodations. The streets were bustling, with the sidewalks crammed with people in low tables and stools eating pho (rice noodle soup). So it was dark, and strange, but not necessarily scary. We eventually found beds in a youth hostel and I fell into exhausted sleep.

I spent several days exploring Hanoi on foot, and I have to say I really like the city. It's noisy, full of motorbikes, and bustling with activity from 6am til way past my bedtime. Here I could get anything I want, and it's kind of nice after the little towns of northern Laos where the options were very limited. I took in the museums and the sights. The National Fine Arts Museum was excellent, as was an exhibit in the Women's Museum on street vendors. Hanoi is chock full of street vendors, selling baskets of vegetables, plastic goods, tea, pancakes, noodles, baguettes,...Many of the women who do this are from rural villages, trying to make some extra income while their rice crop grows. One thing that amazed me, while crossing from Laos into Vietnam by bus, was the change in colour. In Laos, they grow one rice crop a year, and the terraces were unworked and brown while I was there. Once we came down the border into Vietnam, the terraces were all green with growing rice. The road we took followed a mountain river down, down past beautifully tended crops and mountain villages, past fishermen in bamboo rafts. It was a lovely journey, actually. Anyway, street vendors - you encounter them everywhere, and after that exhibit in the Women's Museum, I have a deeper appreciation for what they're trying to do. I met up with my friend Alissa's brother, Mike, for some local beer and dinner. We went to a hole in the wall restaurant...literally. It's a long dark tunnel you have to follow and it rounds a bend deep inside a street block and you end up at this little place filled with Vietnamese, eating steak and fries. I would never have attempted to go into this dark vortex on my own. The food was excellent, with a nice atmosphere. I hardly ever eat in restaurants, eating most my meals on the street, so this was a treat. Mike is from San Francisco and teaches English in Hanoi.

I just spent a couple of days in Ha Long Bay, a really big bay filled with over 3,000 mountains/islands. It was misty, but beautiful. I saw jellyfish swimming in the water, and big birds soaring - a type of eagle, I think. It is really maze-like in the bay, and the legend goes that a dragon creates the mountains by flapping his tail in the water to hinder Chinese invasion of Vietnam.

Nam Ou, Nong Khiew, Sam Neua, ViengXai

Muang Khua, a village on Nam Ou (Ou River) in northern Laos. That's a scary suspension bridge made up of a single sheet of metal. Motor bikes cross it, alongside kids walking to school.

Tranquil countryside around Nong Khiew, northern Laos.

Villagers gathering moss, a traditional Lao food, from Nam Ou.

A typical scene of children playing in ViengXai.

ViengXai statue of the people's victory of the U.S. in the "Secret War" of 1964-1973.

ViengXai, sleepy mountain village today, bombed battleground of yesteryear.

The movie theatre/stage in a big cavern in ViengXai.

On a garden wall outside Sam Neua, Laos.

In my last post, I described the river village of Muang Khua. It was lovely there, but I got sick while I was there. I needed rest, but they were adding on another room at the guesthouse I was staying at, so there was constant sawing and pounding noises, starting at 630 in the morning. I decided to leave despite not being 100% better. I took a slow boat down to Nong Khiew on the Nam Ou, a 5 hr journey, for 120,000 kips. We passed by towering limestone mountains and remote villages accessible to the outside world only by boat. A really tranquil trip, despite the boat motor throbbing incessantly. There were even a couple of class 2/3 rapids thrown in for kicks! It must be something to journey down that river in wet season...

Arrived in Nong Khiew, a town buffered by yet more towering cliffs built around the Nam Ou. It was just a little bit touristy, but it's by no means overrun. I enjoyed several beautiful misty mornings and serene evenings in Nong Nhiew. It is a really mellow place, and there's always something happening on and around the river. In essence, I loved it. First night in town, I stayed in a bungalow by the river and was disturbed by rat noises all nght (I was still sick, and it was terrible to be waken every 30 mins or so). In the morning, I grabbed my daypack to go outside and discovered that holes had been chewed all over one side of it! My limegreen Patagonia daypack from my friend Christina has been with me throughout this trip and on many others in the US the past few years, and I was a little bit crushed. I discovered that although it's all gnawed on one side, there was still some structural integrity to it, and I have still been hauling it around the past few days, hoping to find someone to sew it up. My emergency sewing kit will not be up to the task of this project.

So I got out of that bungalow and moved to a nicer cheaper one away from the river a bit for the second night. I was walking to see some caves outside of Nong Khiew when I see a farang walking back. I stopped him to ask for directions and it turned out to be Pontus, a guy I had met in Penang, Malaysia! What a small world. I ran into him two more times in town and we shared a Beerlao together that night and talked about Swedish politics and how Finland is just not like the rest of Scandinavia. He was in his gap year between high school and university, and I was just amazed by the level of knowledge and confidence in someone so young.

I could have stayed in Nong Khiew for a few more days, but I wanted to see some caves in ViengXai, in remote Houaphan Province in northeastern Laos. So I took the bus from Nong Khiew to Vieng Thong, a little one horse town, for the night to break up the journey, then continued on to Sam Neua the next morning. Vieng Thong is one of the many towns in Laos that has electricity starting at 6 in the evening, turning off at ten. Except that night it didn't come on til much later, so I was getting ready for bed, and reading and writing, by three little candles. I have very much appreciated lights out by ten on occasion, when there are loud parties going on, or the TV in the guesthouse is on ultra high volume, and I want to sleep, I know that the quiet will reign when the electricity turns off.

Did you know that the US fought a war in Laos? I didn't either. I don't ever recall learning about it in school. That's why they call the "Secret War". In fact, the US bombed ViengXai, Laos for nine years, every day, from 1964-1073, because this is where communist Laos leaders were running the country from, the vast system of caves around ViengXai. More bombs were dropped in Laos than during WW2 in Europe. I saw many craters and mountains blown by bombs during my excellent cave tour yesterday in ViengXai. It is so peaceful there, with laconic mountains all around, and lush gardens, that it is hard to imagine the chaos that was the way of life there, but for the craters and crushed rock, and the caves, so many caves, enlarged with dynamite, with airtight emergency rooms and air pumps in case of chemical strikes by the US planes. and the blast walls, three-foot thick walls protecting cave openings from bomb strikes. One cave complex that housed the military housed up to 2000 troops. there is a movie theatre cave, with stage for travelling shows, to boost the morale of troops and villagers. Our Lao guide got up on the stage, about 80 ft in front of us, and sang a traditional Lao song at our encouragement. It was a haunting song, a unifying song to bring together the many tribes of Laos during the war. We had excellent audio guides to fill in the history, and for me, one of the most haunting moments was hearing a lao villager ask "why?" Most Laotians had never heard of America before the bombing. They certainly did not understand why this place called America was set out to destroy them, dropping bombs on them, killing them.

I am back in Sam Neua, at the Lao Development Bank this morning changing the last of my leftover Australian dollars to kips. There are no ATMs here, and I am nearly out of US dollars as well. US dollars is gold here, and I wish I had brought more. I am hoping Vietnam will be more ATM friendly. I am going to take a ten-twelve hr bus to Thanh Hoa, Vietnam, tomorrow. That's the plan anyway. But between here and there is Nam Xoi border, and I am hoping that won't be a story for the next blog. In recent developments, I have finally succumbed to eating sticky rice and laap with my hand.

Northern Laos: off the tourist trail

This week I hit my stride in northern Laos. From Luang Prabang, tourist central, I had the goal of getting to Muang Khua, a remote river village on the Nam Ou in north-eastern Laos. I couldn't find any bus that would actually go to Muang Khua, so I pored over my map and decided I'll go to Udomxai, a trading town heavily influenced by the Chinese near the northern border, and then figure out how to get to Muang Khua from there.

The "VIP" bus from Vang Vieng to Luang Prabang had been pretty terrible, so I decided I was going to "splurge" and pay 10,000 kip (1.2 USD) more for an "air-con" mini-bus, with "pick-up" from my guesthouse. Sorry for all the quotation marks, I hate when they're over-used, but sometimes there's some irony you want to display. I was just un-wrapping my baguette sandwich at the guesthouse when a tuk-tuk driver comes for me. I was expecting a mini-van, and it was 15 mins early, but okay. In Laos you just have to go with the flow. You don't know what's happening 95.02% of the time, but in most situations things end up okay. So I get on the tuk-tuk. I was the first one to be picked-up. Over the next one hour, we go all around town picking up 7 other passengers, lapping my guesthouse three times, the driver smoking 2 cigarettes. At 9am, we pull into the mini-bus station, finally ready to start head to Udomxai. My back was killing me from the tuk tuk ride and we haven't even started yet! But it was smooth sailing to Udomxai, although the promised "air-con" failed to be turned on, with windows down and dust as the alternative instead, to save on fuel, I suspect. At the Udomxai bus station, I asked and it turns out there's a local bus leaving for Muang Khua in an hour. Perfect, I thought.

An hour comes and goes. There are already many locals sitting inside the standing, ancient, bus. Claiming their spot. For good reason, I find out. I stand outside the bus, I walk in circles. People stare. I stare back. I can't see anyone who looks like a bus driver or gives a care, to get my pack to the roof of the bus to be strapped on. Two hours later, a young man is helping a farang, so I give him my pack too, and head in the bus. Sometimes the only way I can get help is to hitch on to the help given to farangs. There's a class system here, and Asian tourists are second-class, after the farangs. All the seats are taken by this point. So I see plastic stools and take one in the aisle of the bus for my spot. Before the bus leaves, many more people get on, and I'm obliged to give up my stool to an older couple, and I end up sitting on a mat next to the teenage driver and his young daughter. But at least I get the best view.

It was a beautiful ride to Muang Khua, passing through mountain villages along the Nam Pak (river), dropping off and picking up more and more locals, who always have bags and bags of things, until the zenith, when the bus driver actually stops to tell people we're too full. You don't understand the significance of this - I've never seen this happen before. Local buses are infamous for never saying no. People and things just get crammed in, no matter what. But there was literally no space a person could have inhabited on that bus. Then the bell curves the other way, and the bus starts emptying out. About four hours later, we arrived outside the village of Muang Khua, at the "bus station". Now, there's no need for a bus station in Muang Khua. The only reason it exists is for the tuk tuk driver to meet the bus so that he can charge passengers to drive the half mile into the village center. It was evening, and I didn't know how far in the village was, or else I would have walked. I protest these set-ups.

I arrive with a Frenchman and a Japanese student who were on the bus. We walk around trying to find a guesthouse when we run into a Spanish girl, who takes us back to her guesthouse on the Nam Pak. It is very rustic bamboo and wood rooms with open windows and mosquito nets, sharing bathrooms of squat toilets and cold showers. Simple, but more than enough. The four of us fill the place to capacity. We are invited to dine with the family and I have my first homecooked Lao food: fried eggs with meat, a green vegetable soup (just like the one my parents make at home), and mixed stir-fried cauliflower and squash. Steam and sticky rice. Green Lao whiskey (made from rice by the mom). It was very good food.

I loved looking out over the river, and up and down it. The lifeblood of Muang Khua, like all the other Lao river villages, is the river. Muang Khua sits at the confluence of the Nam Pak with the Nam Ou, so it is doubly blessed. At all hours of the day, you see things happening on the river. Children bathing, playing; men and women fishing, gathering snails and moss, ; washing clothes; boats arriving and departing for villages up or down stream. One night I saw a huge bon fire on the river bank, to warm men who were spear-diving for fish in pitch black and cold.

I walked around the village with Bruno, the Frenchman, after the Spanish girl and Japanese guy left for Vietnam. We were watching a group of bureaucrats play a French game called Padanque outside the Education Services Office (a reallllly long time to be playing on a workday morning...), when they invited Bruno, I think, to play. But I played dumb and went in too because I really wanted to try the game. I've seen it being played all over Lao. It's close to being the national game. We ended up playing two games with them. I didn't do too shabbily and managed to score some points for our team. By the end, even the really sexist guy was warming up a little towards me. Of course, they all had a turn guessing what I am, "Korean?" no. "Japanese?" no. "Lao?" no. I get this a lot, everywhere. Sometimes for fun I just answer their guess and don't offer any more information.

Northern Laos: Vientiane, Vang Vieng, Luang Prabang

Wat Xiengthong in Luang Prabang. The Bhudda and the Tree of Life (left).

Sunset over the mountains and development of Vang Vieng.

Monks playing in the blue lagoon near the sacred cave.

Nam Song and the mountains of Vang Vieng. Did I mention it's very smoggy all over the region due to Slash and Burn agriculture and the dry season?

That Luang in Vientiane, the most sacred place in Laos.

Greetings from Luang Prabang, ancient capital of Laos. It's a temple-studded town on the banks of the Mekong River. It's the second largest town in Laos after Vientiane, the capital. The entire population of this land-locked country is about six million. About a week ago, I crossed the Mekong via the Thai-Australian Friendship Bridge to Vientiane. (No, that's not a typo - the Australians probably helped fund the project.) I was originally going to bypass the capital totally, but I met an American at the border while we were waiting for our visas on arrival (35 USD). We got to talking and he lives in Vientiane, working for a non-profit that provides small amounts of capital to fund Laotian businesses (like textiles, traditional medicine, etc.). His descriptions of the city inspired me to change my plans and spend a couple of days checking out the capital.

I'm glad I did, because it really is a very laid-back city with great Lao-French architecture and temples. I even went to the Lao National Museum, which used to house just communist propaganda. Many of the rooms are still just that, but there are several updated wings on archeology and lao culture that I found interesting. In terms of archeology, much of Laos is largely unsurveyed because of unexploded bombs or UXOs that litter the countryside from American military action in the Cold War era. Visitors to the Plain of Jars, perhaps the country's best known archeological site, is warned to stay strictly on worn trails because the region is covered with UXO. Straying off path could mean your life. I'm still debating on whether I want to make a visit there or not. The Plain of Jars is comprised of many different sites where huge jars carved out of solid stone are arranged in some symbolic fashion. Some people say these jars were used to store human remains, but this is an unproven hypothesis.

I ended up playing a little badminton with Alex, the American, in Vientiane in a small outdoor court tucked away in a residential neighborhood. Turns out he went to Los Altos High School and played a couple of years of badminton there. He laughed when I told him I used to take the sport pretty seriously and indeed started running cross-country to stay in shape in the off season, he said he and his buddies used to drink and then go to badminton practice. Well, there's something to be said for diversity of experience, I guess. :)

From Vientiane, I took a local bus to Vang Vieng. I met an English-Australian couple on the bus and all was well until the guy started talking about the incentives the Australian government were giving people to promote the birth rate. Apparently if you have a baby in Australia, you get three thousand dollars courtesy of the government. This meshes with the impression I got when I was in the country - the belief that a stronger economy could be obtained by increasing the population. This is why immigration policies in Australia have been relaxed in the past few decades. But this Australian dude on the bus started ranting about how the uneducated (i.e. immigrant) people on welfare were the ones having babies and getting this "birth bonus", and they'll just keep propagating the uneducated masses, etc, etc. I started to jump in, but he had no interest in listening. Australian cities are incredibly diverse and all seems to be well, at least at a glance. But much publicised while I was there was several racially motivated attacks on Indians. I think just under the shimmer is a chaotic boil about to erupt - as tends to happen when things change "too fast" - when more and more different looking people try to mix into society.

Vang Vieng is one of the most beautiful places I have seen. Huge limestone mountains rise up dramatically across the Nam Song (river) and provide the backdrop for the town. I was happier yet to discover that a modest room at my guesthouse sets me back only 40,000 kips/night, that's less than five dollars! There's a nice little balconey overlooking the town and the mountains too. One day I rented a mountain bike for 20,000 kips for the day and biked across the river to the mountains where there are sacred caves. I visited the most famous one, which is comprised of several HUGE caverns; the biggest one at the front houses the reclining Bhudda. I wondered if the Mammoth Caves in our own country could compare to this level of "mammoth-ness". I passed several Hmong villages on my bike ride, and the farther out I rode, the nicer the kids became, until soon they were yelling "sabaidee!" (hello) enthusiastically when I rode by. The bike ride was definitely a highlight, as was having a Beerlao while watching the sun set over the Mekong that evening. Speaking of the Beerlao, this lager is a source of national pride for a country that doesn't really have any industry to speak of, and a large bottle will set you back 10,000 kips, just a little over a dollar.

Vang Vieng has another side though, when you take a little closer look. It's known for its tubing down the river and getting drunk on bars riverside. I biked down to the Organic Farm a few km outside of town to check it out, and the whole time I sat there enjoying my mulberry shake, loud music was blaring and the vibration got to be too much. I walked to the river and found that about 200 ft away was one of these riverside bars, with people partying. Back in town, many restaurants have "happy" menus where the drug of your choice (mostly marijuana and opium) can be added to fruitshakes or anything of your fancy, and you can lounge around watching endless re-runs of Friends or The Simpsons. The locals just sit back and watch all this craziness. While some of them are getting ridiculously wealthy off of the farangs, many more are living right next to them in shacks.

I find a similar disparity of wealth and poverty here in Luang Prabang today walking along the Mekong. Some people have found a way to market themselves and are doing really well, while others (notably the Hmong) are very poor. At the morning market today, which is one of the best I've seen in southeast Asia, there was an old woman telling three things on her little mat, two of which were a little dead squirrel, and a dead coiled snake. Another woman was selling several groupings of beetles.

Northern Thailand: Mae Sot and Umphang

Tee Lor Su waterfalls near Umphang.

A little swimming and relaxing in one of the waterfall pools.

A morning raft trip on the Umphang River.

Beautiful scenery on the raft trip out of Umphang.

We took a bus out of Chiang Mai and headed to Mae Sot, a border town with Burma (Myanmar) and the end of the bus line, spending a night there before a grueling songthaew ride to Umphang the next day. Mae Sot was laid back without the hordes of tourists, so it was nice. When we got to Mae Sot bus terminal, we were trying to figure out how to go the 2 kilometers into town to our guesthouse. Mamie's bag wasn't suited to be worn for long, so we wanted a ride. But it was going to be something ridiculous like 80 baht (2.5 USD) into town, so we thought, what the heck, we'll just start walking (I know you're thinking, what? 2 dollars? But it could be two-three meals!). It is a ripoff and I hate being ripped off. (although sometimes there's no getting around it...) About a hundred meters out of the station, a white girl (american?) we had greeted at the station comes running after us saying we could ride with her and the kids! Turns out she's some kind of teacher working in Mae Sot and Chiang Mai, and there's a "school bus"/songtheaw filled with students who greeted us enthusiastically with "swadee caa!" when we jumped into the back of the songtheaw. One of those times when I thought, how cool is this right now!

We walked around Mae Sot in the evening and ran into the evening market, filled with huge frogs and swimming buckets of eels alongside butchered meat, fruit, and the smells. Down a side street on the way back, we saw a stage with a whole band and singing and music, but no audience save for a few kids nearby. It was the strangest thing - a complete stage on the side of the road, band, music, no audience, with cars driving by. It was another one of those times when I thought, how cool is this right now!

The songthaew ride to Umphang took six hours to cover 160 km, mostly because the driver made umpteenth stops running errands, picking up things like roses, a basket full of wide noodles, bags of cucumbers and tomatoes, etc etc, which were going to be delivered along the way like his passengers. Oh, and fueling up his songthaew. I was thinking, couldn't you have done all this before you picked up all these people who have to wait for you to do this? It's about lack of respect. Mamie and I were among the first in the songthaew. He picked up more and more people along the way, until at the zenith, there were about 24 people in and on the vehicle. About 16 in the back of the converted pickup, three standing and hanging on to the back of the truck, two up front, and three or four sitting on the roof with the luggage. Apparently there are over 1200 curves between Mae Sot and Umphang. We felt them all, tightly gripping on with nothing else holding our bodies in place. It was exhausting. We were stopped by the police several times for ID checks. Finally we arrived in Umphang where we spent a couple of delightful nights at Tukasu Cottages. We originally planned to do some overnight trekking in Umphang (a little village of 3 thousand), but it wasn't going to work out timewise, with Mamie needing to be back in Bangkok for her flight by Saturday, so we ended up doing a fantastic day trip, floating down the Umphang River with its limestone cliffs in the morning, and swimming/lounging by TeeLorSu waterfall in the afternoon. Really fantastic day, and great to be in the wild.

Umphang is a very small town and hardly anybody speaks english, included the woman who greeted us at the guesthouse (which is supposed to be the best in town). Most foreigners come because of the trekking. Finding food was a bit of a challenge in the town, although we ended up having a delightful fried rice, which was one of the few english words the cook knew.

We met a German couple on their honeymoon at the guesthouse. They had just gotten married in southern Thailand. We ended up hooking on to their daytrip and so enjoyed the river and waterfall together. Really nice folks. We felt bad for them because they had booked this one week trip for their honeymoon, with a driver and itinerary, for a humongous amount of money (like maybe a thai family could survive on it for a couple of years), and it wasn't turning out the way they wanted. Their driver is lazy and doesn't really want to take them anywhere or do things with them, so they've been driving town to town, getting in around noon or early afternoon, with nothing to do for the remainder of the day. Decent hotels (the best you could find in this region) but didn't meet their expectations for posh places befitting their honeymoon.
We ended up riding with them back to Mae Sot instead of having another long songthaew adventure. Nice minivan with AC and leather seats - bliss!

From Mae Sot, we wanted to take the bus to Bangkok, but the next one wasn't due for like 5 hrs, so we took a "minibus" to Tak, the regional hub, and caught a Bangkok bus there. Got into the city around midnight after 9 hrs, exhausted, then haggled with a taxi driver to take us to "Phra Athit Rd", a backpacker district near the river where we've stayed before, walked around looking for a room and found one on the fourth or fifth try. It was a windowless room, a box really, with two twin beds and shared bathrooms. Good enough for one night. "windowless" means hard to break into, so that's one plus. 290 baht, or nine dollars split between the two of us. All I need is clean, the rest is just nice to have. weeelll, I take that back, clean with no mosquitos.

Mamie left at 3 this morning and now I'm waiting for my sleeper train to Nong Khai, a twelve hr journey up north to the Thailand/Laos border. Laos is my next destination. I've heard really good things about northern Laos from other travellers and I am excited to check out this sleepy country. I read a travel book called Lollipop Fury recently, about an expat cycling in southeast Asia. Really good book. He shares a saying (from I don't know where) describing the economic situation of SE Asia, or the interrelationships between the four country, as thus:

"Vietnam grows the rice, Cambodia watches it grow, Laos listens to it grow, and Thailand sells it."

Northern Thailand: Chiang Mai

Chiang Mai turned out to be a really laid back city, as I'd heard from other travellers. It's an ancient city, known as Thailand's "Number two city", with a moat surrounding a wall which contains the original town. We could walk around easily, and for the more out of the way places, red songthaews are plentiful and pretty cheap. The guesthouses and hotels are all clustered together near Tha Pae Gate, once of the entrances through the wall into old town. The city is replete with backpacker delights such as banana rotis, fruit shakes, toast and jam and butter, and fruit and yogurt with muesli. Traditional thai breakfasts are savory, headed in popularity by the Khao tom, or rice soup. I happen to love this delicious rice soup, but it's a stretch having it every morning for breakfast, so I have recently taken to having the "farang" breakfasts as well. Once in a while you want to have something familiar.

A highlight of Chiang Mai was meeting up with Ject, a friend of my friend/mentor/former professor, Jim Carter. Ject did part of his doctorate work at the USGS in Menlo Park in Jim's lab. Ject took us to his favorite restaurant near Chiang Mai University where we had amazing thai food I would never have known about much less order on my own. Delicacies like young coconut shoots and sayote salad were delicious! We also spend a lovely evening at the Sunday Walking Market and it was so good to have a local explain what all the foods were, and answer our questions. We had an excellent time with Ject. He does research on giant fireflies!

Another memorable experience in Chiang Mai was the Thai cooking class Mamie and I did, in which we learned about the traditional ingredients and cooked five dishes from scratch, down to pounding the curry paste. I made green curry, tom yum soup, wide rice noodles, pumpkin in coconut milk, and something else, which I forget just now. It is actually quite easy and everything turned out delicious. The hard part will be getting the ingredients back in the States.

We also visited the Thailand Elephant Conservation Centre near Lampang. When we arrived, the elephants were just getting into the lake for a bath before the show. It was so fun to see them playing in water, obviously having a great time, and watching the interaction between each elephant and its trainer. The show was nice, and I liked watching the demonstration of how the elephants used to work with logs, pulling and piling them up, back when that was their primary job during the timber age. One of the main reasons why there are so many elephants and rescue and conservation centers for them is because they were let go when they weren't used for logging anymore. It takes a LOT of food to feed an elephant - about 260 kilograms, or about 500 pounds, on average a day. After the show, Mamie and I walked over to the nursery and saw two very young elephants, one with its mother. The other was about a year and a half old, and it is a rescued wild elephant. Watching him was heartbreaking because his mother didn't have enough calcium when he was feeding, and consequently, he developed bowed legs. It is hard for him to balance, and every step is a struggle. Now they are adding calcium to his rice diet; I hope that does something...Elephants really are amazing creatures, and true gentle giants. They are so big and lumbering, but they have such grace despite their might. They're also really smart. As an example, after the show, the audience could feed bananas and sugar cane to the elephants. I watched one elephant as he accepted one piece of sugar cane after another, and handed each piece up to his trainer (who's riding on him) for storage. When the glut of food stopped coming, he reached up to the trainer and enjoyed the sugarcane one by one!

Getting to the Elephant Centre and back was interesting. They dropped us off on the side of a highway and we made our way down the road to the Visitor Center. When we left, we had to cross this highway to hail down a bus back to Chiang Mai. We waited just a little while before this old junker of a bus stopped, with the attendant jumping off the bus, shouting "Chiang Mai, Chiang Mai". So we got on, and the fare was a heck of a good deal, but I had to scoot down the bus, which was completely packed with locals, and sit on the floor, which just happened to be over the bus engine. After a little while, the floor got unbearably hot. I pulled out my Thailand guide book, which had plenty of girth, and sat on it for most of the trip. Mamie ended up front between the bus driver and the attendant, sitting on a wood stool.

travel weariness

We met an American couple on a songthaew tonight. A songthaew is a hop on-hop off "taxi" - a converted pickup truck with two (in thai = song) benches and a cover. It's the cheapest way to move around town besides the ol' feet. Anyway. Americans. The man used to live in the Roaring Fork Valley. That made me think of Colorado and, not for the first time on this trip, of how much I miss it. I see a photo of red canyons and my heart thumps. I realize I haven't eaten a toasted chewy bagel in months. I wonder what's going on with Obama and the healthcare initiative. I need calcium and miss my favorite source of it: yogurt. I am getting a little travel weary, I must admit, and I am homesick. I don't even know where "home" is anymore; I just know it's in America. and my ache is for American mountains and rivers and canyons and desert, Colorado and Utah, the Rockies and the Colorado Plateau, and Alaska, Alaska, Alaska. Montana and Wyoming. Lake Tahoe, Yosemite and the granite of the Sierra Nevadas. My family, my friends. Quiet mornings and evenings. Cooking and eating exactly what I want. My bed. Eight months is a long time to be on the move. The moments of feeling totally alive and exhilerated are there, but they are interspersed by periods of almost a dullness or tired reception to everything around. My brain is reaching saturation (is this possible?), and my body needs some tuning for sure. I desperately need my running shoes. I've killed my contact lens from the previous months of backpacking and trying to keep them clean in the backcountry. It's almost time to go home. I have a month and a half to go yet though.

I've been thinking about "identity" a lot lately. Mamie and I are often taken for Thais by Thai people, and when we tell them we're American, we get very puzzled looks. We're not "farangs", or blond and blue eyed foreigners. People talk Thai to us all the time. It's a little exhausting when people are constantly questioning what you are. It's not as dramatic as all that, but something like it. Does who you are have to be legitimized by people around you? What if you don't fit into this group or that group? Do you create a wall to protect yourself, or will it be a bridge? And what will this bridge be made of, what language, collective thoughts, histories? a song? And certainly there have been millions before me who have had similar experiences in straddling different worlds; how have they or do they deal with it? I have a feeling it may be as simple as, "one day at a time..."

Northward bound

"Well, if no one wants to play, I'll just lay here on the table and keep the eggs company." Happy cat in Chiang Mai. We're happy too to be in laid-back Chiang Mai, which seems like it's a sleepy outpost compared to Bangkok.

Me...

...and Mamie on the overnight "express" train, second-class sleeper, from Bangkok to Chiang Mai. Mamie had lots of admirers on the train. :) Okay, so one of them was a semi-crazy stewardess... :D

Grand Palace and Emerald Buddha temple.

The Chao Praya River runs through Bangkok. My favorite way of getting around the city is by ferry, one trip for 13 baht (40 cents). Sunset around 6:30pm.

front seat, next to el capitan, on the Chao Praya.

First night in Bangkok we splurged for a really "flash" place next to the river, New Siam Riverside. Mamie's having breakfast. A beautiful start to the day!

(look at the pictures from bottom up to get the chronological order)

We spent two full days in Bangkok. Our bus from Kuraburi rolled into the big city at 4:15 in the morning, pitch black, but the southern bus terminal was hopping, with some vendors and shops already open, and people getting off buses in pulses. Our bus was "VIP", which meant everybody got a packaged bun for a snack and a blanket. I didn't find it a very comfortable ride because my feet couldn't touch the floor. Because I couldn't let my feet hang there all night, the way I deal with it is I take my Chaco sandals off and stack them on top of one another. Then when I rest my feet on the two-tiered sandals, it's almost right. Exciting, ey? Two more exciting things happened on the bus ride: 1. I watched "Waterworld" in Thai, and 2. I got to see Thai soldiers up close and in action as our bus got stopped repeatedly for soldiers and drug dogs to check us and our things out. We saw a bus just like ours next to the road with all its passengers ejected...they must have found something. What a way for those folks to spend the night!

Bangkok was the big shadowy city when we arrived. After a long while, we eventually figured out that we had to take th 511 bus. The funny thing is that Information Desks in Thailand (that I've encountered so far) are not staffed by people who know English. But eventually some piece of vital information gets passed, or at least they physically point to you the right direction to get started. Thailand is proving difficult to get around without knowing any Thai. I am glad I started my travels in English-speaking countries! Travel here is difficult even compared to Malaysia, where many people speak English, because their language is written in Roman alphabet. The Thai script is impossible for me to understand. We have taken to carrying little scraps of paper with the destination written on by a nice Thai so that we may present it to other nice Thais to help us.

Perhaps my favorite part of Bangkok is the river that runs through it: the Chao Praya. The silently flowing river is a calm ribbon of blue to rest the eyes when the exhaust fumes and noises of the city get to be too much. Many places we wanted to go to were along or close to the river anyway (Chinatown, Grand Palace, Wat Pho, connection to Skytrain...), and there's no bottleneck traffic on the river, although the ferries get very crowded during rush hour. Still orders of magnitude better than the buses. And, it's beautiful.

I also enjoyed walking the streets of Bangkok when school lets out, when all the uniformed kids wander about, buying snacks from the street vendors, getting picked up by parents...I even saw a group of girls negotiating with a taxi driver for a ride home at a reasonable fare! Taxi drivers don't like to use the meter, so they can rip you off. We used the taxi one time, when we needed to get to the train station after waiting and waiting for the bus to show. Another backpacker shared the taxi with us, so split three ways, it's not bad, but if I had been by myself, it would have been an expensive ride. Mamie and I also used a tuk-tuk in Bangkok, one of the three-legged "vehicles" that are basically a motorcycle with a covered bench in the back. Our driver was crazy and we were both happy to have survived. He would sing in a way to suggest he wasn't totally there...and his pinky fingernail was long and painted pink. Maybe it's the fashion for Thai men, who knows?

We are now in Chiang Mai, having arrived by a sleeper train this morning after a fifteen hour journey north. It's really nice to be able to sleep most of the night through on a real (albeit very narrow) bed. Mamie and I got seats that faced each other. The seats fold out to make the bottom bunk, and the top bunk folds down from the top. Really nifty. The Thai staff kept laughing and giggling about something around us, and we figured eventually that two of them were teasing one of them about Mamie because he couldn't take his eyes off her whenever he walked by. :D Then there was the crazy woman stewardess who was drinking Chang beer on the job and acting a little drunk.