Moto-ing merrily through the minefields

Oi, I'm way behind now. Let's hope I can remember everything with all that's happened since. I think I finished last time as I got into Kompong Cham. Kompong Cham was pretty quiet, but turned out to be a really good time. I've always had in the back of mind the idea of figuring out a way to live somewhere around here and this seems like a place I could do that. That may be just because the first two people I met were the owners of a local bar, a Brit named Simon and his Cambodian wife, followed closely after by their friends, the owners of the competing restaurant down the block. (Anyone finding themselves passing through, go say hello at Mekong Daze or Mekong Crossing). In the two days I spent there, I spent most of my time back and forth between their two places chatting with them and just enjoyed relaxing like that.

For one day, I did take a bike out and go off to explore. There was a really nice old Angkor temple that had been converted into an active Buddhist temple and which easily bested Wat Phu in my book. So much for the judgement of UNESCO. The Lonely Planet highly recommended going to a pair of hills where, according to legend, men and women competed to be the first to build a stupa at the top. The trusty guide especially said to keep an eye out for a "band of inquisitive monkeys" at the top of one of them. When I got to the hills, vendors swarmed around me -the sole tourist- and tried to sell me bananas to feed the monkeys. Only trouble was, there are no monkeys -haven't been any for years. Actually, there weren't any old stupas either, the originals having been replaced by blocky concrete wats with fading paint. Yet another stunning success for the guidebooks.

Just behind those disappointing hills lay something far more interesting. Joe had told me about an abandoned American airfield from the days when the U.S. absolutely definitely did not send B-52s to pound the snot out of Cambodia. All that's left to mark the site is a pillbox perched on the low brow of a hill overlooking a rotting runway. The strip itself has been incorporated into the local roads so that the dirt track suddenly sprouts into superhighway for 1000m before branching off again into a network of paths. In a fitting manner for the site, the land surrounding the runway is dry and dead. Somewhat wary since I figured an airfield would be a likely spot for mines, I cautiously followed the paths up to the pillbox and spent an afternoon sitting in the sun.

It was tempting to just stay in Kompong Cham and do nothing, but with only two weeks I decided press on to Kompang Thom. Zoo and I had gotten a second-hand tip that the ruins of Sambor Prei Kuk there were as good as Angkor Wat. They weren't. Worth a trip certainly, but the towers were in pretty miserable condition. Many were little more than piles of rotting brick with trees growing out of them. That may have had something to do with the huge bomb craters in and around the towers (See the one in the picture?). They seemed especially dense there, though I suspect it was like that everywhere and they just haven't been smoothed out as they have in the fields and towns. It was a very enjoyable time though as it's spread out in the jungle with few tourists and just a nice serene atmosphere.

For a long while I was followed around by a Cambodian boy who appointed himself tour guide and clearly expected money for his questionable help. I'd walk into an octagonal temple and he'd tell me it's octagonal. Thanks. I'd start walking down a path and he'd follow behind kindly telling me that I was walking to a temple. Impressive vocabulary word for an eight year-old whose probably never been to school, but not exactly surprising info. When I finally managed to convey that I did not want a guide or to buy his scarves, he was pretty angry.

The dirt road out to Sambor Prei Kuk had been a miserable experience on the back of a motorbike, but I don't learn from my lessons. Besides, the Lonely Planet -though it did warn the road was not for inexperienced drivers- showed what appeared to be a real dirt road going right the way I wanted and recommended the trip. So what if the drivers all laughed? The next morning, I set out with Sity -the driver from the day before- to the temple complex at Preah Kahn. Also along, were another driver who's name I've forgotten and a Belgian guy named Frank.

The ride started out on the brand-new blissfully smooth Route 6 to Siem Reap. The back of a moto at 100kph seems pretty nice right about then. But we quickly turned off onto a dirt road heading north. It too started out alright before dissolving into the most spine-shattering lung-choking path I could imagine. At least, that's what I thought at the time. Then the road further disintegrated until it was just a knotted tangle of little oxcart ruts, rice patty berms and foot trails. These were not roads by any stretch of the imagination. The way was crisscrossed by massive roots, deep crevices left in the last rainy season, streams, fallen trees and underbrush. Hard knocks bottomed out the off-road suspension and bucked me almost off the bike. The tough grasses sliced at our legs while the low hanging branches scraped our arms and faces. We bled for this trail.

Five miserable aching hours later, we arrived in the tiny village of Ta Seng where we arranged to stay at a local house. A quick rest, and we went off to explore the temples. Fortunately, they made it all worthwhile. The temple complex there is the largest in Cambodia -larger in area than Angkor Wat- and mostly covered by the jungle so that each part is cut off from the rest. Because of the difficulty of getting there though, only a few tourists make it by every month. We were completely alone in the first area and could climb all in and around the ruins. Only later did a few local teenagers show up for a picnic.

The second stop we made was the main complex which did have a few guards around to stop looting and extract a healthy fee from the few visitors. We were given a choice: $5 for a ticket or 10k riel (about $2.50) for a "sponsor". I chose the corrupt option. This area was also beautiful, but proved depressing as so much had been looted. All over the complex, you could see where pneumatic chisels had been used to cut priceless statues out of the stone to be sold. And since the cuts were fresh, with the rock dust still lingering in the gaps, many must have been taken in the last year. What remained was beautiful and in excellent condition. It was heartbreaking to think that the work of thousands of craftsmen had survived more than a thousand years of weather and war, only to be destroyed by 20th Century capitalism.

At this point, maybe I should bring up what I'm sure my mother has been thinking about the whole time: landmines. The not-so-trusty guidebook warns not to stray off the path anywhere in rural Cambodia, including inside remote temples and where drivers say is safe. The problem is, there aren't any paths in the ruins. All along the trail, I had seen tree-trunks painted with the red and white blazes that marked a minefield. Outside both the first part of the temple and the central area were signs announcing that the minefields had been cleared with uncomfortably recent dates posted on them. Still I wondered: how good are these mineclearers at their jobs? Most of the mines in Cambodia were laid in the last ten years and are of modern plastic design specifically made to escape metal detectors (mostly Vietnamese copies of American designs). The temple areas are so overgrown and strewn with rubble that you wonder how anyone could possibly search in that environment. This came up even more later on, but I'll get to that as I come to it. Fear very much in mind, I tried to stay on what vague paths I could make out or -when that proved impossible- to walk directly on the rocky ruins. Still, there were times when I found myself walking across areas I did not at all trust.

In the evening, we went off to another section of the sprawling complex which had no signage at all. I decided to trust it as the locals had converted the site into an active Buddhist shrine. We watched the sun going down over a huge baray.

Staying with the local farmer, we ate a traditional meal with them and washed it down with palm wine. I'd been anxious to try since I'd enjoyed Lao palm beer but this turned out to be a sour medicinal version with the odor of sulfur. Sity drank a little too much and was soon talking loudly about the relative merits of the girls at the two "karaoke" bars in Kompang Thom. In his well-researched estimation, the girls at one are far more attractive but it requires more cash to take one home and you have to have a car because they don't like motorbikes. At the other, they are apparently less picky.

The next day we headed off along an ancient Angkor road towards Beng Mealea and Siem Reap. This time, the road was even worse than the day before. It evolved from rutted hard dirt to a sandpit which sucked down the tires and slowed us to a crawl. A few times I got tossed off as the bike swerved through the sand and we often had to climb off to push the motorbike out. By this point though, I was almost numbed to it and it didn't bother me nearly as much.

Only an hour or so into our trip, came upon another unimpressive ruin. All along the approach, familiar red skull and crossbones signs lined either side of path. At the edge of the ruins, however, the signs had been pulled up and stacked to the side, the dirt still fresh from the ground. The deminers (CMAC) had moved on to a field on the other side of the path and their equipment was neatly arranged on the ground with sandbags piled around their explosives and detonators. Frank started off across the freshly cleared ground and walked straight up to the temple. I hesitated and again considered the skill of the demining teams. Eventually I did go up into the temple by sticking to the rocks. There was almost nothing to see really though it was interesting to think that Frank and I were probably the first foreigners to go there in more than twenty years. Frank trudged back through the brush without blowing up so I guess the deminers did a pretty good job. I again took the long route. As we sat there on the side of the dusty jungle road, surrounded by minefields and an hour from the nearest village, an old man peddled up on a bicycle. He had a bright orange cooler strapped to the back and was traveling from house to house selling ice cream sandwiches -homemade ice cream in a baguette- for 25 cents.

The rest of the ride was pretty uneventful -just more of the same painful slams and terrifying swerves. There were some incredible thousand year-old bridges along the way and a suicidal Aussie bicyclist attempting the maze we had just come from. Another five hours and we reached Beng Mealea. This temple is only an hour from Siem Reap on the nice clean paved road so we suddenly saw more tourists again. Once a complex to match some of the famous temples, Beng Mealea has collapsed and been overgrown by jungle. And unlike other temples, the only way to explore the temple is by climbing directly up and along the walls and over the rubble piles. Frank and I wandered for hours through the ruins and I had one of the best temple experiences I had anywhere.

Busses, Boats and Motos -Oh My!

The last week and change has been all about the transportation. The first little adventure (read: nightmare) came on our trip from Pakse to Champasak. For medium distances, the vehicle of choice is a songthaew, or pickup with benches in the back. They usually have two people working them: the driver and someone in the back to (man-) handle passengers. Anyway, Zoo and I hopped in the back of one at the market. With ten people on board already, we figured they'd leave pretty soon. Twenty minutes and another ten or so people later, we made a few false starts and then got moving. We made it all the way across the street. The guy in back hopped off and started loading on a ton of construction materials.

Ten minutes later, we were off again. This time we got a few hundred meters down the road before stopping again to pick up more passengers. That brought the total to 26 adults, 3 children, and at least one rooster. Off again, we went all of 20 meters before turning abruptly into a mechanics shop. With all of us still in the back, they jacked up the pickup, took off a wheel, and proceeded to patch the huge slash in one of the tires. We waited, literally, for glue to dry.

While doing that, an old woman appointed herself group comedian. Naturally, the two falang on board were the target of her humor. It must have been riotous stuff because everyone on the bus was having a great time, but I felt a little like a zoo animal. Later on, the old lady noticed that I was in just the right contorted position to be used as an arm rest and did just that. That also got a few laughs.

The wheel finally on again, we piled back into the songthaew ...and went another 50m to the other bus station. All told, it took us over an hour and a half to go the first kilometer. The other hundred or so only took two more hours, as it should normally.

Champasak, after all the effort, wasn't actually that impressive. Zoot got sick right away and spent the whole time in bed. I spent the days there exploring on bike and seeing Wat Pho, the Angkorian temple sight that everyone had recommended. It was nice, but small, scorching hot, crawling with tourists, and in awful shape. The many temples I've seen since have been nicer and much more accessible.

From Champasak, we hopped another songthaew -this one was speedy- to Don Det in the Si Phan Don region at the southern tip of Laos. It's a spot in the Mekong where the river fans out and there are thousands of little islands. Zoo still being sickish, I went off in search of a bicycle to explore the island on my own -maybe see the waterfalls or endangered river dolphins. Just as I left the guesthouse though, a random guy stopped me and asked if I wanted to go for a boat ride. Being skeptical, I said no at first, but it turned out he needed to go cut bamboo and just wanted company. He said not to worry and that we'd be back by two. So I and Brit I'd met on the ferry over hopped into the guy's longtail boat and we headed off.

First, he said we had to pick up some of his friends to help, so we stopped at one's house. He offered us lunch so we all chipped in a little and he went off to buy some fish. As we were waiting, they gave us an endless supply of snacks and homemade lao lao. Each time they passed the glass, they poured only a little bit, but the glass made the rounds at least a dozen times. After over an hour, the guy finally came back with fish and they started grilling it. I was already beginning to suspect the four hour estimate would be way off. Lunch was awesome, but only the first guy we met spoke any English so Owen and I were a bit in the dark.

After the slow lunch, we grabbed a couple liters of lao lao for the road and went diving for freshwater clams. I'm pretty miserable at it, mostly because I was kind of sketched out swimming in the oh-so-clean Mekong and getting all that nice water in my eyes. My bathing suit reeked afterwards. I'm not sure I'd want to eat them anyway considering what the water's like. By this time it was after four in the afternoon so we finally went off to cut bamboo. Owen and I chipped in but we still didn't finish loading it all up until just after the sun set.
That posed a big problem -the river is full of rocks and it's hard to navigate a boat even in daylight. We slowly crawled along back through the shallow water but there really wasn't a way to spot the submerged rocks. At one point, the pilot unloaded us on an island to make the boat lighter and we walked 2km by moonlight to meet him at the other end. When we got there, he'd beaten us easily and had been throwing back still more lao lao for a good twenty minutes. I finally got back to the guesthouse just after 8. One of the friends gave Owen and I coconuts as thanks and I did real botch job of trying to open the damn thing up. It didn't even taste good so I gave it to the guesthouse monkey and he yelled at me.

Thus ended my Laos experience. Zoo and I had maxed out our visa and we had to head across the border to Cambodia. The border crossing was fairly painless if a little surreal. It's a rural area and only recently became an official crossing, but the road to the border turns into such a tiny dirt road that you'd think there's no way it could be right. After getting stamped out of Laos, we walked a few hundred meters through the woods to the Cambodian checkpoint. All around, fires were smoldering in the woods making it smokey and bleak. Welcome to Cambodia.

At the checkpoint where you can get a visa, there was a young Korean woman throwing the worst little hissy fit. She kept whining to the head official, asking him why he wouldn't let her into the country. After a while, he got so irritated, they simply booted her out of the country. We'd missed the beginning of all this but the official explained she had been refusing to pay the $21 dollars he asked for instead of the $20 she thought it would be. If she was short a dollar, there were countless people around who would have happily given her the dollar if she'd asked politely -or maybe just to shut her up if we'd known the problem. If she thought he was being corrupt, you'd think she'd bite her tongue once it was clear he wasn't going to relent. But apparently she wasn't smart enough for either option. I hate to generalize, but let's just say that I wasn't too surprised when I saw her Korean passport.

Our van took us all the way to the small city of Stung Treng, where Zoo and I said goodbye -probably the last time I'll see her for another year or two. She stayed there, planning to head east, while I continued on south to Kratie. On the way, I finally had a chance to go see some of the last remaining Irrawaddy dolphins that I'd missed in Laos. I didn't get a single decent picture because they move so fast, but it was beautiful and we got to see them right up close. Other than that, Kratie was pretty dull.

I stayed with a French guy who I'd been with on the bus from Stung Treng and we ended up on the same bus going south the next day. The first thing this guy did upon waking up was roll a joint. We went for breakfast together, which he followed with another joint. We hopped on the bus -sitting in the aisle again- at around eight but we made it only a few kilometers before it broke down. Charlie's reaction was to wander off and smoke up again. So we waited there under a tamarind tree for a while and then another bus showed up. Thinking we'd be off soon, I got excited and hauled my things to the new bus. Unfortunately, this bus didn't work either. Two teams of guys worked simultaneously on both engines to create one working Frankenbus out of the two junkers. A few hours later, they got it going.

While we were moving, it was a pretty nice ride. They had an old movie playing on the TV that was kind of like a 70s Thai version of I Love Lucy goes to a beauty pageant, all poorly dubbed into Khmer. When that was over, they put on a VCD featuring the Khmer cover of "My Humps" as sung by a Khmer girl whose titular attributes were notably modest and a guy well into his 50s.

Frankenbus got us to withing a few kilometers of Kompong Cham before again dying. That was cause for still another joint. Again we waited by the road until someone showed up on a moto to fix it. All told, it took us eight hours to finish the supposedly three hour journey. At least the road was paved though.

Well, that only gets me to Kompong Cham and I'm well past that now, but it's long enough already. I didn't even get to the moto trip in the title. I'll write more in a few days. Too sleepy and hungry right now.

The Lazy South

Hi again. I've been a little out of touch since the south is far less developed and less set up for tourists. We started out going down to Savanaket, which most travelers bypass, and maybe we should have taken that as a hint. The town itself had little going for it besides a few nice riverside cafes and a tiny dinosaur museum with only Lao and French captions. There are supposed to be nice areas further out in the province, but our rapidly dwindling visa only allowed us a day trek. It was nice, but nothing compared to the north. Our guides showed us endless herbal remedies and edible plants and we saw how they collect lamp oil from the trees. It just wasn't that wild of an area though so the only cool animals we saw were black swarms of daddy-long-legs that turned tree trunks black.

From Savanaket, we continued down the Mekong to Pakse, which is a little more substantial but not much more interesting. We just checked out bikes and rode out on the scorching road to a small waterfall where all the locals were. Mostly though, we wandered around the city and got a quick fix of internet and backpacker food.

Since Pakse wasn't really that cool, we went over to Tad Lo -a tiny town set up near three gorgeous waterfalls with a few small guesthouses. It's not much beyond a few quiet guesthouses and two small farming villages, but it was perfect. We stayed at a place called Tim's run by a Lao family and there was just an incredible group of people there. We spent our days hiking around to the waterfalls and relaxing. There were gorgeous blue-green pools between the falls where I'd go swimming with the local kids. At night, we always ate at the guesthouse because of the people who dropped in. One night, an aging hippy musician couple from Nashville broke out a guitar and I got to hear an acoustic tribute to James Brown.

Once again though, the remains of war crept back into sight. It all blended in at first, but then slowly I began to notice little pieces everywhere: a bomblet sitting on the bookshelf, an artillery shell made into a lamp, a napalm canister turned into a BBQ grill. (To the panicking mother: the mortar shell and bomblet I'm holding are quite empty and quite safe. Stop hyperventilating, take deep breaths and relax.) Not only that, but there were countless shallow depressions in the ground which may or may not have been craters. Clearly the locals know how to take advantage of the situation though. When we went to the furthest waterfall, a dozen or so kids assigned themselves as guides. Each one wanted to be the leader so they kept showing us different parts of the same intertwined system of paths. Heading back, when we ignored one kid, he shouted "No! Bomb! Boom boom!." Now that certainly got my attention until I realized the way he was talking about was the way we had come and the way the other locals had gone. When we went down the path, he followed the same way.

Tad Lo was incredible, but with our visa running out, we decided to head further off the beaten track to a city called Attapeu. Strike two. Apparently there's a reason why it's not really mentioned in the guide books. There were a couple small cheap guesthouses, but not much to do except more of the same riverside cafes and biking to villages. We didn't even make it far either, because the only bikes we could find were tiny junky things sized for munchkins, not full-grown adults. I must have looked like a circus monkey riding on that thing with my legs barely unfolded and arms pulled in tight. Why, oh why, did I listen to my sister and not get the motorbike?! So what if I don't know how to ride one -that's a minor inconvenience at best.

The one cool thing that happened is that we found another novice monk who wanted to practice his English. We talked for a while our first night with half a dozen young novices and one tattooed monk lingering curiously around us. Nikon asked us to come back the next night to meet his brother, so we did and we spent a couple more hours chatting with them. Again, I was reluctant to take pictures until Nikon whipped out his camera-phone and started doing it himself. Then he practically insisted that we take pictures. When he was finally satisfied, he dragged me and the Austrian guy who was with us back to his room so we could put the photos on their shared computer -a nicer computer than mine too. I was a little surprised by the novices quarters but I guess I shouldn't have been. They had been playing Lao rock on the computer when we came in, but switched over to Usher and the Black Eyed Peas in our honor. On one wall they had newspaper clippings, which I suspected were there less for the article on Condoleeza Rice than for the models in the ads. A pack of cigarettes -for monks only, not novices- was sitting on the desk. All this was in a small room with holes in the clapboard walls and a single small bed for the monk. Novices sleep on the floor. The monk got really ticked off at the novices though since so many of them had skipped their prayers. Nikon was excused because he was practicing English with us, but if we hadn't been there, he said, the monk would have beaten the others.

Susanna wasn't allowed in their living area or the temple, so we went into kind of an auxiliary temple building to talk some more. The walls were covered with murals depicting a series of stories that Nikon couldn't explain and a bizarre set that showed in graphic detail all the nasty things that happen to bad people when they die: liars having their tongues pulled out by demons, birds tearing the entrails from murderers, and adulterers violated cruelly by demons with swords. So much for the friendly Buddha.

Now we're back in Pakse for the night to catch up on internet and take care of errands. We're off south to Champasak in the morning and then moving on into Cambodia. I'll write more when I get the chance but that may be a while. Miss you all.

Bus Rides & Bombies

That last post ended rather abruptly, eh? Well, that's kind of how it was in Luang Nam Tha as well. I'd bonded quite a bit with the people on the trek and we all went out together when we got back and again in the morning. Sensing that anything else in the area would be an anti-climax, I decided to follow Minna, Ben and Tash back south to Luang Prabang. They bought a ticket for me and we got a leisurely breakfast near the station. I was a little worried about seating but they told me the seats were assigned. I was rightfully skeptical. When we got to the bus about half an hour before it was to leave, everything was full except for a few broken seats in the back. The other three took "seats" and I arranged a few 50kg sacks of fertilizer, rice and sugar in the aisle. I had someone's boots behind me and a huge tractor engine in front. We took off quite late and about twenty people past capacity.

Most Asian bus drivers seem to be aspiring Gran Prix racers. Ours drove like a Gran. We slowly cruised down the mooncrater road at jogging pace while cars, motos, overladen trucks, bicycles, and quadriplegic sloths whizzed by on either side. Almost seven hours into what was supposed to be a nine hour trip, we finally crawled into the halfway-point stop. After purchasing sweets and what turned out to be raw pork in a banana leaf, we got back on the bus for the second half. This time, I flipped the sacks around, made a table, and played cards with my group and a random Israeli. As soon as we settled in to play though, our driver let loose his inner Andretti and started barrelling down the road at top speed. I don't usually get motion sickness, but going backwards while being bounced around like that in a stuffy airless bus wasn't a fun experience.

Luang Prabang was nothing special again, just a quiet night with a random Japanese guy who's name I could never remember and a relaxing day with Ben and Tash. I again hopped on the bus, this time to Vientienne. Again the bus was overcrowded, but this time I got the last real seat and -miracle of miracles- it was that glorious seat in the back middle with acres of legroom. On the downside, the "mutton" we ordered at lunch was beginning to give me some wicked stomach cramps. By the time we got to Vientienne at 4am, my stomach had lost the fight and I spent a vigorous hour in the highly questionable bus station men's room. Nothing of course is open at 4am in Vientienne. The few awake tuk-tuk drivers just laughed at me. Nothing opens until 7 or 8, and none of the guesthouses have rooms until people check out around 11. I spent a pathetic seven hours wandering around the city in an exhausted delirium before finding a place to crash.

After that nightmare, I've pretty much been taking it easy. I biked around and met a number of monks who insist on giving me tours of their temples so they can practice English. The national museum was pretty cool too with a long section on the imperialist French and Americans and their many weapons and puppet armies. One wall had an RPG launcher and a few grenades sitting on a shelf with a little laminated sign saying "Do not touch." Nothing to physically stop anyone from doing so, just the sign. Another had a line of rifles, each of which was supposedly used by some peasant hero to shoot down an American jet. Everywhere were piles of assault rifles and heavy machine guns. Another fun section was the short bit on UXOs in which they have a case filled with intact bomblets and mortar shells. Now, I'm really hoping all of these very intact looking objects are defused, but they certainly looked untouched and rusted shut.

As if I needed further reminding of all the wonderful things America has done for Laos, I found myself in a prosthetics workshop this afternoon. Zoo and I were tracking down a pair of crutches for a friend who had sprained his ankle. We finally got directed to a rehab clinic where we could buy some. Since all were adjusted for shorter people, a guy took us into the shop to re-fit them and we watched men molding and forging all sorts of prosthetic parts. It was an eerie place with limbs lying all around. I made a mental note to donate money for mine clearing when I get home.

And on that cheerful note, I'm going to have to leave it. We're staying here one more night and then Zoot and I will move on south to Savannaket, Champasak, and eventually Cambodia.

Lao Lao and I

Hi again. When we last saw our hero, he was striding off alone again to tiny Luang Nam Tha. I had planned on going straight on further north to Muong Sing, but when I stopped for lunch by the bus station, I ran into a few fellow solo travellers -Toby the Aussie, Merit the Mexican, and Roger the Swiss- and I decided to stay there.

New Years actually turned out to be pretty tame. We all took rooms together in a little fakey traditional bungalow type place. Thinking we'd really feast, we stopped in at an Indian place that according to the Lonely Planet had the best Indian food in SE Asia. Not quite, though the accidental dramatic entertainment was certainly interesting. While we were hungrily and impatiently waiting, a fistfight broke out in the kitchen, causing tears and a few people to storm off in a huff. Apparently the chef was one of them. After that, our night was just card games and whiskey cokes until after what we think may or may not have been approximately midnight according to our many watches.

On New Years day, Merit, Roger and I rented bikes and did a tour of the villages in the area which was really cool. The whole area is gorgeous with rice patties and small tribal villages scattered about. Every village had a party going on and we got so many invitations to join them. We accepted a couple, but after more than a few lao laos (rice moonshine) and Beer Laos we had to turn down most or we would've been zigzagging home.

At one point, while going down a dusty road, we got stopped by a couple guys with AK47s slung over their shoulders. They were dressed in regular clothes so I don't think they were army. It was a little unnerving at first, but they just made sure we knew where we were going and sent us on our way. I really wanted a picture but figured it wasn't nice to annoy the men with guns. Since then, I've come across guys armed like this on the bus and elsewhere so it doesn't seem to be a big deal.

All along the way we went, there were some obvious signs of the occasional tourist, but we still got many stares and never saw another foreigner. Roger had lived in South America for much of his life so he and Merit spoke mostly in Spanish. We had odd conversations with one person speaking in one language and getting answers in another. I loved that random kind of international experience and I was so proud that I actually remembered so much more from high school than I thought I had.
The trekking office finally opened up that evening and I managed to snag a last minute spot on a three day trip. I had come up here specifically to find trekking that wasn't so overdone and overcrowded but there were so few people that they weren't sending out many treks and almost no longer ones out into the less touristed spots. Again, I lucked out though. We had good local guides and a good group of people (l to r): Mai Hoi our lead guide, Minna from Finland, Manuel from Germany, me, Ben and Natasha from New Zealand, and Boon Ta our other guide.

The trek turned out to be incredible. Far from the tourist nightmare that Ben and Tash had described in Chiang Mai, the places we visited seemed still unchanged by us visitors. In the first village we stayed in, an Ahka village, I was a little surprised by just how many animals they had just wandering around with no apparently markings. They somehow knew which of the hundreds of pigs belonged to whom though because I saw a girl throwing rocks to shoo the wrong ones away from the feeding trough. People were genuinely friendly and kids still seemed very curious and a little hesitant. After a minute though they warmed up and, before long, we were playing rattan ball together. If you haven't seen it, rattan ball is like volleyball except you can only use your feet and head. We all got the hang of it eventually, but of course the locals trounced us in every match. For dinner, they killed a chicken and fed us an amazing meal. In some ways it was odd though, because the Ahka in the village were not that different from the urban Hmong families that I had just been with. Some of the houses in the village were nicer than some of the poorer houses in town.

The second day was even better. We got up early but had a nice relaxed start. We ate a nice big breakfast and they killed a couple more chickens for us to take as lunch. Before we left, one of the three chiefs stopped by and gave us little touristy water-bottle bags made in the village. Not only were they not begging us to buy things, they were handing it out!

The hiking that day was real nice as we wandered across some mountians in the jungle and through bamboo forests. As we walked, Mai Noi pointed out all the plants the hill tribes use. We also picked some wild starfruits, gooseberries, and figs, but they weren't quite ripe. The scenery was incredible along the whole trail with wild bananas growing everywhere and birds squawking just like the recordings at the zoo.

***Warning -Parental guidance suggested (i.e. if you're the kind of paranoid mother who worries retroactively, skip this part) ***

The area we were trekking in was one of the most thoroughly destroyed during the wars in the seventies. A number of times, we crossed ridgelines where you could see the faded signs of fighing -old overgrown trenches, rows of foxholes, and rusty spent clips from assault rifles. I'd seen plenty Civil War battlefields near home, but this was different because it was so recent. Boon Ta assured me that the trails we followed were safe and that these mountains had been cleared. Other mountains in the area, pulverized by American bombings, are definitely not safe though and he said the tribes won't go there. Apparently many stray animals have been killed by UXOs. It was one of a series of experiences I've had which make me less than thrilled to be an American.

So anyway, for lunch, our guides prepared us a picnic hilltribe style with bamboo used for everything. As we were hiking, one just stepped off the trail and cut down a huge piece about five inches in diameter. Another found some wild banana flowers and palm stems. A large round green section was used as the stew pot; another section cut down the middle made two huge bowls; smaller pieces sliced diagonally just above the natural divider made spoon bowls with strips bent and tied as handles. All of this was served on banana leaves as a table. I tried my hand at making one of these spoons and failed miserably, slicing my hand open in the process. I'm so impressed with how they can use this giant bamboo for just about everything.

During the course of the hike, we came down out of the hills and into the lower rice paddies. There were two villages quite close together, one was Lanten tribe and the other was Khmu, where we would be staying the night. Despite the fact that the people in the villages mixed a great deal -many of the Lanten came over to join us at night- it was still very clear who was of each tribe. The Lanten women all wear dark blue dresses with white leggings and distinctive silver jewelry and shave their eyebrows, while the Khmu women looked more like the Hmong. Most of the men just wore western clothes, but all the Lanten men had huge knives in woven bamboo basket sheaths. This village was also much larger and more advanced than the last one. They had an ingenious hydropower system set up with a series of dams on the river channeling the water into huge wooden pipes with what looked like outboard motors in reverse. There were about eight of these, each one capable of powering a few lights. I'm not sure, but my impression is this is part of the governments bribe to them for giving up opium production.

We were especially lucky in that the night we arrived, as they were having a ceremony for a girl in the village. It had already been going on for a while when our guide brought us into the local shaman's house. The place was filled with people already and there was barely room for us but they welcomed us in. In one corner they had a large clay jar of rice wine with reed straws which I was led to repeatedly. As you drink, they refill the jar with water of a questionable nature using a little horn cup. The custom is that the two people drinking should drink until twenty-four cups have been replaced. The stuff was pretty potent even with the water added and tasted a bit like a port with a beerish finish -not bad really. When not taking a turn at the rice wine, we were often passed more of the ever-present lao lao. These people must rival Koreans for liver damage. Then again, the life expectancy of a man in Laos is only 50 years.

The main part of the ceremony was kind of like at the Hmong New Year, where you tie a string around someone's wrist while giving them a blessing. Everyone ended up with dozens of little strings tied around their wrists, but especially the girl at the center of the ritual. Her arms were covered from wrist to elbow with blessings. I have no idea what people wished for me, but Boon Ta translated some blessings for Ben which were something about having enough children to fill a village and grandchildren to fill a city. Tash was not thrilled. I was again very nervous about taking photographs and ruining the moment. Boon Ta pushed though and I eventually got out my camera. Far from bothering the people, they were thrilled to be photographed and check out their pictures on the screen. I ended up acting as photographer for them as they all wanted to pose with their friends. After we got back, I made prints and gave them to Boon Ta to pass on.

The other reason for all the celebration was that a wedding was happening the next day. People had come over from the next village to celebrate. We farang passed out around midnight, but could hear the party flare up now and again throughout the night. I swear they must have been playing the same song over and over again. When I woke up -6:30- I wandered over and joined the party. Some of the men had clearly been drunk the whole night and weren't slowing down at all. Nor did they want us to slow down. So at about 7:00, I was tossing back a few more lao laos and taking turns at the rice wine. Quite the healthy breakfast. Again, we were asked to play official photographer while the extremely drunk father of the groom slowly gathered everyone together for group photos. Those who spoke English practically lined up to practice on us, all asking the same questions.

When the guides finally pulled us away from the party, it was well after we were supposed to have left. We finished the trek by hiking out of the mountains along a beautiful stream. Of course, the first time I wear shoes in almost a month is the day we have to zigzag over the stream a dozen times.

That's not really the end and I've got loads more to tell but I'm sleepy and it looks like this internet place is closing down. Talk to you all again soon. Hope everyone out there is happy and well.

Happy New Year!

Hi all. I'm in Luang Nam Tha in northern Laos now. We got into Luang Prabang by plane on the 26th. I was a bit nervous since Laos Airlines has a less than stellar reputation (actually, one of the worst in the industry), but apparently they've been upgrading all their planes, so we went for it. The flight was totally fine though and we even got little fruit-cakey things in the meal, which was the only Christmassy thing I ate this trip.

I had expected Luang Pabang to be like Chiang Mai, but it's not at all. It's an odd blend of sleepy old town and gentrified tourist haven. Zoo and I got rooms in a spartan little guesthouse for 5 dollars a night (her desire to save money demanded we not spend the extra dollar or two for a private bathroom.) But then we'd go out for breakfast at a posh little cafe and spend more than that on coffee and croissants. Go figure. I didn't really sleep much the whole time because the evil inherent in roosters. I have never enjoyed eating chicken so much before. The annoying things would start crowing prematurely at 3am, get bored after a while, then start up again an hour later.

It was fun to explore the area though: less touristy than Chiang Mai, but still not the the mythical "authentic" experience that every traveller dreams of finding. There's a ridiculous night market with slightly different tourist junk from the markets in Thailand but the same from stall to stall. This is truly where the "same same, but different" phrase comes from.

We'd met a Canadian named Kalil in Chiang Mai and met up with spent the first day wandering through the city and the big wats at a leisurely pace. On another day, we hired a tuk-tuk and went off to Kuang Si park where there are some beautiful waterfalls. Zoo and I hiked up the steep slope to the top and waded through the stream abovehim again in Laos. We basically the falls. Ever mindful of safety, the Lao authorities had placed a tiny sign that read "Danger - No Entry" hanging from a tree out over the 30m or so dropoff with a single rickety wood rail to stop the utterly stupid. The water had clearly changed its course and recently, as the ground was coated in layers of rock, like a mass of stalagmites. Even twigs that had fallen in the water, were quickly covered before the unexposed end had time to weather. After the hike, we took a dip in the freezing milky-blue water with natural massages from one of the waterfalls.

Not agreeing on what we wanted to do, Zoo and I decided to split off. She's heading down to Veng Viang to look at organic vegetables or something, while I headed up to Luang Nam Tha. I hopped on the overcrowded night bus -the only foreigner. Though everyone else seemed to avoid me, a Hmong university student named Vong sat next to me to practice his English. He pushed me to join him and his friends in Oudum Xai for Hmong New Year celebrations and a wedding party. So I got off the bus with them and went.

The friend's family was relatively wealthy so their house was large and concrete, with cars and motorbikes outside. Tents were up with huge speakers in preparation for the wedding party. But inside, the walls were still thin woven bamboo and the kitchen was an outdoor fireplace. We got there around 1am and they fed us traditional Laap (minced meat and glass noodle salad), pork soup, chunks of chicken with heads and feet and all, and loads of Beer Lao. Bi, the older brother who was playing host, kept pouring more and more until the others hid the beer while Bi's back was turned. Only three spoke much English (Vong, Ning and Bi), but all were eager to practice and translated. Finally, they put me in a room with Vong and Ning and we slept on floor pads with heaps of blankets.

I woke up early to the sound of party preparations and, of course, roosters. Vong, Ning, and I walked over to Ning's other uncle's house (The relationships were complicated and unclear. They refer to close friends as brothers so I gave up keeping track after a while) where they were still celebrating the Hmong New Year. This house was considerable more modest, though still concrete and the uncle is apparently the city mayor or some equivalent. They had just finished slaughtering a pig in the yard and were starting to cut it up on a big blue plastic tarp. As far as I could tell, this involved expertly slicing off the various parts and then whacking them endlessly with huge cleavers into a minced pile. Nothing -and I mean nothing- was wasted. At first, I was welcomed then relatively ignored, but once they had finished, I was brought out again for English practice. I must have been asked the same questions a hundred times. Most spoke no English; a few spoke some; and one or two spoke pretty well. I was very surprised to learn that many of the older generation had visited the US, while none of the younger people had. Apparently, the US is more willing to give visas to older people who they don't feel will try to stay. The uncle had even visited DC. When Vong asked him what he thought of it, the first thing he mentioned was the traffic. Seems appropriate. I wish I could have asked him better though about the culture shock he must have felt and compared notes. It would have been nice to know the opposite perspective.

***Warning for the faint of stomach. You may not want to read the next paragraph***

After chatting for a while, they unveiled the first dish, which was a special soup made of a leafy veggie like spinach, pig lungs, heart, liver, kidney and -the crowning glory- fetus. Yes, I ate pig fetus. They had impregnated the pig in advance so that it would be ready when slaughtered. It doesn't taste bad, but the squishy texture was a little much for me. I almost lost it when Vong spooned a chunk of torso into his mouth and slurped up the tail. Having watched it made, I knew what I was in for, but I was feeling adventurous and didn't want to be insulting. I decided I would just have to ignore the screaming warnings in the guidebook about foods to avoid. We ate standing around a big communal bowl and toasting each other with lao lao, or Lao whiskey. That's what they called it, but actually it was more like vodka or soju. After the third round, I had to plead foreigner and decline.

I thought that might be it, but it turned out only to be the beginning. I was then moved inside to the head table. The house again was simple but nice inside with posters of Lao, Chinese, and Korean pinup models and calendar girls all around the room. There were about thirty-some people there so I felt a little odd being brought to the table while many people were just eating on the tarp outside, but they insisted. As part of the celebration, people tie strings around others' wrists and make wishes. I felt a little left out until I noticed that all the strings were going to the uncle and his family. He sat there in his chair with the posture of important men and accepted blessing after blessing. We then ate (pork laap, soup and salad), and continued the blessings in toast form with loads of Beer Lao. I again had to plead foreigner to avoid getting too drunk.

We eventually tore ourselves away from "breakfast" at around 3 and went to a traditional Hmong flirting ritual. The guys told me they have a very hard time meeting Hmong girls and these few weeks during the New Year celebrations are the only real time to do it. I was a little surprised since I had thought Vong was happy enough flirting with Ning's little sister, but we went off anyway. The ritual is pretty simple: the boys and girls dress up in traditional dress or at least look nice, stand in two lines, and toss balls back and forth. The idea is to try to toss the ball with the person you think is cute and talk while you do it. Meanwhile, little boys light firecrackers and gamble in a kind of dice game. This was the last weekend of the season so the crowd was pretty thin and the guys were all disappointed. Most of the people there looked about 16 or younger and it seemed reminiscent of a middle school dance.

In a clear sign of how few tourists make it out here though, I was swarmed. Everyone who knew the slightest bit of English came to practice on me and those who didn't, just stared. I'm pretty used to being stared at from Korea, but this was far more than I cared for. Vong made me join in the ball tossing and took pictures, which I didn't really want to do. In the one place with no other tourists, the last thing I wanted to do was make it touristy by whipping out the camera. Unfortunately, that means I have few photos from that day.

Thoroughly disappointed, Vong led me off to another cousin's house. This one was tiny and clearly very poor. The house was built on stilts in the traditional style and the woven bamboo had come undone. Near the fireplace, they had stuck kitchen utensils through the holes in the wall as storage. Even in this poor house though, they had a TV blaring low-budget Lao music videos on VCD.

Finally, we went and joined the wedding party. Unfortunately, it really wasn't as special as it had sounded before. In fact, except for the menu (roast water buffalo, more laap and soup) and music style (think synthesizer stuck on Bossanova beat), it could almost have been an American wedding reception. The actual wedding took place privately days before and this was just a party to announce and celebrate it. I guess the dancing was a little different too. There were two kinds: the slow tradition style in which partners kind of shuffle in a circle, facing each other for a few steps and then facing forward, while gently swishing their hands in front of them; and the modern dance which made me think of a cross between a church revival and a mosh pit. Not quite my style in either case. And again, there was endless Beer Lao. Despite my attempts to brush aside most offers, I still had to down many glasses and return many toasts. As before, many people either stared or came over to practice English. Naturally, they also wanted to share a drink or five. By the end of the night, there was an enormous pile of empty bottles under our table. I don't know how I managed to avoid a hangover.

So this morning, I declined their invitations to another wedding party, said goodbye, and caught a van up to Luang Nam Tha. I'd planned on going straight on to the even tinier town of Muong Sing for trekking, but I met some other travellers who reminded me that tonight is New Years so I'm sticking around here for now. I'll probably be off to do a trek in a day or two. I'll post again when I get back. Happy New Year!

Merry Christmas Everyone!

Merry Christmas to everyone. I hope it's been a good one and that you all got lots of good stuff if you wanted it and not too much junk if you didn't.
Well, it's my second Christmas away from home (sorry 'rents, but probably not the last). We spent Xmas Eve day, wandering through the enormous Sunday market picking up Secret Santa presents. There were many cool things -especially art- I would've loved to have picked up for myself or you all but everything I liked was huge and heavy. I almost did you a favor.... Then we went to a Wat for "Monk Chat." It was cool, just talking to this young monk who was finishing monk university. Part of his English training is to sit and just talk about anything so we finally got some explanations about some of the things we'd seen.
Then in the evening, our guesthouse had a special party. They cooked up a huge dinner, brought in a guy to play (what else?) reggae music, and we all played a few kids games. I was in one against three other guys where you have to pick up a small coin at the bottom of a plate of flour with your mouth, then eat two of the driest cookies, blow up two balloons until they pop, and then down an entire bottle of coke. I failed miserably. We also exchanged presents with Secret Santas. I got two little puzzle toy things that have been driving me mad since. It took me fifteen minutes to get the first one apart and I still haven't gotten it back together. Finally, we sent off a few of the floating lanterns that I had seen the night before. They're paper lanterns with a small oil lamp inside like a mini hotair balloon. Apparently, some people send them up with fireworks dangling from below so they go off in the air, which is probably why I got confused.
After the party, a group of us set off to a bar and hung out until late, listening to good Dire Straits covers and horrific renditions of the Killers. It turned out to be a good group of people so we had a good time.
Today was a little surreal. They're having a flower expo in honor of the king's 60th year on the throne and every Thai person we met kept telling us to go see it. We finally did and it was... special. I don't know if it was the dippy Xmas jingles playing non-stop, the blinding sun, the outdoor air conditioners outside the oil company sponsored display on sustainability, or the endless captions lauding the king's wise and loving leadership towards the "New Theory" of agriculture, but the whole thing left us thoroughly blasted. Oh, and I learned that Zoo gets crabby if we don't feed her enough veggies.
As a side note on the king, Thais genuinely seem to worship the guy. A good tenth of the population wears the same yellow polo shirt with the royal logo on it on any given day. But this guy is far from glamorous. He's always portrayed with a rather odd expression -a blend of stern, loving, and bewildered- and always carrying a camera or playing jazz.
So that's it for now. We're flying to Luang Prabang tomorrow so I'll hopefully sign on again in a few days. Merry Christmas again.