2/25 - Transliteration by a Chicken

I've just had a big Beer Lao at the place where we made a CD from our memory cards, nearly filled to capacity. Is there any place in the western world where you can have a beer served to you as you burn a CD? Perhaps there is, but I've never seen it. Furthermore, is this going to become the format for posts now? A mention of something consumed, in a brief paragraph at the start? I ask this because, contrary to popular belief, I'm not entirely in control of this thing. My subconscious is largely that which dictates its format, its organization, and its general flow. So let's just hope it doesn't get too caught up in certain formats. Everyone likes variation, after all.

Now, briefly, a running list of Aubrie's injuries:

-Smashed foot, still bruised (though walking is quicker now)
-Cut finger (after trying the Opinel out on an apple)
-MIldly Scraped palms (after going through a sand patch on the bike and losing control)

She's holding up quite well though.

Tomorrow we get more intimate with the Mekong River, setting out on a 10-hour journey to Pakbeng along it. We'll spend a night there and then continue down the river for another full day to the Thai border at Huay Xai. 'X' in this case is pronounced like a soft 'S'. Which brings me to,

Lao transliteration:

It's a funny system, devised by the French according to the peculiarities of their language, and yet seemingly also devised by aliens with no grasp of the Roman alphabet. For instance, I should really have put 'Luang Phabang' under the current location heading, as the 'r' in 'Prabang' is a completely useless letter. There is no 'r' sound in Lao. I don't know who thought to put the 'r' there, but it's in wide use. Similar absurdities include various consonants, which now escape me but I think include 'j' amd 'k', are actually meant to be pronounced as a 't'. Why not just write it as 't', then? We may never know.

Speaking of Lao, we met a bird the other day who spoke a bit of it. I'd never witnessed this phenomemnon before. He was a jungle-bird type with yellow flaps on his head and a black body. I fed him apples, and he responded by first laughing at me, then doing some jungle-bird calls, then speaking in Lao. I'm not sure what he was saying, but I know the word for "thank you" ("khawp jai") and it wasn't that. Still, he was a good bird--very adept at catching bits of falling apple (I wasn't about to take my chances with that beak.)

We took a trip out to some waterfalls yesterday, and I swam in the aquamarine-colored pools, but only for a short while as they were freezing. A French family was nearby us at our chosen pool, and as the kids played in the water the father lit up a joint, waving to his kids happily. This fit perfectly in my mind as the kind of family that would think to take their kids to Laos. But in fact, all over Luang Phabang are American families (man with plaid shirt and khaki shorts, wife looking stressed, one son, one daughter, eight and ten respectively) wandering about, looking fresh out of their Indiana church, and sounding like it too. There are several serious Ned Flanders look-alikes in town. You can picture what I mean. All I ask is: why?

My subconscious is working well today, giving convenient lead-ins to my major topics of discussion, as pondered while riding over here on my Chinese bicycle, and while showering this morning. The previous paragraph brings me to,

Tourists Taking Over L.P.:

It was bad enough in Vientiane and Vang Vieng. Here, you'd think you were in a town where 40% of the population is foreign. Of course, it makes sense. This town is a UNESCO World Heritage site. It's manageable and small, is dotted with beautiful temples, and is flanked by two picturesque rivers (Mekong and Nam Khan), whose confluence can be observed at the northern tip of the peninsula which contains the old city. On top of this, there are several non-stop flights here from Bangkok. There are droves of them here--the usual backapacker bunch, as well as many elderly couples and full families of five--and it's clear that the word has gotten out about Laos. It's not as if I'm not part of the problem, but I just wasn't quite prepared for it. They almost ruin the laid-back feeling of the place, but not quite. In a few years, it may be beyond hope.

Presently, it's still a great place to hang out, once you learn to tune out the theme-park feeling that overcomes you in certain areas. The rivers on each side are gorgeous, and the countryside beyond is mountainous and uninhabited. Palm trees dot the banks, which feature a steep drop-off due to the low water level. Between them, there are temples on basically every block. As the sun sets, the sky behind the palms turns a brilliant orange, and then a deep pink, and at the same time the monks start chanting in all of the temples. Traffic is never much worse in the old town than the occasional motorbike or tuk-tuk. (A tuk-tuk is a three-wheeled, open-air passenger vehicle.)

The animal cruelty of which I spoke in the previous post wasn't so terrible--just a person keeping a bush baby on a string, looking generally unconcerned about its well-being and periodically pulling it off the ground so that it dangled slightly. It just seemed to be another example of the lack of concern for the environment, including animals, which is pervasive throughout the world. What has made me more angry during this trip has been the extent of littering I've witnessed, mostly by the locals. There doesn't seem to be any concern that throwing trash into the woods might be a bad thing. When the bus broke down briefly between Vang Vieng and here, they were tossing used motor oil containers, oily towels, plastic wrapping--anything they could find bascially, into the bushes by the side of the road. I see this on a smaller scale most days on the street. Someone with plastic in their hand will just let it drop. This is clearly a problem throughout the world, as I see it in New York City all the time, but the problem seems to be much worse in developing countries. It enrages me, especially seeing how accepted it is as a standard practice.

Moving on from that, however, some notes on Lao food, in closing:

Lao food has probably been my favorite out of all the countries we've passed through. To start with, sticky rice is great. Nothing much to it, except that I've always enjoyed rice when it's been made "glutinous" (such as in the Japanese food 'mochi') and sticky rice to me tastes like rice that's about halfway towards glutinous. In any case, sticky rice is eaten with the fingers out of a small wicker basket, an activity that I find most enjoyable.

Another standout dish is laap, which is a salad, usually with minced meat in it, consisting of mint, onions, some sort of green bean, and various other vegetables all chopped up into small pieces. They may put fish sauce in it too. It's incredbly refreshing.

Also, the Scandinavian Bakery nearby makes the best chicken sandwich--it's about a foot long and has curry sauce and mayonnaise all over it. I may go have one after this.

Luang Phabang will have been the place we've stayed the longest in, at 8 nights by the time we leave tomorrow.

Into Laos, Photographs

In Thailand just before crossing the border, by G:





Gabe filming sunrise over the Mekong from the Thailand side, by A:





View of the Mekong from Orchid Guesthouse in Vientiane, by G:





Gabe with Beer Lao, next to the Mekong, by A:





Ugly Dolls (l to r, Mr. Juicy and Ugly) with mad Kip, by A:

At Wat Pho, Photographs

A monk walking past the Reclining Buddha, by A:





The Reclining Buddha, by A:

















Child at feet of Buddha, by G:





No shoes allowed, by A:





Aubrie facing a smaller Buddha, by G:

Bangkok Photographs

Near Siam Square at dusk, by A:





BTS Skytrain tracks, Chit Lom Station, by A:





Gabe on Skytrain Elevated Walkway, by A:





Aubrie on same, by G:





Near our third, and worst, hotel, by A:





Modern Art Museum, clearly no longer open, by A:





The Terrifying Edifice, by A:





Garbage just off of the Chao Phraya River, by A:









The Chao Phraya River Taxi, by A:









The King of Thailand on one of his many billboards, by A:

Two More Photographs From Malaysia

Aubrie at the tea fields, by G:





Anti-AIDS campaign billboard in Tanah Ratah, by A:

2/19 - And the Chinese Hospital Fell Out of the Sky

I just ate some sweet fried water buffalo. I feel guilty about it, since I tend to feel a bond with the water buffalo living here, but I wanted to give it a try. Aubrie and I have taken to regularly talking to the many chickens wandering the streets in Laos. The locals must think we're out of our minds.

Aubrie's foot is not broken, according to the doctor who we saw today. We went first to the international clinic right in town, on rented bikes (Aubrie is much faster on these than when walking) and it was typically run-down and dusty, with the odd young Lao girl walking by connected to an IV. Not sure what makes it international, but the doctor (who showed up on his motorbike half an hour after we got there, having supposedly finished a surgery) suggested we x-ray the foot, though that meant going to a different hospital, 4 kilometers away. So we followed him on our bikes, he trying to maintain our slower pace, along dusty roads under the midday sun. The ride, though hot, was actually great. It was our first time away from the tourist hordes since getting here (more on that later) and we were left with mountains and fields. It was a similar feeling to when the bus broke down on top of a mountain yesterday while getting here (but more on that later too). The hospital 4km away ended up being the Lao-Chinese Friendship Hospital, newly completed last Autumn. It was really impressive after what we've seen elsewhere. The very odd thing about it was that all the equipment in the hospital, right down to the power outlets with the slanted prong inlets, were Chinese. Even the phone had Chinese characters all over it. It would seem that the Chinese simply lifted a hospital out of China (we are quite close to it at the moment) and placed it in Laos. As Aubrie said, "the Chinese hospital fell out of the sky."

In fact the X-Ray machine was probably the only piece of non-Chinese equipment, appearing more like some Soviet relic from a bygone era. Odds are that's exactly what it was (the Hammer and Sickle is everywhere here--have I mentioned that?) In any case, there was no being shielded from the Rays for Aubrie. They just placed her foot on a table and the nurse ran back behind an iron barricade in the middle of the room, about the size and shape of a door.

The doctor was a great guy, although his English wasn't great. He was a little off-put by me showing an interest in staring at Aubrie's foot bones up on the light-box, but otherwise things went smoothly. The whole thing, with a pair of basic wooden crutches, x-rays, exam, and some pills for swelling, cost her $60. Official label for the injury is a sprain. But I swear, you would've thought it was a break too if you'd seen it. Photos are on the way, but they never really did justice to it.

On the way soon is a post which has many complaints in it, so brace yourselves all you optimists! Among the topics for complaint will be: littering, animal cruelty (to marsupuials, even), backpacker and retiree hordes, the Mekong Guesthouse (aka Guesthouse of Death (we're out of there now)), and Lao roads.

Aubrie Speaking: American HMO's Pull Through at the Edge of the World

It seems that American HMO's can, and do, come in useful. Who would ever have thought this to be true? I'm covered by a travel insurance company, Assist America, through Columbia University's medical insurance program. They have a 24-hour emergency contact number and an email address, so I sent them an email informing them of my condition and asking if there was any way that they would provide me with crutches. Within a number of hours, they had emailed me back, seeming quite concerned about my injury and offering me a whole host of medical options, one being, of course, to head back into Thailand, which I don't want to do. So, they instead went ahead (without me asking, no less) and found me an international clinic in Luang Prabang, called the center to notify the English speaking staff of my possible arrival in a few days time, gave me the name of a specific doctor to contact, a Dr. Sune, told me the clinic's hours of operation, and the list goes on and on.... They even asked if I was able to get around and if I needed anyone to assist me. And to think that all this time I harbored an immense hatred for private medical insurance companies--well, to be honest, perhaps I still do. The lesson may be that they only care about you once you leave the continental United States.

As for the state of my foot, it is slightly less swollen, thanks to the incredibly friendly owner of the Erawan Restaurant in Vang Vieng, who has provided me with ice free of charge. I have little memory of how I actually did injure my foot--it was the middle of the night, and me being the strange nocturnal riser that I am, I got up out of bed and toppled to the ground, with all my weight landing on my toes and my foot. I immediately cried out in pain, which sent Gabriel shooting out of bed quite disoriented and confused, and I was overcome with nausea and cold sweats for about ten minutes from the pain. I think Gabriel thought I was in the midst of dying from some sudden onset of a tropical illness, until I explained that I had hurt my foot.

The woman at the Hopital de Vang Vieng--well, let's place "hopital" in quotes--told me, in broken English, that my foot wasn't broken. Then she said, soon after, that it was broken. Who knows. Judging from the size of it, the pain, and the extent and the severity of the bruising, which has now started spreading up the top of my foot, I would say I've broken something. I suppose I will never know, as the probability of them having x-ray machines in Luang Prabang is very low.

In Gabriel's next post, he will tell you about all the ways in which my injured foot has allowed us to meet more people. It's a good conversation starter, as you can imagine.

Now, on to Vang Vieng. This "ban farang," or foreigner's town as they call it, is small and somewhat sleepy. It's the dry season, and the brownish-red dirt blows around and covers my feet by the end of the day. It has the feel of a desert to it, both because of the dry earth and the cool temperatures at night. The giant limestone karsts that line the town are the epitome of the sublime, green vegetation clinging to the white stone, covered most of the day in a light mist, and thrusting up to such heights and such beautifully organic shapes. It gives Vang Vieng the character of a place situated at the edge of the known world. If this is the end of the world (there is even an "End of the World Cafe" here, B. Leigh), I'm a little disappointed to see how many typical backpackers are here, but happy to see that Pepsi is in great supply. All of these elements make Vang Vieng, and Laos in general, the most interesting part of the trip so far.

2/15 - Farang Town and The Broken Foot

We've arrived in Vang Vieng, which is just under 200km north of Vientiane. It's right along a very nice river, the Nam Xong, across from which are a number of massive and gorgeous "sawtoothed limestone karsts" as the guidebook calls them. Basically, they're big limestone mountains that jut up into the sky dramatically. Much cooler than your average non-limestone mountain.

What's making things more interesting, however, is the fact that Aubrie managed to break at least a couple of her toes the other night, and possibly part of her foot. Seems she had a bit too much opium and thought that jumping twenty feet down into the Mekong would be a good idea. I knew I shouldn't have left her with those Lao gangsters.... Actually, it was a simple trip and fall in the hotel room which caused it. The injury doesn't look too great (two toes are pink and purple), and we've had to employ some interesting tactics to get her around. She can walk, barely, but very slowly and with a distinct limp. So when we came up here I either carried both packs while she limped, looking awfully strange, or carried her a ways and then went back and carried the packs a ways, alternating between the two. There's a hospital here which we went to check out today, but the combination of no English, no facilities, and no crutches available (someone else has taken the only pair) yielded us nothing. I guess they're not kidding when they tell you to get to Thailand if you have any medical problems; you should have seen the hospital. But because we don't want to give up on our hard-earned visas just yet, we're going to wait to see if they have anything of use in Luang Prabang, where there's supposedly an "international clinic."

In response to comments: I'm sorry to have been so transportation- and money-focused on this blog. I guess these are the things that tend to preoccupy me. I think that it's also due in part to the transportation segments being the times when all the action happens. As soon as we leave one guesthouse for another, that's usually when weird things start happening. I'm also dismayed to see that you, MCF, find that I've been complaining too much. Perhaps sometimes things come across as complaints when I'm just meaning to get across the bad but usually comical things that happen. Somewhat related to the transportation-focus problem, the things worth complaining about are usually the most interesting things that happen. Please keep in mind that when I complain, it's usually more that I'm laughing at whatever has just occurred and find it worth sharing with the blog-world. Perhaps I'm making excuses for myself though....

In any case, internet is triple the price here (damn, there's the money again--but isn't it interesting to know relative internet prices in Lao cities??!!) so I'll be ending here. Will have more of a place-focused update when I return, and Aubrie promises to comment more on the foot situation, as well as on this town, in her own post, very soon (probably tomorrow). Stay tuned, because at that time we'll also touch upon the subject of Lao road bandits.

2/12 - Barking Deer, Fried or Dried

We've arrived in Laos, after a fairly smooth trip, and in this internet cafe there's a Russian woman screaming into a phone directly behind me. 70% of the time on this trip, the keyboards I've worked on have been terrible, and this one is no exception. It's as much of a rattler as the Malaysian local bus was. I'll take this time, therefore, to note that any spelling or grammatical mistakes, heretofore and now, must be seen as the product of speed of typing (I'm always on the clock) and/or the keyboard either disregarding me entirely, or otherwise limiting me in general.

Today's title comes from a post-it note placed in the guidebook by Aubrie. It's available up north, supposedly.

And before moving on, I should indeed apologize for the singling out of balding men as prostitute-takers in The Land of Smiles (they said it, not me). You're correct, Father, that there is no truly established link between the two and that plenty of full-heads-of-hair-wearing men do support the trade. Nor do I claim to be somehow superior to those balding and seeking out hookers. In writing that, I was merely hoping to give a sense of what I've tended to witness--that many of the men were indeed balding. For the record, though I personally wouldn't want to go bald because I don't think it would suit me at all, I think that balding can actually make a person look cooler than they did previously. In my father's case, he has remained steadily cool throughout the E.H.L.H. (Era of Having Less Hair), though he might not believe it.

Laos lies across the Mekong from Thailand here, and the Friendship Bridge, built sometime in the 90s with the help of the Australians, is the main way of getting across in this area. To reach it, we drove through the night on our VIP double-decker bus (Aubrie and I in the front seat on top, which gave us panoramic views) and arrived in Nong Khai, the border town on the Thai side, quite early, at about 5 a.m. The border didn't open until about 8 I believe, so we sat around for a couple of hours and watched the sunrise. The logical question here is: why don't they leave a couple of hours later so there's no sitting around by the border? But we've learned not to ask those sorts of questions around these parts.

The drive up was a little strange. Town after town along the road looked exactly the same--a messy strip of auto parts stores and small food stalls in plain concrete buildings, all closed of course because it was the middle of the night, and all the more depressing as a result. Periodically I would wake up (the Thais have not heard of the Malaysian concept of large recliner-like seats on buses and so my sleep was not very sound) and watch as the driver barrelled through red lights, sounding the horn to ward off any traffic that might be coming. At bigger intersections he employed a tactic in which he would slow down as he approached the red light, then make it appear as if he was turning left (we're driving on the left-hand side of the road, mind you). When he was about halfway into the turn, having confirmed that no cars were coming, he would step on the gas and right the bus back onto the main road and continue on. Not really an ingenious trick by any account. The only real low-point of the trip was when we stopped at Nong Khai at 5 a.m. and the guy sitting across from us took it upon himself to start singing loudly and badly. Why would someone think that this was acceptable? Luckily he stopped after about 5 minutes, but still, he made a point of conversing loudly with his friends for the next hour or so.

Crossing the border into Laos, there's an immediate difference in the feeling of the place. Everything on the Lao side seems a bit more haphazard, including the people. We had to switch to a minibus to go the 25km to Vientiane, and the road there was total traffic chaos, with no lines in the road and a mess of cars, tuk-tuks, and motorcycles taking up about three lanes worth of space across. The rule seemed to be that there were three loosely defined, invisible lanes, all of which could be used for traffic in either direction provided there weren't any vehicles coming in the opposite direction. So sometimes it would appear that we were on a one-way road, other times, I don't know, one of those things where all the shitty cars get into a ring and smash the hell out of each other? This look was enhanced by the number of aging vehicles which looked on the verge of complete collapse. Still, there wasn't much in the way of speeding. It was chaotic but also oddly relaxed. This, I've gathered, is the Laos vibe in general.

The roadside was as you might expect it--shacks made of corrugated metal, wood, and concrete; people, dogs, and chickens lying, sitting, or walking around at various points, listlessly. Why is it that man-made materials always turn into a complete mess when allowed to deteriorate? I've been thinking about it this way: anything that people make themselves ages awfully. Metal rusts, concrete crumbles, and even if the thing was built well at first (which is rare) the overall effect is inevitably that it looks terrible. That is, unless the money is available to keep it painted, sealed, and generally maintained. If a tree dies and begins to decay, or something like that, it still looks beautiful. There's a natural progression to it, and a sense of harmony with the surroundings because of that. I guess when people build things, especially cheaply, that natural harmony isn't considered, and understandably so. If I lacked such a basic need as shelter, I would want to obtain it as quickly and cheaply as possible. It's just sad to think that at some point, before materials like plastic and steel came onto the scene, buildings would have been made solely out of materials directly gathered from the surroundings.

Vientiane is a tiny, laid-back place. It's the capital city, but you'd never really know it by the looks. Most signs are in Lao and French here (the French colonial influence is huge), with English and Japanese sometimes making an appearance. We found a place along the road closest to the Mekong, the Orchid Guest House, which is a little more expensive than it should be, but decent. We had to take a $15 air-con room last night but switched to a $10 fan room this morning. I definitely like this town, though there's not all that much of a reason to stick around here. It's decidedly laid back, and has the feeling of a sea-side city, though it's just the Mekong (currently at low levels) snaking past on the western edge. There are a surprising number of great French restaurants and other cosmopolitan eating establishmentse here. We get BBC World in the guest house and there are foreigners all over the place, many of them elderly. It's a lot more tapped into the world than I expected it to be. My hope is that it'll feel a little less so when we head north, but I'm not overly optimistic. Then again, I had a delicious waffle this morning with real coffee (not the super-sweetened kind) and read an English language newspaper over it. It cost under $3. Is it bad that it's possible to have a proper Belgian waffle in Laos? Is it bad to like having a waffle in Laos? In some sense, having all (or most) Western comforts available goes completely against the idea of having a travelling adventure in Southeast Asia, but then again, sometimes I really enjoy them. So the only thing I can hope to do is to partake in them with moderation. But it's something I struggle with on a conceptual level. The evidence of globalization is alarming to me, especially in a country like Laos. But am I overly wary of it? Perhaps it's not such a bad thing. As Aubrie and I discussed this morning, it's a problem only if it's overrunning and eclipsing the local culture. So far it seems like it's doing exactly that in all the places we've been. It's not obvious whether that's the case here in Laos. It does seem like a unique and special place still, which is encouraging. And Beer Lao, the local beer, is delicious. Reminds me of the quality of beer in Prague. I've heard that 1% of the produced Beer Lao makes it out to the US and other countries. If you can find it out there, go and pick some up. At 8,000 Kip for a 650mL bottle, it's a bargain and makes me glad my visa's good for longer than 15 days. For the record, I'm no beer-crazed backpacker, though I may become one during my stay here.

A peculiarity of Laos is that most things can be paid for in Thai Baht and US Dollars, in addition to Lao Kip. I changed $60 into kip yesterday and was given a massive wad of bills about two inches thick. It's quite comical--I have to keep it in a plastic bag in my day pack. They were out of 10,000 kip notes (value of about $1) and had to give me 617,000 kip in a combination of 5000s and 2000s.

2/10 - Thanks to Second Secretary Bouaphanh Vongsavanthong for the Visa Lao

So, it appears we have another mysterious commenter, this time writing about blood clots. I highly doubt that this is the same person who wrote the maiden comment #2, but perhaps we'll never know. Yes, as you mention Randy, I believe there may be some comment confusion going on. But I suppose it doesn't really matter. Who reads this blog and is in contact with Aubrie's departing roommates and/or landlord though? I can't begin to fathom it. And what's this about blood clots?, I can't even imagine. Are thirteen-year old children doing this for fun now, reading blogs and commenting with non-sequiturs? Oh well....

Lao/Laos looks like it will really happen. We picked up our passports with visas for the Lao PDR in them yesterday, and they look legit, stamped by the above named man. Of course, because nothing can ever be 100% worry-free out here, the part where it should list the duration of stay allowed doesn't list anything. But the woman insisted it was all well and good, that now they've begun issuing only 30-day visas so there was no need to specify the duration. I trust her maybe 60%, which is good enough. We catch the bus tonight at 19:30. The people at the shitty hotel we found for the last two nights were good enough to let us leave our big packs there after check-out, so that we could wander about Bangkok free of burden for the day. The other hotel ended up being fully booked, so we called a place that sounded okay despite the name, Charlie House, at random and they had rooms so we just went there. Unfortunately I do believe we were given the worst room in the place, on the 5th (top) floor, no elevator, no window, and dingy brown decor. They insisted it was the only room. We didn't buy that, but what could we do? We paid our 540 Baht per night because we had little choice about it. I was happy to find a room. As it's Chinese New Year week, every place in the city seems to be full. For a while there I thought we'd be wandering around Bangkok for 48 hours without a bed. Then we would have been real backpackers....The hotel was not without it's humor though--on every landing going up there's a nature painting on the wall, but on our floor this was replaced by one of those posters of South American women in thong bikinis facing away, with parrots drawn on their bodies. Also, a sign on the ground floor dictated that "a visitor is allowed to your room for a charge of 100 Baht." Presumably this is the "you can have a prostitute in the room but we'd like a little money for it" charge.

You constantly see older Western men here with young Thai girls. Do they hire them out for the day or something? It's kind of sickening to watch, mostly because it seems to be such a standard practice. It's such a cliche that men would come here to sleep with Thai prostitutes that I can hardly believe it still actually happens. Then again perhaps not all the ones I see are cases of prostitution. Maybe Thai girls just like balding men from Europe. Who knows?

Walking on Thanon Silom the other night a guy flashed me a card in the palm of his hand which read "CD Sex." Just what I was looking for! There were many others doing the same with less imaginative cards, and they would lead people down dark alleys by the hand. I can't quite imagine being interested in CD Sex enough to go along with that.

Bangkok continues to be a place I like. If it had a more extensive transportation system it would be even better. There's an above-ground Skytrain which is five years old, as well as one subway line which just opened recently I believe. They're very modern, quick, and cheap. Traffic is so bad that even though taxis are cheap, we've been trying to take public transport whenever possible. This is also good because I have a fear of taxis ever since Indonesia. Yesterday we wanted to go to the old part of town, which is not reached at all by either transport method, so we took the Skytrain to the river, where you can catch a river taxi. These were good fun, and at 8 Baht per ride very cheap. They cruise along the river and stop at points along the way. The river isn't exactly nice and clean but the urban mess leading right up to and hanging over the water's edge was interesting to see. We took it up to where Wat Pho is. That's one of the bigger temple complexes in the area, and also features the massive, gold-covered reclining buddha, stretching maybe a hundred feet long (I could be exagerating slightly) and thirty feet tall. Otherwise, it was nice to walk around amidst the statues and buddhas tucked away in every corner, and see that impressive building style, where the edges and corners stretch up to sharp points, and ornate, incredibly detailed designs cover everything.

Meanwhile, I don't know what the story is exactly with the "s" at the end of "Laos." I've heard it pronounced as "Lao" mostly, by Thais, Brits, and Australians. Supposedly the "s" was added by the French at some point. But I don't know what the true pronunciation is supposed to be.

I must mention also that at the end of the Skytrain line by the river, at the Saphan Taksin stop, we glimpsed a most terrifying edifice. Chances are I won't be able to get across why the thing was so scary to see, but I'll try to explain. It was a massively tall building, maybe 50 stories, designed in a colonial-type of way so that every window had a balcony with white columns as guard rails. It was the sort of thing you might see on a three-story British mansion. Somehow the fact that there were thousands of these balconies cluttering all sides of the thing caught our attention, but there was more to it. You see, as you went up the floors, the columns got less and less white gradually, so that by about halfway up they were starting to be grey, the color of the concrete. The top third of the building became irregular in shape, jutting out and inward seemingly randomly, and at the very top, Rebar (that's the steel that reinforces concrete, as covered previously) jutted out from the thing at all points. The effect, if you're having trouble imagining it, was somewhat like seeing a "ghost mansion," but with the proportions of a skyscraper. It felt like gargoyles would come alive and come streaming from it at any moment. And I can guarantee that there were headless ghouls roaming the hallways, no doubt about it. It looked much like something out of a bad dream, or a Disneyland theme park, which my father might argue is about the same thing.

Also, I neglected to explain the "Krung Thep" in the title a couple of posts ago. That's the local name of Bangkok, and actually it's short for a massively long name that I dare not try to write out here. It would stretch for several lines. So people tend to call the place Krung Thep, whereas the rest of the world uses "Bangkok."

I feel that I might be making these posts a bit too long, but there's so much to talk about out here. Overall, Thailand feels friendlier than any of the previous countries. The feeling here is good, even when it should be bad, considering how noisy and smoggy this city is. The sprawl of it reminds me of Tokyo. There are a few tall buildings but nothing so ostentatious as in KL or Hong Kong, and mostly it's just concrete, lifeless mid-rises with ads all over them. And yet, whereas Tokyo makes me feel like I'm going to suffocate, Bangkok does not. You might argue that at this point I'm actively looking to like a place I've travelled to, so my feelings for Thailand might be exagerated. It can be disheartening to travel and find yourself wanting to move on every time you reach a place which sounded so good during the planning stage. This is what most of Indonesia and Malaysia felt like. Either way, I can't wait to see what the rest of Thailand, and Laos, is like.

The packs are a little on the heavy side, but I maintain that this is Aubrie's fault, because at every airport book store she buys a new book, and it's usually a while before we get a chance to post things back. Speaking of which, dad, did the small box from Hong Kong arrive? Did I mention that we sent a bigger box from Singapore? As for the packs though, mine is great. I can comfortably carry the weight for long periods. Aubrie's bag is giving her a lot of trouble. We can't figure out why it isn't working properly, distributing the weight too heavily to the shoulders, whereas most of it should be on the hips. Either we're doing something wrong or the bag sucks. In any case, that's become a problem because whereas I would prefer to walk a kilometer or two if we have to (in fact I kind of enjoy the pain of walking with the pack, when it does start to hurt, as it's that sore-muscle variety of pain) usually it's impossible with Aubrie's bag the way it is. Overall though, even though my bag is manageable at its current weight, I think I could have brought less and been fine. But I'll report more on that at the conclusion of the trip hopefully.

Will report next from Vientiane, Laos.

Cameron Highlands, Malaysia Photographs

All by Aubrie. I'll attempt to upload some of my photos soon.

Out the window of the ancient Land Rover, a view of the Boh Tea Estate:





Workers spraying the plants:





Ravi, our guide, talking about the tea leaves:





More of Boh Tea plantation:





Pitcher plant in the jungle atop Gunung (Mt) Brinchang:

2/7 - Waiting on the Lao Visa

We're still in Bangkok, and it looks like we won't be leaving until the 10th. Originally the plan was to stay here for two nights, and in that time get a Lao visa and a train ticket to the border at Nong Khai. Unfortunately since we didn't get to the hotel until 1 a.m. the first night, we couldn't resist the urge to sleep in on the 5th, and as we wandered around trying to figure out how to get to Laos at various travel agents, we realized that we weren't going to be able to get out on the 6th as planned. So we rushed to find another hotel to stay in, but even the place near us that charged 800 Baht a night (about $20) had rock-like beds and didn't seem quite worth that, so we went online and found a place for the same price, the Bangkok City Inn, which is actually pretty nice, and booked it for two additonal nights.

We also decided that the sleeper train was going to be a bit too expensive, and because a bus would actually take us across the border, as well as the 25km over to Vientiane, the capital, that sounded like a better plan. You see, we've come to find that in Southeast Asia, every connection between modes of transport is a potential nightmare, not to mention a huge undertaking involving heat, heavy bags, and people yelling prices in your ear. Interesting at first maybe, and it does make you feel like a real backpacker, but it's not really worth the discomfort of it in general.

The problem here in Bangkok is that the Lao embassy, which we had planned to visit to get our visa, is far out of town. Also, there are conflicting reports all over the place of how much the visa actually costs. Our books say it should be around $27 for a 30-day visa at the embassy, or $30 at the border for a 15-day, and that at agents in town it should be only a couple of hundred baht more (a few dollars). We went into a T.A.T. (Tourism Authority Thailand) place on the first day and asked about the visa, and the woman told us that if we got a visa on arrival at the border (this is not ideal for us because we may want to stay longer than 15 days) it would cost over $100, and that she could arrange a 30-day one in advance for us at the bargain price of about $75. Clearly this was highly inflated. The woman felt a little slimy to us (yes, when I touched her arm strings of slime came off of it onto my hand) so we found out about the bus they had to Vientiane (950 Baht, about $25) and then left to research more. This morning we set off to go to the embassy itself, hoping that this would allow us to get the price in the guidebook, but after a few of the hotel staff told us that "the Lao embassy has most likely moved" and a cab driver told us that he would charge us 300 Baht just for the one-way trip there, it became clear that even if we found the embassy and got there in time, we would end up spending $75 just going back and forth, or close enough. Luckily, we found a travel agent down the street who would do the visa for about $50 per person, which is actually worth it considering that pays for them to fill everything out, and for a messenger to take our passports over there and wait for the visa to be issued and then bring them back. Only problem is we can't get the visas until the 9th, and she indicated that we shouldn't plan to leave until the 10th, which meant adding another two nights here. The woman at the Bangkok City Inn said they're full until the 13th, so we've gone back online and tried to book an additional two nights through the same site, and we're waiting for the confirmation now. I'm hoping they allot some rooms to these agents/sites and that they'll have a room for us even when the hotel itself doesn't. If not it'll mean rushing to find another hotel tomorrow, which will be a huge hassle. In any case, we went back to that T.A.T. place and booked the bus for the 10th, through a much less slimy girl, who incidentally gave us a price that was 100 Baht less. The bus leaves Bangkok in the evening and arrives in Vientiane in the morning, taking about 14 hours.

I had a Som Tam last night (Spicy Papaya Salad) and as I was feeling adventurous, I chose to have "salt crab" added to it. These were small black crabs which were put in whole and crushed. It was prepared for me by a ladyboy. And if you've never been hit on by a ladyboy while they prepared a papaya salad for you, you've been missing out. As he crushed up the stuff, he asked where I was from, and laughed exageratedly at my answer, then said "Som Tam" a number of times, trying to get me to repeat it, gesturing flamboyantly all the while. Imagine a very large, very effeminate man with long hair making eyes at you as he crushes crabs and chillis and you'll pretty much have it. Unfortunately, though the salad was quite good, I could only eat about a quarter of it because I felt like my mouth had caught fire after a few bites. This was compounded by the fact that Aubrie had rejected her dish because it was too spicy, so I was trying to eat that as well, and it was littered with chilli seeds stuck to every piece of rice, chicken and vegetables on the plate. The unfortunate thing was that it all tasted good, but I could only stand so much pain, so I worked on it slowly, trying to get used to it. By the time I gave up my nose was running and I was sweating and jittery. Is this the standard thing here? Could food really be that spicy and be treated as normal? Could someone get used to that?

Speaking of food, I think taro is one of the greatest things on earth. I don't even really know what it is. Perhaps a root? I've been having it in dessert form here mostly. Inside of a fish-shaped pancake thing for 5 Baht, or as little cubes in a bowl of coconut cream, etc. Incredible. Also, mangosteens--I'd always seen them and heard about them, but last night we decided to buy some and cut them open, and they're great. To start, they're purple with little green stalks sitcking out of the top, and the stalks sometimes have a bright, lime-green goo that sits inside, and which sticks to your finger very tenaciously if you attempt to take it out. I felt like I was playing with a Nickelodeon product. Inside, the fruit is very small and white, arranged kind of like a citrus fruit but tasting not much like one. The flavor is sweet but odd and somehow delicious. It also stained my knife purple. The fruit situation in general here is quite good, as it tends to be in Southeast Asia. We went to the Tesco near the end of the Skytrain tracks and it was this cavernous, massive place, kind of like a Wal-Mart but less depressing. There we boughtpre-cut dragonfruit, guava, and mango. The latter two came with a pack of sugary-chili--at least that's what it tasted like--presumably to put on the fruit. I was disappointed by the dragonfruit. It tasted quite a bit like nothing. It all came to under a dollar.

Bangkok feels cheaper than any place we've been. I'm not sure if this is actually the case, but it seems to me you could eat three meals a day here for under $3, which is better than previous cities. It's as congested and polluted a city as people portray it to be, and actually it can be quite unmanageable and overwhelming at times. Walking by the side of main roads you have to yell to talk to anyone, and you start looking for a place where you can buy a mask to save your lungs with. It's also a sprawling, huge mess in general. But there's something I like about it. KL was pure chaos and made me want to get out of it, but in Bangkok the chaos feels good somehow. We haven't actually had a chance to get to the older part of the city yet because we've been running around trying to sort out the Laos stuff. Hopefully tomorrow we'll venture out there.

They do a thing at the beginning of movies here where everyone stands up and they play a song (national anthem?) while showing odd photos of the King walking around with a camera around his neck. It's pretty strange. Honestly I would have expected better production value though. The rain effect is somewhat lacking.

I'll leave you this time with some quotations from the notice on our door at the hotel:

"Do not take all kind of weapon and ammunition in, please keep it at the reception desk."

"Smoking in bed is not advisable."

"Do not expose clothes on the air-conditioner. Do not repair it."

2/5 - Mysterious Commenter / Krung Thep

In Bangkok now. Quick post only to ask the commenter who wrote "Mysterious maiden, where art thou...." who they are. You have mentioned the need for Aubrie to contact you but have not left your name and no amount of detective work on our parts could come up with who you might be.

Dad, don't worry, there are many less Mickey Mouse ears in the crowds here....

More soon.

2/3 - Back In S'pore

Let it be known that the abbreviation "S'pore" is not my invention. They often refer to it here that way on road signs and postcards and I'm merely borrowing it, so as not to have the full "Singapore" appear in too many entry titles.

Anyway, we're back in this splendid city for one last night before the flight to Bangkok tomorrow. I like to think of the Thailand/Laos portion as Part II of the trip, with this currently being the conclusion of Part I. So, for those of you that were craving a little organization, there it is.

We decided to do the daytime local bus to Tapah/"Super VIP" bus to Singapore all in one go. The Singapore bus was supposed to take seven hours and it took something like nine, but that sort of thing I'm used to at this point. The bus was very comfortable. They seem to have a number of buses in this region that are configured with one seat on one side and two seats on the other, seating about 25 in total. This means lots of legroom, legrests, etc. Like business class on a bus. It cost us about US$11 for the ride down. We were on one of these types of buses on the way up to Kuala Lumpur, but this time the bus was much newer, with an engine that could support acceleration on inclines, and decent shocks. Not to mention that despite lots of legroom on the first Super VIP bus, the seats didn't recline. Seemed an odd oversight. The designers of the latest bus cabin had thought of the recline feature. The only drawback here was that instead of having a non-working bathroom in the back with the door locked (as has been the case on all other buses), this bus just didn't even bother installing one at all. So we had to rely on the whims of the driver and time ourselves accordingly, being careful about water-consumption amounts all the while.

And the local bus down the mountain to Tapah--it was a bit of a rattler, as we were warned, but it wasn't too bad. Waking up that morning I had envisioned the brakes failing at a critically steep point (such is the way my mind works at times) but that never happened, and even though it seemed from the sounds the thing made that there was a fairly good chance that something would break, it was an uneventful ride down. Fairly interesting was watching the people who got on the bus at various points midway down the mountain, emerging out of the forest to flag it down. They looked decidedly different from the Malaysians you see in towns and cities, their faces somehow more dramatic and weathered.

Now, a few words about Singapore, because I haven't so far covered it much. It's a very wealthy city, especially compared with its neighbors in the region. You can pretty easily forget where you are when you walk around the center of Singapore. Most will disparage the place for being overly sanitized, and I have done so myself in fact. It's true that the place has an overly controlling government (banning gum chewing, for instance) which has tried to sweep as much chaos under the rug as possible. At times it feels that the Singaporean authorities would like very much to turn the entire city-nation into one big Disney park. Posters all over town display instructions on how to spit into tissues instead of the ground, signs in public toilets depict how not to miss the urinal, etc.

The result of this approach, of course, is a convenient and efficient, heavily modernized, orderly, and comfortable place, with air-conditioning everywhere and speeding, on-time public transport. And as much as that has come at the price of the sort of character that less efficient cities tend to have, this in effect becomes its own sort of character, and is just as fascinating to witness in action as the utterly chaotic cities elsewhere in the region.

Meanwhile, Singapore has plenty of neighborhoods, such as Little India, where we're staying, that are nothing like that sanitized veneer that central Singapore has. Walk into this area and it feels like you're in India, with Bollywood hits blasting out of shop windows, people wandering around in the road (though without the cows, sadly) and vegetables and fruits spilling out onto the street.

Then there's the fact that Singapore has some of the best trees of any city I've ever been to. In fact, I think it takes the top spot. Massive, tropical-looking trees lining the streets, palm trees covering parks, etc., all make for a very green city with lots of shade, which is crucial when the sun is out, and which is oddly lacking in most other cities around here. I suppose it has to do with time and money, which Singapore has and other cities don't. But in any case, the overall effect is a very pleasant and relaxing place to spend time.

Finally, this place we're staying in, which is called The Inn Crowd, is a great little hostel that I discovered when I came here for the first time last August for a few days. It's dorm-style accommodation, so it means sleeping in a big room with a bunch of other people and using a big communal bathroom, but the place is so nicely designed and kept so clean that it's much more pleasant to stay in than most of the hotels we've been in. It's painted in orange, blue, purple, and red, which sounds garish but actually has a really nice effect. All the furniture is modern and simple, and there are windows and even skylights in the dorm area. The only unfortunate aspect is that some members of the staff have this odd attitude towards the people staying here, as if they expect us to be typical backpackers, and therefore be irritating and careless, and so even before we walk in the door they have decided to be vaguely irritated at us during all of our interactions. I suppose the return for them is a feeling of superiority over the mindless backpacker. Well, perhaps I should direct them all to read my blog, for then they would see that I am not mindless, but a genius, clearly, and would surely repent and sign the place over to me to run as I see fit, for I am clearly the Seer of the True and Good Path and Eternal Enlightenment will only come through Me....

Speak to you next from Bangkok, then.

2/1 - How Tea Is Processed

We did end up hiring a guide, in a way. We let the owner of our hotel talk us into going on a half-day thing that they organized, which ended up being Aubrie and I, as well as an English couple from Bristol, and our guide Ravi, in an ancient green Land Rover. It was actually pretty cool, and not too horribly touristy. We went up to the highest elevation around, on Gunung Brinchang, which is at 6,666 feet. Then we took a leisurely walk through the jungle for about an hour, and checked out some pitcher plants, which are those scary-looking pitcher-like plants that eat insects by luring them in and then dissolving them with acid. This is not to be confused with the venus fly trap, which only grows at lower elevations. Afterwards, we drove over to the tea plantation nearby, where we were taken in to see where they process the tea leaves. As much as I felt like a silly tourist at that point, I have to admit that it was interesting. They use ancient machines from the 1930s to roll the stuff violently- it's quite dramatic, really. The highlight of the whole thing was driving through the tea plantation, which is beautiful. In the distance the tea plants appear as acres and acres of bright green amoeba-like shapes, looking most dramatic on the steeper parts of the rolling hills.

Were you aware that 80% of the workers on the plantations are Indonesian single men from Sumatra who get sent up here on three-year contracts? And were you also aware that 50% of the population of the Cameron Highlands is Chinese, and 30% is Indian? Furthermore, tea is the 2nd most consumed beverage in the world next to water, and Americans drink 80% of their tea iced. Luckily for all of us, the health benefits of tea are not lost in the icing process.

At one point, passing a golf course on the way to the jungle, Ravi told us, "very cheap, only 50 Ringgit per day....many Japanese come, stay three, six months, play every day." And then later, walking in the jungle, on the topic of the monsoon season, he said "not many tourists, but still some come, Japanese....they have short leg but can still do it."

Ravi was a cool guy, and the Land Rover was cool to cruise around in for a morning, so I was happy enough to have paid 40 Ringgit for it (about $10). This wasn't in our budget, but oh well. Speaking of which, it's very difficult to stay on budget in cheap places, because everything's so cheap that it feels like you might as well have that extra drink or take the 1st class train seat. Anyway, we're still living on pretty meager sums, but probably not doing quite as well as we could be doing.

Some Looming Dilemmas:

We're not sure how we'll get back to Singapore. We could take the local bus to Tapah, down the mountain, then catch a Singapore-bound bus from there, and spend another night in Singapore before our flight to Bangkok on the 4th. But that local bus to Tapah is described as a "real rattler", and it would mean an early morning. Or we could take the overnight bus to Singapore and save a night of accomodation, sort of, but it arrives into Singapore at something like 4 in the morning, and our flight out isn't until 10:30 p.m., so that might leave us in a bad situation. The other option is going back via Kuala Lumpur, and spending one night there, but that means braving that bus station madness and windowless-box rooms once again. Having so many options is a good feeling, like we're free to follow our impulses, but then again, I have no idea which way to do it and we have to decide soon.

Slightly further in the future, we also have to decide where in Bangkok to get our Laos visas, and how to get to the Lao border (overnight train, flight, or bus). But more on that soon.