What a long, strange trek it's been.

A little friend at the thousand year-old Thare Gompa in Khangsar, Manang Distrtict. I received a blessing from the Tibetan lama here for a safe passage over the mighty Thorung La Pass.

(please click the audio file above to listen whilst you enjoy this blog, o reader)

Tibetan refugee Tenzin Sangpo struck the last chord on his homemade tanyin, a six-stringed guitar-like instrument and it slowly faded into the thick fog settling around us.  I pressed "stop" on my tape recorder, thanked him for sharing his music, and quickly gathered up my things. I slung my pack onto my back for the last time and strode into the dense fog. My friends and trekking partners of the last three weeks had been walking ahead of me when I heard the faint strains of music leaking onto the road from an unseen courtyard. Knowing full well they would ditch me, I stopped anyhow. Thirty minutes later, I was far behind the group. We had been making our final descent through scattered villages and massive, terraced rice paddies. The goal, a rural taxi stand at the Phedi trailhead, lay hundreds of meters below by line of sight. But a cloudbank now blocked my view, and dusk was dropping quickly. 

Rice terraces.

A wide fork in the road appeared in the fog. It began to rain lightly at first as I made a quick decision and jogged down the right fork, my pack bouncing. An old man pointed me down the muddy, rutted road towards Phedi. It began to pour. Jeeps heading up the mountain for the night, loaded with families returning from the Dasain holiday, coughed past me and splashed mud belligerently in my general direction. After ten minutes running the margins of the road, I saw a wide, flagstone steps leading down into the rice fields. At first glance it appeared be one of the beautiful staircases maintained by the Annapurna Conservation Area Project that criss-cross the mountains and hills in this region. I didn’t think twice as I turned into them. I knew I had to go down; the steps looked like a reasonable way to achieve this. Running down the slick steps, I soon passed from neon green rice paddies into dark, lush forest. 5 minutes passed; the steps got a bit mossy and meandering, then narrower and narrower. 10 minutes passed; the trail became a cow track with vegetation, heavy with rain, leaning into my path. They soaked me as I stormed through, heedless of my mistake. After 15 minutes, I realized I was hopelessly lost and skidded to a halt. There was not a soul around. Just rice and barley and croaking crows to witness my bewilderment.

My friends were gone, I was lost, it was getting darker and a bit chill. I started to laugh. We had been so close to finishing the trek without any incidents whatsoever. (Unless heartburn from deep-fried Snickers banana pie counts as an incident.) Then it all fell apart at the very end in just a matter of minutes. So I laughed. 

My laughter initially frightened the young Nepalese women who emerged from the mist and dripping foliage. She was downslope from where I stood giggling in the light rain. My savior was dressed in a mist-dispelling electric pink sari. Strips of green bamboo and flowers were woven into her dark hair and a tikka of rice grains and scarlet sandalwood paste covered a circle on her forehead the size of a tea cup’s saucer. She was returning from her grandparents’ village. She had gone there for the last day of the Dasain festival to receive the tikka blessing from the eldest members of her extended family. I found this out later. 

“Where are you going, sir?”

“Phedi?” I uttered without much hope. “And not sir, Michael, thanks.”

“Oh my goodness!” She laughed, the fear slipping from her face. “You are so very much lost!”

“I know.” We both laughed.

“Follow me, Michael Jackson!” If I had a rupee for every time I was mistaken for the late King of Pop by Nepalis, I could afford to buy the Elephant Man’s skeleton back from MJ’s estate.

“Back up the hill? No way to keep going down?”

“No, mati, UP! Very much up, all the way back to road.” She tittered as I sighed and turned around.

As we walked back up a series of twisty side trails, she told me about her family and the Dasain festival. She asked about me and my family and America and my age.

“Almost 30.”

“Oh my goodness!” Covering her mouth to smother a shocked laugh.

“Thanks. You’ll be 30 someday too, you know.”

Out of the crops and back in the land of mud homes and buffalos being milked, she said goodbye to me and pointed me mati to the road.

“Dhan ya baad. Thank you… but what is your name?”

“Rosina.”

“Oh, ramro Rosina. And your full name?”

“Rosina, just Rosina.” Her eyes flickering nervously past me to the glowering man who walked towards us.

“Namaste, Rosina.”

“Namaste, Michael." She hesitated."I’ll never forget you...” She blurted out, then ran into the house.

I fell a little bit in love right then. I didn’t think pretty young women actually said things like that; at least not to me. I brushed past her father presumably with a curt namaste exchanged. I wouldn’t forget her either. 

Back on the road, a groups of teen boys played on a huge bamboo swing erected especially for the end of Dasain. They wanted to walk with me in the right direction, but I was running again and soon left them behind. Their fire crackers split the quiet, woolen air at my heels. At the next fork in the road (damn these choices!), I shook a man awake who had passed out on the damp hillside. Barely able to lift his head and none too pleased to be roused from his stupor, he drunkenly waved me on towards Phedi. He was asleep again before my footsteps faded away. One more fork. One more affirmation of my path, this time by a pair of young lovers leaning dangerously close to each on the side of a pond.

But still darkness and rain were falling together. Although I was on the right path, I had a long way to go. A mild edginess, younger brother of panic, was coiling around heart. Surely my friends had gone to Pokhara already, leaving me to take a costly taxi ride alone. Plus, I was dead tired. Since leaving the of Jhinu hot springs, this morning, my friends and I had hiked up and down for more than nine hours, going up 1000 feet then down 3000. My feet were not particularly happy with me. 

As I set one mud-caked boot onto the main road, a motorcycle engine revved in the mist. Instinctively, my arm thumb shot up, led by a hitchhiker’s thumb. The driver fishtailed to a stop in the mud next to me. The proverbial cavalry had arrived. Fumes of rakshi, a home-distilled rice whiskey, rolled over me as he said, “It’s too muddy…for me to take a rider. And I’ve been drinking…just a little bit…with my brothers. Ok, get on.” So, on I got with my big backpack and hiking stick and dignity. We fishtailed at low speed down the road dodging jeeps and animals, forging murky puddles, and singing. Raj taught me Nepal’s unofficial national anthem, Reshan Firiri, which as far as I can tell is about a flying insect. And I, feeling quite happy to be off my feet yet still moving forward for the first time in almost three weeks, really belted out the old tune.
(click below to listen to this classic tune with some modified lyrics especially for tourists.)

Trad. bamboo swing constructed for Dasain.

The road down to Phedi was much longer than even I expected. I clung to the back of the motorcycle as we bounced down through rice terraces and little towns for over half an hour. I realized I never would have made it down before dark on my own. More of the towering bamboo swings rose out of the fields around us, swarming with people at play. One old lady motioned for me to join the fun as we rolled past. A little boy made faces out me from a window. Raj and I talked about his difficulties finding work and his hope to join his father in New York City someday. Finally we dropped below the clouds and into the valley bottom. The last bit of sun for the day slanted beneath the fog bank before it was extinguished by the mountaintops, a premature sunset.

Our familiar mud track emptied us onto the paved highway leading back to Pokhara and hot showers and warm beds and food other than the ubiquitous national dish of rice and lentil soup called dahl bhat. Pavement, what a strange thing. Too move along at such speeds without feeling the texture and flavor of the ground beneath your feet. Wondrous strange after so many days getting to know every rock and step of the Annapurna Circuit so intimately. Anyhow, on to Phedi. 

Without any real hope of seeing my buddies there, we pulled into the roadside trailhead. Dave and Brandon saluted me with the celebratory Everest beer they were sharing as the other David loaded a taxi with reeking, sodden gear. No one seemed surprised at my sudden reappearance on the back of a motorcycle, just as they had not been surprised by my disappearance up on the mountain earlier. Turned out that everyone had gotten separated in the fog and taken whatever way seemed best. Dave and Brandon found each other, the most direct path, and the proffered bamboo swing ride. David followed conflicting sets of directions down an alternate, but ultimately sound, trail arriving just minutes ahead of me by foot. And I… well, I took the road less traveled, and that has made all the difference.

Epilogue

A big steak dinner in Pokhara later that night became fertile ground for my little tale to assume the epic proportions it now boasts. Even though there is a little creative license here and there, this I tell you is true: somebody actually said “I will never forget you” to me. I can die happy now, knowing that I won’t be forgotten.

If you are interested in learning more about the people and landscape of the Annapurna Himal region or my trek, check out my annotated photo album on Facebook (click here) or stay tuned to this blog for a compilation of the sound and music recordings I made on the trail. They should be up soon.

Above Milarepa's Cave and below the glacier/ice fall at the base of Annapurna III. I was happy evidently.

P.S. Can someone teach me how to resize my embedded audio players? Pretty please?

My debut podcast! "The Babas of Pashupati"

Two young boys on the street stroll arm-in-arm on a sunny Sunday morning.  They could be boys anywhere.  But they’re not.  They casually inhale glue fumes from a plastic bag that they pass back and forth as if they were sharing a Coke. A policeman on motorbike drives past. Three Germans in expensive trekking gear quietly windowshop.  No one gives them a second glace. This is Kathmandu, Nepal.

I stay with a Nepali family, just outside the main tourist ghetto, Thamel.  But it feels a world away. The streets are deep mud as this is monsoon season. Piles of rubbish, open sewers, and homicidal taxi drivers make navigation…fun. Once a stranger gave me a ride home on his motorcycle.  Turns out he lives below me. As the only foreigner in the neighborhood, most people in the area recognize me after just 3 weeks.  But as I walked home late last night, a man chatting on a corner with his friends called “Hello, Hello, wrong way, sir” as I turned into my dead-end courtyard.  “No, it’s okay. I stay here, but thanks.” Well, at least the dogs in dark alcoves don’t bark at me anymore. They recognize me.

 That’s a good thing because everything that happens here or in any of the flats on my courtyard is amplified and broadcast to all of the flats.  This means that at any time of day or night, you can hear people talking, laughing, cooking, cleaning, washing.  Bollywood music bounces around, flutes intertwining with the cries of a boy that walks the street each morning advertising his skills as a porter to anyone that can hear.  At 7:15 promptly each day a woman begins pounding spices with mortar and pestle in the flat adjoining my own.  I always wake with a start, thinking that the rhythm must be Rajesh, my friend and owner of this whole building, knocking on my door.  I add my own sounds to the courtyard racket:  American indie rock, NPR podcasts, downloaded movies.

I just finished a short course in audio storytelling taught by independent radio producer, Jack Chance from Bozeman, MT.  For my first assignment, I went to Pashupati, the holiest temple in Nepal.  Anya Vaverko, the woman that organized the workshop, and I spent the day with the homeless, dreadlocked holy men, or saddhu babas, that live there. Learning the scripting and editing process at the moment and should have that audio story posted up here in a day or two. 

So here at last is my first audio story, "The Babas of Pashupati." Enjoy and please give me feedback! I know there are some audio quality issues to work out as I get better at editing. Let me know what you think of the content, my voice-over style, the length and pacing, anything. I really want to get better at this, so I need objective opinions. Don't worry about my feelings! Lay on the criticism, as long as it's constructive.

Back on the blog.

wow, so hard to get back into this after such a long break. I think after all the positive responses to my Bhutan blogpost, I got some kind of performance anxiety. I have actually been nervous to write about my time and travels in Borneo feeling like I couldn't live up to people's expectations for my writing. THEN I remembered this is just a blog, and I am not a paid writer, and not many people really read this thing after all, and I was just getting a big head. Sooooooooo, I am back at the keyboard.

I will eventually get some more substantive posts up here about the work I have been doing with Noah Jackson and his NGO Forest Voices here in Malaysia this summer. But in the mean time, I have decided to try a new format. This one will be shirt little quips about the randomness of my life and travels in Asia this year. No big thoughts. No big ambitions. Just my disassociated ramblings. Here goes:

Today, I went running for only the second time since I have began traveling in January.  It is ususally too hot here, but rainy season has arrived early which cools things down considerably and blocks out the brutal equatorial sun. I run in this massive, hilly Chinese cemetary surrounding the apartment complex where I stay in Kuala Lumpur with my friend Mohala. The cemetary must be at least 4 or 5 square miles with a big network of access roads running through it. The Chinese build these huge elaborate enclosed graves of molded concrete and tile.  Their families come and leave offerings of water, incense, flowers. You know, the stuff you need in the afterlife.  On most of the older graves there are also black and white pictures of the inhabitant of the grave. Thes pictures are somehow made of tile and very durable, so the pictures are in quite good shape. Chinese men and women stare out at me as I run past. Some smile, some just appear sullen, others distracted. I pretend that I am running a marathon and that they are cheering me on to the finish (ok, let's be honest, it's only a half-marathon, even in my fantasies.) There are children in the pictures too. I wonder if they died as children or if their family members chose the pictures of them as children to put on the grave. If they never had a better picture than their 1st grade school photo with slicked down hair and tight collar. Twice, older people visiting graves have yelled at me. I assume that they are telling me to leave, that I am being disrespectful. But I like to think that the dead enjoy me jogging past. That it adds a little excitement to their eternity.

Travel is the act of leaving familiarity behind. Destination is merely a byproduct of the journey. - Eric Hansen

So I just haven't been feeling super inspired to write anything since Bhutan, kind of a travel hangover or something. Or maybe the tropical heat and humidity of the rainy season in SE Asia  have made me lazier than I already am as a blogger. So this will just be a shorty, mainly sharing some interesting ideas I have gleaned from reading I am doing in preparation for my summer volunteer position in Malaysia.

I am in Kuala Lumpur, Malayasia now, as you can see from the pic featuring me looking heroic beneath the famous Petronas Towers. I'm  preparing to do some work in the forests of Malaysian Borneo for the next month or so. I will be working with a fellow U of Montana grad, Noah Jackson, and his NGO, Forest Voices, to document local ecological knowledge of the Penan tribe. Please check out Noah's website to get an idea of the great stuff he is working on, plus there are a ton of gorgeous photos from the area I will be working in.   http://hopeinlight.com/    The Penan are formerly nomadic hunter-gatherers that live deep in the rain forest. In prior times they were infamous as head-hunters and deadly accurate blowpipe marksmen. Now, they are just another group of indigenous people getting a raw deal from their national government that values logging and oil palm plantations over their traditional rights to forest lands. An all-too-common tale across the developing world. Noah and I will be using mixed methods of interviews, short video clips, audio files, still photographs and more to allow them to tell their personal stories about life in the forest in their own words. So in a month's time I should have much fodder for the blog.

Until then here are some passages I wanted to share from Eric Hansen's wonderful1983 travelogue, Stranger in the Forest, chronicling his epic 9 month trek on foot through the forests of Borneo and the time he spent with the indigenous forest communities there.

After months of continuous jungle trekking, ridden with leeches and  injuries and mishaps, Hansen starts to lose focus on why he is doing this to himself and begins to wish he was elsewhere. A feeling familiar to most long-term travelers. I think they also call it "homesickness." The antidote usually involves a hot shower, some Western food, and a good night's sleep.
"My anxiety about wanting to get "somewhere else" was partially due to the fact that I knew too many "other places" in the world. Fo Bo 'Hok and Weng (the author's Penan forest guides) there was no "other place"  apart from the jungle, and I grew to envy their sense of place, their contentment with where they were. When I became anxious , I would embark upon extraordinary journeys in my mind. When, for example, a steep, muddy trail became impossible because of the leeches, I might imagine myself on a pair of cross-country skis, gliding across expanses of unmarked snow, a picnic lunch and a bottle of wine in my pack. This sight of bee-larvae soup could send me around the world to the Empress Hotel in Victoria, British Columbia, for afternoon tea and scones with freshly whipped cream and thick strawberry jam. Outside, a light snow would be falling on the passing traffic."  
  
This passage really resonated with me as I have often caught myself completely absent from the present moment at times during my travels. In my head, I am back in Montana, floating the Blackfoot River with a cold can of Kettlehouse beer in my hand as rainbow trout break the surface all around me slurping hatching insects of the glassy surface of the water. And then I realize the little Thai lady that is serving me pad thai, sigh, again, (never dreamed I would or could get sick of the stuff!) has been trying to hand me the plate for a minute or more. The other effect is that everywhere I go is constantly being sized up, compared to, and judged against other places that have formed and informed me throughout my short but rarely sedentary life. To my chagrin I have frequently found myself making snap judgments about a new place. A gorgeous beach in Cambodia in its own right gets reduced by my overactive mind to merely "not as pretty as Hawaii." Unfair, I know, but sometimes my brain is just too quick for me!

 "Travel is the act of leaving familiarity behind. Destination is merely a byproduct of the journey."
- For someone who intentionally arrived in Asia with no plan or budget or timeline or return ticket, I can say, definitely, yes, destination is nothing but a byproduct!

Hansen goes on to quote a Victorian-era, British traveler,  Isabelle Eberhardt, from her book The Oblivion Seekers. This is a long passage but worth reading all the way through. I don't necessarily agree with all of her sentiments, but it is good food for thought.

"To have a home, a family, a property or a public function, to have a definite means of livelihood and to be a useful cog in the social machine, all these things seem necessary, even indispensable, to the vast majority of men, even intellectuals, and including even those who consider themselves as wholly liberated. And yet such things are only a different form of slavery that comes of contact with others, especially regulated and continued contact.

I have always listened with admiration, if not envy, to the declarations of citizens who tell me how they have lived for twenty or thirty years in the same section of town, or even the same house, and who have never been out of their native city.

Not to feel the torturing need to know and see for oneself what is there, beyond the mysterious blue wall of the horizon, not to find the the arrangements of life monotonous and depressing, to look at the white road leading off into the unknown distance without feeling the imperious necessity of giving in to it and following it obediently across mountains and valleys! The cowardly belief that a man must stay in one place is too reminiscent of the unquestioning resignation of animals, beasts of burden stupefied by servitude yet always willing to accept the slipping on of the harness.

There are limits to every domain, and laws to govern every organized power. But the vagrant owns the whole vast earth that ends only at the nonexistent horizon, and his empire is an intangible one, for his domination and enjoyment of it are things of the spirit."    hmmmm....

Until next time, 

Michael

Bhutan: The Land of the Thunder Dragon

My excitement soars along with the plane as we ascend from Dhaka, Bangladesh on the final leg of my trip from Bangkok to Bhutan. After an in-flight meal of pad thai and tropical fruits, the pilot comes over the intercom and directs our attention to a pure white pyramid breaking through the cloud layer to the left of the plane. My wide eyes have already been glued to it for several minutes. I feel strange, excited yes, but also calm and quiet seeing this peak for the first time in my life. Japanese tourists crawl over one another to to get a glimpse of Qomolangma (Tibetan), the highest and most sacred mountain on earth. For once I'm not the obnoxious tourist. Soon, Sagarmatha (Nepali) is obscured by a sea of clouds as we begin our descent into Paro, the only airport in the whole country. (Bhutan, btw, is 1/8 the size of the state of Montana and has a popn. of only 700,000 people compared to Montana's 900,000 souls.) Suddenly, the plane breaks through the floor of the clouds, and we are deep in the belly of a massive canyon. Our wings practically brush the blue pines clinging to the steep mountain slopes within a few hundred feet of my seat. As the jet swings left, right, and precipitously down to follow kinks in the canyon, I laugh out loud with childish delight. The women next to me, clinging with white knuckles to the armrest, gives me a dirty look. Terraced fields of rice and chilies clustered around boxy, white farmhouses slip quickly beneath us before giving way to the tightly packed stores and homes of Paro. Then suddenly we are on the ground without a jounce in one of the smoothest landings I have ever (not) felt. I have arrived in Bhutan.[ P.S. I am later told that the take-off and landing in Paro are considered among the most technical and dangerous for a commercial jetliner on earth. Check that off my bucket list.]

I am in here the tiny Buddhist kingdom of Bhutan to attend a wildlife biology conference and hands-on workshop in the holy town of Bumthang, home to the most temples per square kilometer in Bhutan, as well as the Ugyen Wangchuck Institute of Conservation and Environment. I have been invited as a guest of the government by a classmate of mine from grad school at U Montana, Tschering Tempa, who has organized the conference. Although the plane ticket is outrageously expensive for an intra-Asia flight Bangkok, once I am in country all expenses are covered by the conference. There is no other way I could afford to come otherwise because Bhutan is a semi-closed country. Tourists must arrange visas through travel agencies and pay at least $250 per day for the privilege of traveling here. This policy was set in place by the last king, a beloved father figure named Sigme Jigme Wangchuck, to promote low-density tourism that would not overtly impact the deep Buddhist culture. Thanks to this and other policies, such as measuring the country's progress through Gross National Happiness rather than GN Product, Bhutan is a place relatively untouched by western influences. 80% of the people are still rural subsistence farmers, and the country is 72% forested. These numbers didn't really become real to me until our 12 hours bus ride from the capital Thimphu out to Bumthang over some of the curviest roads I've ever seen. We would go for long stretches between tiny villages and hamlets , and the dense blue pine forests just seemed to roll on forever.

Goodness, how do I describe this place? Well, for starters it looks a lot like the northern Rockies or the central Alps (think Switzerland with yaks and Buddha statues everywhere) with steep mountains hemming fertile valleys that grow potatoes, rice, buckwheat and all manner of veggies. Crystalline streams, blue and milky green from glacier dust, tumble over huge granite boulders through slot canyons. Not surprisingly, Bhutan's economy rests on tourism and hydropower-generated electricity exported to India.

What else? Everything, everywhere from cargo trucks to temples to bank is hand painted with intricate Buddhist motifs of animals and symbols and frequently, huge, graphic phalluses (aka penises) that are meant to ward away evil spirits. Despite being devoutly Tibetan Buddhist, Bhutan is a very sexually open place, with both men and women being allowed to take multiple sexual partners in a discreet process known as "night-hunting." Sex ed is taught in schools and condoms are distributed freely and widely. Perhaps that's why everyone is so happy here. Oh yeah, and marijuana grows wild here all over the place, my first sighting being right outside the airport. That might help too.

Archery is the national sport, with men competing every weekend or any free moment, it seems. It involves more singing and dancing to psych out your opponent and celebrate good shots than actual firing of arrows. Extremely fun to watch with all participants wearing traditional clothes and really whooping it up. Um, what else? The whole country is supposed to be vegetarian, but like every other Buddhist country I have visited, they are emphatically not. The one twist here is that Bhutanese abhor killing…so they get Indian immigrants to slaughter the pigs, chickens, and cows for them. Ah, spirit of the law, that's my kind of religion!

The people of Bhutan, despite being generally calm and tranquil at nearly all times, often burst out into song and dance at the drop if a hat. They love to dance in big Greek-wedding style circles, especially around fires. The Institute had a great farewell bonfire for us, and I picked up a few steps. The majority of the singing I experienced came from Tempa and the drivers of the buses and trucks that carried us everywhere in Bhutan. Sonam and Tempa would serenade us with both traditional and original songs they composed, most having to do with lengthy but eloquent metaphors about love and sex. One day, on a hike to a tiny hilltop village in the remote Tang Valley, we came upon a group of women using huge wooden posts to pack clay into the rammed earth walls of a traditional Bhutanese farm house they were constructing. As the women did this back-breaking work all day without a man in sight, they sang a song punctuated by the deep bass thuds of their vigorous dirt-packing. The song explained that although men might seem to be in the ones in control in Bhutan, it's really the women that get it all done and make the real decisions. Based on the sinewy biceps these ladies were sporting, I was prone to agree with them.

Temples, monasteries, and chortens (memorial monuments, some simple, some grand) thickly dot the landscape. You are never far from the sounds of chanting, prayer flags flapping, bells ringing, and prayer wheels spinning. The Bhutanese are so keen on getting their prayers heard that they have built water-driven prayer wheels that sit in little huts over streams that keep the wheels spinning out prayers all day and night. And of course, each flap of a prayer flag in the breeze is another prayer or wish shot out into the cosmos. Local deities inhabit every nook and cranny in Bhutan, from homes to trees. They must be appeased with gifts or special chants from paid monk squads or scared away by giant phalluses. The fusion of religion and politics, church and state, is so complete that from regional administrators all the way up to the Parliament and the King, government officers share space with to monks and lamas in huge , fortress-like "dzongs" that house them both. Dzongs are often perched in strategic spots on cliffs and riversides because they originally served as forts against the invading Tibetans, and later British. Due to their impressive design and features such as internal water tanks, Bhutan is one of only a few Asian countries to never succumb to invasion or colonization. Because of this Bhutanese are very nationalistic and proud of their unique place in the world. But at the same time, kids are taught impeccable English in school starting at a young age, and many are given the chance to study at foreign universities the world over. However, unlike international scholars of other nationalities, the Bhutanese abroad nearly always return home to Bhutan to contribute the development of their land. The Bhutanese are keen on developing their homeland and raising the standard of living, but not at the cost of tradition and family. Doesn't sound like a terrible place, huh?

Perhaps one of my favorite days in Bhutan was my last there. Those few of us left after the conference went on a trip to one of Bhutan's most famous landmarks, the Tiger's Nest, a very sacred monastery perched precariously halfway up a massive cliff. Next to the monastery is a huge ravine with a waterfall tumbling down its face. Prayer flags are strung across the entire gorge and up and down the cliffs above and below the temple. The temple was supposedly created in the exact location where Guru Rinpoche, the lama that brought Buddhism over the mountains from Tibet, landed after flying across the Himalayan Mountains on his magic tiger steed. The temple is so delicately perched on the cliff that some Bhutanese believe that it is held in place by the hair of angels. The hike up to the Tiger's Nest started hot and dry at the bottom as we passed through cow pastures. Soon we entered a forest glen where three huge prayer wheels turn together over the tumbling stream. Women call plaintively to you, "Shopping…?" as they try to interest you in fake turquoise trinkets. We hike up and up through pine trees into dry oak forest festooned with Spanish moss. Several horses that ferry supplies up the mountain everyday come trotting down the trail unattended, seemingly happy to have their burdens lightened; we give them the right of way. The trail is so old that in some places it has become worn 6 feet deep into the earth by thousands of pilgrims making this trek over the years. Piles of rocks, prayer flags, and prayer wheels make frequent appearances along the trail. We stop at one spot where one is meant to see a handprint in solid rock left by Guru Rinpoche; however, the sacred relic doesn't reveal itself to our foreign eyes. We finally make it to the overlook, "the postcard spot," our first closeup look at the Tiger's Nest. It is magnificent. Nearby I light a yak butter lamp for 5 rupees and say a prayer for my grandmother back in Delaware. We then climb all the way down to the base of the waterfall on a series of vertigo-inducing rock steps carved into the Cliffside before climbing back up the other side to the gates of the monastery. One of our drivers Sonam tells us in his broken English that the sheer drops were making his heart feel "itchy." We all knew what he meant! (Sonam also describes the crazy, hairpin roads of Bhutan as "curly" and himself as the "undrinkable driver" for his refusal of all alcohol.)

Inside the monastery, I see that one temple is actually six temples stacked on top of one another and carved into the rock. In the first one, I get a lama to bless some prayer flags with holy water from one of the many sacred springs trickling from the rocks beneath the Tiger's Nest. On my way out I hang them along with thousands of other flag strands to spin prayers off into the canyon breeze until winter storms wear the cotton threads down and ultimately pull it out into the void. In other temples, monks play huge bronze horns, bang drums, and chant atonal mantras. One temple houses giant, intricately painted and gilded statues depicting the many incarnations of Guru Rinpoche, both benevolent and wrathful, as well as Buddhas of past, present, and future. In the final temple we enter, pushed back into a cave within the cliff, I leave an offering along with hundreds of others on the tiers of a crumbling chorten, and make a wish. I almost went the most obvious route and wished to return to Bhutan someday, but I stopped myself and offered a different prayer. I wished to have no more wishes.

I could go on and on, but perhaps the best things I can do is tell you to check out my pictures of the place that I will post on Facebook soon hopefully, fast internet connection willing.

 

Culinary Delights

Doma – A special combination of betel leaves betel nut and limestone powder. An addictive stimulant chewed all day long by most men and many old women. According to traditional belief, the leaf represents human skin, the nut a shrunken skull, and the lime the gray matter of the brain. When chewed together, a chemical reaction turns one's saliva bright red, representing blood.

Chongmo –rock-hard pieces of dried yak cheese sold on a string; off-white, mild taste, and smelling of smoke; it took me an hour to chew through my first piece; aka Bhutanese bubblegum;

Ema-datsi – a spicy staple present at every meal, and the national dish. Basically whole chili peppers cooked in yak cheese. Unlike most culinary traditions that use chilies as a spice or condiment, Bhutanese cooking treats the chili as a vegetable to be consumed in heaping piles. My capsaicin-addicted tastebuds and I are pleased; my digestive tract is not.

Buckwheat noodles and pancakes – common wheat is also grown here but native buckwheat is prized for its taste and high nutritional content

Red rice – another staple of the Bhutan diet, tastes like white rice, but looks much more awesome on your plate.

Favored veggies - often served in yak cheese like ema datsi – carrots, green beans, asparagus, fiddleheads (young fern buds)

Pork Bacon – thick strips of gelatinous fat, not fried crispy as we do it, but left practically raw

Dahl – a thick Indian-style lentil soup with mild curry spice, served with nearly every meal

Excellent raw honey and wild strawberry jam available from local producers all over Bumthang province.

Cow's milk yoghurt from local dairies; tangy and sour and full of probiotic goodness.

Oh wait, almost forgot the delicacy served to us at a special dinner given by the provincial governor: Pickled cow hide aka leather! Chewy and spicy, not as bad I had imagined it would. Unfortunately, when I ate this I was already coming down with a stomach virus. Apparently, pickled leather was the straw that broke the camel's stomach, and it was soon deposited in the bushes outside the dining room at the beginning of a 12-hour stint of food poisoning-esque sickness. Yum.

The Motorbike Chronicles ( I couldn't help myself...)

Wow, I can't believe that I have let a month go by without blogging.  No excuses, but I did get pretty far off the beaten path since then. I even vetnured into lands entirely devoid of internet, perish the thought. Additionally, I find that the longer I travel the less time I want to spend in internet cafes. That maybe because here in Vietnam the cafes are packed full of screaming boys playing online videogames and cranking bad Asian pop music at high volumes. Or it just may be that I have gotten more comfortable as a solo traveler and don't feel the need to seek solace in my community of electronic friends. Oh yeah, I also found out that more people read this thing than I realized, and it freaked me out a little. Any or all of the above will suffice for a decent excuse, I hope.

So on to the meat of this blog, concerning the title.  After leaving the Imperial City Hue, I traveled down to China Beach with some friends (location of the infamous surfing scene in Apocalypse Now), then on to Hoi An, a beautiful ancient city in a river delta by the South China Sea with a mixture of old Japanese wooden buildings and newer French colonial architecture. There I linked up with my friend Amy Morison, an Aussie expat. I stayed with Amy for 2 weeks, a much needed break from constant packing and unpacking of bags.  While in Hoi An, enjoying the nearby beach and best food in Vietnam, I decided that I really wanted to get off the well-trod backpacker path and see something different. Soooooooo, I bought a beat-up old Honda motorbike for less than 300 bucks, got used to driving it around town (mostly to the beach and back every day), then hit the road.  Or the trail.  To be exact, the Ho Chi Minh Trail, which was the route used by the North Vietnamese Army and the Viet Cong to smuggle supples to the South.  The trail runs through the mountains and highlands along the border with Laos, and it was under constant bombardment by the US during the war, although it was never shut down in that time. Today, it is a reasonably well-paved, 2-lane highway that passes through hilltribe villages, mountain passes. primary rainforest, coffee abd tea plantations, rice paddies, big cities, national parks, past waterfalls and bamboo long house on stilts, and much more. I passed elephants and oxcarts, funerals and weddings, saw one deadly accident and many many minor ones, all all on my own, just me and the motorbike named Speed.

For my first long distance 2-wheeled excursion, I have to say that it was amazing. In the first 5 days, I traveled about 1000 kilmeters (~600 miles) stopping in the towns of Dok Glei, Pleiku, Ban Ma Thuot, and the tiny M'nong village of Ban Don on the Laos border.  My only problems came when I had a breakdown during a torrential downpour on my first day out ( I was able to limp into town and get the chainguard fixed for roughly 25 cents) and a flat tire on the second day, which went flat just as I got to a major town. So for an older, high mileage motorbike, I feel very lucky.  After 5 days on the road, I made it to Dalat, capital of the Central Highlands region. It is a gorgeous small city nestled in pine trees (the smell of which made me homesick for Montana) with a big lake in the middle of town and the best, eternally spring-like weather in all of Vietnam.  From Dalat I made excursions into the surrounding countyside discovering tiny villages where people just about popped the eyes out of their heads from staring at me, Cao Dai temples, and even took my bike (nicknamed Speed) offroad on some really fun singletrack adventures going where I thought no scooter could go. One day I met some American girls in town and led them on a trip to a high pass from which you could see 50 miles to the sea. It was great to do some riding without all my heavy gear bungees to the back seat.

Finally leaving Dalat just 4 days ago, I rode down from the Highlands to the coastal plain. My last big mountain day on the bike started with a thunderstorm as I left Dalat. Luckily, there are cafes everywhere along the roads here and I just popped in for a cup of java to wait it out. And when there aren't cafes there are little rest stops that serve coconuts, sugarcane juice, and cold drinks and provide hammocks for lounging under shade tarps.  This ride down to the coast on Route 28 was one of the best I had in the 'Nam, with a rolllercoast-like series of hairpins down into jungle valleys. I was sad to say goodbye to the mountains and pine trees, but the beach was calling.  I rode into Mui Ne, a coastal town known for windsurfing, sand dunes,  and brewing fish sauce. The whole town reeks of the sauce which is made by layering sardines with brine in big clay pots and letting it ferment in the sun for up to a year. The Viet use it in place of soy sauce or salt. Yum. The beach was really nice though, and I rode with some Canadian girls and a Brit out to the huge  pure white sand dunes next to a lake filled with pink lotus blossoms (at some point I am going to figure out how to upload pictures to this blog and save myself a lot of typing.). At the dunes you could rent plastic sleds from kids for 50 cents and going sledding down the dunes. Good fun, but ridiculously sandy and hot!

Yesterday, I did my last big ride on Speed most likely. I left Mui Ne and rode along the coast with great views of the ocean almost the whole way. I stopped at the amazing Kage lighthouse surrounding by twisted red and yellow sandstone formations and passed salt fields, mud springs, and dragonfruit orchards.  Last night I finally stopped in Long Hai, a beach town frequented by Saigon weekend warriors. I hit the beach for a hour before sunset and what a scene it was! Huge families having picnic dinners, teens racing tricked-out motorbikes on the sand, kids playing soccer, women bathing fully clothed (they hate the sun here, or at least getting tan), ice cream vendors cranking dance music from their carts, and local ladies selling bbq-ed octopus.  A relaxing last night before the big hot crazy city.

So today I make a short ride into Saigon where I will sell Speed in the next few days and become another backpacker on the bus, just like everyone else. Sigh. But it was an amazing journey over the last few weeks, and I am certain it is not my last big motorcycle trek, but just the first. All in all, not a bad inititation to the two-wheeled brotherhood. All told, I will have done about 900 miles on a bike that is only 110 cc and tops out at 50 miles per hour.  I have been run off the rode by trucks and buses and braved the ridiculous no-hold-barred traffic of Vietnam and navigated in a country with little to few road signs without getting lost once.  I got so far off the beaten track I didn't speak English for days ( a rarity in Asia nowadays) and got a workout from performing charades so much in order to communicate. I have walked into places where everyone stopped eating at the sight of me and women felt compelled to show me how to use chopsticks and roll springrolls I appeared so helpless.  Not bad for a kid from Delaware, I think.

Coming soon: Reflections on a year of traveling. Yesterday marked my 1-year anniversary of leaving Montana and beginning my travels around the US and Asia.

Addendum to the last blog about wierd food:

Cat - a corner beer joint, Hoi An. Minced meat formed into little squares with rice flour. Grilled in banana leaves. Gross.
Frog- Better than chicken. Delicious in fact!
Fish pate sandwich - I got this from a little old lady at the night market in Dalat. I triewd everything she had to offer from night to night. It was all amazing, but she spoke no English, and I very little Vietnamese. So besides this one, I had no idea what I tried.
BBQ-ed octopus head - Long Hai beach.  Marinated, stuffed with cilantro, line, and scallions. Grilled. The best seafood I have had in a long time.

Strange foods that I have eaten.

 

Well,  my ambitions to keep a true log of all the delicious and amazing foods that I have sampled in SE Asia have come to naught. So, to at least throw all you interested foodies out there the proverbial bone, I will now share, not all the great food, but instead the much shorter list of really strange foods I have tried in my travels thus far.  Try not to judge me too harshly...

Thailand
Deep-fried Giant Water Bugs with chili sauce - the Chiang Mai night market. Crunchy and delicious! Each one was about 4 inches long by 2 inches wide.

Laos
Grilled river weed - Nam Tha National Park, from the Nam Ha River.  Basically green algae but smoky, chewy and quite tasty.
Chicken feet grilled on a skewer. Local festival in Huay Xai.  Chewy, tough, and nasty. Full of bones and cartilage. Never again.

Vietnam 

BBQ water buffalo balls on a skewer with mint. Excellent!
Pig intestine soup. Actually sweet and soft, despite intestine usually being really tough other times I've had it.
Chicken liver soup. Meh.
Green unripe mango with spicy salt and pepper. Sour and hot and sweet. Yum.
Fetal duck egg. A truly beloved culinary treat here in VN and China. Basically a duck egg that is ideally about 5 days away from hatching. Served boiled in the egg (you crack it out like a hard-boiled egg) with pickled ginger and coarse salt and pepper. Mine was actually not so bad as long as I didn't look at it. However, my friend loves these things, eating about 2 per day, and got 1 that  was a little too  "ripe" and he had to spit out a tiny beak and feathers. Ugh. Won't be taking any more chances on these little guys.

And.....drum roll please...the moment that you have all been dreading....
DOG. Yes, I went for it here in the city of Hue one night while I was couchsurfing with two Vietnamese university students. Cooked in and eaten in a greasy spicy sauce over a charcoal brazier that is set directly on the table. In big unidentifiable chunks with baguette to dip in the sauce, rice noodles on side, plus basil, mint and other greens to chew along with it.  Really greasy, tough and full of gristle. Pretty disgusting but a worthwhile experience I suppose. This dish is eaten mainly by drunk men late at night, kinda the equivalent of post-drinking Pita Pit or pizza in the U.S. I was complimented by my Viet friends for being the only westerner they met that was willing to try it.  I was doing okay until I got to the ribs, the tiny little ribs. A single tear rolled down my cheek as I thought of my first dog. (Not really...?) I was also offered "little tiger" (aka house cat) which I politely declined. Gotta save something for Cambodia!

So for some quick redemption of Vietnam in order to leave you with a pleasant taste in your mouth, here are the good things about the food here (mostly relics of French colonialism). The following are almost entirely absent from Thailand, if not prohibitively expensive.
Ca Phe Sura Nong - Dark,  strong coffee made by a single-cup slow-drip method referred to as "lazy coffee" b/c it takes so long to drip. Served with a layer of sweetened, condensed milk on the bottom. Often iced.
Baguettes!
Cheese! - extremely rare in Asia.
Wine!
Chocolate!

Places that scare you

Confess your hidden faults.
Approach what you find repulsive.
Help those you think you cannot help.
Anything you are attached to, let it go.
Go to places that scare you.

-words from Pema Chodron, an American Buddhist nun, that really resonate with me as I travel.

So, I made it to Hanoi in one piece and am loving this chilly, northern weather. Hanoi is a vibrant, dynamic city with a historical heart. It reminds me a lot of some of NYC's outer boroughs or maybe the east village.  The pho (noodle soup) is amazing plus the good things of French colonialism that remained ain't too bad neither, e.g. baguettes and coffee!  I have made a new travel friend, David Duong, a Vietnamese American, who takes me places that I definitely would not go otherwise. Yesterday, we went to a commune(aka village) outside of a permitted tourist zone. We had to have special permission from the Communist Party and were greeted with lunch with the local police and many shots of traditional rice whiskey, a part of any welcome feast. I got to eat pig intestine, bbq water buffalo, chicken liver soup, bamboo salad, sour melon, and much more. Vietnam is by far my favorite country in SE Asia thus far! Tomorrow, I am heading up into the northern mountains around SaPa on the Chinese border to climb the highest peak in SE Asia, Mt. Fansipan.

A little aloha spirit in Laos.

So it has been a bit since I last blogged. I have been busy tearing up Laos with an old friend  from my time working in Hawaii, Cato Cook. And when not traveling alone, you seem to find yourself with much less time to commit to the internet. Surprising I know.

"So, what have we been up to?" you might ask. Well, here is the abbrev. rundown.

-Left southern Thailand for the north after my scuba expedition. 5 hour bus ride to train station, 11 hour overnight train to Bangkok, 14 hour train Chiang Mai. Who said traveling was all fun and games?
- Linked up with Cato in Chiang Mai, the biggest city in northern Thailand and sort of its cultural capital. Spent a few days here, the best being an all-day cooking class on Sammy's Organic Farm outside the city. Can't wait to cook Thai food for the folks back home.
- 1st night in Laos, the border town of Huay Xai.  Met some French friends that took us along to a festival at a temple outside town they has heard about.  As the only foreigners, or falang, we first gawked at, then taught to dance Laos-style and given free papaya salad to complement our cold Beerlao, the national beer. Also played carnival games alongside teenage monks like throwing darts at ballons and knocking down a pyramid of cans.
- 3 day trek in Nam Tha National Park. One day kayaking along the boundary of the park; two days hiking through mostly pristine rainforest. Both nights we stayed in local hilltribe villages, one night actually in a family's home. We shared meals with villagers and the chief of one village and were able to talk (through our guide) with them about our differing cultures. All meals were delicious regional Laos dishes often with rainforest ingredients like rattan hearts and ginger and we ate with our hands off of banana leaves using sticky rice to scoop up the food. Saw some new bird and bat species (new to me, that is). The forest itself was the best part, absolutely gorgeous. Unfortunately, most of nothern Laos should be forested mountains but have been largely deforested for logging and rice cultivation. The US led "Secret War" that coincided with the Vietnam War  has also left the forest littered with unexploded ordinance. A good reason to stay on trail. Oh yes, and on the 2nd night of the trek at a Lanten tribe village, our guide got us drunk on local rice whiskey aka lao-lao. Cato proceeded to entertain the tribal ladies with his antics that included picking up our sleeping assistant guide Mei and carrying him around, swimming in the river, and slitting a chicken's throat with my knife to make soup at around 1 am.
- The Royal Palace, temples and historic homes of UNESCO World Heritage City, Luang Prabang.  A very interesting style of mosaic murals made of painted Japanese glass pieces is unique here. Sunset from the hilltop monastery of Phu Si. The might Mehkong River flowing along the city's western flank (actually really low right now as we approach the end of the dry season). Luang Prabang also has a lively and sprawling night market that sells everything from t-shirts to bamboo rice steamers to raw silk and hilltribe handicrafts. I bought some spring rolls.
- Vang Vieng, pretty much the only "party place" in quiet, rural Laos.  Backpackers rent tubes and float down the Nam Song River, stopping at bars along the banks. The bars have a variety of ways for drunkards to hurt themselves ranging from huge slides and trapeze swings into the water to mud volleyball to copious amounts on illegal drugs being sold openly.  Cato and I eschewed all the silliness and instead chose to contract food poisoning and spend most of our time running back and forth from our bungalow along the river to the outdoor bathroom. Fun times with a good friend! We did feel well enough to venture out to the river one afternoon for a couple hours, but mostly watched from the sidelines as trashed falang made asses of themselves with body paint, loud music, and overt displays of public affection.  Around 5 in the evening, local Lao adults and children got out of work and school and trickled down to watch the gong show going on.  As a bit of a sociologist, I was fascinated/appalled by everything going on and content to be the objective observer.  Yet I secretly yearned to be 10 years younger and not sick as a dog so that I could just throw thyself into the fray without reservations. 

Well, that's about it for now. Today, Cato left to meet up his girlfriend in Bangkok, so I am Mr. Solo Traveler again.  However, you are never really alone for long on the backpacker circuit, especially as I am sleeping in a dorm with about 30 people tongiht. It was really nice to have a good friend along for the ride, even if just for a little bit. Sometimes you get tired of just making quick friends that you say goodbye to just as you get to know them.  Deep conversations and true friends are hard to find! Cato, you'll be missed, braddah.

Tomorrow, I start the next leg of my odyssey: Vietnam. It begins with a 24 hour bus ride from the capital of Laos, Vientiane to the capital of Vietnam,  Hanoi. I at least have a sleeping berth on this huge bus that is billed as "King of Bus." Border crossing at 6am. Can't wait.

Oh, I finally got a bunch of Thailand photos loaded up on Facebook. Better late than never, I suppose! I hope to get my Laos pics up tomorrow before my bus leaves.

Hope everyone is well and looking forward to Spring back home! Oh, did we win the Olympics? Someone wins, right? Usually us, I think.

Adventures in deep diving

Since I last checked I have had two big adventures. One into the mind; the other into the depths of the Andaman Sea. I'm not sure which was more fruitful, but you can probably guess which was more fun.

On Jan 30th, I traveled to Wat Suan Mohk in Chaiya, Thailand and began a 10-day silent meditation retreat focusing on vipassana meditation. Like any intensive medtiation retreat it had its ups and downs, but was ultimately very rewarding.  I continue to discover new things about myself and my mind each time.  Some days it easy to focus and clear the mind; others it is almost impssible. On the last retreat I did back in December, I was able to get into much deeper meditative states because the cetner was a bit stricter about the technique they taught. This center, the most famous in all of Thailand for teaching farang (foreigners) about Buddhism and meditation, was very ecumenical in its teachings and laidback in its approach to insight meditation. Rather than deep meditation, my most profound experiences for the whole retreat involved meditating on the Buddhist principles of metta (loving-kindness) and karuna (compassion).  I mostly focused on myself, my family, and my friends, but Buddhists believe that meditating with these intentions can really improve the world simply by holding them in your heart and mind.  Good stuff, no?  Oh yeah, did I mention that you slept on a concrete bed with a thin bamboo mat and a wooden pillow (seriously) which is meant to help your discipline and give you a taste of how monks and nuns live.

Aside from the saving the world, I had pretty varied and full days at the beautiful, forested retreat center. Here is the rough schedule:
4am wake-up bell
 4:30 sitting mediation,
 5:30 yoga
 7 - dharma talk (dharma is the buddhist law of nature, also means "truth" and "teachings") by the abbot of the monastery
 8am - breakfast which consisted of weak tea and rice porridge (think Charles Dickens-esque gruel)
 9am -chores than time for a dip in the naturally-occuring hot springs on the grounds of the center
 10:30  -walking and sitting meditation
 12:30 - lunch - delicious thai food ranging from pumpkin curry to mushroom soup or veggie fritters or spciy green papaya salad, all vegetarian. usually with dessert of fruit but sometimes bananas fritters in coconut milk.
1:30 - laundry (DIY by hand) and nap time
2:30 - dharma talk by an old English monk, who was exceedingly sarcastic and funny, but very unmonklike
3:30 - walking and sitting meditation
6 pm - tea time, no dinner to help you meditate better (you actually don't really miss it after the first day or so).  Also time for another hot spring soak, but the mosquitos usually ruined things.
7:30 - sitting mediation, group walking mediation around the lotus ponds as the moon came up, sitting meditation
9:30 lights out

So, all in all, very full but peaceful days. I only really wanted to run away on day 6!  If anyone has any more questions for me about the acutal meditation techniques or Buddhism, please ask. I don't won't go into too much detail here in case people aren't interested.

Then, after all that peaceful contemplation, I had to a do a quick and dirty, hectic, expensive run to the border with Burma in order to renew my Visa.  Upon entering the little fishing village of Khoung, the Burmese immediately tried to sell me whiskey, viagra, marijuana, and opium. I declined and returned to Thailand via longtail boat and motorcycle taxi (picture me on the back of a moped with my huge packpack still on my back hanging on for dear life but loving it all.)

Visa-run behind, another 2 weeks in Thailand stamped into my passport, I headed back to the Andaman Sea and the little scuba-crazy town of Khao Lak. Here I boarded the MV (marine vessel) Koon for a 3 day, 3 night scuba voyage to the Similan Islands.  It was a really nice big boat with a shared, aircon room with a huge window onto the sea (my roommate and sometime diving buddy was a sweet lady from Yugoslavia named Dushka. Her boyfriend, who refused to share a room with her, claimed to be a dentist but was to all appearances a gangster (seriously) with a neck tattoo and much jewelry and talked about his associates (other dentists?) who bought ipods wholesale in the US to sell for greatly inflated prices in Yugolslavia. The rest of the divers were a diverse mix of Americans, Norwegians, a hyperactive Philippino, Germans, Singaporians, and rich Thai people from Bangkok who spent more time drinking Johnny Walker and watching Jackass in the plush, aircon lounge with a massive flatscreen TV than diving.  The food was excellent and prepared by a sweet old Thai mama and the front of the boat was festooned with garlands and food offerings for Buddha and good spirits to give us a safe journey.  The boat also had a outdoor dining and common area with a smaller TV where we watched episodes of the BBC "Blue Planet" and "Planet Earth" series ast night and had our meals and dive briefings. There was an upper deck that served for sunbathing, diving into the turquoise waters when anchored between dives, and was also where I slept 2 out of 3 nights in order to stargaze and catch the sunrise (gorgeous of course). 

The  dives were uniformly excellent and a learning experience for me each time. We had a couple of dives with really strong current because of the new moon tidal phases that required some semi-scary open-water ascents and descents. We went to the worldfamous Similan Islands, a series of granite islands with massive granite boulders scattered across the sea floor surrounded by amazing coral reefs. A one spot I free-dove with my divemaster to see a mermaid statue placed on the sea floor to commemorate the 2005 tsunami  Then on to the Island of Koh Bon where I saw a manta ray!  Although a small one (about 6 feet across) it was still a great sighting as the peaceful giant flew past in slow motion before fading into the murky blue.  At Tachai Island I did a sunset dive where upon coming to the surface the riotuous sunset was relected on the surface of the water form below. But by far, the highlight was the two dives we did on Richelieu Rock, considered one of the top ten dive sites in the world. All I can say is that it was full on "Finding Nemo" with the healthiest and most diverse corals, sponges and anemones I have seen in Thailand thus far.  The coolest species encountered were: many rare shrimp, including tiny cleaner shrimp cleaning the teeth of a peacock grouper from the inside (what trust!), harlequin shrimp, dancing shrimp and mantis shrimp. Spiny lobsters, clownfish, basslets, emperor fish, triggerfish, blue-spotted stingrays, green turtles, moray eels,  gardem eels, flounder, ornate ghost pipefish, tiny yellow seahorse, lionfish, scorpionfish. I could go on, but I should probably stop now. 

Anyhow,  it was like total sensory overload (in a good way) coming right on the heels of the meditation retreat, and really enhanced the experience for me. If anyone is interested, an Ameican guy named Kevin Smith from the US took excellent video of all our dives and will be posting it to youtube in the next few days. You can find it with his username: KS89991  One of these days I will get some pictures loaded up to facebook or picasa. I have tried several times for hours only to have multiple failures becasue of crappy internet connections. So hang tight, they'll get up eventually.

Anyhow, I am next headed up to the northern city of Chiang Mai to meet up with my old friend Cato that I worked with in Hawaii in 2005. We will then travel on to the highlands of northern Laos to do big jungle trek.  So check back here in a couple weeks, same Bat time, same Bat channel!

Down the shore. (The Thai beaches that is, not the Jersey. Same same but different.)

Well, things are certainly looking a bit better than the last time I blogged, post-bike-wreck. All my wounds, both those physical and those of the pride, seem to be all healed up at this point. Turquoise salt water does wonders for both.

I am writing this from a little internet cafe on the side of the highway full of little Thai boys using their Sunday to play Grand Theft Auto and sniper games and Fifa WorldCup online.  I am outside the Wat Suan Mohk International Retreat Center where tonight I will begin a 10 day silent meditation course.  This center is one of the best known temples in Thailand for teaching and well known to foreigners interested in practicing vipassana (insight) mediation. I recently completed my 1st ten day silent retreat just 2 months ago near Seattle. That course taught the same meditation technique but with a more rigorous daily schedule of nothing but sitting meditation; it also originated in Burma.  This center is a little more friendly and allows for walking mediation as well as yoga and there are even natural hot springs on the campus for soaking in the evenings!  Still, 10 days to be alone with nothing but your thoughts is a challenge.  This retreat is one of the reasons I chose to come to Thailand in the first place, and it feels good to be achieving that goal.  So that is the present. As for the past...

Since my last blog, I finished my Advance Open Water Training in Koh Tao. Had a blast with my group and made a bunch of really good friends. The diving although fun, wasn't great the last few days due to high wind and waves which affected visibility.  The highlights were by far the deep dive (to 90 feet below the surface) in which I was within a few feet of a grey reef shark and saw a scorpionfish and the night dive in which I saw a Great Barracuda bit a rabbitfish in half and swallow it in two bites! We also saw a rare cuttlefish and lots of green flashing phosphoresence. It looks like swirling stars underwater every time you move your hands around quickly distrubing the little critters. No whale sharks or manta rays unfortunately, but I will have another chance when I go on a 3 day/2 night live-aboard cruise with 15 dives to the Similan Islands. I am also hoping to see Leopard Sharks. 

I left Koh Tao, traveling with two friends from my scuba school, Kris from Denmark and Kirsty from Norway. There are loads of Scandanavians here incidentally. Swedes especially. Supposedly 600,000 out of a country of only 9 million come to Thailand every winter. Anyhow, we took the night ferry from the island back to the mainland. On this ferry you are literallt given a space that is half a small mattress to share with a total stranger. Eveyone has to pretty much spoon all night and the entire boat has to roll over at the same time practically. From Surat Thani we went up to Khao Sok National Park, a quiet little area up in the mountains.  The park protects some of the oldest primary lowland rainforest in the world and is home to elephants and tigers and gibbons, oh my.  I saw the gibbon, but no tigers unfortunately. I did however get to see Rafflesia, the largest flower in the world (check my photos on Facebook). It is about 2 feet in diameter, red and fleshy, and smells like sour milk to attract flies as pollinators. The biology nerd in me was loving it! I also ran into some cool folks from Sweden, Pelle and Lina, who shared my interest in the lizards and critters all around us, so that was nice to have others to nerd out with.  My lady traveling companions just couldn't understand why we were so excited about a giant, stinky flower alas.

After 2 peaceful days in the national park, we headed down to Raileh beach where stunning 500 foot limestone cliffs crash straight into the sea.  We spent 3 nights here just bumming on the beach; although one day we did get ambitious and rent kayaks to explore sea caves and we even found a semi-deserted beach to go snorkeling from, a rarity in Thailand.  I also went solo for a day to take a speedboat tour of the Ko Phi-phi Islands which are gorgeous bt totally overrun with Tourists and development. I got to see a German man get attacked by monkeys on the beach, so that was interesting. I also did some of the best snorkeling of my life at an open water site they took us too.  Oh, and we went to the infamous lagoon Maya Bay that was used as the location for the Leo DiCaprio movie "The Beach" that may be responsible for ruining Thailand (in the sense that there are too many tourists).  A good day but I was glad to move on from the crowds. 

Saying goodbye to our friend Kris, Kirsty and I travelled on the sleepy island of Koh Lanta. Here I found my ideal, cheap, ramshackle, family-run beach bungalows with good music and food and hammocks galore.  I had to spend a lot of time out of the sun and the water to let my motor-bike wounds heal, so it was here on Lanta that I finally got some serious loungin done and my first sun-burn, oh yeah.  I also got back on the bike, so to speak, and drove a motorbike all over this large island with Kirsty. We explored the Old Town, which was really quaint and the first place I have seen any wooden homes on the beaches that pre-date the tsunami.  We also got to see a crazy Kenyan Masai band play fun afro-fusion music to celebrate the anniversary of one backpacker-famous resort.  But the best part was just watching the sunset from a hammok with a pineapple shake in one hand.  Good times. 

Oh, I also did a one-day run down to the Malaysia border and crossed at a little outpost in the jungle called Khuadon. You have to do this in order to renew your visa and spend more time in the country.  Then it was another day of traveling all day (yesterday) heading away from the beack and back north.  Now, I am just outside the rural town of Chaiya, and my lazy beach days are over (for 10 days at least). It was great to soak up some serious sun, the first time I have done so since I left Hawaii in 2006. But I am ready to get down to some serious psyche-cleaning that only a long meditation retreat can really provide. I have met loads of great people and made some real friends and eaten lots of amazing thai food.  So several missions accomplished, but many more to come, no doubt.

P.S. Again, sorry for spelling mistakes, I am too cheap to proofread this thing as time is money in internet cafes.

Motorbikes and bull sharks and mango lassis, oh my.

So it's been a while since I have blogged. To be honest I have been avoiding it for days. Mostly b/c I didn't want to tell the world about my stupid motorbike wreck, but I am over it now. Unfortunately it's not much of a story but here goes. The day after I finished my scuba certification course (which was great! swam with several  bull sharks, yeah), I decided to rent a motorbike with some friends and explore the rest of this island. However, all my friends backed out at the last minute. I was gonna bail too, but then felt that I needed to do it anyways b/c I was consumed with the thought that if I went alone I would crash the bike. Everyone on this island you see other backpackers covered in bandages from their bike wreck and the guidebook warns a lot about it, for this island in particular bc the roads are so bad. But I have this thing about conquering fears when they seem unfounded.

Well, this fear was apparently well-founded. After a really nice paved drive to another big beach, I felt that was not enough and I needed to take this putt-putt, skinny-tire contraption offroading to another, more deserted beach. I though, if all the Thais and cool surfer Norwegians can do it, so can I! Having a lot of ATV and 4x4 experience I was actually doing ok for a while, but then I came to a patch of super-steep, super gravelly road. It was also at that moment that I was looking at the view of the beautiful cove below and not at the road.  And before I knew I was lying on the ground, bleeding profusely with the bike uphill from me, wandering what jut happened. Luckily, I was going about 3 mph when I laid the bike down. So all I really got were a few deep gouges (not even stitch-worthy) and a lot of road rash on my hands, right arm and right knee. The funniest part was that as soon as it happened and I was standing there on the side of the road looking at the bike, blood soaking through my shorts and dripping down my leg, I didn't feel upset at all and in fact, though to myself, "Well, now that's out of the way!" Like I knew it was my destiny to wreck a bike along and could do nothing to avoid it. Heh.

So I went home and cleaned and patched myself up (infection is really common here bc of the humidity).  The worst part was going to pay the piper for the damage to the motorbike. Seeing as they don't sell insurace for rentals here, I ended up spending the equivalent of 500 bucks to repair the very superifical scratches to the bike.  It ran just fine, not even a flat tire, but they actually replace all of the scratched parts with brand-new factory parts so that they can charge the next guy for his scratches to their seemingly-new bike.  I was able to talk them down a bit being apprearing so pathetic in all my bandages, and my Brit friend Dave tried to get their sympathy by telling them that I worked with sick children backl home and had been saving for this trip my whole life and that this expensive wreck would end the trip for me. Surprisingly, the Thai ladies at the rental place did not seem to buy that. All in all, it was a stupid mistake and a pricey lesson but I didn't beat myself up over it too much (which I usually do) and didn't let it get me down for more than a day or so.

B/c of the injuries though I had to stay out of the water for a few days. But I still wanted to complete the advanced dive course, so I decided to just cool it here on Koh Tao, not a hard decision. I moved out of my nice big bungalow with a king size bed (about 15 bucks a night) into a cheap dorm room where I don't get much sleep (people leaving for early dives everyday) but I have made lots of friends. I did go on to complete the advanced course and keep my wounds infection free, so things are looking up. Today, I am finally leaving the island with 3 new friends on the night boat (you sleep out on the deck!) and tomorrow we will arrive in Khao Sok National Park. It is one of the oldest patches of rainforest in the world and has tigers and elephants and waterfall galore.  Then it's on to Rai LAy beach on the west coast, a famous rockclimbing spot with limestone cliffs straight down to the sea. So that should be fun.

And no more motorbikes I assure you.

P.S. Sorry for any spelling errors. Internet is expensive, correcting mistakes is time-consuming, and I am lazy.


Food Log: I have been getting lazy about this bc it's all good. So I think I will only include my favorites or the really wierd stuff.

Laab Catfish - not really sure what this was, but very good and typical Esaan food, a southern Thailand regional people.
Goy Lek - this was the sauteed liver and tripe of a pig. there was a little stone inside one piece of the stomach that the pig had preseumably swallowed not long before his demise.
BBQ barracuda, marline, and king mackerel. the fish here is amazing and there are all these little places where you sit at tables set up right on the beach and pic your piece of fish then they grill it up for you.
Sauteed Morning Glory in oyster sauce.

The (Koh) Tao of Diving

So I made it away from the smoggy frenzy of Bangkok to the beaches at last! I left the City of Angels (they have one on Thailand too) on Tueday morning via train.  The train south was rather slow expecially as it left the city. The downtown core gave way to shantytowns, then floating ghettos, then suburbs with large house and satellite dishes, and finally rice fields in every direction. Some dry and being burned to ready them for the wet season, the ash swirling in the windows of the train. Some still green and verdant, scarecrows warding off thieving birds.  People would get on the train at every stop and walk the aisles selling all manner of snacks and knickknacks. I had a variety of seatmates from a grumpy old man to quiet Muslim women with babies to a lovely little family that I shared my my Ipod with. 

After nine hours, the train deposited me in Chumphon, one of the gateway cities to the south. I bargained my way onto a cheap pickup truck-taxi that took me to the pier 10km outside town.  There I got on the midnight boat to the island of Koh Tao.  The boat was much cheaper than the highspeed catamarans that most tourists take bc it steamed through the night for 8 hours.  You get a slim mattree to crash on and a dirty pillow.  Along with a young couple from Los Angeles, we were the only farang (foreigners) on the boat. The rest of the people were Thai going to work on the island, fisherman, and dock workers that loaded the boat high with Chang and Singha beers destined for the resorts on the island.  As we ran out through the river to the ocean, we passed many fishing boats and canneries. I fell asleep to the gently rocking of the waves in the Gulf of Thailand (a far cry from the heaving of the Bering Sea!)

Woke at sunrise as we pulled into Koh Tao.  My new friends and I then began the hunt for accommodations. What we didn't realize immediately was that the island was inundated with kids that had just come over from Koh Pha-Ngan and the biggest Full Moon Party of the year that coincided with New Years. It took us several hoursto find a spot, but I finally settled into my first Thai teak and rattan bungalow at the Pranee Bungalows (about 15 bucks a night and almost right on the beach).  I just stayed at Pranees for 3 nights to relax and take in the beach scene before beginning the scuba training.  Pranee's was at the quiet end of the beach, next to a posh resort, but only a 5 minute walk up the beach to all the restaurants and bars.  The weather has been dodgy with scattered downpours and some cool, but still muggy days. That being said I have still managed to get sunburned even with the little bit of intense equatorial sun that has managed to hot my weak Alaskan/Montanan skin!  I have made some really nice friends here from all over, Britain, Canada, Ireland, Sweden, etc. and on their recommendation decided to do my scuba course with the Big Blue Dive Resort.

I started the dive training 2 day ago with just classes the first day and shallow-water skills training yesterday. Today, we got to go to 12 meters and two different dive sites. Already I have seen some nice angelfish, triggerfish, sting rays, squid, barracudas, pufferfish, conchs, sea slugs, and lotsa coral.This afternoon I passed my final exam, and tomorrow I complete certification with 2 dives at 18 meters. I will then be a certified Open Water Diver. I am liking it so much that I may go straight on for the Advanced course after a rest day. It is about another 200 bucks (the regular course being 300), but Koh Tao is about the cheapest place to do it in the world and supposedly they certify more people than anywhere else as well.  The one downside to doing it in Koh Tao is that the pressure of so many people diving here and the development to accomodate them all is evident.  The water quality that I have seen thus far has been pretty bad with extremely low visibilty.  There is coral bleaching evident all over, caused by pollution run-off, and just lotsa broken coral everywhere from novice divers kicking it.  The resorts cosume a lot of seafood and fishing stocks have taken quite a hit in recent years. Paradise lost I suppose. However, the diversity of marine life is still amazing, and tomorrow I will most likely get to swim with some bull sharks. Plus, one juvenile whale shark has been lurking about one dive site. Fingers crossed...

Not quite sure where I will head next, but if I do the Advanced course, I should be here in Sai Ree Beach for at least 3 more days.

As promised, here is a list of the better foods I have eaten so far. It pretty much looks like a menu from a restaurant at any Thai restaurant in the US. I haven't gotten too adventurous yet, because I am trying to hit all the basics first.
Pad Thai - my first meal at a street vendor in Bangkok. Sadly, not very good. Not even peanut sauce. This national dish varies widely from place to place. But then I had amazing pad thai (or pat thai) here in Koh Tao with tofu  all the fixins.
Tom yum khung - spicy prawn soup, eaten from a vendor underneath a banyan tree on temple grounds
Spicy fried catfish with mango salad - at the Chatuchak weekend market
Green Coconut curry with chicken -Outstanding!
Chicken balls on stick - from a street vendor on the Khao San road, drunk food, not so good
Spicy papaya salad -Yum.
Banana bread - bought from a vendor on the train platform, awesome!
here in Koh Tao - Panang (dry) Curry with pork and friend rice, Pad Kraopao (fried basil wih mild chillies and veggies), Massaman Curry (sweet curry with peanuts and potatoes).
My breakfast is invariably either banana pancakes or muesli with yogurt and fresh fruit.
The fruit here is great, and often blended into cheap shakes: coconut, mango, papaya, banana, watermelon, and more.

Bangkok randomness

So after many hours in planes and many bad meals and 2 decent movies (Funny People and Public Enemies) later, I made it to Bangkok.  This place is so much, it's had to process really. I got in at 2 am on the morning of the 2nd so I haven't even been here two days yet, but it feels like a lot longer. For starters it is hot and humid.  I knew it was gonna be like this, but was not truly prepared for it. The key seems to be lots of cold showers and moving slowly. 

I think I'll just share some miscellaneous impressions of the place so far, I'm not up to writing a true narrative quite yet.

the first billboard I see after leaving the airport is for Amway.
a massage parlor in the Patpong area (redlight district) advertising "special testicle massage" for 800 baht, about 25 bucks.
an elderly monk in neon orange robes casually smoking a cigarette as he waits for the bus.
a dead bloated dog floating in the middle of chrao praya river, our ferry boat barely missing it as we cruise by.
teenagers in parks all over the city practicing muay thai (kickboxing), capoiera (brazilian dance fighting), and break dancing.
a flock of naked little boys swimming in the filthy canal, they all strike various muscleman poses as our boat full of tittering tourists roars past.
as I write this I am in an internet cafe surrounded by thai children playing World of Warcraft. adding their own sound effects.
a solitary policeman mans a car checkpoint as my taxi from the airport leaves the tollway and hits the mad labyrinth of surface streets, he glares sternly at me as we drive by but does not stop us.
the Chatuchak Weekend Market, literally 15000 stalls of vendors, all the selling the same junk. this is the like the elephant graveyard of tshirt and jeans from the US, but here they find new life.
kimodo dragons cruising the grounds and ponds of Lumphini park, gorging on pigeons and giving me sideways glances.
roosters begin crowing at about midnight, the dogs and myna birds soon follow and never let up til after dawn.
the atonal gonging of dozens of huge buddhist bells leading up the steps of the Golden Mount shrine.
at 3 am 4 littles girls chase each other in the street, playing some game that involves balloons tied to their ankles.
and, that's just the beginning...

a interesting passage I just read in the Economist. It's about acutally living in a foreign country but it applies to traveling as well, I think:
"foreigness is intrinsically stimulating...an escape from the boredom and banality of the everyday. the mundane becomes superreal and expereinced with an intensity evocative of the events of a true biography... living in a foreign country can evoke many of the emotions of childhood: novelty, surprise, anxiety, relief, powerlessness, frustration, irresponsibility. It may be this sense of a return to childhood , consciously or not, that gives the pleasure of foreigness its edge of embarrassment." 
hmmm, something to chew on.

What to expect in coming posts: A log of my amazing meals here, complete with ratings, just to make you all jealous. Maybe I'll figure out how to embed a photo or two. And much much more!