I am lazy

So to combat this I use my friend Josh's blog as my own. Wanna know whats up or see some pics? Check out Josh Hegarty's blog at http://flyer107.blogspot.com/

Ill try to be less lazy and update again soon.

West Africa Preview

Hello Evan's Journey followers!

I soon embark on a new journey; this time through West Africa. Follow the maps below:

I begin my trip with an overnight stay in London (not pictured) with my friends Hala and Adam. From there I fly south to Marrakech, Morocco on October 22. Here I will couchsurf, meet my friend Josh who flies in a day later and get used to the fact that I'm traveling again. A few days after, Oct 25, my friend Sjoukje (loyal Journey followers will remember her from Vietnam and Laos) flies in to visit and travel for a couple weeks.

November 5, the final two members of our party, Hala and Adam arrive in Tanger, on the north coast of Morocco. From there our plans are uncertain. A few things we know or have options for:

1. We are going to Cameroon before Christmas. A close friend of ours, Brian Bragg, is in the Peace Corps near Bamenda in Cameroon and our whole trip has evolved from plans to visit him.

2. We may stay in Morocco until flying to Cameroon or

3. We may have to fly from Dakar, Senegal depending on availability of Cameroonian visas in Morocco. This decision will shape the first two months of my trip.

4. Another option is that shortly after arriving in Cameroon I may head to Uganda to volunteer with a friend, Sheela, who is going to be doing an internship there with an organization doing work with antiretroviral treatment on AIDS patients and also making a documentary about AIDS in the country.

5. I also plan to stay a few months in Cameroon with Brian.

6. There are two organizations I have contacts with in Ghana that both sound like great opportunities to volunteer for solid nonprofits.

7. I want to see a lot and help a lot.

Balancing the two aspects of #7 will be a major problem of this trip. Also negotiating the group dynamic involved in traveling in 4,5 or MORE at some times.

Because of the money I've saved, and the freedoms I've awarded myself, there is no time limit set on my trip. I may be gone 6 months. I may be gone 2 years. Even if I run out of money, I have options to make more, or stay in one place for free for awhile. With all this, I am liberated to say, that although I will miss my friends, family, nachos, and toilet paper, I will not be returning to the US until I am ready.

SE Asia wrap up

It happened again and I am sorry.  Since my last post I got lazy/ busy/ unmotivated/ depressed and didn't post again.  Truthfully there is no incredible story that anyone is missing out on.  I left from the national park with all my leech fun and headed to Kuala Lumpur (known as KL).  

I couchsurfed here with a great guy, Mo, from Kenya.  I spent a week there hanging out with other couchsurfers and relaxing.  We gave free hugs one night which is growing in popularity especially among the community of couchsurfers in SE Asia.  

Mo from Kenya, Jason from NY, and Nash from Malaysia at Batu Caves outside KL

Basically we walk around with home made signs announcing our offer to passersby and anyone that wishes to take us up on the offer receives a sleeze free, content smile inducing embrace!  In the relatively social conservative muslim nation of Malaysia, we ended up hugging mostly men.  But I did manage to reach my goal of a car hug when I embraced the driver of a car through his window while he was stopped at a red light.  

Free Hugs in KL!!

After my week here I traveled to Singapore for basically one day and one night.  I again couchsurfed, got taken around the city by a fun girl, Nhazean, and then we met up with a whole bunch of travelers and locals for dinner and laughter.  

A huge gathering of CSers in Singapore!

Then I hightailed it back up to the north of the city and crossed back over the bridge into Malaysia where yet ANOTHER couchsurfer, Chris, met me around 11pm.  

Nhazean, my Singaporean guide, and myself at the biggest mosque in town

Since it was Saturday he decided we should go out for a drink and we did, inviting Alan, a more active CSer from the city.  They treated me to my first beers since Bangkok two weeks before- since beer is so expensive in this predominantly muslim country- and we stayed out late chatting at a high volume club.  Finally around 3am Chris drove us back to his place and set me up in my own extra bedroom.  

Alan and Chris, CSers in Johor Bahru outside of Singapore

After a glorious 2 hours of sleep, at 5am we drove to the airport outside of Johor Bahru and I flew over to Kuching, the capital of the Malaysian state of Sarawak on the island of Borneo.  Here I was picked up from the airport by Teck, yet another CSer and we drove around all day with his photography club.  I wish I could say I enjoyed myself but I hadn't slept and I was exhausted and there is only so long that I felt I needed to watch him and his friends take pictures of orchids at the orchid farm or crocodiles at the croc farm outside of town.

Idealized picture of the croc farm near Kuching

Adrian and Barry, our incredible host in Kuching

Eventually we met up with Adrian, my Canadian friend who I was meeting in town, and we went back to our CS host, Barry's, home.  After a couple days we took a night bus  and a series of river boats down river into the more wild parts of Borneo only to find out the wild parts are significantly less wild than we had hoped.  

Slowing down in the small town of Belaga far downriver we basically played with the local kids for two days straight.  We had an offer to do a "trek" to some longhouses but we don't regret turning it down.  The longhouses here are less a unique cultural experience of jungle tribes and more relatively modern houses that happen to be long and accessed only by river.  They are expensive to visit, require a guide, and we took a pass.

Borneo: green jungle, brown river.

From here we decided that since we are relatively disappointed in our high expectations of what the tropical jungles of Borneo are truly like, we decided to hitchhike the rest of the way of our route for our last 10 days or so.  We hitched to Miri, near the border with Brunei which we really didn't like.

Hitching a ride across Borneo

 From there we got a short bus to the border, crossed immigration and needed 4 rides to take us into Bandar Seri Bagawan, the capital city of the tiny sultanate of Brunei, an oil-rich independent nation at the north of Borneo.  

Here we couchsurfed with an older Australian woman, Gillian.  She is a lifelong traveler recently returned from a trip to Mongolia and on the cusp of taking a long slow trip through SE Asia where Adrian and I had just spent months.  We were able to give her a number of tips and information and I think she appreciated that a lot.  

Spending an extra day in the city was a mistake.  There is nothing to do here.  We walked around, hung out in the mall (because it has AC and it is HOT and HUMID outside) and I read an entire 300+ page book, The Devil's Double, about the unwilling body double of Sadam Hussein's son Uday.  

The water village in the capital of Brunei

From the city we took a couple of ferries to reach the northern Malaysian state in Borneo, Sabah.  The capital city is Kota Kinabalu (KK) and we hung out here for a few days, staying for nearly free at a hostel owned by a young CSer, Hazmillah.  She showed us around, took us to see a movie, and basically just hung out with us in our laconic state for a few days.  

Hazmillah, our CS friend in KK

To break up the time in KK Adrian and I hitched up into the cooler climates of the mountains near Mt. Kinabalu National Park and stayed in the nearby town of Kundasang.  Here we ate delicious food, played badminton horribly in front of curious onlookers in the town center and watched WWE wrestling in cafes.  More of the same for our time in Borneo, just relaxing, chatting with people, singing to them, and wasting time.

We hitched back, spent another day in KK and then we parted ways on April 26.  Adrian flew back to Canada on May 3 from Bangkok.  After hearing of my time in Singapore, he spent a couple days with the couple that hosted me and also hung out with a lot of CSers.  While he flew to KL first, I flew back to Vietnam to visit some friends there for my last 9 days.  

I hung out with a number of CSers during my last week and even planned my first official CS gathering at a water park in town that was successful despite the rain that pelted us all day.  Turns out that in tropical areas with hot rain, water slides are still really fun! Unfortunately my camera was broken on my second night back in Vietnam and so I have no pictures from my last week.

A representative picture of CSers on my first visit to Saigon

I think I will write one more entry for this trip with some final notes, and a preview of my upcoming trip to West Africa this fall.  Stay tuned for that!

Taman Negara

So after a relatively comfortable overnight train from Bangkok to the border with Malaysia, I spent a couple days recovering in the city of Kota Bahru.

From there I took the famed jungle train through the interior of Peninsula Malaysia. Both coasts are the main populated areas with the mountainous/ jungle packed interior being far less populated. Right in the center is a national park, Taman Negara, that boasts to contain the oldest rain forest in the world.


The jungle train lasted all day and dropped me off in Jerantut, a small city near the park. Here I stocked up on essentials since I was intending to spend a few nights in the jungle. So I bought a bunch of water, instant noodles which I intended to eat cold, and peanut butter and a loaf of bread. I also had a strange and a little creepy encounter with a man at the grocery store.

The next morning I took an early local bus before dawn to Kuala Tahan, the village at the entrance to the park. Before the ride I met an enthusiastic group of five 30 somethings from Kuala Lumpur coming to the park to spend three days fishing.

Upon arriving, and after catching a few more hours of sleep in a dorm overlooking the river that separates the park from Kuala Tahan, I took a ferry across and booked a couple nights in the park. There a few trails leading to different places, and I booked the furtherest hide away that didn't require a guide. A hide, in this case, is a freestanding stilted wood hut that is set in the jungle near water sources or salt licks and is used by tourists to view wildlife. I also booked one close to the park HQ for a second night.

After making my plans starting the next day, I took a short hike into the jungle to get a sense. There is a popular "Canopy Walk" that takes the visitor high into the trees, and across bridges in between the tree tops overlooking the jungle and river more than 100 feet in the air! It was a pretty cool experience, especially since I somehow avoided the lines and was basically there alone.

Treetop-spanning bridge.


View of the river from the Canopy Walk

After another short hike up a steep hill, I headed back to the village to rest and sleep. I felt confident that the trails were clearly signposted and dry, so I wouldn't have to deal with mud and leeches the next day. But conditions can change.

View from on top of a hill in Taman Negara. I laid my shirt out to dry, I was a little sweaty.

Although I didn't hear any rain the night before, isolated showers are common all year round in this near equatorial country and when I crossed the river and began my trek the next day I found the same path that I had taken the day before was now damp and even quite muddy in some places.

Worse still was what the wet conditions meant: leeches.

A trek through the Malaysian jungle is a unique one, at least for me. Never before had I felt like I was hiking in a sauna. The humidity was incredible, and the temperature was hovering around 80-90F. Basically within the first hour on the hilly trail my clothes were completely soaked head to toe. I looked like I had jumped into the river instead of just following its twists around. I felt like it too.

A little sweaty but enjoying myself!

A jungle-shrouded bridge.

I first discovered my little green friends after my first short sitting break about an hour and a half in. I'd had a little experience with leeches before in Nepal, so I checked my ankles. Yep, about a dozen little leeches had grabbed my passing shoes, inched their way across the leather and laces and attached to my socks around my ankles and the tops of my feet and some had successfully penetrated the layer of white cotton socks to reach the delicious smorgesbord of blood beneath. I didn't think much about it at the time, I pulled the slippery creatures off and flicked them away, and five minute later I was back on my feet and down the trail.

Lunch on my only sitting break of the day. A big mistake.

The rest of the day went this way. Every half hour I would bend over and check my ankles and feet and had to continually rip away leeches that had begun to attach themselves to my skin for a quick liquid meal. Once I felt someone on my right hamstring, and had to pull down my pants in the middle of the trail and found half a dozen leeches that had somehow journeyed all the way up my legs to reach the delicious delicacy that is my white ass. After that, I didn't sit down any more until I reached the hide.

By the time I arrived there, five hours later, I had removed nearly a hundred leeches from my body and clothes and had 25 bites on my left half alone. The great thing with leeches is that they inject a anticoagulant into the blood so it won't clot and continues to bleed for hours.

In the hide, waiting for me, was a young German guy who had studied at USC and was a good guy to converse with. I stripped off my wet clothes, attempted to dry them by hanging them out the open windows (but clothes don't dry in a sauna) and was down to my boxers with a dozen bleeding sores on my feet and legs. I had to clean up the concrete floor of small puddles of blood later.

A Czech couple joined us later- actually the girl was Slovakian- and after hours of staring out the windows at the small clearing below us had revealed no wildlife, we went to bed. The others had brought pads and sleeping bags to sleep on top of the wood plank bunks, and the German guy had a mosquito net. I brought only my small backpack, so I used it as a pillow and slept in my wet clothes. I didn't really have a problem except that I had a horrible headache that woke me up in the middle of the night and prevented me from getting much sleep. I think it was from the dehydration.

The wonderful accommodation.

The next day I followed the couple on a different path back to the headquarters and across the river to Kuala Tahan, forgoing another night in the jungle since I didn't have much food left and truthfully didn't feel like dealing with the discomfort of sleeping on wood with no pad, soaked clothes and open sores on my legs.

The young Czechoslovakian couple

Yes, I am about to ford this river.

After eating my weight in salt, and taking a much enjoyed cold shower and putting on dry clothes, I caught an afternoon local bus back to Jerantut. Also riding with me was the same group of five fishermen from KL. I thought it was cool that they remembered my name and we chatted a short while about our respective trips.

The next afternoon I caught a bus to KL where I've been since, couchsurfing with a really cool guy. I guess I am a little ashamed at not sticking it out in Taman Negara and staying the second night which I had already booked and paid for. But leeches are just not as cute as some people think they are. And because of them I had to throw away two pairs of socks and now one pair of boxers and my favorite backpacking pants have large blood stains on my legs and butt.

My blood soaked socks. Had to throw them out.

I can update my past few days in KL when I update about my impending short time in Singapore. Tomorrow I head there for a day and a half and have a bunch of couchsurfers lined up to hang out with. Then on Sunday I fly to Borneo and meet up with Adrian! I can't wait. I hope my shoes make it the rest of the trip or at least to Saigon. (They are in BAD shape. Read: duct tape.)

Coming home plans

For all interested parties,
I've made my plans to return to Seattle. The magical day will be May 30th. Parties will rage and champagne will flow to celebrate. Unfortunately local authorities across SE Asia anticipate angry mobs and riots at the news that I've left their continent. I can't make EVERYONE happy ALL the time.

For those of you fond of messages of the textual variety, I will actually be back in the US on May 6th, and back manning my cell phone around May 10th. I will spend a few days with Danielle in San Francisco first. Then visit my parents, and spend 12 days breaking my back and making money in Hawaii.

So the day is set, write it down. I think Josh is the only one in Seattle that reads this anyway. So Josh, write it down!

I made it to KL (Kuala Lumpur) and I'll be here for a few days. I'll update you in the next couple days on my short battle with leeches in Taman Negara National Park here in Malaysia. I also plan to visit Singapore next weekend before I fly to Borneo and will most likely visit Brunei also! Then my last 9 days I will spend back in Saigon with the lovely Miss Natasha.

So lots left to discuss about traveling, no more talk about coming home!

Myanmar

So after the highly anticipated reuniting of myself with my friend, Natasha, in Bangkok, after all day of wasting time (I literally watched Al Jazeera English for like 5 hours- its better than CNN, FACT), we flew the next morning to Yangon, the capital of Myanmar.

We were met at the airport by a middle-aged man, Khine, who she had contacted through Couchsurfing. After we checked into our hotel, we had breakfast with him and then arranged to meet the next day.

A roadside stall in Yangon

After a nap- we had only slept 2 hours the night before (Bangkok will do that) we met another couchsurfer, Andreas from Zurich. He was hosting a guy from Oklahoma, Zach, who mentioned a rock concert in town that night. After some wine and cheese at Andreas's place- yes wine and fancy cheese, Ah expats- we went to check out the concert.

Arriving late, we thought we might have missed it, but walking through the park we started to hear the music and as we hiked up over a small rise, we saw the crowd. About 10,000 strong in the middle of a park in Yangon, truthfully a very politically controlled city, shirtless, tatoos, piercings, belting out every word verbatim with the long haired metal rocking band. The music was rocking, the crowd was rolling.

After standing on the fringe and watching for an hour, I had to join in and was welcomed near the front of the crowd by gangs of young shirtless Burmese men, proud to have a foreigner in their midst. It was a great night out.

Burma, and especially Yangon, struck me as an obvious intersection of Indian and East Asian cultures and peoples. The first day I felt like I said, "Man, this is just like in India!" about a hundred times. Even the faces of the locals look like a graft of Indian and Chinese features. Very bizarre. But the people are incredibly friendly. They have that reputation and I think they live up to it very well.

The next morning we had breakfast and met Khine again. He took us all around the city, walking, showed us a few sites and answered all of our questions. He even took us to an apartment rented out by a Belgian man, also a CSer, which houses two young Burmese women whose educations he is now sponsoring. Khine asked me to teach them English and I ended up quizzing them on their geography. It was a pretty cool experience.

Khine is an incredibly generous and knowledgeable man. His siblings live in Britain, Australia and Singapore, but as the oldest he had to make the money early on and so he remains in Myanmar. Although he hinted quietly and indirectly that he doesn't like the government (open dissent is still brutally punished) I think he is an ardent patriot and enjoys living in Yangon, and helping travelers.

Our second morning, Natasha and I decided to take a bus that night to the old colonial capital of Mandalay, 16 hours north. The bus ride was long and horrifically uncomfortable, but c'est la vie, and we arrived in one piece.

I'm sorry to say we didn't do much sight seeing in Mandalay proper. The first day we headed to see a famous ancient bridge in a neighboring small city, Amarapura, which itself is very old. Pagodas abound here and Natasha made sure to photograph them all.

Riding atop a mini bus in Mandalay

Famous ancient U Bein teak bridge near Mandalay

We got a ride back to town from a huge family who shared the back of a pickup (I'm talking 12 people) and they insisted we share the front with the driver and wouldn't allow us to pay. "We are all brothers under God," he told me. There are still many christians in Myanmar, a residue of colonialism.

Twelve happy faces in the back of a pickup!

The next morning I got up super early and went for a walk around the gorgeous palace wall and watched the sun rise over it. Unfortunately I forgot my camera, but the views of the city in the dawn light are beautiful. Lines of young monks march on sides of streets, accepting alms of food from people who apparently have prepared large amounts of food just to feed them. This must be pretty common because I think nearly all Burmese men spend time in a monastery during their life. Khine did also.

Later that morning we took a shared taxi an hour up to the hill station of Pyin U Lwin (yeah I could never pronounce it either). The weather was much cooler up there (its like 95-100 in Mandalay and not much cooler in Yangon) and Natasha immediately complained about the cold. I think it was like 70 in the shade. VERY refreshing.

Gold villager handicrafts on sale in Pyin U Lwin

Dusk in Pyin U Lwin

The small town doesn't have much to offer other than its quaintness. Colonial buildings, few tourists (like everywhere in Burma these days) and pony drawn carriages straight out of Cinderella made our short stay very worthwhile. This was our favorite place in Myanmar.

In a pony drawn carriage in Pyin U Lwin

Another overnight bus- this one slightly more comfortable because we simply did not allow the people in front of us to recline their seats, even though they got REALLY pissy about it- and we were back in Yangon. More walking around in the heat, and we went to use the internet.

While Natasha and I were discussing flights for my return visit to Saigon, she realized she didn't have her black leather bound notebook. Now that wouldn't be a tremendous loss if she didn't keep ALL her extra cash in it ($900) and even her flight ticket from Bangkok back to Ho Chi Minh City.

The rest of the afternoon and evening we retraced our steps of the day, I grilled her with questions and, I hate to say, was pretty annoyed that she had been so careless even after my warnings. Finally we gave up, I made her file a police report for insurance reasons, and we met up with Andreas and another German guy who was in town for one night because he works on a cruise ship that was in port and he had the night free.

We had some drinks, went to a club, Andreas hung out with some of the local working girls there that he is obvious acquaintances with, he said something rude, Natasha scolded him, there was awkward tension and then Natasha and I went back to our room.

The next morning we changed hotels and went to go get a new ticket for Natasha at the Bangkok airways office. While she was doing the paperwork, we decided I should run downstairs to the internet office below- the same one where she realized she had lost or had stolen her notebook- and check there. I figured it was worth a shot but knew it was horribly unlikely.

I walked in and asked if we left a book yesterday. I saw a black leather book on the desk and the guy working there said, "This one?" I opened it in slow motion and was relieved to recognize the colorful ink vandalizing the business-intended pages. I found it!

I tried not to make a big deal about how Natasha actually never lost it until she left the internet cafe in a storm ready to go look for it. It was beside the computer the whole time. I never bothered looking because I was behind her and had to rush up the street to catch up after she left.

So the rest of the day we basked in the warm relief of finding her money and ticket. Khine took us to the market and helped her bargain for LOTS of stuff. We had lunch, took a taxi to the Shwedagon Pagoda, the largest and most beautiful in Yangon and a symbol of Burma. After snapping a few photos we drove to the fancy expat wine and cheese store, where Andreas met us and we spent a few hours living the sophisticated life again.

A familiar looking tourist photographing the incredibly huge Shwedagon Pagoda in Yangon

Natasha is the biggest cheese snob I've ever heard of. Its incredible how its all she eats and how little time goes by before she feels she has earned herself a meal of cheese (maybe 12 hours).

The next morning we flew back to Bangkok and headed to the market where again she was a gift purchasing monster. It was impressive. That night was the big CS meeting that Natasha had been working a month to plan. We met about a dozen couchsurfers at the bottom of the Baiyoke Tower, the tallest building in Thailand.

We took a ride up to the revolving observation deck on the 84th floor and had our free drinks on the 83rd. The rest of the night was spent drinking and dancing with our CS friend, Charlie from Cameroon, DJ'ing until 2 am. Hung over the next morning, and Natasha with a bad stomach virus, our last hours together were not beautiful but I know we will see each other again in Saigon in 4 weeks.

Observation deck, 84th Floor, Baiyoke Tower, Bangkok

I'd wrap up better but I gotta run to the bathroom. I arrived today in Malaysia and something I ate (maybe all the deep fried bread) had done my stomach in.

Laos Part 2

OK truthfully, there isn't much to part 2...

The day after we got back from the trek we jumped on a local boat heading down the river, back to Mung Qua, the first place we stopped after we crossed the border. The boatmen didn't even try very hard to make us pay more than the locals. I love Laos.

The ride took from around six hours as our narrow longboat packed with people and cargo (because no respectable Laos villagers goes ANYWHERE without at least one live chicken in a basket) motored down dozens of rapids and passed waving children playing in the eddies of the brown river. The sun shone, which was lucky because we often got splashed when going through rapids, and the day was very enjoyable.

Reaching Mung Qua after the last bus left to Udomxai, we prepared to stay the night. That of course turned into two nights. The small town is so picturesque clinging to the hillside surrounded by dense forest and jungle and set right next to the river that we decided to forgo the relatively touristy northwest entirely and chill out in Mung Qua.

The second day we went for a swim in the river, the favorite past time of seemingly everyone in town. Mostly we hung out with a gang of young boys 8-10 years old, but at sunset the river was packed with locals of every age and bother genders. Some bathing clothed, some bathing naked, some riding an innertube down the swift currents, and others playing in the wake of boats just passed.

The highlight for us was when we inevitably courted our cult following of the young boy gang. One boy climbed high onto the cables of the ferry bridge before plunging back into the water. Some shampooed their scalps before diving off of pilons. All of them jumped in together when the ferry bridge moved to bring a truck to the other bank.

By the end, we were on the shore surrounded by squealing young girls as well. After seeing one boy skip a rock, I followed suit as did Adrian. Soon I had devolved the grace of rock skipping into the maniacal chaos of mass skeet shooting.

Throwing one rock high into the air, a dozen other rocks were thrown by my young sages in an attempt to collide with mine. The mass heaving of rocks of course has an inherent mob craze feel to it and the children, and I, loved it. Then we practiced our Laos counting and their English counting, played a few other games, and I feigned throwing a couple of them in the river.

That may have been the last mentionable event to happen in Laos. Unfortunately the next day we arrived in Udomxai and were stranded there by the infrequent bus departures.

We spent one night back out in the fringes of Nong Khiew surrounded by giant limestone cliffs. That town was a bit more touristy then what we had become used to, but the scenery, and our journey to some caves that were inhabited by locals during the war, made it an enjoyable stop. Also, that was the first town to offer us Beer Laos Dark. Beer Laos is the ubiquitous brew in the country and is probably the best in SE Asia, but its still light. Beer Laos Dark is its seldom seen dark counterpart. It is delicious.

Then we went to the touristy town of Luang Prabang which travelers swear by. Because we are infinitely bored of temples, have already done the trekking, visited caves and waterfalls, and gone down the river by boat, the city offered us nothing but expensive prices. A day later Adrian and I said goodbye to our longtime travel partner, Sjoukje who would head east, and took an all day bus to Vientiane.

A small city, and the capital, Vientiane also didn't offer me anything of interest except one night of 6 trips to the toilet.

After crossing the border back to Thailand, and catching an all night bus back to Bangkok last night, I am here and healthy in this steamy metropolis. I will joing a CS meeting here in two hours, and Natasha arrives two hours later.

Tomorrow morning we have an early flight west to Myanmar (Burma) where we will spend one week before returning to BKK, from where I head south to Malaysia. I already bought my ticket to Borneo!

I've heard mixed details about internet in the nation of Myanmar, so if I don't update for a full week, and no one receives emails, worry not. I am probably just a new political prisoner and will be released heroically upon the popular overthrow of the ruling military junta. Hopefully before I am completely bald.

Laos Part 1

I apologize for not updating my blog earlier. Internet in the north of Laos is completely nonexistent and I haven't sat still in one place long enough to compose my thoughts of my last two weeks in this country.


From Hanoi I took an all day minibus up to the far reaches of northwestern Vietnam, to a city named Dien Bien Phu. When I reached there I found out that the bus that usually runs three times a week and should be running the next day, had broken down and so I had to search for alternative means of transportation.

Never one to worry so much, and knowing that my two friends, Adrian and Sjoukje, had crossed the morning before, I got up early the next day, and hired a moto driver to take me the 38 km up to the border. When I arrived I realized that it is truly remote up here. We hadn't passed a village within 10 k on the road and the border station was little more than a small outpost perched on a ridge embedded in the surrounding mountainous forest.

After the border formalities on the Vietnamese side- I was the ONLY person there at the time- I began looking for available transport to the Laos border post which I was told was only 800 meters down the road.

There was a man strapping things down onto the back of a motorbike and when he saw me he offered me a ride for $15 dollars down to the nearest town, Mung Qua, which was 80 km away. I was just about to counter his offer when I saw this big van pull up and six white people, three couples, get out and head into the building. I thought, "This is my chance."

I went back inside, spoke to the people and found out that basically an old French couple had rented the van to take them all the way from Dien Bien Phu to Mung Qua, for $250! When I heard the price that the man paid I was really surprised. He was DEFINITELY getting screwed over, but he told me he felt like he had no choice since the bus was broken until who knows when. He agreed I could have a ride and said he wouldn't ask me for anything. The other couples had chipped in or paid the driver even more instead of paying the French man who had paid for the whole van before.

After getting through the Laos border we stopped only once, to check out the wreckage of a big semi-like truck that had fallen off the road a couple days ago. There was a man in a tent there but he didn't need a ride and said the driver of the wrecked truck was taken back to Vietnam. Hopefully no one had died.

The truck that had fallen off the mountain road.

Arriving in Mung Qua, I first had to block attempts of the van driver who thought I owed him $20 for the ride (bullshit) and then eventually walked away to find a guesthouse. Arriving at one, I walked in, saw a couple of packs and did a double take. There was a pink helmet hanging off of one. That pack belongs to Sjoukje! I thought for sure that they had headed off somewhere this morning and wouldn't still be here. They had waited for me!

I began my search and, because the town is SMALL, I found them immediately and big hugs were given all around. We ate lunch, I bought the French couple lunch and a couple beers for giving me a ride- they were very appreciative so thats good- and we hopped on the 330 bus for Udomxai, the biggest town in the north of Laos.

On the way Adrian and I changed our plans. Instead of heading northwest where there were a lot of tourists, and some great trekking options, we decided to head way north where the tourists were few and the Chinese border nearby. So the next morning we took a 9 hour rattletrap up to Phongsali.

Adrian, Canadian; Sjoukje, Dutch; and our rattle trap, Laos

Our hotel was cheap, but we arrived on Saturday, and Sunday the tourism office was closed meaning we couldn't organize a trek, and it was horribly foggy and rainy all day. Internet was nearly non existent, there was no TV, but there was plenty of card playing, cookie eating, and for a short time, we were invited to partake in some local fire water with a bunch of short male youths listening to load music and dancing up a storm to celebrate Womens' Day. How that was celebrating I don't know.

A foggy day of fun in Phongsali

Later we celebrated Women... with young men... and green alcohol.

That night over dinner we were approached by a soft spoken polite local man who used to work for an NGO in the town but now was guiding treks while he found another job. We agreed to go on a two day trek with him starting the next day because we figured even if the rain held, we could be dry the second night.

Early the next morning we walked to a local bus stand and awaited our guide, Song. When he finally arrived we stood on a tiny cramped mini bus to a village named Hatsa. Adrian and I used a trick I have picked up involving both leaning and ducking in a comfortable position to survive the 20k (which took 1.5 hours!) ride in the very short us. I sang songs to the locals who stared at me in disbelief and we arrived in one piece.

The comforts of Laos bus travel.

After Song bargained for a ride up the river with some local boatmen, we all stepped onto a long boat and were ferried for half an hour past villages and jungle up the Nam Ou river. We were dropped off at a small sandbar, promised we would be picked up the next day, and we began our ascent.

Riverside, waiting to catch a longboat in Hatsa

The rain over the previous few days made the steep trail muddy and a challenging climb. My old tattered shoes have little of the way of tread left on the bottoms, and that fact helped nothing. Despite this, I never fell on the hour-long ascent of the first mountain.

After a few hours we stopped for lunch. Song produced a huge bag of sticky rice, a bag of beef lap (cold beef with green onions and spices), an omelet each, and a small bag of sauce made from a fruit he called hawk plum. After our hours of steep climbing we gobbled down the meal until the food was completely gone. It was the most delicious meal I had in Laos.

Another hour brought us to the first of three minority hill tribe villages we would visit. The small gathering of bamboo and thatch huts were set on a hillside overlooking a vast range of misty mountains. The site was gorgeous and thinking of the beauty of their everyday view made me think of Sonapani and its position overlooking a range of 25,000 ft. peaks in the Himalaya.

After visiting the tiny but seemingly well stocked school, we stopped in a local home to drink some tea out of VERY dirty glasses. One child in the hut had a fever that has lasted a few days and Song tried to describe the traditional medicine to woman.

The school in the first village, built by an NGO

Because of her remoteness, she doesn't speak Laos, but her young son had studied a little and translated for them. Song used hand gestures and made noises, got the materials he needed and made a tea for the ill toddler. Afterward, we asked him what he had done, since it is very very dark in the home, and he answered that he had taken "chicken shit, put in fire, when hot make tea."

Another hour and a half of hiking brought us to a second village where we first sang to some startled children (not a lot of traffic of tourists through this region) and then joined the village chief in some tea in his home. A few other older men joined us and they passed around a large bamboo tobacco bong between them, and Sjoukje even took a turn. (I bought a decorated one for $0.66 cents in Hanoi).

Finally after one more hour of trekking we arrived right before dusk at the village where we would sleep that night. After meeting our hosts we took a stroll among the numerous large thatch and bamboo huts while Song helped to cook dinner.

The third village where we spent the night.

A few curious children following us soon turned into a dozen and then into 30. I felt like Tiger Woods walking to the green of the 18th hole with the gallery of small snot-faced children following 10 meters behind.

When we had reached the other side of the village where more kids were playing a game with some marble-like balls, I immediately invited myself to play. Of course my one turn of attempting to flick a ball off of one finger into a tiny hole two meters away went horribly wrong. The ball went flying behind me and the crowd erupted in laughter. Let the entertainment by the white people begin.

I sang to them. I stood on one leg and jumped around. I made fake glasses over my eyes with my fingers. I did the running man, jumping jacks, and was about to attempt a head stand with I was saved by a small boy coming to join the large semi-circle of men women and children watching the strange white giants make fools of themselves.

As he ran down a small slope, the tiny child flew into a graceful cartwheel.

"YES! Do it again! AGAIN!" I yelled at the boy who was immediately too embarrassed that I had singled him out. However, the attention paid to him did attract others to follow suit. Kids cartwheeled, did hand stands and other tricks while the crowd, led by we three whiteys, cheered them on. It was incredible.

To round off the day, Adrian had a push up contest with one guy- he won- Sjoukje gave a noble attempt at a cartwheel which ended hilariously and a tiny tiny boy no older than three did his version of a cartwheel over and over while the crowd slowly lost steam for him. But it was crazy cute.

For dinner we ate steamed rice, potato soup, fresh vegetables and Song had brought some more beef. We had to drink more neon green firewater with our host, each time we took a sip, calling for a toast by saying Cheepa toma!

After breakfast the next morning, we started our long descent back to the river. I did slip once or twice and got pretty muddy. The day was relatively uneventful but the weather held out for us and we had some decent views around the range.

Taking a break on the second day at an empty bamboo hut

That night we stayed in Hatsa, I bathed (for the first time more than a week) in the river with the locals, and we stayed in a gorgeous bamboo guesthouse overlooking the river and the main part of the tiny village.

Our guide, Song, on the boat back to Hatsa after our trek

After just the first week in Laos, I was in love. The people are way more easy going that in any other Asian country I've visited, with "Bo Peng Yung" (no problem) seemingly the national phrase of choice. Hassle is low and the people are friendly if laid back about it. Plus the absence of tourism in large sections of the country just begs for adventure seekers to come explore.

Vietnam Rap Up

As I am set to leave this beautiful country, I guess I should update on what I've been up to for the past two weeks. Sorry no pictures today.

After arriving in Hoi An on my moto, Penelope, I spent a couple days in the small city hanging out with Brad, Adrian and a few other friends. Apparently it is a nice place to visit, but for me, after coming from the tourist-free mountains and from the freedom of driving myself, the omnipresent jewellery shops, tailors and hassle was too much and I was itching to leave.

So I rode with Adrian up the coast 130 Km to Hue, another stop on the tourist track. This day started off nice but turned into the most miserable on the trip and sufficient enough to skew my intended plans.

As we left the major city of Danang, the 4th largest in Vietnam and on the coast between Hoi An and Hue, we have to cross a couple of short mountains passes. The first was a beautiful ride, although the clouds of the morning turned to mist, to drizzle, to rain before we reached the white out conditions at the top of the pass. Putting on some more clothes, we descended and continued on our way to Hue.

However as the weather got worse and worse, the adventure of the day turned into misery. After we ate lunch about 30 Km from Hue I decided to just head into town as fast as possible and threw down the throttle.

Just once I stopped to make sure Adrian was behind me as my tiny rearview mirror shows almost nothing. After 20 seconds I saw his big bike coming so I hit the throttle hard again and roared north through the wind and rain.

However when I stopped again at the outskirts of Hue, Adrian wasn't 20 seconds behind me. He wasn't 5 minutes, or 10 either. I found the place where he and I had agreed to meet if we got separated but he wasn't there and still hadn't appeared after an hour. I began getting worried that his bike broke down or worse, he had been in an accident.

Shivering from the cold and my drenched clothes sapping my body's heat, I booked a hotel, emailed Adrian to tell him where I was and to call me, and took a hot shower to warm up. I put both my soaked pairs of pants up to dry but of course it was days later before I was wearing dry pants again.

Finally as I watched news about the declared independence of Kosovo on CNN, my cell phone range. He was fine, but his bike, which he never named, was not. Hours later he had it towed into town (read: two bikes one rope) and came into the room sullen.

All the next day I pushed him around to repair shops and finally on the 4th shop he had been to they agreed that they could fix it for him. The mechanics identified some problem with his engine which would require hours and hours of work disassembling and reassembling the engine and replacement parts. For all this work, Adrian paid the amount of 315,000 Vietnamese dong. That amounts to just under $20. You gotta love the prices here.

So after that stressful day, Adrian and Sjoukje, a Dutch friend who Adrian had traveled with for awhile weeks before and who I had only met briefly, but who saw me in an internet cafe and joined us in our 4 bedroom hotel room, headed off to do some touristy site seeing, which apparently is nice, while I attempted to change my plans.

After looking at the weather forcast for the north of Vietnam (I was still only about halfway up) and finding that we could expect lovely days of cold and rain for the next two weeks, we abandoned our plan to visit the mountainous north before heading to Hanoi. Natasha, my friend in Saigon invited me back to her place and offered to by Penelope, so I was looking for a bus or train to put the bike and myself onto.

Of course this was very frustrating and took all day. However eventually I was aboard and 18 hours later I was in Saigon although it took me two days more to get my bike and then it wouldn't start and even now runs horribly. After spending a few more days with Natasha and Amy I flew up to Hanoi and put my passport in for a visa extension since mine was to expire in a few days.

That was Wednesday night. Thursday morning Adrian, Sjoukje, Will- a young british guy who I met on my way from the airport- and I headed east to visit the famed Halong Bay. Somehow we had decided together to on a tour and spend a night on a junk, the type of boat that is used. Of course the tour was annoying and completely frustrating at times after we had been used to traveling only by moto. Indeed my first bus in Vietnam was from Hanoi to Halong City.

The bay was beautiful although the weather blurred the gray sky with gray water. But a bottle of Red Label consumed our night on board the ship and having 3 good friends with me made the trip tolerable.

That weekend Natasha visited and organized a very successful couchsurfing gathering at a local restaurant where locals, expats and travelers all joined together for a meal and conversation. A very fun event.

Natasha left Sunday night, Adrian left Monday morning, Sjoukje and Will, another friend, left Monday night and I remained, still waiting for my passport to be returned.

Finally yesterday, Tuesday, I got my passport, and today I will get my Myanmar visa returned to me finally. There is a 6am bus up to the border with Laos where Adrian and Sjoukje await my arrival. I will probably cross early Friday morning my time and then spend about two weeks in the country, hopefully most of it trekking, before heading back to Bangkok and meeting Natasha for our weeklong trip to Myanmar (Burma).


I apologize for the rambling sense of this post. Nothing important has happend and although I do have some good pictures, it isn't a good place to upload them here. I have changed my ticket home and will arrive in SFO on May 6th, two weeks later than planned. Hopefully my money will last that long!

Central Highlands

Random:

That leashed monkey just attacked that little boy who was playing with it. Gotta stay on your toes when playing with monkeys on leashes.

Saying my farewells to Natasha and Amy as they road the local bus home to Ho Chi Minh City from the beach town of Mui Ne, I loaded my pack, donned my helmet and mounted my steed. Heading north I rode the gorgeous and little-trafficked mountain roads up to the hill station of Dalat.

Built by the French Dalat is a beautiful, if touristy, city full of gardens, colonial architecture, and motorcycle tours. I met up with Brad as he had arrived the day before and met some other couchsurfers and travelers in a backpacker cafe. One of them, a young Canadian, Adrian, had just bought himself a Honda Daelum 125 cc motorcycle and he and Brad were leaving the next morning to ride through the highlands.

I expected to like Dalat, hoping it would be the vietnamese equivalent to the mountainous paradise of Darjeelng, my most favorite city in India. However I decided to just stay one day as the mountains were significantly smaller and less impressive than in the Himalaya (no surprise) and in an effort to catch back up with Brad and Adrian at some point.

With my one full day in Dalat I decided to skip all the normal tourist highlights and rode out to the nearby peak, Lang Bian, standing at 2200 meters. There is a road driven by tourist jeeps all the way to the summit, and plenty of Vietnamese tourists still on their Tet holiday to hire them, but there is also a trail.

Road up to Lang Bian from the nearby villages.

Taking off quickly I realized that riding a moto through the mountains of Vietnam is not the same as hiking them. I was short of breath after the first 45 minutes and had to sit on a rock, feigning good health so as not to embarrass myself in front of the two Dutch women were I had passed earlier. I mean they are Dutch, they don't have any mountains, I should be able to climb faster than they can!

Taking a break on my hike to the summit of Lang Bian. I realized I was not in the trekking shape.

In an attempt at saving face, I chatted with them as we walked slowly together the other hour up to the summit. Atop was a cafe, local ethnic minority villagers selling handicrafts and dozens of Vietnamese tourists. What was lacking was foreign tourists, and the two Dutch women and I became an attraction in and of ourselves.

On the summit of Lang Bian.

As I was chatting with one Vietnamese man I felt an arm across my shoulders and turned to see a beautiful young Vietnamese woman looking straight ahead, away from my face. Following her smile's trajectory I realized she was posing for a picture, and I was to be the other subject. I quickly capitulated, threw on my borrowed smile and allowed my picture taken. It was a very unique experience as that doesn't really happen in India as much. At least not with women doing the posing.

That night I had dinner with the Dutch women really had a great time. The conversation flowed smoothly alongside the Saigon beer until it was 1 oclock, and we had closed down the last open cafe in sight. Promising to see each other in Hoi An a few days later, we went to bed.

The next days ride was again gorgeous. Twisting through more mountains, skirting along acres of rice paddies, and fighting a side wind that threatened to push me off the road, or worse, into the sparse oncoming traffic, I made the 6 hour journey up to Buon Ma Thuot.

A roadside view from the ride from Dalat to Buon Ma Thuot

Another roadside view. This small girl found me fascinating as she watched me eat lunch from a foot away. No matter how hard I tried, however, I could not maker her smile.

A large and city, I found BMT not especially appealing and so after the customary time wasting of eating alone and using the internet I retreated to my cell of a room with one unusual comfort- satellite TV. I had planned to read my book until I fell asleep early, but alas, my weakness for western movies got the better of me. So ashamed as I am for the movie that I did watch, I can't even tell you here.

(Not quite as) early (as I had hoped) the next morning I set off for Kon Tum, again seeing similar scenery along the way and enjoying the ride more than the ultimate destination. (Perhaps that is because Evan's Journey IS the destination?)

A not-so-great shot of the ever present fields of rice paddies.

But that is not to say that Kon Tum is not a worthy place to stop. In fact, Adrian had stayed an extra day in the town, allowing Brad to get a day ahead of him, and allowing me to catch up. Arriving in the afternoon, I got a call from the Canuck and we drove out to a neighboring ethnic village before heading back into town for dinner.

A view out along the countryside from my hotel balcony in Kon Tum.

While we stopped and chatted along the one road village, local children began massing on the steps of a nearby building. Eyes fixed on the strange tall newcomers, the children whispered amongst themselves and a few became braver and braver until they were calling out to us, "Hello! What your name!?" apparently exhausting the group's English vocabulary.

Funny enough, a few even mocked us playfully by opening their eyes wide with their fingers demonstrating a foreigners large eyes. Adrian and I thought this a little shocking, yet innocent and hilarious so we called back playfully that they were horrible racists.

After some time the curiousity of the village rose to a point that a few adults came out to see what the buzz was about. And soon were being invited into a nearby house to share a cup of tea with an older woman who was the mother of the two girls who had tried to take pictures of us with their camera phones.

The older woman's sister spoke English and so she translated for us all night. After one small cup of tea we were asked to stay for dinner and politely accepted. While the one sister cooked, we were escorted to the English speakers house, met her grandson who lived with her and, oddly enough, watched the first half hour of the 1956 film The Ten Commandments, starring Charlton Heston, completely and loudly dubbed over by one Vietnamese man doing all the voices. A very strange and surreal experience.

After we ate a dinner of rice and, well, I'm not sure what the other stuff was, while sitting on the ground in the first house, we chatted some more. Adrian and I gracefully steered around comments about us marrying the 17 year old daughter, and asked about their families.

The sisters were two of 5 girls and 3 boys in the family. All the brothers have died, as have both of the womens' husbands. We were struck by how matter of factly people in Vietnam discuss the death of loved ones. I think it is just one more cultural difference that we were not expecting.

The English speaking woman told us of her daugther whose husband ran off with another woman and how she remarried a man from Dalat, moved there, and left her son to live with his grandmother. At some point during the night, the 17 year old pulled out her phone, dialed and handed the phone to the child. A huge smile materialized on his little dirty face and his eyes lit up with the life of love. His grandmother confirmed our suspiscion when she whispered to us that he was speaking to his mother. For the rest of the night, the brightness of that full and innocent smile never faded.

Eventually the night had worn on too long, and although Adrian and I were appreciative of the family's hospitality and warmth, we were ready to escape the long awkward pauses in conversation due to the language barrier. We thanked our hosts and promised to return if we ever came back to Kon Tum.

The next day Adrian drove north and east back to the coast and I stayed an extra day to rest in Kon Tum. I read for hours, slept for hours, spent hours on the internet, and only minutes driving through other adjacent villages. Truthfully I didn't return to the village from the night before because I didn't want to brave the inevitable awkwardness of the encounter alone.

Getting up at dawn the next morning, I made the long drive out to Hoi An on Vietnam's coast. This day's ride was the longest and most incredible of my journey. First the road wound us through a number of villages each with a large steep-roofed town hall staring down at me as I cruised by.

Typical village town hall. This one is near Kon Tum.

Then I ascended up into the clouds of a high mountain pass. For half an hour visibility fell to a dozen feet and I weaved slowly around the switchbacks honking my horn to warn nearby motorists and pedestrians of my presence. After the slow descent out of the cold fog, and long after I had donned both my pairs of pants, a hat, my new gloves and many layers of shirts and jackets, I turned east onto a small road that would take me to the coast. The scenery only became more spectacular.

The foggy haze gave way to vistas of high mountains encased in a thick shell of lush green jungle. Grey rivers flowed swiftly nearby, racing me towards the lowlands of the coast. As I descended lower, the narrow road itself eventually became enveloped in the jungle. For kilometers on end I cruised through the cool shade and moist but quickly warming climate of the surrounding greenery.

View from the Ho Chi Minh Road north of Kon Tum after I had descended from the cloudy mountains seen at the top of the picture.

Penelope posing on the side of a bridge on my way to Hoi An.

Another landscape from the same day's ride.

The town where I ate lunch. "Com" means rice and all I have to do to eat is stop at a small place with this sign outside.

Varied and sustained views ruled the day and won me over. A smile firmly rooted on my bearded face, I cruised the Ho Chi Minh Road and its tributaries, in search of exactly nothing else. This ride was to be the climax of my motorbike trip through Vietnam.

Random:

A fat dog in Hoi An. Don't worry. It was still alive at the time of the picture.