Myanmar's finest

Sittwe, Myanmar (the first time);

Sittwe was another stop on my long trip to Mrauk U.  My first impression of it wasn’t stellar.  My traveling companion, Jenna, and I had just arrived and were in route to a hotel on a bicycle taxi when a man appeared beside us on the back of a moto and identified himself as a police officer.  He rode along side of us and inquired as to where we came from and where we were going.  He told us that the entire town is filled with liars and cheats and not to trust a single person.  “They all lie here” he told us.  He said to “remember I helped you.  Remember I gave you advice” and then handed me his card.  He continued to ride next to us for about another 30 seconds and then patted his driver’s shoulder and away they went.  His tone was more threatening than helpful. 

We’d just gotten off a boat from Tuanggok and had to stay in Sittwe for a night.    I don’t want to get into the “situation” here, so I’ll just say that the police are not liked.  The boat we’d just exited was packed to the gills with police.  Besides Jenna and I, there were 2 other tourists.  The rest on the boat, for the most part, were police.  The reason for the great number of Myanmar’s finest was that a large police promotion ceremony was taking place in Sittwe in the coming days.  This meant that Sittwe was hosting large number of unwelcome guests.  The mood in the town was cool if not all together dark and I was happy to board the boat for Mrauk U early the next morning. 

Maurk U;

When your guesthouse host shows you to your room the first time, you never know what’s going to be behind the door.  You might be shown to a large, clean, airy room with a private bathroom and hot water.  The door may stop half swing, bumping up against your would-be bed and requiring you to remove your backpack just to enter (I had one room that was so small that I had to climb onto the bed to make sufficient room to put my bag on the floor).   You may find a room to be perfectly fine only to later discover that the walls are so thin that you can hear the slightest noise from next door.  The later you arrive to a town, and the greater the competition for rooms can be and the less picky you get.  I’ve been lucky though as I haven’t had to sleep fully clothed yet (unlike Guatemala). 

The fact is, at least for me, that as long as the room is clean, I’m satisfied with it.  I can even live without hot water, though I don’t like cursing so early in the day.  The second most important thing is the guest house owner(s).  A friendly, knowledgeable, and accessible guesthouse owner can make a trip.  This is particularly true in a country like Myanmar where processes and schedules are ever changing and rarely intuitive. 

In Maurk U, I stayed at a Hotel called “The Prince”.  The place was good in every way.  It was run by a married couple.  They had one child, a 4 year old girl named Tawn Tawn (spelled phonetically – this is true for all Burmese names in this blog and some English names too).  The wife, whose name I could never quite get, had two siblings that worked there, both younger than she.  Besides the siblings, there were 6 other children that the siblings described as “like sister” or “like brother”.  I have no idea where the “like” children’s parents were and another guest who inquired into the subject received a vague response followed by a fresh subject. 

Everybody there treated us like we were the most important people on the planet.  They all had duties around the hotel.   Even the 7 year old girl, “The Then Way”, helped with preparing our dinner (pealing a small batch of roots with a carrot peeler with surprising skill).  Most of the guests ate dinner together at a large table in the tree filled courtyard, the children running about serving food, tea, coffee, and beer as needed.  After dinner, some of the kids would collect near the dinner table and chat and joke with the guests.  Their days were long.  My room was closest to their home, and I would hear them begin crossing the courtyard to the kitchen at about 430 AM.  Each night I fell asleep still hearing conversations, laugher, and clanking pots emanating from the kitchen. 

We (I and 7 other guests) toured some of the Chin Villages north of Maurk U on the border of Myanmar’s Chin State.  The husband half of our host team lead the tour.  Here we visited a remote river side market and three villages.  In the villages, the older women all had their faces completely covered in web like tattoo.  The custom dated from over 3000 years ago, but had stopped altogether 50 years ago for the reason, if I understood correctly, that the shaman that were tattooing the women were charging a year’s income.  We ate lunch cross legged on a bamboo platform from banana leaves and our guide explained that all of the structures along the river, including the place we were sitting, were washed away each rainy season and subsequently rebuilt. 

Sittwe (the second visit)

We returned to Sittwe after 3 days to a town that barely resembled what we had left.  The mood was lighter and the people friendlier.  The people of Myanmar;

It’s hard to describe just how friendly and warm the people are here.  They’re always smiling, always calling to each other, always laughing.  Even those who appear to live in abject poverty smile and wave and only after greeting you will sometimes turn their palm up asking for a bit of money.  My arm grew tired during a walk in Sittwe as I could barely lower it for all waves I was returning to children and adults. 

I was invited into a shop keepers store (a space smaller than some walk in closets I’ve seen) and asked to sit.  I spoke to him about his life in Sittwe (at 64 he’d travelled very little, and never out of the country).  He had been a school teacher but was now retired.  The chair he sat in nearly filled the store.    Behind him was his living area and kitchen.  His wife sat quietly as he spoke to me and I got the feeling that this was something he did regularly.  He offered me a cigar which I refused, but then asked to purchase a cup of coffee which I presumed they offered based on the cups and coffee packets I saw on the wall behind him.  He seemed confused by my question and we quickly dropped the coffee subject.  He asked me to return to his shop if I were to visit Sittwe again. 

Inle Lake, Myanmar;

My current location is Inle Lake.  My traveling partner for the past two weeks, Jenna, headed to the beach.  She had intended on traveling back to Thailand, but during a layover in Thandwe decided that was the town for her.  Traveling like this gives you that sort of freedom.  So I’m back on my own.  I spent one day on a guided tour of the towns around the lake.  We visited some markets and a Buddhist monastery.  The best part of the trip was a visit to “the floating gardens”, which is a large town with hundreds of homes built on stilts and surrounded by a vast floating farm.  The entirety of the town and the farm area is built on top of Inle lake.  The layout of the town is similar to any normal town.  But, except for roads and yards, they have water and floating gardens.  No stray dogs here.  Each house has a boat beneath it.  The floating farms are made of lake weed and grass and are pinned to the 15’ deep lake bed by long bamboo poles.    The farms go on for miles. 

During my flight to Inle I sat next to a French photographer, Yannick Borit, that is married to a Burmese women and owns a resort here called The Inle Princess.  He invited me to have lunch with him at his studio and to a tour of his resort, which is how I spent my day yesterday.  When I arrived, one of the hotel hostesses brought me to Yannick’s office/studio where we found Yannick sitting on the floor sorting through piles of medication.  “For my guests” he explained in a thick French accent.  I’d gotten the feeling on the plane that he was a man that rarely stopped moving.  He left his medication project and walked behind his large horseshoe desk and asked me to sit.  He showed me some of the photography work he was currently sorting through from a trip to China.  The walls of his studio were covered in large prints of his work.  We discussed his approach to photography and some of his more recent projects while his staff set out our lunch at a table that was encircled by a single hanging bench.  It was the sort of dining area only an artist could conceive of.  He told me that the resort had 47 rooms and about 200 employees. 

After lunch, he brought me on what I believe was his daily inspection routine.  I would need all day in order to give this place any justice in my writing.  It was a beautiful place.  The resort was on Inle Lake.  It had large bungalow style rooms, long bridges over ponds, sauna, yoga room, massage rooms, a beautiful dining area, and a wine cellar.  Paintings and carvings decorated walls, fences, ceilings, and roofs.  The really interesting thing about the place is that all of the wood carvings, all of the paper for the paper lamps, pottery, dishes, plates, tiles, were made on site.  They have a vegetable farm, pigs, cows, goats, pottery facility, wood carving facility, lacquer facility, paper making area, carpenters, and mechanics.  I began to understand why he needed so many employees.  It could be described as an artisan colony with a resort attached.   He and his wife opened the hotel 15 years ago.  It was impressive to see all that they had accomplished there. 

I spent today hiking with some new friends to a cave outside of town.  A monk that lived there invited us into his home and showed us some pictures of his travels to various temples.  My friends and I took turns getting pictures with him and then each gave him a donation.  As a gift, he and gave me an avocado which I, in turn, made a gift to my guesthouse owner.  I imagine most avocados don’t have such interesting histories.  His house was just a tiny room with a bed.  It was located inside the cave.  It was a dark place that I would think would depress anybody, but he never stopped smiling. 

After the cave we hiked south towards a mountain side winery we’d heard rumors of.  None of us had tasted wine in a long time, so we all felt pretty motivated to find the place.  After about an hour and a half of weaving mountain trails and dirt roads and some help from locals, we managed to locate it.  The dining area overlooked their vineyard and the wine was excellent.  We all felt like we’d been teleported to another land.  There, I had my first non-Asian meal of my trip (spaghetti) and some pinot noir.  It was a nice change of pace. 

So, that’s the post.  I’ll be heading home on the 26^th, so my next few posts will be about the process of preparing to leave the country for 27 months.  I’m not sure how interesting I can make such a subject, but I’ll do my best.  I’m looking forward to catching up with friends and family (and walking Gomez).  I hope all is well with each of you. 

Everybody must be examined!

sorry for the poor formatting.  myanmar internet is poor, so i'm posting via a friend on skype.

The end of this post (section; “The ride home”) isn’t good for kids.  You may want to stop there if you’re more interested in the lighter side of my travels. 
Please note; the people of Myanmar are referred to as ‘Burmese’ as the country was previously known as Burma. 
New Year’s Eve, Chiang Mai, Thailand;
New Year’s Eve in Chiang Mai probably wasn’t much different than many large cities, save for the fact that everybody has access to large fireworks and the entire sky is filled with thousands of lanterns.  It was a good town to ring in the New Year.  The thing that most surprised me here were the burning lanterns that people launched.  I’d never seen one of these things.  It’s a four feet tall white paper bag with a burning element attached by wires at the opening.  You open it up, light the element and then stand there holding it open end down waiting for the air inside to heat up.  After about 1 minute, off it goes and goes and goes.  There were thousands of these things filling the sky above Chiang Mai. 
I won’t go into my NYE night in much detail.  I did meet some good people from Thailand and around the globe.  I’d been fighting a mild cold for a few days and took care not to make it worse.  Chiang Mai was nice, but I’ve discovered I much prefer the less developed areas.  I did some sightseeing and met some nice locals, but my mind was on Myanmar which was my next stop. 
Myanmar;
I flew to Yangon, Myanmar from the Bangkok airport with 15 one-hundred dollar bills hidden in a copy of Stephen Kelman’s ‘Pigeon English’ which was stuffed in my backpack.  This sort of behavior isn’t encouraged when traveling abroad or anywhere else.  The exception to the rule is Myanmar.  There are no ATMs in Myanmar and nobody will accept a credit card.  Even domestic air travel is paid for in cash.  You need to carry every penny you’ll need for the entire trip into the country with you.  When you arrive in Yangon, you then change your money at an unofficial money changer (black market).    I quickly found out that everything in Myanmar is different than what I’m used to.  Cars have their steering wheel on the right, but also drive on the right side of the street.  Men wear “longi” skirts and western tops.  Most of the men and many of the women constantly chew a substance called “Bettle Nut” that stains their lips and teeth blood red.  These are things I noticed before leaving the airport. 
The country seems like a place built by a previous civilization and then abandon, and, subsequently, taken over by the current inhabitants.  It’s a dark place at night as lights are used sparingly.  Everything here is crumbling and patched together.  The buildings, the vehicles, the sidewalks, the roads, everything.       
In any 5 minute period here, I see enough alien things to create a pretty large blog post.  I’ll start by telling you about where I’m at right now and how I got here.  I’m currently at a little café in an off-the-radar town called Taunggok.  Foreigners don’t typically come here, but my current travel partner and I decided to take a non-typical route to a remote mountain tribe in the north so that we could see some places that aren’t on the tourist trail. 
Taunggok, Myanmar (on the road, and sea, to Mrauk U);
My friend Jenna and I are currently on day 3 of our 5 day journey to Mrauk U.  We started in Bagan, bused to Magwe, bused to Pyay, and then bused to our current location in Taunggok.  People here seem surprised at our existence.  We have to wait one day to get a boat to Sittwe (which is the last stop before the mountain tribe town of Mrauk U).  Each stop on the journey has had fewer and fewer westerners.  Here, we are completely alone.  We walked past a primary school today and every window was filled with waving hands.  I cannot stress enough how friendly and curious the locals are.  My friend is particularly popular among the men here (and I often seemingly invisible when in her company).  Another thing we encounter less of each day is English speaking Burmese, so we’ve gotten really good and charades and at using the few words of Burmese we can find at the back of our Lonely Planet guides. 
It wasn’t easy to get here.  We made it to a town called Pyay only to find out that the military was particular about foreigners on the road to Taunggok.  The only way we could get to here, we were told, was to “wait on the bridge at 8:30 tonight”.  As in many previous occasions, locals came to our assistance (for a very minor fee) and helped us through the process.  They explained that there are a number of military check points on the road to Taunggok and that we needed a bus driver that had at least a little knowledge of the English language.  The only English speaking bus drivers were the ones that originated out of Yangon.  So we were essentially hitching a ride with a passing bus with the help of some locals.
Once I was on the bus, I thought I would be in for a high-speed, loud, and extremely bumpy ride on worn out cement and dirt roads for the next 8 hours (as per the norm here).  What I didn’t realize was how very mountainous the area between Pyay and Taunggok was.  We weaved the tightest single lane mountain road I’ve ever seen in person or on TV.  It consisted of winding switch backs with hairpin curves and insanely steep inclines and declines.  We passed a few very small villages on the way, but, otherwise, it was nothing but a single lane dirt twister for over 100 miles.  The fullish moon was both a blessing and curse.  The scenery was beautiful, but much of the drive had sheer cliff on one side and mountain side on the other.  No guardrails, no room for error.  It was hair-raising.  We did this in a greyhound sized bus.  In the states, this road would be dynamited off the side of the mountain for everybody’s safety.  We had to exit the bus one time during the trip for a check point.  A large sign above the military station stated “Everybody must be examined”.  I was not examined, thankfully. 
This place leaves you constantly scratching your head.  For some reason, at about 1AM on two of my bus rides, they began blasting this sort of Buddhist chant music followed by a selection I will call “echo, screams, and feedback in D minor”.  Nobody seemed at all surprised by this.  The music stayed on, in both cases, for the remainder of the ride.  I think the purpose was to keep the driver awake who, based on the empty energy drink bottles, I believe works very long hours.  
Prior to my current journey to Mrauk U, I was in Bagan (Myanmar); 
I won’t write much about my visit to the temples of Bagan.  It would take me days to put words to the beauty of the place.  42sq kilometers filled with over 4400 temples, all of which were constructed over 800 years ago.  It’s difficult to believe the place exists at all.  From the top of one of the central temples, you can see hundreds of temple peaks in every direction.  The place is particularly beautiful at sunrise and sunset, which leave the atmosphere dusty clay red in the evening and a foggy blue in the morning.  One morning, well before sunrise, I was wrapped in my jacket high atop one of the better temples for viewing the sunrise.  I’d gotten here on a horse drawn carriage driven by a chubby local with blood red teeth and a happy personality named Tilo.  There wasn’t yet a hint of light on the horizon, but the largest temple, Ananda (about 2 miles away), was lit and playing Buddhist morning music.  Once the sun began to rise, about 8 hot air balloons lifted off in the distance and started to float across the skyline in a long precession of dark silhouettes.  The temples and trees poked up above a low heavy mist.  This place is a photographer’s dream come true (hint to M+B). 
Later that day, my friend and I were told of a festival taking place that evening near the Old Bagan gate.  We decided to rent bikes and check it out.  We rode out of town for about 20 minutes on a dark dusty road lit only by the headlights of cars and motos.  We passed droves of walkers.  The festival area was quite big and attended by thousands of Burmese.  We saw four other tourists near the gate, but none other for the rest of the evening.  The festival was essentially a huge night market.  The main part of it was a patch work of connected tents that spread out for what seemed like a few city blocks.  The further we weaved back the darker it got.  Finally, we emerged on the other side of the tent city in a field where we found a crowed yelling and surrounding a small arena.  We could see that they were playing cane-ball (think hacky sack with a wicker ball the size of a cantaloupe) which is very popular here.  When we approached, a few folks in the crowd quickly grabbed us and pushed us to the front for a better look.  It’s a sport unlike anything I’ve ever seen, which, in Myanmar, is and experience I’m beginning to get used to.

We then waded back into the tent city in search of a concert we’d heard rumors of.  It was getting late and I was noticing more than a few drunken locals.  One accidentally ran into the back of me, spun, and crashed to the ground in front of me.  He jumped up and looked at me, his lip packed with blood red bettle, and seemed to have difficulty processing what he was looking at.  I’m sure he didn’t mean me any harm, but his friends quickly grabbed him and pulled him deeper into the market.  I began to wonder how many of these kids would be driving motos home tonight.  I’d seen 4 moto accidents since I started traveling and one car accident.  All were minor.  I’d already seen one moto accident that day and I would see two more before the day was over. 
Jenna and I found the concert area and were, as per norm here, greeted warmly by the crowd.  We pushed our way toward the right front stage area to get some good photos, but found ourselves among the ruffian drunk teenager crowd.  A fight broke out and we decided the family area toward the back was more our speed.  We settled in and watch the show for about an hour.  There was dancing and music and it was all quite entertaining and alien to me.  
The ride home (it gets very unpleasant here to put it lightly, so please skip the next two paragraphs if you’re so inclined);
We abandon the concert and headed back to our bikes, passing a human propelled wooden Ferris wheel and human propelled merry go round.  We were happy to find our bikes untouched and started to ride back.  I had some worries about drunk drivers, but Jenna and I stuck close to the side of the road and were as careful as we could be.  It only took about a minute before we witnessed the first accident.  It was minor.  Three teenagers on a moto, clearly drunk, dumped their bike in the middle of the road.  They were all fine.  We rode on for another 5 minutes until we saw a small crowd standing at the side of the road.  It was dark and dusty and, at first, it appeared to me as if a large potted tree had been dumped off a truck.  As we approached the outline of a moto on its side emerged.  It was hard to make out the body that was still half mounted on it, as it was twisted in unnatural angles.  The man had hit a jeep head on, crushing the quarter panel and headlight.  He lay in a pool of broken glass and blood.  He was completely still as was everybody in the crowd.  The jeep owner (presumably) stood over the man.  Nobody spoke. 
I wanted to help, but I knew there was nothing I could do.  I considered pulling the bike off his leg, but that would have meant moving his whole body which I knew I shouldn’t do.  If he could speak English, I would have tried to talk to him.  But very few people here spoke any at all.  I was afraid that if he were conscious, seeing and hearing an American would only scare and confuse him.  It was a horrible, violent scene.  In the states, everybody in the crowd would have their cell phones out and you would hear sirens in the distance.  Before long, multiple ambulances, fire trucks, and police would be on the scene.  And, shortly after that, you might hear a helicopter approaching.  Not here.  Cell phones are rare and I’ve never seen an ambulance or heard a siren.  I had no idea how they dealt with this sort of thing, but I was sure that they dealt with this sort of thing plenty.  Jenna was shaken by the sight and wanted to go.  I knew there was nothing we could do and we were just contributing to the growing crowd.  An official looking truck with two men in uniform arrived at the scene and we left quickly after. 
So, that’s my post.  I’m sorry for the downer ending, but you see a lot of things in a land like this.  In two days’ time I will be in Mrauk U.  There, the hill tribe women decorate their faces with spider web tattoos to make themselves look less attractive to marauding kings.  It should be an interesting few days.  Thanks for reading and Happy New Year.

But they're going to kill the snake

My Lonely Planet guidebook’s description of the speed boat ride to Huay Xai (Laos) used terms like “ludicrously dangerous” and “mortality rate”.  In the end, it was the fear I saw in my guest house owner’s eyes when I asked her to book me one of these death-commutes that changed my mind.  I’d ignored a similar look in Guatemala when deciding on a chicken bus trip out of San Pedro and lived regret it.  This is how I came to be where I am right now; on a slow boat to Huay Xai, a two day trip from Luang Prabang (Laos) that includes an overnight stay at Pak Beng (Laos).  It’s not so bad.  Watching the tall cliffs along the Mekong River meander by while drinking a big Beerlao and listening to some Brand New on my iPod isn’t a bad way to spend a day (or two). 

Things happen quickly here.  Last night I was sitting on the front steps of my guesthouse in Luang Prabang, uncertain about where I would go tomorrow when a Swiss guy (Lukas) sat next to me and we started discussing our travels.  He’d just finished a semester abroad at a university in Bangkok and was traveling Thailand and Laos with three friends.  Two of his friends were also Swiss, the other (Hanna) was German.  Before long, he and I and his friends and a few other guests from the guesthouse had taken over the front porch.  Not long after that, Lukas suggested we get some Beerlao and that started a mildly epic night that ended with a restaurant employee politely requesting their table back that we’d pulled out onto a sidewalk and were using for a German drinking game called “south north” (or something like that).  This gang had spent four months studying in Bangkok followed by four weeks of traveling.  They had some advice on where to visit in Thailand and where to avoid.  They told me Burma shouldn’t be missed and filled me in on what to expect there.  They suggested I tag along with them on a tubing trip in the center of Laos.  However, I need to start working my way back toward Bangkok if I hope to have time to visit Burma.  They were good people and I’m glad I met them. 

In my last blog post I discussed my tour of Dalat and the evening at the bar “Saigon Nite”.  An episode that I didn’t note was the conversation I had at a large table of drunken locals as I waited for my Dutch friends outside of our hotel.  How I came to be at this table was an invitation from one of our Dalat tour guides.  He and some friends play pool and drink each night at a small place attached to the hotel I was staying at.  I, being one man, was ready to go out well before the two girls I was accompanying, so I decided to spend my extra time having a drink with my tour guide and his friends.  I found them sitting at a big picnic table outside a really small bar that was filled almost entirely by a large pool table.  It was cold out and everybody was wrapped tightly in their jackets and in front of each were multiple bottles of beer.  Some were still full, most were empty. 

There were five men at the table, but only one spoke and he spoke a lot.  He was a loud, gregarious, chubby man (by Vietnamese standards).  His name was Thrang (or something like that).  He had a plate of dried shark meat that he dipped in a hot sauce and shared with me and the rest of the table.  He asked me where I was going and where I had been and was, like many I’d met here, very interested in what I thought of Vietnam.  He laughed loudly at his own dirty jokes (about naked women, tomatoes, and cucumbers).  His laugh was a mix of doctor evil, Dracula, and jaba the hut.  It was maniacal.  It started explosively and ended abruptly.  When his laugh died, he would look me intently in the eye and then continue with whatever the hell it was he was trying to tell me.  Then he said something that got my attention.  I can’t remember exactly what his phrasing was, but it was something along the lines of; “After our war with America, I have one problem with America.”  He looked around the table, but I’m pretty certain nobody had any clue what he was saying to me (whether due to drunkenness or lack of an understanding of English, but most likely it was varying portions of both).  He went on to tell me that his father had served under an American commander and that this was something he was very proud of.  He said that when a hill needed to be taken, three Vietnamese leaders were chosen to lead the assault and that his father was always one of the ones to lead.  He said that his problem with America is that we “went away”.  I think he is among the minority here, but I don’t know.

But, that’s not the reason I’m telling you about Thrang.  It was something he said later that I reflected on many times in Hanoi and Sapa.  He said that I will find the people of the south nicer and that I should maybe consider telling people in the north I’m Russian (maniacal laugher).  He said that the north is poorer.  He said that their lives are harder and they are not as friendly.  I figured a little less friendly would be OK.  People couldn’t get much friendlier than what I encountered so far.

Hanoi, Vietnam;

Thrang was so right.  I’m not going to write much about Hanoi.  It’s a loud, dirty city filled with people who aren’t particularly fond of me or anybody else from what I can tell.  It wasn’t all bad.  I’ll share some of the highlights and oddities and I’m sure a few other things that you wouldn’t consider either odd or interesting. 

On Christmas Eve I met an Australian girl named Elyse at a nice café called Koto across the street from the Temple of Literature.  I’d just left the Ho Chi Minh mausoleum where I’d seen Ho Chi Minh’s embalmed body protected by four Vietnamese honor guard soldiers with bayonets fixed and reflected on the fact that he was adamant in his wish that he be cremated.  After I left the mausoleum, I was approached by a Vietnamese man who asked if I was American.  He was thrilled to find out I was and announced the fact to the crowd around us (pointing at me like a circus animal and excitedly announcing “American!”) and then asked to get a picture with me.  Then a line formed.  For the next minute or so I was posing with various Vietnamese in the shadow of the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum.  It occurred to me that it might be a natural human emotion to feel a bit humiliated by what was occurring, but I didn’t.  I had nothing to do and all day to do it.  If I could make a few people’s day a bit better, why not?

So, anyway, Elyse wanted to eat snakes.  In a country that had “dog markets”, a snake restaurant wasn’t a huge surprise.  She suggested that we take a tour of the areas outside of Hanoi the next day.  The highlight would be a snake market where we would eat at a snake restaurant.  Elyse was cool and I figured a snake meal would be a memorable Christmas brunch, so I agreed. 

It turned out I agreed to much more than I thought I did.  The evening before the snake market, Elyse and I went to a bar called Mao’s Red Lounge (the name screams Christmas Eve fun).  There, we met an Englishman (john?) and a Canadian (jett) that both taught English in Burma.  I got a familiar not-so-thrilled-with-americans-in-general vibe from the Englishman, but they were cool nonetheless.  Elyse mentioned the snake plans and our new friends filled us in on what we might encounter.  Jett talked about seeing a snake slaughtered, snake blood, and a still beating snake heart.  I thought that they were just having fun with us.

Snake Market (on a dirt alley somewhere outside of Hanoi);

Jett wasn’t just having fun with us.  On Christmas Morning I met Elyse at her hotel.  Our tour guides showed up a few minutes later on their motos.  We visited a silk market and a flower auction (highly entertaining – hearing a Vietnamese auctioneer is a life experience).  Elyse and I looked at each other for a moment when it was time to go to the snake market.  We had concerns, but we shared a silent determination. 

We got on the back of our respective motos and started our long trip to the snake market.  We drove for about 25 minutes through congested streets, down a highway, over a long bridge, past random street vendors and cows grazing in city alleys and roadsides, and, finally, through many dirt alleys until we got to our destination.  There were no other falang (tourists) around.  In fact, we’d seen very few falang since we left the hotel. 

The restaurant grounds had one small building on it that housed the cooking area.  Otherwise, it was a small pond with multiple dining areas built on stilts above the water.  Bridges connected each dining area.  It was a traditional sit-on-the-floor place.  We were shown the snake cages that housed a variety of water snakes and cobras.  One of the hosts took out a cobra.  Elyse and I stood well back.  (I actually held a cobra once many years ago at a festival in Pennsylvania.  It had been devenomized by a man who later died of a cobra bite.  Even small baby cobras can kill you…but I digress).   Then he took out a water snake and handed it to me.  Our hosts (two of them) then showed us to our table, one still carrying the water snake.  Elyse and I agreed on the “small” meal, which we both thought saved us from witnessing the snake slaughter.  We were wrong. 

Once Elyse and I realized that they were going to kill the snake in front of us, we both panicked a bit.  Nobody at the restaurant spoke any English at all, so Elyse called her hotel so that they could translate for us.  She explained that we ordered the” small meal” but that “they’re going to kill the snake” and then handed the phone to one of our hosts.  After a brief conversation he handed the phone back and hotel employee told her everything was fine and that we were only getting the small meal, but that it was expected that we witness the snake slaughter.   

So here it was; the place where my own squeamishness and empathy towards the snake met a local cultural expectation and I need to decide which side of the fence I was going to land.  I eat meat.  I will continue to eat meat throughout my service in Namibia as it is a big part of their diet.  All the meat I’ve ever eaten was killed well out of my site except for the occasional fish caught on my yearly UPS fishing trip.  This will not be true in Namibia where I will have to get used to witnessing, and likely participating in, the slaughter of animals for food.  In any case, this is how I justified what I was about to participate in, rightly or wrongly. 

Our hosts brought us to our table and set out a small mat upon which they placed two medium sized glasses with lemon grass stalks sticking out of each.  One poured rice wine (whiskey really – 100 proof) in both glasses while the other held the snake.  Then each grabbed an end of the snake and pulled it taut.  The man holding the head of the snake folded the head back forcefully and then folded it once again.  He then took out a small knife and inserted it just below the fold.  He opened up about a 3 inch slice in the snake belly and then pulled out what turned out to be the heart.  I don’t know if the word for “artery” is the same in Lao as it is in English, but the man holding the head said this word and then the other man sliced a small part of the guts and blood came pouring out into the rice wine  in a deep red cloud.  He then sliced the heart out and put it in a shot glass and handed it to me.  It was still beating.  I was still looking at the beating heart when one of my hosts poured rice wine into the shot glass and then motioned for me to drink it.  I swallowed everything in one shot and then looked at my hosts and then at Elyse and felt like my day had just ended.

I wish I could say the meal was good, but it really wasn’t.  Snake meat is very dry and though the restaurant tried its best to dress it up, it just wasn’t very good.  On our way out of the restaurant, a man (I think the restaurant owner) was sitting at the front gate with a bong (very common here – used to smoke a hairy type of tobacco).  He packed the pipe and then handed me the bong.  I took it and drew a puff while he held his lighter to the tobacco.  I blew out a puff of smoke and he seemed please and said something to me in French.  It was a strange day. 

So, that was Christmas brunch.  I hope yours was equally memorable.  Moving on.

Sapa, Vietnam;

I did a two day/three night trek north of Hanoi.  The hike was based out of a town called Sapa which is a remote farming town on the mountainous border with China.  Farming terraces for growing rice were carved into the mountains side as far as the eye could see.  It was interesting to see how the locals lived, but their existence was so tainted by tourism that it was hard not to feel like I was looking at my own negative impact on the world as opposed to how other’s live.  Sapa was a tourist zoo and I was as much a part of the reality of the place as the locals, which sort of defeated the purpose of visiting a remote farming village. 

I met some good people on my Sapa trip.  I met a man who was evacuated after the fall of Saigon.  It seemed he had a very good life in the States.  He was a retired software developer that coded programs used to analyze space shuttle stress data.  He was traveling with his wife and daughter (soon to be law student) and they all lived in San Francisco.  The four of us shared a sleeper cabin on the ten hour ride to Sapa.  The father and I spoke for a long while about his life in Vietnam as a child.  He’d grown up in Dalat and was happy to hear I’d visited there.  He said that he’d once gotten caught swimming in the Dalat lake which was strictly prohibited because of frequent drownings and that the police took all of his cloths and made him chase their car naked through the city while they threw out one piece of clothing at a time.  He said he and his friends would camp every weekend and he said his childhood there was a very happy one.  

I don’t know what the average age is in Southeast Asia, but I’d put it at about seven.  There are kids everywhere.  My tour group visited a primary school.  The kids all had the hand writing of a calligrapher and seemed to be working on pretty advanced math for second graders.  The school had a small house on its grounds that many of the teachers lived at.  Images of Ho Chi Minh were everywhere.  

The men in Sapa, my tour guide explained, work extremely hard most of the year.  He said that there are some months where there is very little for them to do (like now) and that during these times they spent their days completely drunk on locally made rice whiskey.  He said they start drinking in the morning, nap in the middle of the day, and then drink more in the evening.  Walking around Sapa you saw almost no men at all.  They were all inside somewhere, sleeping or drinking.  We saw a fight between two men.  It was pushing mostly and seemed to be over the placement of a small rock on one of their properties.  The men here wear only western cloths and the women only traditional dress.  They were quite poor and their houses were very simple and totally un-insulated (it gets very cold here). 

Luang Prabang, Laos;

I flew from Hanoi to Luang Prabang the day after Christmas.  Flights in Southeast Asia are cheap ($100-$200 range). Laos is very laid back.  It’s much quieter than the other places I’ve visited.  You hardly hear any horns whereas in other countries horns seem to be the primary form of communication.  The street vendors stand quietly as you walk by.  The voices in the markets are a bit hushed.  Tuk tuk drivers rarely call to you.  Buddhist monks are common in Southeast Asia, but, here, boys and men in saffron robes are everywhere.  Laos seems to have a lot of the good qualities of Southeast Asia and less of the dark underbelly you find in other countries. 

I took a Lao cooking class.  After days of hiking and sightseeing and markets, it was a really nice change of pace.  The others in the class were all fun.  They were all teachers except for one Lebanese man (Richard) who did video editing for Aljazeera.  He said his job was interesting but very stressful.   I learned quite a bit in the class.  Lao cooking is 95% prep work and 5% cooking. 

I went hiking at some waterfalls outside of town.  They were so pretty that they almost looked fake.  Emerald blue water flowing down a series of perfect waterfalls.  That night, I ate dinner at the night-market with a Malaysian traveler (Ben) I’d met hiking.  The food area at the market was a long alley with food stands on both sides and a small corridor through which people walked and looked at what was being offered.  A plate of food was 10,000 kip (about $1.25).  A bottle big of Beerlao was the same.  Each food stand had a clear incandescent light above it so that everything was either brightly lit or in complete darkness.  The thinnest crescent of moon burned orange above the tuk tuk drivers hunting for fares at the dark edge of the alley.  The electricity briefly cut out touching off a loud cheer from the crowd.  The whole scene had a rich-beautiful -creepy feeling to it.  I was also extremely tired.  Traveling like this can be exhausting. 

Pak Beng, Laos;

This is the only town on the Mekong River between Luang Pragang and the Thai border.  It’s here for only one reason and that is to serve as an overnight spot for people traveling the river.  I ate dinner and breakfast at the same restaurant.  The owner was nice and her little daughter would sit with me while I ate.  She spoke to me constantly.  I had absolutely no clue what she was saying but she seemed very pleased with the conversation. 

I hope you enjoyed this post.  I’ve got a few more hours left on this boat and then I’ll be in Huay Xai.  I hope everybody is enjoying their holiday season.  Thanks for reading.

Weasel Poo Coffee

It’s becoming obvious to me that my original plan of posting a summary of my travels every two weeks isn’t going to cut it. I see and experience so many odd and new things here that by the time two weeks roll around, I have way too much to put into a single blog post. So, expect more frequent posts going forward. I’ll touch on my recent visits to Phnom Penh Cambodia, Saigon, Mui Ne (Vietnam), and Dalat (Vietnam).

 

Phnom Penh;

I love Cambodia. It’s a fun, wild, and high-energy place. The moto traffic here makes Bangkok look tame in comparison. It’s a bit hard to describe, but I’ll give it a shot. Imagine motos (gas moped), bikes, busses, large trucks, cars, and pedestrians in droves all mashed into tight streets, all moving like they are a single organism, all with a zero room for error. The motos far outnumber any other vehicle on the road. Some move quickly and some slowly, all seem to be looking out only for themselves, but also seem to share a desire to not crash (but will push the risk of a crash to a degree that would seem insane to a westerner).

Just learning how to cross the street here is a challenge. I went through the same process on this front as I’m sure all others do. I stood on the curb of a seemingly impenetrable blur of rushing humans on every type of transportation device thinking crossing would be impossible. Then a local woman calmly walked past me and into the melee. She was accepted as another piece of the moving organism and walked quite calmly (but carefully) across the street as the moving motorists adjusted an inch to the left or right so as not to hit her and she, in turn, adjusting her pace to accommodate a mutually agreeable path. They don’t waste an inch of space on the streets of Phnom Penh.

 

A different way to experience this is on the back of a moto, which is a common way to get around the city for cheap. Moto drivers constantly ask passing westerners if they want a ride somewhere. Taking a ride on the back of a moto to anywhere in the city during the daytime costs between 50 cents and a dollar. At night, it’s 1.50 to 2 dollars and the ride is totally worth the price of admission. You really never know what’s going to show up in front of you as you weave through the traffic. At any moment a car could back into traffic, a woman could wander into the street holding her baby, a waitress with a tray full of food for a table on the other side of the street (really), a trash truck could decide to make a u-turn. You’re so close to the vehicles around you that you could write your name on them. But nothing surprises a Phnom Penh motorist and no obstacle is impassable, even if it means riding down the sidewalk for a few yards.

I can’t really talk about Phnom Penh without touching on the next subject. These next three paragraphs are not ones to share with the children. Skip it if you’re squeamish or sensitive to violent subjects;

Cambodia is still recovering from the Pol Pot Genocide from 75 to 79 and the years of conflict and unrest that followed. It wasn’t until 1994 that the final Pol Pot loyalist surrendered themselves. Two common tourist stops for visitors to Phnom Penh are the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum (located at the s-21 security prison), and The Killing Field of Choeung Ek. Both were the scenes of horrible violence and murder. The S-21 prison and the killing field are both raw and untouched, appearing very much as they did when the atrocities were occurring. Blood spattered walls and blood crusted mattresses at Tuol Sleng sit as they were when the Vietnamese took the facility in 1979. Bone fragments, teeth, and clothing fragments in the mud at Choeung Ek. A monument was erected at Choeung Ek containing the 8,000+ skulls exhumed here. They are organized by age and sex. Men, women, and children were tortured and killed. Even the smallest children were not spared (and their end no less brutal than the adults’). Many of the skulls bare the marks of their violent end, often by pick axe, steel bar, hammer, or machete. Bullets were rarely used to execute victims as they were too expensive.

At S-21, I was fortunate to meet one of the very few who survived incarceration at the prison. He was an artist named Bou Meng. He was allowed to live so that he could paint pictures of Pol Pot. His wife was imprisoned at the same time and was executed at the killing field. He was very friendly (like all of the Cambodians I met) and was very curious about what I thought of Cambodia.

Today, things are starting to look up for Cambodia. There are construction projects all over Phnom Penh as foreigners are starting to invest in their tourism and export industries. Their GDP grew 7.5% last year and the owners of the hostel I stayed at say that they’re seeing a steady increase in business. The increased investment is not seen as a good thing by all as many of the poorest are being forcibly driven from their homes without any relocation assistance to make way for new construction. Apparently, this sort of thing is occurring all over Cambodia and is a regular news topic.

Evenings and leisure in Phnom Penh;

I caught up with my friend Camilla, who had also traveled here from Siam Reap, on my last night. We walked the Mekong River water front which is loaded with bars and cafes on one side of the street and a huge park on the river side of the street. It was a good place to sit and drink some Saigon beer and watch the churning crowd of people. It’s all one big mix here, the wealthy locals, the homeless, the tourist, the vendors. There were street entertainers and a children’s dance-group competition which was hilarious.

When I wasn’t out and about in town, I was hanging out with the folks at my hostel which was a cozy little place that is home to ex-pats and backpackers. I met a German newspaper reporter that was doing a story on human trafficking and an Irish artist who had gone on a 3 week vacation with her sisters to Cambodia over a year ago and never left. She now tutors the Prime Ministers nephew in English. Both lived at the hostel and didn’t have any plans to leave Cambodia anytime soon. I could see why. Western money goes a very long way here if you live simply, the town is full of travelers from all over the world, and the locals are very friendly.

My next stop after Phnom Penh was Saigon (Ho Chi Minh’s City center) – again, this next paragraph is not appropriate for children;

While I wasn’t crazy about Saigon, it sort of had the deck stacked against it after my experience in Cambodia. It’s a constant party, which would have been just fine by me 10 or 15 years ago, but now it’s just all a bit too much. It’s clearly a place westerns come to behave badly. Once the sun goes down, the party starts and you can’t walk a block without having just about everything under the sun offered to you. “Marijuana? Girl? Boy? Coke? Heroin?” The offering is done somewhat subtly and it seems targeted specifically to westerns.

No matter what bar you enter in this neighborhood, the process seems to be pretty similar. You sit and order a drink and about 30 seconds later a young woman is sitting next to you asking you where you’re from and where you’re going in and if you are married, etc. At first, I thought that these were prostitutes, but it turned out that in every bar the hostesses do this. Their goal seems to be two things, 1) to get you to stay and drink more, and 2) to get you to buy them a drink (more money for the bar). The bars that are fronts for prostitution are easy to spot; 5 to 10 girls sanding at the doorway of an otherwise empty bar all yelling for you to come in and have a drink. So, yeah, the town is just sort of seedy like that.

I did visit some interesting places. The most interesting was the Independence Palace (central command of the losers in the US/Vietnam conflict), where much of the inscription machines, radios, phones, maps, and furniture have been left just as they were when the tanks came to invite us to leave. I had planned to visit the War Remnants museum, but it closed early. Much disappointment on that one for me, I had looked forward to seeing how the Vietnamese viewed the conflict today.

The real highlight for me here was the family I stayed with. Many shop owners also live and rent out rooms all in the same building. My particular owner was an artist. Her name, after about 30 tries, we both agreed I could not pronounce. She runs the art shop in which every piece was painted by either her or her brother. She told me about her home town and her parents (also artists). She told me about her recent trip to Bangkok, which was a first for her. When I asked her how much she works she told me nearly every day from morning until night. She has some hours off a few times a month and will take some days off a few times a year. She looked a bit sad when talking about this. Not long after I arrived, she asked me to help her load pictures from her camera onto her computer. She then had me sit with her and her sisters and a niece at a small table. She put out a big pile of this small orange like fruit and we all ate it and talked about their lives and my life and where I was going and if I was enjoying my visit to Vietnam.

It seems the people I meet here never stop working. Tuk tuk drivers (cart pulled by a moto that seats 2-4 people), who spend most of their time looking for a fare, start early in the day and work late into the night spending most of that time asking every passing white person “you want tuk tuk? Where you go? We go now”. It can be a pain to walk down the street and be asked these questions every 10 seconds, but I recognize that they are all competing for a small bit of the tourist money to bring home to their family and that their job is very much like fishing; you need to constantly cast your line if you want to catch something.

Organized crime is also active here (easy to believe). When talking about school with a waiter at a small café, he jutted his chin toward the street and said quietly to me “Saigon mafia”. I looked out in the street and, though it was filled with the usual chaotic mass of people, I immediately saw who he was referring to. Two men, both wearing plain dark cloths, walking in lock step with their hands deep in their pockets, acting as if the people around them were little more than ghosts, both with their eyes on the street ahead of them. They walked straight and didn’t move or adjust their path for anybody. I saw them again later in the day and followed them when they turned down an alley. They stopped at a tattoo shop, one entered, the other stood outside, presumably standing guard.

It’s odd to me how everything is so out in the open here and mixed. The good and the bad. The legitimate restaurant, shop, and hotel workers, and street vendors, and homeless, and prostitutes, and criminals. The ceaselessly hard working locals and the wild everything-at-their-fingertips tourists who are quite at their leisure, all mix with motos and exhaust fumes and music into a single image of Saigon.

Mui Ne, Vietnam;

At 8PM on the 16th, I exited Saigon on a “sleeper bus” (imagine a bus with three rows of beach lounge chairs, stacked two high and you’ll have a pretty good idea of what a sleeper bus is) heading to the Vietnam beach town of Mui Ne six hours away. There is no shortage of learning experiences when you’re traveling a country like Vietnam and my trip to Mui Ne wasn’t an exception. My lesson; never trust that the bus assistant is going to tell you when it’s your stop. In my case, it was a comically bad moment to have to learn this lesson.

When I got on the bus, I clarified to the attendant that I was going to a specific address in Mui Ne, which I wrote down and handed to her. She seemed confident that she knew where it was and said she would let me know when to get off. However, at some point during the night, the female bus attendant vanished and was replaced by a man who woke me up at about 2:30AM saying “your stop, your stop”. “Super”I thought, and hopped off the bus. It took me about 2 minutes to realize I wasn’t at my hotel and about 5 minutes to realize I may not even be in Mui Ne. I was in the parking lot of a large, seemingly abandon resort. I saw no signs of any other hotel up or down the street. It was dark and all I could hear was the wind rushing through the dunes and the waves crashing on the shore. I figured I could do one of two things. Sit here until dawn and see if somebody shows up, or start hitchhiking back toward Mui Ne.

I decided to walk back in the direction the bus had come from, assuming based on the time that we had passed Mui Ne. I would pass a locked and dark resort about every 10 minutes. Every so often a stray dog would emerge from the darkness and regard me from a distance before retreating again. I wasn’t scared or worried and was actually somewhat amused at the fact that I had just been abandon on the Vietnam coast in the middle of the night. About 40 minutes into my walk, headlights appeared on the road behind me and I turned and put my hand out. It was a big dump truck and the driver seemed to understand I was trying to make it to Mui Ne. He drove me for what seemed to be about 5 miles to a resort and pulled in and pointed to the guard sitting in a small hut at the entrance. The guard’s English wasn’t very good, but it was a hell of a lot better than my Vietnamese. He understood I was trying to get to Mui Ne, but he wasn’t familiar with the hotel I was looking for. He got on his phone spoke to somebody for a bit and then told me to sit and pulled out a glass and poured me some tea.

I was there for about 10 minutes when I heard a moto approaching. On it was a young English speaking Vietnamese man who seemed very familiar with all things Mui Ne. He told me that the hotel that I was booked in was on the very far side of Mui Ne, about 25 miles from where we were. I asked if he knew a closer place in Mui Ne, which he did. In the end, I was at a beautiful resort with a beach front room for $15/night. The staff was awesome.

There’s not much else to say about Mui Ne. It was a nice change from Saigon. The beach was beautiful and watching the fishing families work was a new experience. I met a couple other travelers, but spent most of my time zipping around on a rented moto and checking out the local sights. The streets here were a bit calmer than other towns, but they had the added complication of small packs of cows that would emerge just about anywhere and cross the street at their whim. The memory of weaving through a herd of cows on my moto in Mui Ne will stay with me.

Dalat, Vietnam;

Dalat is very different from the rest of Vietnam. It’s high in the mountains near the Cambodian border. It’s a big farming area for Vietnam, producing much of the vegetables and coffee used in the country. I took a day long motorcycle tour here with two new friends, Anke and Marika, both from Holland. We visited a coffee farm (where they make a type of coffee that uses only beans that were digested by a weasel –it’s considered a delicacy here and costs about 5x what a normal cup of coffee costs), a mushroom farm, the elephant water falls, a local ethnic minority tribe known as the “mountain people”, a rice whiskey producer (samples where nice), a silk factory that started with cocoons and ended with the finished products (picked up some gifts for mom), and a large mountain top Buddhist temple. The whole day was a blast. We had lunch at one of the tour guide’s family’s house (also coffee farmers). The food, as usual, was amazing.

That night, Anka, Marika and I found a funny little bar called Saigon Nite run by an older man who liked to crank American rock music. It was a slow night for the bar, so the three of us drank 75 cent beers and the owner joined us to play pool until late and then we weaved our way back to the hotel through the alleys of Dalat.

Right now;

I flew to Hanoi on the 20th, which is where I currently am. I leave for a two day trek in Sapa, Vietnam at 8PM tonight. I’ll return to Hanoi on Christmas Eve to meet up with Anke and Marika and some other travelers for Christmas Eve and Christmas and then I’m off to the famously laid back country of Laos.

As I noted earlier, I’ll be posting more frequently so as to avoid such long posts as this. I hope everybody is doing well and enjoying the holiday season back home. Thanks for reading!

Attack Duck at Angkor Wat

Hello All. I got to Bangkok without issue and spent my first full day touring Wat Pho and Wat Arun (Wat = Temple). Buddhism is the major religion here and images of Buddha are everywhere. The temple Wat Pho has the largest collection of Buddhas (Buddhi?) in all of Thailand. The architecture, statues, and ceremonies around these temples are amazing to see.

I was fortunate to be able to see a ceremony for a boy becoming a monk. All males in Thailand go through this when they turn 20. The ceremony I saw was just the first step, after which they spend anywhere from a few weeks to over a year studying at a temple.

Bangkok is bedlam.
There are vendors of every sort on every side walk and sometimes right in the street. Pedestrians have to fend for themselves as there don’t seem to be any rules as to where somebody can
drive a moto (motorcycle) in this city.

I spent my first two nights here in a very un-backpacker way at a courtyard Marriott. I still have tons of Marriott points left from my days as a consultant and figured two nights
adjusting to the 12 hour time difference would be excusable. I used my one full night here to hit a few of the night markets and party areas and, in the process, learned their sky train
and bus system (with a lot of help from the locals who are all extremely friendly). Something about learning a public transportation system in a foreign country gives me great satisfaction. The night was fun and I met some other travelers and a few locals and caught a hilarious (intentionally so) Thai cover band at little hole in the wall bar.

I exited Bangkok for after less than 48 hours as I have a lot of ground to cover in the next 7 weeks. I took a bus to the Cambodia border which took me a front-row seat to the massive damage caused by the worst flooding Thailand has seen in over 50 years. After having seen how packed the sidewalks in Bangkok were with vendor equipment and motos and awnings, it was
easier to make sense of what I was seeing outside the city. Massive piles of garbage had been bulldozed on every block. Destroyed cars and furniture and sandbags were everywhere.
Water damage on the houses looked to reach 2 to 3 feet high and a muddy muck covered all of the sidewalks and streets. This went on for miles.

Crossing over into Cambodia from Thailand is like stepping back in time. The people here are very friendly despite widespread poverty. The Cambodian Civil War followed by the Kampuchea “reconstruction”, which resulted in 1.7 million deaths (of a population of 7 million) over three years (1975 –1978) and the subject of the movie ‘The Killing Fields’, followed by a 10 year
conflict with Vietnam. You see very few old people in this country. If you’re not familiar with what occurred here from 75 to 78, look it up. It’s as interesting as it is jaw droppingly horrific.

The temples at Angkor can’t really be described in words, or really even photos. Multiple temple
structures built between the 9th and 15th century. The largest and best preserved, Angkor Wat. It’s hard to comprehend how something so big and complex was built by hand nearly 1000 years ago. It seem every inch of the stone walls and columns are etched.

I have so many new experiences here daily that it’s hard to decide exactly what to write about and so I’ll stick to highlights and random thoughts;
Total lunar eclipse party in the streets of Siem Reap Cambodia with my new friend Camilla (backpacker from Sweden). Like something out of a movie. Hundreds of people (old, young, Cambodians and tourists) drinking and dancing under a total lunar eclipse.

The food is amazing and seemingly everywhere you look. There’s and endless variety. Street vendors set up early. I try to eat and travel like the locals, so I’ve had mostly food from the market and some street vendors.

The smell of smell of Siem Reap; a mix of cooked meat, incents, car exhaust, and clay

It’s so cheap here. Yesterday’s expenses; hotel - $7, breakfast - $2, Lunch - $2, Dinner for
two - $5, having clothes washed for me - $2.

The local beer, Angkor, is 50 cents a draught.

Siem Reap means “Siamese defeated”, which is a not-very-subtle jab at Cambodia’s Thai neighbors who had taken control of this city at one point and were then pushed out.

Gasoline is offered in old 40oz beer bottles and then siphoned into the gas tank via a plastic hose.

This is the landmine capital of the world. There are still many active mines and you are reminded to never stray from the path while hiking.

Telling an aggressive duck at Angkor Wat that wanted me to move from where i was sitting "you're not the boss of me" and subsequently finding out that the duck was the boss of me (much to the entertainment of all who saw).

I promise some photos soon. I have some good ones, but posting them from a slow connection takes an eternity.

That’s all for right now.
I’m currently on a bus to Phnom Penh (Cambodian capital). After that, I’m off to Vietnam where I hope to catch up with some friends of mine from Italy. I hope all is well stateside. Thanks for reading!