touristyistics

monday morning we got up at 5:30 to see the superbowl. it was playing in a bar owned by an american in an international part of town: lots of international food, nice hotels, and travelers’ hostels and bars. there were probably 40 people, most from the states, up early to see the game. it was worth it of course, what a ridiculously entertaining game. philip grew up in new york, and both he and eli go back there often to visit family. so they are giants fans. most of the bar was also for the giants, probably just because they hated new england, which i imagine is similar to hating the yankees.

after breakfast and jogging, we spent the day running errands (i got the disintegrating zipper on my beloved backpack replaced with a metal one for about 4 dollars) and making travel plans with a booking agent.

tuesday eli and i did a funky little tourist excursion that included elephant riding, touring a kahren village, hiking to a waterfall, lunch in a hmong village, then rafting down a river. we were in a group with a couple from france, a couple from sweden, two chinese women, and a swiss guy.

we rode around on the elephants for about a half hour, through an encampment in the hills full of platforms from which locals would sell us bags of bananas to feed the elephants. the elephants and locals have a good system worked out. the elephants constantly stretch their trunks up behind their heads to nag us for food, while every hundred feet or so there is another platform with someone pushing bananas and sugarcane. it was fun to feed to babies though, which followed us around the trails.

the waterfall was called maewang. i just laid in the sun and soaked up the spray. the water was from high mountains (don’t know where exactly) and was too cold for me to swim in. i do have low tolerance for cold water. hiking through hmong territory, rolling jungle hills with farm fields in the valleys, we came across a cockfight in a little village. its supposedly illegal so i don’t know why the locals didn’t mind us watching and taking pictures. it wasn’t fun to watch, so we moved right along.

i loved the rafting. the rafts were just six 30 ft long bamboo poles lashed together (which made for easy disassembly and transport back upriver) so everyone got soaked. also one of the young men poling the rafts along was very playful (we were warned about “ding dong” guides), and used his pole more for splashing us than navigation. there was lots of screaming and embarrassing flirtatious behavior. he and eli sparred a bit with the poles, and the french woman on my raft wouldn’t stop screaming. not exactly a relaxing ride, but sure a certain type of fun.

today, wednesday, rachael joined eli and i for a thai cooking class. in our group were four people from france, a woman from bulgaria with her two little boys, and another couple from the states, dylan and kari. coincidentally, dylan grew up in evergreen, co, where he was friends with ben hassinger, eli’s roommate in the dorms at cu boulder. he visited ben and remembered seeing eli there. also, kari is from seattle and flew here on the same redeye as eli and i last week. we remember seeing her wandering around the taipei airport. they are students at evergreen in olympia, where they are studying sustainable farming, geology, permaculture and things of that nature. great folks, i feel lucky to have met them.

we were picked up and taken to the romshop produce market, where we stocked up and got lectured on the foods. then we drove about a half hour north of the city where farmland begins to be interspersed with the suburban landscape. the class was held at a little organic farm, which supplied some of herbs and spices we used, but it seemed like the main purpose of the farm was to show us what the trees and bushes looked like and let us smell and taste all the raw roots and leaves and peels.

we cooked all day, first making curries, soups and stir-fries (i made red curry, tom yum soup and cashew chicken; but others made green and yellow curry, galangal coconut soup, vegetable soup, and basil chicken). then we ate it all for lunch, or rather, tried to eat it all. i’ve been stretching my stomach out lately with 1 or 2 massive meals a day, but i couldn’t even come close. after lunch we went back to it, cooking egg roles and a pumpkin coconut milk dessert (others made more stir-fries, banana coconut milk and mongo and sticky rice dessert). we brought that stuff home with us. also, they gave us a cookbook at the end. as long as i can find some of these exotic ingredients, i am set up to cook fantastic thai food for the rest of my life. whah.

tomorrow eli and i are headed for laos. we are scheduled to take a bus to chiang khong, a border town, where we’ll spend one night. then on friday we’ll take a boat down the mekong river to luongphrobang, a city in northern laos, which is a two-day trip. so no updates til saturday night or sunday.