fireflies and rolling blackouts

on thursday we took a six-hour bus ride to chiang khong, a border town on the mekong river, which determines a long stretch of border between laos and thailand. there is no bridge, just dozens of water taxies, ferries and barges that run back and forth between chiang khong and its lao counterpart, houayxui. the views out over the mekong are spectacular, especially in the morning, before the sun burns off the fog that makes the rows of hilly valleys fade to hazy layers of green-grey into the distance. rooftops are just humble silhouettes along with the jungle palms and vine choked trees.

friday, after we spent a couple hours getting our lao visas , we loaded up onto “slow boats”, which seat maybe 70 but can apparently hold well over a hundred. we were packed in tight. then down the river, chugging along dodging jagged (and so tantalizingly climbable) rocks- the river is probably near its lowest point, as we are nearing the end of the dry season. we stopped a couple times at tiny villages (grass huts, chickens, small fields of crops) so that locals could get on and off, and the village residents could come on board and try to sell food and drinks.

the farengs (toubabs, foreigners) on the slow boat were pretty funny. many were drinking hard, starting early in the morning, loud and boisterous, flirting, playing cards and dice, cheering, playing guitar, taking pictures incessantly, both of the interior and exterior – fishermen, villages, other boats, wild river rocks, sandy beaches, jungle hillsides, and craggy mountainous terrain. i was impressed by how pristine the whole region looks. this far upriver, its not contaminated by industry and city waste, and the developments along the banks probably looked almost the same as they have for centuries.

we stopped to spend the night at a town called pak beng, which had the infrastructure to accommodate a flood of hundreds of farengs every night. the residents of pak beng go to sleep early, shutting down all shops and restaurants by 10pm. the entire town’s (and probably the entire rural region’s) power is cut at 10:30, a frugal feature of the central government’s planned economy. eli and i walked around until midnight, up and down the dead silent dark streets and up a bluff to a hilltop garden. fireflies rivaled the raw rural starlight (no moon) to light our exploration. we were finally stopped trying to get down to the river, and escorted back to our room. i don’t think there was a curfew exactly, but they didn’t want us getting hurt on the steep rocky bluffs without any locals awake to help us.

yesterday, saturday, we got up early and back on the slow boat. things were quiet until a fast boat (a tiny speed boat with about 8 helmeted passengers that makes our 2-day journey in just a few hours) capsized as it passed us. other people in our boat saw it happen – apparently one of the passengers bounced out (crossing our wake perhaps?) and the as the driver slowed to turn around, he went to close to the rocks on the bank and sunk the whole back end. just the nose was left sticking out. everyone made it out ok and began to scale the rocks and haul their soaked bags out of the water. we turned around to help, took the soaked farengs on board, and gave them towels, dry clothes, their own seats and beers. lots of drama, especially when the soaked fast boaters were screaming obscenities at slow boaters for taking pictures.

when we arrived here in luang prabang last night (one of laos’ biggest cities, but still population about 20,000), we hustled up the hill to secure a guest house. after passing up one (we didn’t want to pay the extra for a tv and fridge), we were turned down from literally dozens of others. farengs flooded the city, and bizarrely, it was unable to accommodate us all (even though rural village pak beng was able to). after wandering for hours, we were ready to find an internet cafe, a phone, and start calling guest houses outside the city or in other nearby towns. at that point we were working with a belgian guy named pierre, who was in the same boat as us. farengs were still wandering around with massive hiking backpacks, so we were worried. finally, someone found us and led us to a hidden place in an alley off of the bustling night market, where we paid a premium for one of the last rooms in town ($10 each- today we relocated to a better one that’s about $4 each per night). we felt extremely lucky.

(right as we get settled in our room, the city’s power failed for a few minutes. stupid communism.)

today we explored town, hiking to the top of the hill where an elaborate wat is perched, shopping in the markets, getting a feel for the content and layout of the city. it really is wonderful, much cleaner than thailand, streets and sidewalks wide and not shattered and treacherous as they were everywhere else we’ve been. far less traffic – mostly tuktuks and scooters, cleaner air, everything cheaper, nights perfectly silent (even this city is totally closed down by 11), beautiful untouched wilderness, locals happy and kind to us. communism rules.

well, actually: the communist party has been in power since 1975 (when the states lost the vietnam war, asian communist parties all helped each other take over – in this case, the lao overturned the US puppet monarchy), but like the rest of communist countries at the time, laos became a deformed workers’ state, following the example of stalin’s degenerated workers’ state. laos has an insulated, stagnant bureaucratic single-party state apparatus (instead of, say, a congress of deputies from workers’ councils – real communism). also, following stalin's example, there's enough political repression that the locals, we are told, are too afraid to talk politics. some of the economy is collectivized, but there’s plenty of free enterprise too, especially in the petite-bourgeois merchant class – vendors, restaurant and hotel owners, etc. also, foreign capital is at work here, along with the imf and world bank. so, an extremely compromised deformed workers’ state. the only redeeming qualities would be highly subsidized food and housing for urban poor and rural villagers, non-classed health care and education, state sponsored infrastructure development, low unemployment, and so on. i don’t know to what extent these endeavors are successful, so i will learn and share soon.

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.

walking walking

saturday eli, margie and i took a song tao (just like the car rapides of senegal, a cheap little bus that might or might not go where you ask it to) up to the chiang mai zoo. it was huge and spread out, almost set up more for the bus tours than for walking (one guide map said walking the zoo was only for mountain climbers).

it had an impressive collection of animals, in living conditions fairly comparable to those in the states. besides the standard spread of critters, they had many that i know i’ve never seen (understandable given my limited experience), such as casuarius casuarius – like an emu but with wild colors; fae’s muntjack – a little fanged deer-like animal with long sharp horns; and sun bears. lots of the signage was only in thai, so we often didn’t know the names of things.

we probably spent the most time with the malayan porcupines, the river otters, and the various types of gibbons. maybe its just easy to relate to mammals, but we were too charmed to keep our normal pace.

we ate lunch at ___________, a restaurant overlooking a stream, waterfall and lush forest. it also serves some of the best food we’ve had yet. it costs lots more than the food down in town – entrees for the equivalent of about three dollars instead of about one – but its worth it.

then we caught another song tao up to doi suthep, a huge wat about a half-hour drive up into the steep hills west of chiang mai. doi suthep is the most famous buddhist site in northern thailand, and is full of monks, buddhists travelling from all over, as well as tourists. it’s simply packed with golden buddhas, elaborate shrines, ornately carved buildings and bells, gongs, and offerings, all surrounding a massive golden dome that’s visible from our balcony here in town.

many people were meditating among the narcissistic material wealth and human buddha idols, but i went off to sit on a balcony somewhere in the monks living quarters, overlooking a gorgeous spread of jungle, the city, and the sunset (none of which were visible to the throngs up in the palace-monastery). all i could hear was a slight murmur of voices and the clanking of the bells, and the chorus of birds fluttering around me. and the rumble of the occasional commercial jet taking off from the airport in the valley. oh well.

yesterday, sunday, i woke up early and watched the sunrise, sitting on the balcony reading (jose saramago’s all the names) as the city woke up. eli and i went on a hike, taking the same route as yesterday to the zoo, but then walking up the steep road towards doi suthep, where yesterday i had seen several trails leading off into the wilderness. we found one, and explored it. eventually it took us up to a stream which had exposed a hillside of rock, which i climbed and jumped around on, somewhat satisfying one of my recurring itches. the waterfall was beautiful, and the sun was shining through it as it set into the hills above. eli fell in the stream when he slipped on the mossy rocks. twice actually. i felt bad because i made him follow me to the waterfall, only accessible by walking a ways through the water. sorry eli.

through bangkok

eli and i arrived in bangkok on wednesday afternoon. we took a cab to our hotel, the vieng tai, which is in the rattanakosin neighborhood of bangkok, about 45k from the airport. from the cab we could see most of downtown, but only a highway perspective, so i can't say much about it.

the vieng tai is a couple blocks from khao san road, an infamous little cultural microcosm: it has an extremely high concentration of tourists. the neighborhood is middle class, with lots of western style hotels, bars, internet cafes, travel agencies, and other material comforts. there are dozens of wats (buddhist temples- we explored one, the wat chana songkhram), compounds for monks, statues, political monuments, and massive ornate pictures of the king and queen, as well as plenty of palaces for the royal family to lounge around in (the military coup in sept 06 didn't overturn the traditional monarchy, which probably has about the same amount of political power as that of england. it also didn't overturn the parliamentary democracy, but it did oust billionaire businessman prime minister, thaksin, rewrote the constitution, and stacked the new government with military generals).

the tourists attract thousands of vendors hawking souvenirs, so a kind of commodity market thrives there that wouldn't anywhere else. khao san itself is the epicenter, and at night it all hits its peak, even on a wednesday night. nightclubs, outdoor bars, no laws prohibiting drinking in the streets, a different western pop music blaring every hundred feet or so.

white people hold a clear majority. speaking all kinds of languages, but plenty dialects of english. we say the same people over and over- in the hotel elevators, in the internet cafes, in the restaurants. clearly this all adds up to hell on earth for me, but eli liked it. he likes everything though- it's his first time out of the states.

we kept ourselves awake until about midnight, then slept soundly until about 8, so we managed to land on our feet in terms of sleeping schedules. it feels wonderful. on thursday we went on a walk along the choa phraya river, the big one that winds through bangkok. it was full of water taxis and tourist expeditions. we had to hurry along though, to catch a puddle jumper to chiang mai. it's too bad we just blew through bangkok (less than 24 hours), but i'm sure we'll be back. not to that neighborhood though.

we got to chiang mai (one of the bigger cities in the north of thailand) in the late afternoon, and took a cab to philip's apartment. philip is eli's dad, who does contract work programming databases on the internet, so he can live wherever he wants. the apartment is within the boundaries (a moat) of the old city. he's been here about two months, along with his daughter, rachael, who is 11. you can read her blog, which i highly recommend, at http://rachaellightstone.blogspot.com/.

rachael's mom, margie, has been here with them too for the last two weeks. we went out for japanese food and then to the night market, which i loved. clothes - western and thai, art - paintings, jewelry, carvings of wood, marble, jade, soap, etc, food - we got a dessert version of indian roti bread, stuffed with banana or chocolate, a seafood market, massage parlors, and all of it packed to the gills. this was also fairly upper-middle class, but not nearly as touristy as the markets of rattanakosin in bangkok. so, still bouncing around the sheltered, familiar territories.

this morning (friday) eli and i went with philip and rachael on their customary jog in buak hat public park. i went barefoot, as i don't have good shoes for running. it might have been overly optimistic, but if i keep it up i will have awesome feet again soon.

this bring us up to this moment. we plan to stick around chiang mai for the next four days or so, going on hikes up into the hills, getting to know the city, going out on brief expeditions. then we plan to head off (all of us but philip, who has to get work done) to vietnam, for at least a week.