Days 150-???: Philadelphia, USA

We’re going to spend the rest of the summer in Philadelphia, living with Mary’s parents for a bit while we rebuild our savings accounts and rest up from a tiring journey. It won’t quite be all leisure time, since we need to find a place to stay in Pasadena and get our stuff out there (which Monica and Gif have VERY graciously stored in their basement while we’ve been gone!). Plus I will continue contracting over the next several months and need to find a permanent position in the LA area (if you know of interesting startups out there, give me a holler). Not to mention that we have quite a bit of travel still to come this summer: 1 graduation, 4 weddings, 1 Bar Mitzvah, and 1 family reunion. But our circle around the pacific is complete, and so is this blog.

If you ever have any questions about the trip, please feel free to ask. I’ve acquired mad trip planning skills through booking all of this! Only one travel agent was used during the entire trip, and that was because you can’t book flights on Vietnam Airlines over the web. A big thanks to Lonely Planet, Wikitravel, Wikipedia, and Google for all the help! Thanks also to our parents for helping provide logistics at home (dealing with mail, helping with taxes, etc)!

We’ll be up in Boston at least a couple times this summer to see everyone there, we miss you all!

How we travelled

Modes of transportation:

• Planes
• Trains
• Automobiles (taxis, private cars)
• Subways
• Monorails
• Buses
• Tuk Tuks
  
• Motorbikes
• Bicycles
• Cyclos
  
• Ferries
• Longtail boats
  
• Double-decker bus
• Escalator (Hong Kong)
• Trams
• Van
• Maglev
• Elephant
• Horse

What we skipped (due to lack of money usually):

• Helicopters
• Dune buggies
• Submarines
• Cable Cars

We built up pretty good carbon footprint from all of our travels that we'll be trying to offset as we rebuild our savings a bit. We flew over 36000 miles during the trip and drove (mostly in New Zealand) almost 3000 miles. I can't calculate our emissions from hotels, buses, trains, and other assorted transportation, but from everything I can include, we generated around 41,000 pounds of Carbon Dioxide during the trip.

Debriefing

By Mary

In case any of you are planning a similar trip, I have prepared a list of what you might want to take. Everything on this list we used during our trip, or really wished we had. Thanks to the people at OneBag for helping us build this list!

• A great backpack
• Daypack
• Travel locks
• Nice sewing kit
• Earplugs
• Eye mask
• Heating pad or hot water bottle
• 2 long sleeved travel shirts
• 2 quick drying T-shirts
• 2 pairs convertible nylon travel pants
• Swimsuit/goggles/swim cap
• 6 pairs of cotton underwear
• 6 pairs cotton socks (thin)
• 2 sports bras or 2 undershirts with built-in bra*
• Hat
• Running sandals
• Walking shoes
• Fleece jacket
• Waterproof shell
• Ibuprofen (hard to get in Asia)
• Anti-diarrheal medication
• Ciprofloxacin (prescription)
• Waterproof bandages and band-aids
• Sunscreen
• Antihistamines
• Insect repellant (DEET-based)
• Anti-malarials (prescription)
• Toiletries
• Liquid lysol or other disinfectant
• Rubber or latex gloves
• Mosquito net
• Hand sanitizer
• Travel clothesline
• Rubber doorstop
• Flashlight/headlamp
• Travel bath/sink plug (for washing clothes)
• Compass
• Glasses AND contacts (if needed)
• That stuff you put under your nose to block out bad smells
• Bed sheet or thin sleeping cocoon
• Neosporin (bacitracin/neomycin antibacterial ointment)
• Tampons (for the whole trip)*
• Towel (thin, with lots of surface area)
• Books that you can read at least three times
• Crossword or Sudoku books
• A small laptop if possible
• Universal travel adaptor
• Digital camera + extra battery, memory, and waterproof case
• Cell phone with world-wide GSM card
• Passport (with all the visas you need)
• Credit cards (preferably both MasterCard and Visa)
• ATM cards (preferably both Plus and Cirrus)
• Travelers Checks (we only used 1 the entire trip, but still a good backup)
• Security pouch
• Copies of all important documents and numbers

(* most men don’t use these)

Things we should have packed:

• More ibuprofen
• Hot water bottle
• Latex gloves
• Another camera
• Lysol
• That stuff you put under your nose to block out bad smells

American things for which we are grateful:

• Friends and family (that we can see!)
• Legible road signs
• Twinkies
• Potable tap water
• Cable television
• Reliable plumbing
• Trash pickup
• Clean streets and sidewalks
• Not looking conspicuously wealthy

We were able to fit all of this into our 2 REI Vagabond Travel Packs, two small daypacks, and one small travel tote. Ideally we'd have avoided the travel tote, but weren't quite able to fit everything in the two bags. It's hard to find room for presents!

5 months is a long time. You’ll be really glad to come home. :-)

Days 144-149: Los Angeles, USA

We stopped in LA for a few days on our way back to visit with my family for a bit. My sister Rachel and her husband Bruce graciously hosted us (in high style) for a few days and put up with us while we switched our sleep schedules around (raiding their kitchen at 4am!) and readjusted to being back in civilization. My parents joined us in LA and we were able to spend Mother’s Day with them, then the following day attended an awards ceremony for Rachel and Bruce honoring all their work with their temple and greater community. It was a great transition back to US, but also still felt like traveling a bit, since we were stilling living out of our backpacks. We’re excited about getting back to Philadelphia and being able to wear more than just the clothes we were able to fit into our two backpacks!

We’re going to do a couple last posts with epilogues, but this marks the end of the trip! It’s been wonderful, crazy, and entirely impossible to summarize. We’re really glad we wrote this blog, since it’s helped us remember what we’ve done! It’s amazing, but after five months of travel (nearly to the day) a lot of the trip blends together and it’s easy to transpose memories from one country to another. All of the photos have helped too, we’re really sad that the camera died towards the end, but at least we had it for most of the trip. Thanks for all the supportive comments about the blog, it’s been great to hear from people and get feedback about the writing and photos. We can’t wait to see you all!

Days 142-143: Osaka, Japan

Our original plan for Japan was to fly into Osaka, then visit Kyoto, Nara, Nikko, and fly out of Tokyo. We cut that down to the bare minimum of flying into Kyoto, taking the train to Tokyo, and then flying out. We spent an extra day in Osaka to avoid the rush at the end of Golden Week, but otherwise spent no more time here than was required. It’s really a shame, since it’s a beautiful country that we’ve both been really excited about visiting. But we’ll come back and do it properly when we can, hopefully soon!

We made the best of what time we had in Osaka. We arrived late one evening and immediately headed out for food. We were staying near the Umeda train station which had a large selection of places to eat and picked a sushi place that was both popular and affordable. The food was superb! Not surprisingly, it was some of the freshest, tastiest sushi we’ve ever had. What was surprising was that the prices were in-line with a mid-price sushi restaurant in Boston; we ended up spending about $40 for a dinner for two, including a beer for me. We had a great time watching all the young Japanese kids walking around, gawking left and right as one costume more intricate and colorful than the next was paraded by. Gone is the fear of sticking out and the prohibitions on showing too much skin that we saw in the rest of Asia. Micro-skirts (sometimes with stockings underneath, sometimes without), princess outfits, goth get-ups, punk stylings, and many outfits I can’t start to describe were all quite popular.

The next day we woke up early, bought our train tickets for the following day, and then went out walking and exploring. We stopped by the huge Yodobashi Camera store to see seven floors of technology for sale. After getting our fill of gadgets not available in the states, we moved on to Shinsaibashi area, a huge shopping area for Japanese clothes, accessories, and other odds and ends. This area, like many of the others in Osaka, is comprised of a combination of streets and long covered alleys. When we got hungry, we walked to the neighboring Dotonbori district, filled entirely with restaurants and street vendors. We had some superb noodles, breaded octopus, and several other great dishes. The people watching was extraordinary! It was also fun seeing all the Pachinko parlors and vending machines with strange contents.

On the final day of our trip, we woke up early and took the Shinkansen Nozomi bullet train to Tokyo then another train directly to Narita airport. The train ride was a lot of fun, since we got to pass by Kyoto, Mt Fuji, a dozen nuclear reactors, and probably a hundred golf courses. Even moving at three hundred kilometers per hour, you can still see a lot of scenery and get a decent feel for what the country looks like. Certainly much more than you can from a plane!

Days 137-141: Beijing, China

By Mary

Three things one cannot avoid noticing in Beijing are: the smog, the Olympic fervor, and political situation.

Smog

I cannot overstate how bad the air quality is in Beijing. You cannot see clouds or blue skies anywhere (except after a rainstorm). The city is covered in a thick, overcast haze. The air doesn’t smell or anything, it is just harder to breathe here than in any place I’ve ever been. LA does not compare. I can’t stay outside very long, except in the places that have a lot of trees; they make a noticeable difference. Is it possible to be allergic to pollution? The smog and pollution don’t affect Dave as much, so he’s been the intrepid explorer here. Based on how bad the smog is now, it seems unlikely that enough improvements to the air can be made in time for the Olympics. The track and field events might be in trouble.

Olympics

The Olympics are a really big deal to the Chinese, and in Beijing especially. The people here are really excited about getting to host the Olympics – to them it’s a symbol of how far they have come as a nation.

Dave and I went to see Tiananmen Square. In front of the National Museum right across from the square, there is a giant clock counting down to the Opening ceremony of the games. It was extremely crowded when we went; both because of May Day (Labor Day) festivities, and it being exactly 100 days before the start of the Games. There were policemen everywhere, who seemed to be in charge of crowd management. This mostly consisted of blocking passage along the sidewalks, and marching back and forth in front of the Mao Mausoleum. It was really, really strange to see such a huge police presence, but what was even more strange was to see what I assumed to be a large Party presence as well; great crowds of men in matching black suits who seemed to be higher up the chain of command than the uniformed police.

I’ve said that the Beijing Olympics are a source of national pride. The Chinese view their hosting of the Olympics as evidence that they have entered the global stage as equals. Most of the people here appear really happy about the presence of (non-Russian) foreign tourists like me and Dave, as a further sign of China having ‘arrived.’ In aid of this, the Chinese government is making a big effort to ‘get ready’ for the national spotlight. What does that mean? Well, it means getting the public to stop spitting on the ground, severely restricting smoking in public places, and emergency efforts to reduce the heavy smog in the air. There is even talk of shutting down factories in nearby towns to improve the air quality.

Politics

I suspect that the average Chinese person has no real understanding of the West’s objections to the Chinese government’s human rights record. In Hong Kong, Shanghai, and here, the people have been very proud of the Olympics and what it symbolizes to them. When the Western protests against the Beijing Olympics are reported here, they are reported as anti-Chinese demonstrations, and there is no mention of Tibet except as troublemakers or terrorists. If there are any significant protests during the Games, I doubt that the protesters will be warmly received by the locals.

One gets the impression that the Chinese government agreed to the reforms suggested by the IOC because it was what the IOC wanted to hear, and had little intention of actually implementing the reforms. For instance, the ethical treatment of “dissenters,” environmental improvements, and press freedoms, are probably not going to happen. And when those things don’t happen, there will most likely be more negative press for the Chinese government and the IOC. After the Olympic torch PR nightmare, the Beijing Olympics doesn’t need anymore bad press.

Overall, I am doubtful that Beijing is ready for the worldwide scrutiny that is to come. Practically speaking, accommodation near the Olympic complex is pretty scarce, and there don’t appear to be good, fast transportation options across the city. (For instance, the Olympic Stadium subway stop doesn’t exist, yet, and will have to be built in less than one hundred days.) Also, the spitting, smog and pollution are extremely off-putting, and the large police presence can be intimidating. It’s a bit sad, because I actually really like the city, and I empathize with the Chinese people’s pride in their country. The food is outstanding, and the people are incredibly friendly and helpful, and genuinely excited about re-entering the national stage. At the very least, one can safely predict that the Beijing Olympics will be interesting.

By Dave:

The Forbidden City and Summer Palace are both wonderful, just as much fun as when I visited them as a kid. We didn’t make it to the Great Wall since it was pouring rain and freezing the day we intended to go. I met a really nice German man named Daniel and spent a day walking around the city with him. We visited Jingshan park, which overlooks the Forbidden City, but whose view is much diminished by all the smog – you can’t even see half a mile through it! I also visited some of the new architectural icons of the city, including the National Swimming Center, the National Stadium, as well as the National Grand Theater, and the new CCTV building.

Days 132-136: Shanghai, China

We’ve decided to cut the remainder of our trip a bit shorter than originally planned, removing several destinations in China and Japan from the itinerary. We’re running out of time, energy, and money, all at the same time. It’s been a wonderful trip, but all things must come to an end. China is so huge that we were never going to do a very full job of it, but instead of visiting Guilin and Xi’an like originally planned, we’re going straight to Shanghai. Then will pass through Beijing briefly and home via Japan. Due to the nature of our tickets, we can change the dates of our flights but not the itinerary, so we’ll still be flying back through Japan but not spending any real time there.

Shanghai has always been China’s most westernized city and the architecture of the Bund area clearly reflects that. Built in the early part of the century, this strip of buildings along the Huangpu River are straight out of Europe and America. You can see Art Deco masterpieces, Neo-Classical and Gothic buildings standing next to one another. This area has been heavily redeveloped recently, restoring the buildings to their former glory and installing in them the latest fashion houses out of France and Italy. Across the river is Pudong, the financial center of China, with its crazy architecture and neon lights. Along the river on the Shanghai side is a river walk that was so crowded every time we tried to walk along it that we eventually decided it wasn’t worth it, no matter how nice the views might be.

Along with the architecture, Shanghai also embraced capitalism from the West early on. Although this meant that it was a second class city for many years, snubbed by the Communist leadership, Shanghai has now reemerged as the financial and commercial center of China. Walking down Nanjing or Huaihai roads, no one can doubt how thoroughly China has opened up to capitalism. Amazingly, the crackdown on illegal knockoffs of western goods seems to be making a difference. Although people will still grab you on the street and offer bootleg DVDs and jeans, the infamous Xiangyang Lu Market has been shut down and hasn’t reopened, as have most of the stores containing similar goods. In their places are stores like Li Ning, featuring shoes, clothing, and sports stars all copied directly from Nike. Even their symbol is very swoosh-like. Shockingly, the prices at Li Ning are also very Nike-esque, leaving me wondering what their competitive advantage is supposed to be.

After how good the Hong Kong Art Museum was, we didn’t have very high expectations for the Shanghai Art Museum. But given the glowing recommendations we figured it was worth a shot, especially since it’s free. Much to our surprise, the quality of works there was even higher than those in Hong Kong, and there was so much on display that we had to come back a second day in order to see everything. The display on the clothing and ceremonial wear of the ethnic minorities was beautiful, although it certainly felt duplicitous to praise their arts while suppressing their culture and religion. Such thoughts came to mind frequently, such as when walking down Tibet road or having the Great Firewall disrupt our web surfing.

Despite what the guidebooks said, Shanghai proved to be a nice walking city. There is a long stretch of public parks along one of the main east-west thoroughfares, there are large sidewalks in most parts of the city, and there is even a section of the city with nice cafes. You have to be careful of people spitting (still a national pastime), and the beggars have unusual tactics (yanking on your arm and shouting “MONEY”), but it’s a pleasant city to explore.

Days 127-131: Hong Kong

Hong Kong still feels a little bit like home to me, and it was really fun to get to show it to Mary. Of course, it’s a home that has been massively renovated since the last time I visited, but enough of the old remains to feel familiar. The same vibrancy still permeates here. People shout across the room at restaurants, greeting each new friend that enters. Shoppers rush through the markets, anxious to find the best bargains before anyone else steals them away.

We arrived in Hong Kong on the heels of a typhoon. We avoided the rain, much like we’ve done for the rest of our trip. Let’s hope our luck continues! The city was fogged in through much of our visit, which meant that there was no point in going up to the iconic Peak. Instead we just explored the city, going all around both the island and the peninsula. We didn’t make it up to the New Territories this trip, maybe next time. And of course, we took the Star Ferry back and forth a million times, with its great view of both skylines and all the ships passing through the harbor.

Our friend Laura was in Hong Kong when we arrived, finishing up an internship away from the London School of Economics. She was on her way back to London, but managed to squeeze in a dinner with her during the 12 hours between our arrival and her departure. It was the first of many excellent meals in Hong Kong! Even though are stomachs were rather upset for most of the time we were there, we still managed to eat our way through much of the town. And of course, what trip to Hong Kong would be complete without sampling some of the nightlife and bars, so we made sure to explore Lan Kwai Fong, SoHo, Tsim Sha Tsui, and all the other hotspots.

We thought about getting another couple shirts made in Hong Kong, since we liked our ones from Hoi An so much. However, the three time price increase quickly disabused us of that notion! So we went and explored Hong Kong’s nearly infinite number of clothing stores and street markets, taking in both all the local designers and the knock offs of name brands. And when we needed a break from the stores, we went to the museums. The Space Museum wasn’t as nice as we’d hoped, but the Art Museum was better than we could’ve dreamed. Their collection of pottery, calligraphy, and paintings was both beautiful and very well displayed, with great descriptions and layout.

I took Mary to Repulse Bay on the south side of the island to see where my old apartment building formerly stood. It, like most other buildings from twenty years ago, has long since been torn down and replaced with a taller apartment complex. We also visited my old school, which remarkably remains much the same.

We spent some time looking for a replacement for our camera but came away deciding that the prices on lower-end cameras like the ones we’re in the market for are no better here than they are in the US. So we’ll do without for the rest of the trip and get our camera repaired (hopefully under warranty!) back in the US.

Hong Kong remains an interesting mix of East and West. It has the infrastructure, cultural events, and economy of any Western country. It also has the crowds, street markets, smells, and temples of an Eastern metropolis. We’ve decided that the giant squashed cockroaches on the ground clearly make it an Asian city. It remains a wonderful place to visit and explore, with world class food, shopping, and partying. Hong Kong is definitely a place that we’ll be coming back to many times in the future.

Days 124-126: Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

Ho Chi Minh City was Saigon, why they changed it I can’t say, people just liked it better that way. Or so They Might Be Giants (and The Four Lads) might’ve sung it, although in this case we’ve found that no one likes the new name more than the old one. Almost predictably, no one in Saigon (except for party officials) calls it by the new name. In a lot of ways, the city seems to be in denial that it’s in a socialist country. It has a youthful energy to it that seemed lacking in Hanoi, and an honesty about all the buying and selling going on that always felt more circumspect up north.

Saigon traffic is similar to that in Hanoi, but at least the blocks are longer here, meaning that you have to force your way across four lanes of bikes (two official lanes and two impromptu) less frequently. This makes Saigon much easier to walk around, especially combined with the actual availability of parking, meaning that the sidewalk can be used for walking instead of for parking motorbikes. I took advantage of this and did a walking tour around the city one day. I saw a lot of the famous old French buildings, visited the huge Ben Thanh Market, and had a bowl of pho at the famous Pho 2000 restaurant (made famous by a visit by then president Clinton). In the afternoon I visited the Reunification Palace, which is what the Presidential Palace is now called, and then the War Remnants Museum. The former has a lot of historical significance, and the latter has both a lot of historical information as well as serving as a reminder of the horrors of war.

Our last day in Saigon saw a lot more walking, a little bit of shopping, and a visit to the zoo and botanical gardens. The zoo was pretty disappointing, but it was nice to be in amongst the real trees after spending so much time in the concrete jungle. Plus there was a gibbon with a wonderful climbing gym who was putting on quite the show, swinging this way and that, jumping all around and having a wonderful time.

Days 120-123: Hoi An, Vietnam

The train from Hue down south to Da Nang is one of the highlights of Vietnam. It travels along the ocean nearly the whole time, sometimes right at sea level, other times climbing along the edges of hills that rise hundreds of feet above the water. We were traveling on a bright sunny day and thoroughly enjoyed the whole trip. We took a taxi the remaining 20 kilometers down to Hoi An from Da Nang, passing the famous China Beach and Marble Mountains.

Hoi An is an ancient trading city, once one of the major ports of Asia, but now a relatively sleepy town known primarily for its beach, tailors and old town. Given the quality of all three, I expect that it won’t remain a sleepy town for terribly long; apparently the transformation is already well underway, with a dozen new hotels built in the last five years. We found a nice place to stay near the beach, about five kilometers from town, with a nice swimming pool and a view out onto the river that connects the town with the ocean. We walked into town every morning, then took cyclos back home, with the two drivers chatting the whole way, while Mary and I fought off the urge to fall asleep after another long day.

We planned ahead to have some clothes made in Hoi An, figuring that no trip to Asia would be complete without some tailor made clothing. We did a lot of research ahead of time to pick which of the 500 tailors in Hoi An to visit, since it’s nearly impossible to get unbiased advice in the town itself (everyone is related to a tailor). We picked two different tailors, deciding to have suits made at what is generally regarded as the best tailor in town (Yaly Couture), and shirts made at a cheaper but still recommended tailor (22 Le Loi, named after its street address). The two shops are radically different in appearance. Yaly Couture is a two story, dark wood paneled shop filled with a dozen women ready to help you pick out designs and fabrics, or take measurements and do fittings. It’s a beehive of activity, with another dozen customers in various stages of the process at any given time. 22 Le Loi, by contrast, is a one woman shop, and only once did we see any other customers stopping by. All of the work is done back at her house, with her brother serving as tailor and other family members acting as seamstresses (I think).

All of our clothes turned out wonderfully! I ended up getting 2 suits made (1 wool, 1 linen), 3 shirts, and 3 pairs of casual pants. Mary got 1 suit (with matching skirt), 1 trenchcoat, 2 dresses, 3 shirts, 3 pairs of casual pants, and 1 pair of leather pants! That all came out to a bit under $800, largely due to selecting very high quality wool and linen for our suits. For those of you who will see us at weddings, bar mitzvahs, or family reunions later this summer (5 in total, the travelling doesn’t end when we get home!), I’m sure you’ll see some of them modeled. Mary and I both had a pair of shoes made as well (at a different shop) and had more mixed results. Mary’s turned out well in the end, but only after having them remade from scratch when they used bad material the first time, and mine were just generally disappointing, although nothing in particular that I could point to (or have fixed in the time we had left).

We decided to ship most of our clothes home from Vietnam since there was too much to carry with us. We brought everything to the post office directly from the tailors, with some presents and other stuff mixed in. It ended up being quite a bit (almost 15 kilos), and the post office clerk insisted on going through every single item and making sure that we’d itemized it and declared a reasonable price. This turned out to be a difficult task, given her limited English and our non-existent Vietnamese. The items of most concern turned out to be the CDs I’d burned containing our photos; she warned us a couple times that if they contained any “improper” photos, they would be confiscated. I wasn’t sure if she meant porn or images of military bases or either, but we weren’t in danger either way.

Although we did spend a lot of time inside the tailor shops, we still had plenty of time left to walk through the old city, swim in the pool, and walk along the beach.

Days 118-119: Hue, Vietnam

We had an early morning flight out of Hanoi, which meant we arrived in Hue hours before our room would be ready. We used the opportunity to finally sample Pho at the time it’s supposed to be eaten – in the morning, for breakfast! We found a street side vendor who looked popular and had a couple bowls. The pho here has been good, but amazingly, not vastly better than the pho we were able to get in Boston. The same goes for a lot of the food we’ve had across Asia. Not that we haven’t been eating fantastic cuisine day and night, but we haven’t found many dishes we’d never at least seen on a menu before (except the fried spiders and assorted insects in Cambodia and some of the soup ingredients in Vietnam), nor have we found dishes that tasted radically different from what we were used to.

Hue was the capital of Vietnam for 150 years and there are many remnants of that time. In the old part of the city lies the Citadel, a large walled compound, with the Forbidden Purple City and Thai Hoa Palace inside. Hue is also home to at least four universities, and therefore also home to many students, for whom the evening time means sports! So I got to play some volleyball with the locals and go out drinking with them as well, which was a blast.

Up the river a bit from the city lie the tombs of three of the emperors whom ruled from Hue, providing for the kings to live the afterlife in the same style as they did their real life, much like the Egyptians (sans pyramids). The tombs also served as pleasure palaces for the emperors while still alive, featuring rooms for all their concubines, large stocked hunting grounds, and beautiful views. On the same cruise, we also visited a beautiful pagoda and an unremarkable temple, but a large part of the appeal was just being on the river.

I was shocked to see the amount of dredging going on in the river, to provide silt to fuel the construction going on in Hue and the surrounding areas. Apparently there are limestone mountains up river from Hue and their silt makes for excellent building material, but the massive dredging of the river is not surprisingly leading to big problems downstream, where there are large floods and the river is covering flood plains for more and more of the year. As frustrating as the lack of environmental awareness can be in the US, it’s clear that we have made a fair bit of progress. Vietnam, like most of the countries we’ve visited, has a fledgling environmental movement, but it’s largely powerless in the face of businesses eager to grow as quickly as possible.

Days 116-117: Hanoi, Vietnam

We returned to Hanoi after our Halong Bay cruise to do some more touring around the city. Whereas we spent our first few days in the city mostly wandering around, we did a bit more targeted walking in our remaining couple days, visiting Ho Chi Minh’s Mausoleum, the Ho Chi Minh Museum (one of at least 3 in the country!), West Lake, and a few other sites. We tried to find the famous One-Pillar Pagoda but failed due to a bad map! Our favorite was the Temple of Literature, an ancient university and temple with a very peaceful feel. It had a beautiful courtyard that I could just see students studying in, practicing their calligraphy and writing poetry. Or perhaps they just goofed off and flirted with the girls – some things never change, I suppose.

There was one sight that particularly made us miss having our camera. A woman had a huge “tree” of pinwheels mounted on the back of her bicycle, probably a hundred pinwheels in all, of dozens of colors, all spinning rapidly as she biked along the river. We bought a couple pinwheels in memory of the sight, but what I would’ve given for a camera!

The Vietnamese really do eat everything! Although we’d heard that before arriving, we didn’t see immediate evidence of it. On our way to one of the museums we stopped at a noodle shop to get a bite to eat, expecting to grab a simple bowl of pho. Listed on the menu:

• Beef penis
• Intestines
• Dog
• Rat
• Ox blood, Ox tail, Ox brains
• Chicken feet
• Cockles
• Assorted cartilage

We ended up getting the fish.

Days 114-115: Halong Bay, Vietnam

Halong Bay is a set of over 1000 islands off the coast of Vietnam almost directly east of Hanoi, built up from the same Karst rock formations that we saw in Krabi. They’re really stunning, rising straight out of the ocean for a hundred or more feet. Some of them are simply Karst pillars on their own, while others have other soil and rock alongside, becoming full islands. It’s considered Vietnam’s greatest natural resource and is in the running as one of the seven natural wonders of the world (and you’re reminded to vote quite frequently!).

We took a 2 day, 1 night cruise through the islands in order to properly appreciate sunset and sunrise amongst the islands, considered the best time to see them. It turns out there are easily a hundred different tour operators offering junk trips out into the bay, each running almost exactly the same route, differentiated mostly by the quality of the food served on board and the service you receive. It’s something of a shock to be leaving the harbor on your cruise and seeing 30 other junks leaving at the same time, going to the same place – you lose something of the sense of serenity and calm that the bay is supposed to be known for.

Once you’re out into the bay, the junks spread out a bit and you’re able to appreciate the scenery better. I’m calling the boats junks, since that’s what the tour operators call them, but their masts are for show only, everyone runs on motor power all the time. We were fed lunch shortly after getting onto the boat, and what a lunch it was. Shrimp, squid, crab, fish, several vegetables, soup, and several other dishes I’ve forgotten. We were seated with a couple women named Mary and Anne who were very nice and we had a great conversation, albeit frequently interrupted by oooohs and aaaahs and “I’ll be right back, I’ve got to go look at that!” They were kind enough to send us some of their pictures from the cruise, which have been useful in reminding us that all those impossible visions in our memories are actually accurate!

We stopped at a variety of locations during the cruise out and back, including time to visit a large natural cave in one of the islands (with an amazingly smooth roof, resembling a set of sandy dunes), and an island that we could hike to the top of. The highlight for me was a natural lagoon with a single opening to the sea through a tunnel in the rock. We took a boat through the tunnel and emerged into 200 meter diameter pool with high rock cliffs on all sides – it’s the kind of place that every pirate must have dreamed of finding! We also sailed past several floating villages, where many of the residents spend most of their lives on boats, making a living fishing and selling supplies to the passing tour boats.

Overall we had a wonderful time, with one glaring exception. Our cabin on the boat turned out to be infested with dozens of cockroaches, forcing a midnight exodus into a new cabin!

Days 112-113: Hanoi, Vietnam

Months of practice walking around Asian cities have prepared us well for Hanoi’s vaunted traffic. It’s the sheer number of motorcycles here that make crossing streets hair-raising, combined with the lack of street lights (and ignoring them when they do exist). Six motorcycles can cram themselves into the space that a single car would take up, somehow arranging handlebars, legs, and any luggage into a configuration any puzzle designer would be proud to dream up. The key is to keep on walking, slow and steady, through the stream of traffic and let them figure out how to negotiate around you. Once you get used to it and learn to trust the drivers, it’s not too bad. As I said, we’ve gotten lots of practice with this kind of thing by now.

Our camera is totally dead. The motherboard is toast, same price to replace it as to replace the entire phone. And the prices on new cameras here are pretty bad, so we’ll wait till Hong Kong to buy a new one, assuming prices are better there. It was a great camera and we actually remembered to take pictures with it, of which we are tremendously proud. We were both half expecting to get back from the trip with 10 photos from LAX airport that we snapped on our way home… In any case, we have some photos of Hanoi from a friend we met in Hue located here, but no more photos for now. Thanks Garth!

We spent a lot of time walking around the old quarter of Hanoi, with each of its small streets largely devoted to a single trade (toys, clothing, repairs, bags, etc). We also walked around the beautiful Hoan Kien Lake and out the Huc Bridge to Jade Island and through parts of the French Quarter. And of course, I had to stop and sample all the local varieties of Bia Hoi, “fresh beer”, which can be a very time consuming activity given how many there are! Luckily it’s not a very expensive past time – each glass costs between ten and thirty cents, and it gives you a good excuse to sample all the different local foods as well. Overall a great way to see a city, although it requires strong knees and a good back, since the chairs at most of the shops are less than a foot tall, the small plastic things normally reserved for kindergarteners. I worried about crushing each one as I sat down, mostly a flashback to an embarrassing incident back in Lennox Head near the start of the trip.

I was treated to a wonderful dinner by Lan and Nga, the real-parents of another of my parent’s host-students, Ngoc. They took me to the famous Cha Ca La Vong, serving a single dish for over a hundred years, the eponymous Cha Ca, fried fish. It’s a small restaurant, clearly popular with tourists (apparently it got a spot in 1000 Places to See Before You Die), but also still a favorite of the locals as well. They bring out a frying pan with a fish frying in it to the table, place it on a charcoal brazier, and let you add your own condiments and serve it up. It was great to have locals with me to explain the intricacies of eating the dish, as well as to tell me all about Hanoi. They were wonderful hosts and I had a fabulous time, although unfortunately Mary was again not feeling great and was unable to join us.

Days 109-111: Siem Reap, Cambodia

We took a bus from Phnom Penh to Siem Reap, home of the famous Angkor Wat temple complex and Angkor Thom royal city. It’s a 6-7 hour drive even though it’s only 300 odd kilometers, due to the poor quality of the roads and the fact that the bus has to share them with cows, bikes, and a few other cars. We would’ve preferred to take a boat up to Siem Reap, but this being the dry season, decided that getting stranded on a sand bar didn’t sound like much fun. The tedium of the bus ride in no way presages the wonder of Angkor, which astounded and amazed us, despite all we’d heard of it beforehand.

The Angkor area was the center of the huge Khmer empire of the 9^th to 15^th centuries, and in it they built over a thousand temples, palaces, and tombs. The ancient city sprawled over a vast area, the largest preindustrial city in the world, and from it they controlled an area that included most of what are now Cambodia, Lao, Thailand, and Myanmar. The temples vary widely in their current conditions, ranging from the largely pristine Angkor Wat to piles of stones spread across the forest. There’s so much history, art, and religion crammed into this place that your mind goes into overload. And it’s so beautiful that our camera was overwhelmed and keeled over dead half an hour after arrival! There’s plenty of charge in the battery but the camera just won’t turn on… I guess we’ll just have to come back again!

The city of Siem Reap is much more built up than Phnom Penh since most tourists to the country seem to fly directly in, visit the temples, and fly back out. There were two million tourists last year and they’re expecting many more this year. We were quite glad to be here during the quiet season, since Angkor Wat was already quite crowded enough for our tastes! I’ve heard rumors of fifty new hotels being built in Cambodia – and this in a country that may only have 100 hotels total now! The Japanese appear to be moving in wholesale, followed by the South Koreans.

We did the grand tour on our first day and hired a guide to teach us more about the history of the temples, the significance of various buildings, and the myths behind the friezes carved into the walls. We first visited the ancient royal city of Angkor Thom, which still has a giant moat and wall around its 9 square kilometer interior. In the very center of the city lies the Bayon with its many gigantic faces and huge bas relief stone carvings. We walked around quite a bit, visiting the mostly collapsed Bauphon (it was built on a base of sand), followed by the Phimeanakas, Terrace of the Elephants, and Terrace of the Lepers.

We next headed up to Ta Prohm, the site where much of the temple filming for Tomb Raider (the original one) was done. This temple was thoroughly overgrown by shrubs and trees, and while they’ve removed most of the shrubs, they’ve left the trees, which have over the years worked their way over, under, and through what’s left of the temples. The trees and temples combine to create an amazing atmosphere, one in which I’d happily spend days basking.

Afterwards we visited Angkor Wat, the most famous and best preserved of the sites in Angkor. It’s also, unsurprisingly, the most visited, and was mobbed when we were there, although we were happy to see that a large fraction of the mob was Cambodian. We weren’t as enamored of Angkor Wat as we were of many of the other places we visited. Probably some combination of the crowds, our already being tired and sheer sensory overload. We’ll happily go back and try it again to see if we like it more the second time! We ended the day atop Phnom Bakheng and watched the sun set over the ruins.

We spent the next couple days visiting more temples on our own, spending more time on the less visited (and less restored) sites that we found we enjoyed more. The access at these smaller sites is amazing; at some there is no signage, no paths, and no one watching. You can walk through the remains of the temples, around the old walls and moats, down the ancient hallways. We were of course careful not to add the wear and tear on the sites, but you can go an amazing number of places even so. The lessons from our guide the first day, plus a handy guide book gave us the tools we needed to decode a lot of the iconography and religious significance of the sites, but it was really just wandering around in the ruins that gave us a feeling of the former majesty of these temples, how awe inspiring they must’ve been at the time.

Three days was both not nearly enough and the perfect amount of time in Siem Reap. We easily could’ve spent a week photographing it, but three days is great as an introduction. Plus there were many, many more restaurants we wanted to go to! To our surprise, Cambodian food has been some of the best of the trip! We knew nothing of it before arriving and have been amazed by how consistently great it has been. My best description is that it is a more hearty Thai food. Take the same spices and sauces as Thai food, but add potatoes and other starches, cook a bit longer, and serve. But that’s a vast simplification; there is a huge range to the cuisine that we didn’t have a chance to sample or to learn to make. And for that as well we need to go back!

Days 106-108: Phnom Penh, Cambodia

We’re back in the land of right hand side driving again, and it’s almost gotten us killed. Since leaving home, the only other place we’ve been in with people driving on the right was Lao, but even that was more of a “drive on either side of the road” kind of place. Not that Cambodian driving is more predictable, but many of the drivers at least honk before they start driving on the wrong side of the road! So all of our training to look right first before crossing a street has to be unlearned now; but in reality you have to look both ways several times before crossing, and having 2 people to look both ways simultaneously really helps given how erratic the drivers are (and how bad the roads are in places).

Phnom Penh is in remarkably good shape considering its history. The modern city was built up by the French, whom were forced out in 1953. Then the city was flooded by two million refugees from US bombing and Khmer Rouge fighting. When the Khmer Rouge won, they forced everyone out of the city and it was abandoned for four years, as part of their radical agrarian vision. When the Vietnamese invaded, they too let the city disintegrate, which lasted until around 1992. And for all that, some of the original French buildings are still in decent shape (after how much reconstruction I don’t know), and the Royal Palace is still beautiful.

The aftereffects of the war are still visible in the people and the economy. More so than any other place we’ve been, there is a large homeless population in Phnom Penh. Many of the cyclo and motorbike drivers sleep on their vehicles at night – the cyclo drivers get a MUCH more comfortable bed! And where there aren’t people asleep on their vehicles, there are people on cardboard sheets covering large swaths of sidewalk. I’ll try to never complain about a hard bed again. The offers from the motorbike drivers here also reflect the poverty – instead of the usual offers of just women, here I get offered “Weed, ladies, cocaine, heroin?” And the weed is offered in the open – the have “happy” pizzas with it as a topping in some of the restaurants here. Illegal but unenforced, apparently.

Mary and I spent our first day there walking through the Royal Palace, the Silver Pagoda, and the National Museum. The king still lives at the royal palace, and a section of it is cordoned off to give him some privacy. Cambodia is a constitutional monarchy, but the king still (usually) revered by the people. The palace is beautiful, replicating in stone and concrete what was originally done in wood. Next door is the Silver Pagoda, which sadly is closed, but apparently contains some amazing treasures and artifacts including a Buddha covered in nearly 10,000 diamonds. Nearby is the National Museum, which contains artifacts from other Khmer archeological sites all over the country. Sadly, many of the artifacts were looted from other sites around the country, or recovered from looters. It’s fun to walk around, but without the surrounding buildings or any explanatory text, the statues and friezes seem extra-lifeless.

Since arriving in Cambodia, I’ve been reading a fair bit about the Khmer Rouge and the Cambodian Genocide, after realizing that I didn’t know that much about such a sad chapter in world history. I visited the Killing Fields and the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum (S-21) to get a real world dose of what I’ve been reading about. They not surprisingly reminded me a lot of the extermination camps in Poland – a very peaceful feel in the air, shattered by horrific thoughts about what happened there. Neither site is as well documented as it might be, but tour guides and guide books fill in the gaps well. It all made me think of Darfur a lot and how badly we’re all doing at stopping this kind of thing from happening again.

One final note in an already too long entry; monks are people. I’ve always thought of monks as being rather removed from the world, meditating in their monasteries. But throughout Asia, and particularly in Lao and Cambodia, we’ve seen them in all aspects of their lives. They take the bus, go shopping, chit-chat, and even visit non-religious sites and take photos, like any other tourist! The monks aren’t ordinary people, in that they always sit higher than everyone else, women can’t touch them, and they’re less likely to strike up a conversation with you, but they’re definitely still people.

Days 104-105: More Bangkok

My parents volunteer as host parents for international students attending the University of Arizona at Tucson and through that program have met and become close to quite a few very nice students there. One of those students, Nichalin, is from Thailand, and her parents live near Bangkok. When they heard we would be traveling through that area, they very generously offered to give us a tour!

Unfortunately on the day of the tour, Mary was feeling sick and was unable to join us. We’ve both done pretty well with handling the local bugs, despite eating lots of street vendor food, but on that day Mary’s stomach was losing the battle. So Nichalin’s parents, Linchong and Pinit, their son, a cousin, and an interpreter picked me up, left some breakfast for Mary (it turned into her dinner, the first time she was hungry), and off we went. We stopped briefly to see a demonstration about how coconut sugar is produced then continued on to the floating market at Damnoen Saduak. The floating market is a section of canal where many vendors hawk their wares from their canoes, now primarily to tourists.

After a bit of coffee, we headed to the JEATH War Museum, dedicated to the Japanese, English, American + Australian, and Thai soldiers and civilians who built (and died by the thousands) building the Death Railway. The whole thing reminded me a lot of King Rat. We somehow kept our appetites through it, so off to lunch, just downstream from the famous Bride on the River Kwai. With that sustenance, we were able to walk over the bridge (well, the rebuilt version of it) and learn more about it. We finished off our history lesson with a visit to the Don-Rak War Cemetery, which was really moving.

On the way home we stopped by Phra Pathom Chedi, the tallest Chedi in the world, at 127 meters. Overall it was a wonderful day! I got to see a lot of parts of Thailand that I otherwise wouldn’t have had a chance to see, and it was so nice to meet Nichalin’s family. They were extremely generous, very friendly, and I had a wonderful time with them.

We were originally supposed to finish off the day with a trip to th show, but since Mary was sick, they very graciously moved Mary and my tickets to the following evening so that she’d be able to attend. We had a great time at the show, which is a cultural sampler about Thailand, covering some of its history, religious imagery, and festivals. It included lots of great costumes, good music, and fun dancing

Days 101-103: Bangkok, Thailand

Bangkok is huge. Like the saying about Texas, everything is big in Bangkok; the crowds are big, the sights are big, and the number on the thermometer is big. We were in Bangkok for 5 days and I feel like there are only a few tiny corners of it that I vaguely know. More so than any other city we’ve been too, Bangkok seems immeasurably big, perhaps even more so than New York City. Part of it is that the city is exhausting to traverse, with the traffic, crowds, and heat. Part of it is that the city seems to change so rapidly and frequently that you feel like you’re exploring a different city every time you get off the boat, skytrain, or subway. And part of it is that each part of it is foreign in a different way, and you start exploring anew each time.

We were lucky to find a condotel in a great part of the city for a very reasonable price. It had an incredible view up and down the river, and we spent a fair bit of time just sitting out on it, watching the boats go up and down the river, the cars sit in the parking lot of rush hour traffic, and feeling the temperature drop. The condotel was also close to three of the best modes of transportation in the city – the boats that speed up and down the Chao Phraya River, the MRT subway, and the BTS monorail (skytrain). Many of the most famous tourist sights in the city are along the river, so the boats provide easy access to many of them, which are not serviced by other forms of public transportation (there were public busses, but given how crowded they were, I wasn’t sure if we’d ever be able to get off, having boarded once). The subway and skytrain are very modern and nice, but have somewhat limited coverage. I was quite impressed with how easy to use and efficient they were.

We started off our touring with a river cruise, going up and down the Chao Phraya River, then along some of the khlongs (canals) that cut through Bangkok and the neighboring city of Thonburi. This is still a real working river, filled with barges, edged with cranes, and constantly churning from all the traffic. Along the khlongs you can still find people going house to house with food and other goods; waterways are still the lifeblood of Bangkok, the way it used to be in all Thai cities apparently. We were amazed to see people swimming in the river, given its level of pollution. But given the heat, it’s quite understandable – we retreated to the pool to avoid the urge to join the kids in the riverThe next day I went out exploring to see some of the sights while Mary rested and recovered from her encounters with Bangkok. I took a boat up the river to visit the Grand Palace, Wat Phra Kaew, the reclining Buddha at Wat Pho, Wat Arun, and Chinatown. I met up with a German and two Estonians and we toured our way through. We’d all read in the guidebooks how there would be people at the famous sights reporting them to be closed and steering you towards other attractions, making money off the tuk tuk ride and any other shops they could steer you into. What we didn’t expect was how good they’d be at it. They’d stage themselves at a side entrance to the site, then wave you over, chat you up in excellent English, German, or Russian (as we all found out), and explain how there was a royal ceremony going on (hear the music?), and the palace was closed for an hour. They were so friendly and knowledgeable that it was hard to keep in mind their ulterior motives – in the end, only the fact that they were randomly hanging out where they were was enough to keep away my normal trust.

The sights were worth the effort though! The Royal Palace is stunning (and blinding at times), covered in gold and streaking into the sky on chedi and temple peaks every which way you looked. The Emerald Buddha was incredible – it was nice to see it after visiting one of its prior homes in Chiang Mai. The Reclining Buddha was huge, the view from the top of Wat Arun was spectacular, and overall it was a rather overwhelming day. To calm my mind, I went down to Chinatown, with it’s quiet streets and solace :-) Ok, maybe not – in a busy city, Chinatown still stands out as a hotspot of activity. There were thousands of different types of food for sale on the street, leaving me feeling like I’d never be able to try even a sample of each one.

Days 98-100: Vientiane, Lao

By Mary

The trip from Udon Thani to Vientiane sucks. The procedure itself is not very difficult, and simply involves a bus to the Thai-Lao border, a visa purchase, and then a bus or taxi ride over the Mekong River. A simple matter, one is told, of two hours.

Don’t believe it. It takes all day long, and is torturous. I don’t know why the guide books lie to you, but they do. The “bus,” such as it is, has very little in common with what one normally associates with the vehicle. It does have wheels, and seats, and an engine, and one-and-a-half as many passengers as seats. The vehicle’s air conditioning thoughtfully does not interfere with one’s sweating, and as it travels about as fast as a motorbike, tourists will have plenty of time to regret ever wanting to see what Lao is like.

Then there is the matter of “getting to the border,” and “acquiring a visa.” Such transactions are relatively straightforward in most places, but not in Udon Thani. Here, after spending so much time on the crowded bus in close contact with your neighbors, you are abruptly dropped off about a kilometer from the actual border. Magically, a taxi appears, and proceeds with no delay in the opposite direction from the border. Don’t worry, though, because the driver will eventually stop at a travel agency, where any number of people there are happy to give you a visa for 5 times the official price. Once you have expressed no interest in paying more than is required, the taxi driver will suddenly realize that, in fact, the travel agent’s shop was not what you meant by “border,” and will take you to the official border recognized by both countries. This misunderstanding, unfortunately, will mean extra taxi fare. The driver, of course, is so very sorry.

Once at the Thai side of the border, things mostly return to normal, and you can purchase a Lao visa without more than the usual hassle and long lines. But you will not be in a good mood. Especially if you discover when you get to your hotel that your camera has been left behind in Udon Thani.

Vientiane is a nice place. We had giant fruit salads and giant smoothies twice each day at the local Western-world expatriate hangout, a café called Sabaidee Coffee. Because the city is so small, we were able to see a great deal of Vientiane even though we were only there for a few days. One highlight was Talat Sao, a gigantic day market that is the size of a megamall. It is three floors high, and covers an entire Manhattan-sized city block! Once there, we bought lots of beautiful, hand-woven Lao silk scarves. By this point, Dave and I have perfected our bargaining techniques, and we ended up with a really good deal.

We spent one afternoon in the Lao National Museum, the bulk of which is devoted to the successive wars and occupations fought in the region. The exhibits, lots of guns and swords, are very graphic, and the descriptions are even more so. For example, several rooms are filled with guns displayed in glass cases, with small white placards identifying them as “weapons used by Americans to kill Lao people.” Other displays had knives “used by the French Army to torture and destroy Lao people.” There were also grenades. It was very interesting, and not a little depressing.

I refused to see any more temples, but a lot of the other buildings had interesting architecture. One building that should get special mention is the Lao version of l’Arc de Triomphe, locally known as the “vertical runway.” It is made out of concrete, given to the Lao people by the US government for the construction of an airfield. The Lao government took the concrete, and made the Arc instead. Dave and I climbed to the top, and got a great view of the whole city of Vientiane. Eventually, we went to see a temple, because it was the Lao National monument. But I went under duress, and we each had a milkshake afterwards, so it doesn’t really count.

The trip from Vientiane back to Udon Thani was, incredibly, worse than our journey there. But we got the camera back! Also, I had two doughnuts, so net positive overall.

Day 97: Udon Thani, Thailand

We flew into Udon Thani in the northeast of Thailand largely as a stepping stone into Lao, since there are cheap domestic airlines in Thailand. It was also interesting as a glimpse into a part of Thailand somewhat off the beaten track (although there are still a sizeable number of farang here too). The place we spent the night was a bit out from the center of town, and we were unusual enough to cause a lot of double takes and lots of waving from passing motorbikes.

We managed to find a small night market and did some shopping with the locals, then did a lot of swimming in our hotel’s pool. If you’re ever in the area, the Englishman’s Retreat is a great place to stay -- $12 a night for a nice room, pool, exercise room, pool table, and cheap beer.

Days 92-96: Chiang Mai, Thailand

We flew up to Chiang Mai on Sunday, arriving just in time to go out to the Sunday Walking Market. This outdoor market stretches for half a mile along of one of the main streets of Chiang Mai, plus three cross streets, all of which are shut down for the occasion. It’s one big party and everyone is there – we saw more people that night than we did the entire rest of our time in Chiang Mai. There are hundreds of food vendors, plus people selling paintings, carvings, photos, clothes, and other goods. Not to mention dozens of musicians (many of them blind), dancers, and people from the surrounding hill tribes dressed in traditional costume. We ate so much we could barely walk, then sat down and kept on eating! The walking market was far more fun than any of the night markets we’ve been too (and there have been many), largely because there was more of a festive air – it’s not just for shopping, the market is a social occasion for everyone involved, even the vendors.

We spent the next couple days walking around Chiang Mai, exploring both the walled old city and some of the surrounding newer city as well. The old city has both a moat and a wall around it, although more of the moat has survived than the wall. Inside the roughly square mile of the old city lie dozens of Wats (temples), making it a beautiful city to wander through.

We took a day trip down to the Thai Elephant Conservation Center near Lampang, about 80 kilometers southeast of Chiang Mai. It’s farther from Chiang Mai than most of the other elephant camps, but worth the effort to reach. It’s a government run elephant rehabilitation center, taking in aged and injured elephants and helping them recover, as well as raising money for the treatment of other elephants at the elephant hospital on site. The elephants are incredibly beautiful and talented, and it’s fun to see them alternate between looking very old and wise as the peer at you, and becoming little kids when there’s something to play with or eat. They run several multi-day mahout training programs here that we’d love to attend, but again it’ll have to be put off for another trip.

On the way back from the elephant camp we stopped in Bo Sang and San Kamphaeng to visit several of the craft factories there, mass producing the traditional wares of these villages. We saw silk, silver, gemstones, ceramics, and umbrellas being made, as well as large displays of finished products. The umbrella factory was undoubtedly the most beautiful and fun of the bunch; the color of the umbrellas is astounding. The gemstone factory won the most amusing prize though; as soon as they realized we weren’t going to buy anything (took about 30 seconds), they tried to force us out the door, which of course made us dawdle all the more. They ended up being uncharacteristically rude for Thais, which really shocked us – we never did anything other than admire the rings, bracelets, and such.

Mary was feeling over-Watted on our last day in Chiang Mai, so I took a solo journey up to Wat Phrathat Doi Suthep in the mountains surrounding the city. It’s the most famous of the Wats in the region, and beautiful both for the temple itself and for the views down to the city, although it was pretty hazy and smoky the day I was there (burning of agricultural byproducts apparently). Afterwards I went to the nearby Phu Ping Summer Palace, high enough in the hills to escape the 90 degree plus temperatures of Chiang Mai and most of central Thailand. It’s very well manicured and the gardens are nice, but overall not much character to the place.

I ended my tour by going to a Hmong village, one of the many different hill tribes that populate northern Thailand. Although the village is clearly rather touristy, since I was there apart from all the big tours and during the off season, it was fun to wander on my own and watch the kids play and the families chat and weave. The tribal museum was interesting, if a bit like a National Geographic article photocopied and enlarged. It gave a good bit of background on the different tribes and how each was forced out of China over time and settled in different parts of South East Asia. As an added bonus, I got to see opium poppies growing, the main traditional crop of the Hmong. These were just for display, but there is still a large opium crop in this region, primarily in Myanmar and Laos.

Days 89-91: Krabi, Thailand

Thailand keeps on getting better, and that’s not been easy to do. After the snorkeling in the Similan Islands, we thought we must’ve had the highlight of our stay here. But it turns out that Krabi is just as fun as the snorkeling we did on the islands.

First a bit of explanation of the geography of the area, to explain everywhere we went. Krabi is a province on the west coast of Thailand, as well as the main city in that province. Nearby is the Railay Peninsula sticking out to the south, which contains the many famous karst rock formations for which the area is known. Along the peninsula, isolated from the mainland by mountains, is a small corridor of walkable terrain, with beaches on either end, called (shockingly) Railay East and Railay West. To the west of the peninsula is the town of Ao Nang, and to the east is Ao Nammao (town is used loosely here – there are maybe 30 buildings total). The only way to the beaches is by longtail boat, which are a blast to ride in.

We stayed in Ao Nammao at a beautiful small hotel and took a longtail boat to Railay every day to go sea kayaking, swim, and play volleyball (for me, while Mary went swimming and took some amazing photos). The sea kayaking is simply amazing, we went all around the peninsula, and most of the time you have these limestone cliffs reaching up at least 200 feet above you, frequently with a large caves and overhangs at the base, plus a ton of small islands to paddle around and explore. Plus the water is a beautiful sparkling blue-green color and super warm, making it fun to pop off the kayak into the water. This is a climbers heaven, and we saw many people trying their skills against the faces and overhangs.

The sand here, like the sand on the Similan Islands, is simply amazing. It feels like silk as it runs through your fingers and toes, and is by far the finest grained sand I’ve ever felt. The wind off the ocean keeps it from getting too warm, and the sky is a perfect blue – this is pretty close to heaven. We’ll definitely be coming back here!