Floating along In Laos

Viang Vien is a little town on a river that has become quite a little tourist mecca. The mountains that rise up from the river plain are limestone and riddled with amazing caves.



There is kayaking and inner tubing on the river, although more drinking at the riverside bars seems to go then actual inner tube sitting. The bars are built of wood and bamboo and rise up off the river banks seeming to defy gravity. Employees of the bars fish you out of the river with long bamboo poles as you drift by so you can climb up, collapse on a bamboo pavilion and drink BeerLao. Yes, we did the tubing. And yes, large BeerLaos were consumed. Another very popular feature of the riverside bars are the swings and zip lines that swing or zip you out over the river, hopefully over a deep part, and then send you plunging down into the river, hopefully missing the other tubers and kayakers. Rich did a zip line but we both passed on the really high and long swing from which younger tubers then us were doing flips and massive belly flops. I didn't want to have to go up the bar and order "a BeerLao and two ibuprofen please."



As you travel you make discoveries about yourself, some surprising, some not so much. One of the not surprising discoveries about myself is that I will not become a professional spelunker. For one thing, real spelunkers don't wear skirts.



We went into four caves while in Viang Vien and at no point did I feel a burning desire to go further into the caves. And at every point, when we got back to the place where you see the light from the mouth of the cave my brain reacted as if I had been trapped in the cave for weeks - Oh thank goodness, there's the exit! Two of the caves we visited were with guides on a kayak/cave trek day trip. Both were in one spot and out another, and one of the outs involved a little crack through which you had to crawl. Oh boy! Crawling through a crack to get out of a cave! I was third in line to get out of the cave and had to stop to watch my six foot five husband try to wedge himself through the little crack. Our guide, Air, kept saying to Rich, put your right leg back all the way. This is all the way, Rich said. Air is about five foot five and could have done a tango in the crack. Rich got out with only a skinned knee. The caves are amazing inside. Huge caverns carved out by water running through the limestone. In the wet season a lot of them still have water pouring through them, and we had to wade through streams in one.

Luang Prabang has been more calm, no tubing or kayaking for us here, although both are offered. We rented bikes and did another Rich Coffin adventure tours bike ride, complete with lunch stop at a small roadside resturant.



It is a really beautiful town with a French Colonial feel to it.


It is a Unesco World Heritage Site, and has some damn fine poodles running around.



There was a big festival going on for New Years eve at a spot along our bike ride, I stopped and got a photo of Rich with two girls in local festive dress.

It burns, it burns!

Lessons learned.

In India, I can buy a skirt for less then a glass of wine. No, I'm not good at bargaining, they lower the price when you say you'll think about it and walk away, but usually I bargain very little to none. But the irony of paying 100 RS for a skirt, and then ten minutes later paying 250 RS for a glass of cold white wine makes me laugh. The skirt was too long so I cut the bottom off and used the fabric to make a hat band and a belt for my jeans. The jeans had been held up with a boot string, I think the flowered fabric is much nicer. The jeans themselves have now become shorts hacked off at the knee with my folding knife. Not evenly hacked off, but cooler.



When you throw sticks for dogs in India, they think you are trying to hit them and they run away. To them, it's not a game of fetch. Even if the dog seems like a nice friendly well adjusted 'sure I'll follow you up the mountain because I have nothing better to do' type of dog, it still thinks you are chasing it away. It makes you feel bad when the dog cringes and runs.

The great Snake Brand Powder sold to combat prickly heat in Thailand feels pretty funny if you accidentally get in on sensitive areas of your body. Rich and I can both attest to that.

The Spicy Beef in Laos is really spicy. Yam siin ngao it's called. And whichever word means spicy really should be in capital letters. I was sure that I had steam coming out of my ears and fire shooting from my mouth like a cartoon character. So I kept eating more, it really hurts when you stop.

Being a slow cyclist on a knee masher clunky bike is a great way to spot the best street food vendors, including our new addiction, Kanom Krok, otherwise known as those yummy little coconut cakes - oh my god stop, pull over, more coconut cakes! Rich with Kanom Krok.



And Kanom Krok being made at the Night Market in Chompong.



When riding bikes out in the countryside of Thailand, get ready to wave and shout hello at pretty much everyone. If the people of Thailand were any nicer and friendlier I'm not sure that we could have made any progress on our bike ride. When stopping at small roadside restaurants where there is no menu and no English spoken, it's easy if you just make sure to stop where other people are eating. You just point at something that looks good and point to yourself, nod and smile. That's how we ended up with the most amazing octopus dish. It was fresh, it was good, and the locals were eating it too.



Ah, Thailand.

In love with Thailand

We've been in Thailand for about 9 days, having what we call a vacation from our sabbatical. We flew from Mumbai to Bangkok to Sura Thani, and spent four nights on Koh Samui and four nights on Koh Tao. (see Rich's blog for a great description of leaving India http://blogs.bootsnall.com/TravelRich/ )

There was a very stormy ferry ride in between the two islands which I would like never to repeat, but the islands themselves are wonderful. Blue waters, white sand beaches, great food and sweet happy friendly people.



We are in an area known for it's scuba diving, but neither of us dive and neither of us wanted to sign up for a dive course - a four day commitment? Too much like work. There are loads of Northern European tourists here, mostly Finnish it seems. Some of the dive courses are offered in Finnish. Although it is December the weather is still very warm and during the hottest part of the day those of us not out on dive boats or submerged in resort swimming pools learning how to dive are in the shade.

The beach is lined with restaurants and bars, all open to the ocean and littered with tourists reclining in the shade on the triangular backed Thai pillows. The tourists look like jetsam washed up with the high tide, marooned on the decks of the pavilion style restaurants. They all seem as if they can barely raise their drinks to their mouths, many are simply prone and possibly asleep or done in by 3rd degree sunburn. The breeze coming through the resturant does nothing to stir them, it merely ruffles the pages of their abandonded books. Although Rich and I are not the oldest tourists on this stretch of beach, we are pushing the upper limits. I do feel like the nagging mother of the beach. As exposed flesh around us becomes pink and then red, I adjust my hat and make sure that not one inch of skin is exposed to the sun that is not liberally covered in sun block. I want to warn the pale blondes who make me look swarthy complexioned that that sun is stronger then it feels, sweetie, and don't even think about getting a tattoo...do you kids know where those needles have been? Does the word hepatitis mean anything to you? I'm channeling my father as they bake in the sun and plan their evenings.

About an hour before sunset all the beach bars start coming to life, laying out cushions and digging pits in the sand for beer bottles filled with kerosene and lit with a rag. All along the beach people stake out a spot to watch the sun go down. The happy hour beers are 50 bahts, about $1.50. The fire pits are lit, the strings of lights wrapped around the palm trees go on and the lanterns hung in the trees start to come alive with spots of color. It is a beautiful sight.

Last day in India

Well this is it, our last day in India. We are in Mumbai, our plane for Thailand is tonight at about midnight. I'm so glad we came to India, I know we never would have made it here on a usual 2 week vacation from work. I think I can best sum up my time in India by borrowing a quote from Ruth Prawar Jhabvala that was used in May You be the Mother of a Hundred Sons, a book about women in Inida. Jhabvala said that being a visitor in India was like being strapped to giant wheel, sometimes you are up, sometimes you are down.

Wow, is that an elephant? Up.



Child beggars. Down.

Beautiful views. Up.






And so it goes.

Farewell India.

Food and Trains

I always knew we were spoiled when it came to food. How could you not be living in San Francisco? It really hit home when we spent about two and a half weeks in Italy two summers ago and both Rich and I were tired of Italian food. My sister in law Claire thought it was pretty funny, and it was. We love Italian food. But we got tired of it, we just wanted some variety. So, I hear questions out there, how long did it take us to get tired of Indian food? About 10 days. But, and this is a big but, we both got sick, and when you get sick your mind associates it with the food, and your brain and stomach rebel. We had rented apartments a lot while traveling in Central Europe, so we got to cook for ourselves. Here in India we haven't been able to do that at all. That means four weeks of eating out at resturants. Four weeks of breakfast, lunch, and dinner out. Four weeks of menus, and ordering, and trying to get the bill, and getting change, etc etc etc. It is draining.



So what do we eat? Well, we were lucky that when we went to the mountains we got a lot of Tibetin and Chinese food. We both loved the Tibetian food, love those momos!, and I could eat veggie chow mein for a long time. In Manali there was great resturant attached to the hotel, Johnsons Cafe, and we ate every meal there for two days. Breakfast is never a problem, toast is universal I guess. But, tonight, both of us at our limit on Indian food, we are looking for pizza. And how sick of pizza were we in Croatia? Very. Travel is funny.

I think Rich covered the cockroach train from Varanasi to Jahnsi in his blog. The train that led me to declare "No more night trains!". How long did my ban last? About one and half weeks. After the car and driver we hired left us in McLeod Ganj we had to get to Delhi to get anywhere, so Rich booked a night train for us, 1AC, the highest class available. We got a two person compartment to ourselves and proceeded to settle in, strewing luggage everywhere, getting the rum and fruit juice on deck for cocktails. "A mouse!" Rich announces. Not really, you're joking I hope? No joke, one little mouse. We named him Irwin and decided that one mouse was much better then the hundreds of cockroaches we had endured on our last night train. Live and let live. Coexist. Pass the rum and fruit juice.

Monkeys, Red Pandas, and Monks! Oh My!

Cute critters do a lot to make a place great, in my book. So the sighting of Red Pandas that we had the other day on a hike out of McLeod Ganj kept me going for about two days. Rich and I were on a trail amazingly free of people or trash (India has a big litter problem, more on that later.) when he saw a dark shape dash away down a slope. I got the camera out and we stalked the elusive shape, well, ok, we continued to walk up the trail, but quietly. We discussed what we thought the creature was, it looked like a pine martin, a member of the weasel family, only larger and with a bushier tail. We were pretty sure it wasn't a cat type creature, the body shape was wrong, and it wasn't one of the many monkeys, wrong color and wrong behavior.

Around the corner on the trail and there it was again, dashing away up the slope, then another one dashed as well and we got a better look at it when it curiously peered back down at us. Red Pandas. Also known as Indian Raccoons. They are reddish golden on their backs with darker legs and belly, and a ringed tail. The faces have white mask markings, like our US raccoons but they are larger and longer. We walked a little farther and heard a horrible fighting noise coming from a tree, and two more ran down the tree and we watched them skirt around us. I got one photo where you can actually see the fast moving thing. Very exciting.

Monkeys and trash. As I mentioned, India has a litter problem. A big litter problem. It is everywhere, spilling down slopes in towns, covering the train tracks, in piles along the main streets of small and big towns. We see people just drop trash where they stand, and there aren't many options for them. Some of the hill towns are making a concentrated effort to clean up, like Simla, and have trash cans which say Use Me, but in most places the only option is to toss stuff down. I have been amazed at the length and breadth of the litter and here in McLeod Ganj, but part of the puzzle was solved. Monkeys and dumpsters.



We watched a gang of monkeys puling trash out of dumpster and dragging it all over the hill. Potato chip bags, plastic bags, bottles, you name it, the monkeys wanted a closer look. The dumpster lids are propped open so the monkeys have easy access. There would be a market for monkey proof dumpsters here in India, like the ones Yosemite uses to foil the bears. And today I saw a cow pick up the end of a trash bag in her mouth, lift, and shake. The trash that had been neatly contained, perhaps awaiting pickup, was now spread all over the street. Monkey and cow proof dumpsters would help a lot. A friend did point out that tradionally most of the trash would have been recycled by the cows into fuel; cow dung. But with so much plastic and other non-cow-munchable trash now in the packaging stream, the trash has no where to go.



Yesterday we did about a 14 mile hike up the ridge above town to get a better view of the Himalaya mountains. It was a great hike and the view was totally worth is. As a bonus we also had another question answered. (India generates a lot of questions.) McLeod Ganj is the residence of His Holiness the Dali Lama, and of the Tibetan government in exile so there are many Buddhist monks and disciples. Where there are Buddhists there are strings of prayer flags. Now, a string of prayer flags hung from a railing or balcony or small tree is pretty, but a string of prayer flags hung from forty feet up a pine tree, or thirty feet up a cliff is pretty amazing. How did they do that? Rich advocated for the rock tossing method, tying one end of the prayer flag string around a rock and tossing it into the tree, much like we did hanging our food bags from bears in the Sierras before the invention of bear proof canisters (there is theme of animal proofing going on here). On our hike yesterday we heard voices from around a bend in the trail, above the trail really. We stopped and looked up and saw the distinctive red robes of a Buddhist monk high in a tree, dragging a string of prayer flags after him. You didn't have to know the language to recognize that there was an argument going on. The Monk on the ground was yelling at the Monk in the tree. Probably to go higher. The Monk in the tree was yelling back. Probably to piss off. We kept hiking. Nothing we could do to help there.