The perfect vehicle

Before coming to Vietnam I already thought the bicycle was the perfect form of transportation. Suitable for all ages:





Now I am more convinced of this then ever. Bikes are a great way to meet people and chat with them:





They can carry much more of a load then most people think. Especially when the terrain is flat.









And no form of transport can match the sociability aspects of bikes. As you pedal along you see a friend. You can either ride along with them:



Or have them hop on:



Excuse the poor framing on some of these shots, most were taken by me while riding a bike. All the urban bike riding we do at home sure comes in handy when trying to negotiate a sea of bikes and scooters, and the occasional car or bus, one handed while taking photos. (You didn't read that Dad!)



That's why you mostly see the back of Rich in these photos. If he sees me riding one handed while taking photos he get a bit nervous. So I lurk behind him and take pics, and occasionally make him stop when we see something scenic.






Getting out on a bike is not only a great way to meet people and see things off the beaten track, but we've had some of our best food when out biking. You get tired and hungry and try places that you would never see otherwise. Or wouldn't be brave enough to try. And you realize that people are just people, and most are friendly and nice.

vietnam

As much as Rich and I don't like organized trips while traveling, we signed up for a Junk Boat trip on Ha Long bay. It is one of those "must dos" that most of the tourists to Vietnam take part in. We arrived at the cafe in Hanoi where the mini van would leave from, worrying about our fellow tour groupies - would we like them? Would they be lame? and immediately meet a lovely couple from Australia and thought, oh good, people we get along with. All of us were thrilled...up until the point we got put into different vans because they were doing two nights on a boat and we were one night on a boat and one in a hotel. Oh well. It was a brief, very brief friendship.

The dock at Ha Long City is littered with boats. The boats are double and quadruple parked. In order to get onto our boat we had climb across three other boats.



At this point I'm wondering what type of tourist hell we've agreed to for two nights and three days, but the reality was quite nice. Although there were dozens and dozens of boats, once we headed out into the bay, with its thousand or so islands, and the boats thinned out, the magic of Ha Long Bay appeared.



We spent one day kayaking which is a great way to really appreciate the enormity of the rocks jutting up out of the water. The water is clear and cool and there are lagoons totally enclosed by the rocks except at low tide when you can kayak through to the inner lagoon.



After lunch on the kayaking day we paddled to the floating village.





The village has 1,000 people and probably 3,000 dogs and a few pissed off cats. On the plus side of being a cat on a floating village - lots of fish. The negatives? Surrounded by water and dogs.



The village used to have over 20,000 people, but they lived a subsistence life, catching fish and burning wood from the islands. The government realized that the area was being damaged by the way of life and switched people to an aqua culture life. Now, the villagers farm dogfish and grouper in pens created from plastic drums lashed together with 3x4s. The dogs run along the boards like teenage gymnasts on the balance beam, and skitter to a stop at the edge to bark ferociously at the kayaks. We were waiting for a dog to jump in and swim after us, or to leap on the kayak but none did. I was in the rear of our double kayak and had control of the rudder so I kept us about six feet from the dogs, figuring they couldn't jump that far.

What started out seeming to be a group tourist trip from hell ended up being very nice.



There are more photos on the flickr site, just click on one of the photos to go the whole set on line.

Beach cottage in a box

After a total of about two weeks on the Islands of Thailand I feel confident in my ability to offer a product which will allow the masses to recreate that "beach cottage" feeling we got so effortlessly in our Bungalow on Koh Phi Phi.

Beach cottage in a box contents:

Three stands of fishing line strung with random shells and bits of coral to hang from the eaves.
Five to six geckos who will appear at eye level anywhere in your cottage at any time.



One bottle of salt water to spray on your curtains, your sheets, your clothing, and your spouse for that salty island breeze feeling.
Two bottles of sand to sprinkle in your bed and on your floor.




One powerful heater to re-create the feel of the relentless mid day sun beating down on your bungalow.
One tiny air conditioner to try and combat the fierce heat.

Take a look at the YouTube video of Rich on the beach to get the true feeling of the beach.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2GoeghcVfL8





Next: Vietnam.

Kennel Cough

A lot of good it did me not cuddling the pets at the Chatuchak Weekend market. Don't touch anything, I warned Rich, no matter how cute they are, all those puppies and kittens and baby squirrels. I know that my sister who is a vet would shake her head and intone the names of several diseases which a good portion of the critters would have. So, there was no petting, no picking up, no snuggling. And I got sick the very next day. Kennel Cough.




OK, so it's probably not kennel cough, but for a cold it really wiped me out.




Thankfully Bangkok has pretty good public transit, so we stuck to things along the Sky Train route for a few days. The sky train is Air Conditioned to a temp slightly above frigid, so the continual shock of going from hot to cold is probably not helping my kennel cough.




We visited the Jim Thompson House, a museum created from the home of a US born architect who helped to revitalize the Thai silk weaving industry in the 40s and 50s. His home was created from several traditional Thai village houses, transported and put back together with a few western touches. He vanished in the jungles of Malaysia in 1967.


It's a beautiful place to visit. http://www.jimthompsonhouse.com/



Also on the Sky Train routes are quite a few shopping malls.



Loaded with a variety of new and different shops.... and a bunch of the same old stuff with a new twist. Like Ronald making a Wai, the traditional Thai greeting. Rich could not be stopped from joining in.



Short post, still feeling a bit under the weather but the Kennel Cough is clearing up slowly. We've been so lucky in Bangkok to have friends to stay with. First it was Charlie and Lizzie, friends through my Sister-in-law, and now Kathy, a former co-worker of mine. It's been a great break to stay in a home again. And such fun high rises! Great views.

City LIfe

We left Laos via a boat trip up the Mekong River. It was a fancy pants boat, complete with lunch on board and a bar, and the trip took two days. The alternatives were the bare bones boats, which would have been fine, or the speedboats, for which you wear helmets and life vests and hope for the best. Apparently they are quite prone to flipping over and oh...killing their passengers. Whee!

Many of the villages along the river are accessible only by river, and what a river! This is the low water season so you can really get a good idea of how tricky this river is to navigate. The rocks reach up from the bottom of the river looking like giant teeth waiting to eat the bottom of a boat. The water runs brown like the Mighty Mississippi with a strong fast current and the banks on both side are about 10 to 15 meters below the trees, it gets that much higher during the wet season. The exposed sandy riverbanks are planted with crops near the villages, peanuts and sweet potatoes mostly.





We came back into Thailand and went first to Chiang Rai, where I fell in love with a hedgehog at the night market. I was persuaded that travel with a hedgehog would be difficult so I eased the pain of separation with much shopping for silly cute things that only a pre-teen girl would love. Thankfully, we have about five of those back in the US who will be getting packages from Bangkok so I'll be able to close my backpack again. From Chiang Rai we went up to the mountains, near the border with Burma, the tea growing region of Thailand. It was nice, but a bit dull, so we hightailed it to Chiang Mai, where we've been for six nights now.

What do we do when we get to a City? Go out to dinner, go to movies, ride around on bikes, shop, all the usual. But wait, I hear you say, why did you leave SF 'cause that's pretty much what you did there? Uh, yes... yes it is. We saw three Hollywood movies in five days. (Night at the Musuem, funny, American Haunting, stupid, and Holiday, sweet chick flick complete with crying SNAGS, sensitive new age guys.) The air conditioned shopping mall/ movie complex is a good place to be during the hot part of the day and the food court serves some of the best Thai food we've had, and definitely the best Pad Thai. I said to one of the owners of the first guesthouse we stayed at that we were going to a movie for the hot part of the day and he gave me a puzzled look, "Hot? It's not hot in January." It is if you're a weak blooded westerner.



A word on shopping in Thailand. Hello size extra-large. Most of the teeny tiny little women in the department store where I went to try and buy underwear (mine was holding together by mere threads after five months) would have had to shop in the children's section in the US. The poor saleswomen helping me finally found some that were XL and didn't look like big granny pants. I stocked up. The t-shirt I bought? Size XL. The Capri length sweats to bike in since my Capris are falling apart and are held up at the waist with a safety pin that keeps stabbing me? Size XL. And I've lost weight since we started traveling. Sheesh.

Apparently there is big bussiness in having suits made for you when in Thailand. Loads of shops offer 24 hour turn around. They do dresses too, but everything looked too much like something one would wear to a job, if one had a job, and it freaked me out. So instead I went to a little shop run by a brother sister team - he designs, she sews, and bought two dresses and a top (one size fits all thank you very much!) and then shocked Rich by actually having new clothes on when he got back from a bike ride.

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.