Chiang Mai, Thailand

Happy New Year! I'm hoping this new & improved mailing system from MailerMailer will resolve most delivery problems. Rest assured that your email addresses are safe and you will not be spammed or sold into white-list slavery as thanks for being on my contact list. Also, if you're receiving duplicates of this newsletter, or you can't remember who I am and how you got on this list in the first place, you can now *unsubscribe* using the link at the end.

If you've sent me a message within the past 4-5 weeks and I haven't replied, please don't take it personally! The recent 'quake in Taiwan has affected the already-wobbly Internet infrastructure over here, particularly in Laos where I spent the past month. Many scrambled & lost messages later, I'm back in Thailand and will try to catch up while I can.

Technical difficulties aside, I'm doing fine and traveling dreamily along. Since I haven't had the ability to write for a while, I may overcompensate in this issue...feel free to skim! There are also a few links to my photos on Flickr, which I am uploading "slowly-slowly" as able.

I hope this finds you all well, happy, and looking forward to a bright & shiny new year.

Peace from the Far East,

~ laurie

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November-December: Thailand

In Bangkok, I stayed with the exuberant and charming Fluke Ganitta, who graciously put me up in her cozy apartment and spared me the Bangkok guesthouse roulette I later inflicted on my friend Christina (see below.)

I knew Fluke and I were going to get along like gangbusters when the first CD she played was the soundtrack from "I Am Sam". (Back in El Cerrito, my housemate and I play this disc so often it must be handled with oven mitts to prevent friction burns.) At Vietnamese food later that night, Fluke further endeared herself to me when she picked up the menu and announced that she would be happy to order for us, but she doesn't eat pets. It's like we were separated at birth.

My visit happened to coincide with one of the monthly volunteer days Fluke coordinates at Bangkok's School For the Blind, so she invited me along. All of the kids had a great time playing games, singing songs, and practicing English with the volunteers. You can see a few photos of the activities at:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/laurielou/sets/72157594378220961/show/

...and read more about Fluke's Little Light Project on her website.

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The Real Reason I'm Not a Guidebook Writer

My next stop was Ko Phangnan, a small island in the Gulf of Thailand where I planned a yoga retreat and plenty of beach bumming. Meanwhile, a friend from San Francisco was making her way across the world to meet me -- her first trip to Thailand. I had emailed her a bunch of useful information, including a recommendation a guesthouse I used to frequent in Bangkok's Thewet neighborhood (though I haven't actually stayed there in a while.) The email I received the day after her arrival went something like this:

I'm in Bangkok! Very exciting first night involving bed-bug feeding frenzy at Shanti Guesthouse. Moved to Asia Hotel at 4 a.m. Still on for Sunday; see you soon.

Love,

Christina

Not that guidebook writers don't make that sort of mistake all the time -- they do, and we hate them for it. Fortunately, Christina is a good sport and recovered quickly from the bed-bug trauma. She made it to Ko Phangnan and joined me at the Sanctuary (highly recommended) for some jungle yoga, and then we beach-hopped and snorkeled our way around the island. You can see a few snapshots here (though you might want to skip these if it's really, really cold where you are):

http://www.flickr.com/photos/laurielou/sets/72157594410423921/

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December: Luang Prabang & Southern Laos

When Christina reluctantly returned to San Francisco, I accompanied her to the ferry and picked up my next hut-guest, my brother Nathan. This was also his first visit to Southeast Asia. After letting him get completely spoiled on the islands and in Luang Prabang, Laos, I decided to take him further afield and introduce him to "alternative" travel -- i.e., no fancy guides, no plans, no reservations, get-there-on-a-wing-and-a-prayer. You know, my usual method.

We flew to Pakse in southern Laos and then the real journey down to Si Phan Don (Four Thousand Islands) began with flagging down a song-thaw (a jury-rigged pickup) headed to Champasak. We had a two-hour ride ahead of us and the truck was already overstuffed with local people, parcels, a big stack of wooden pallets, bags of cement, a few anonymous animals tied up in gunnysacks, and a shipment of bicycles. Nathan looked dubious.

"Maybe we should wait for the next one," he said.

"No, there might not be another one today," I replied, herding him inside with our bags. "Let's just go."

The driver said he was leaving for Champasak "now," which means nothing of course. Twenty-five sweaty minutes later, we trundled toward the main highway, only to stop immediately at a lot filled with pyramid-like stacks of watermelons. After a brief negotiation with the vendors, the driver began loading melons into the truck one by one. As there was no room for this additional cargo, his solution was for each passenger to hold a melon in his or her lap. I was already holding my own bag on my lap and had one foot propped against bag of cement because there was no room on the floor. When my assigned melon arrived, I scowled at the driver and passed it on up to the front where another passenger glumly adopted it for the duration of ride.

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A Road Mystery is Solved
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Every time a song-thaw stops -- say, about every 10 minutes -- the vehicle is besieged by local ladies selling food and drinks. I appreciate their entrepreneurship, but it baffles me that only one type of item is sold at each stop. At the first intersection, a fleet of squawking women waved bunches of raw turnips at us, but nothing else. At the ferry launch, a different group jumped aboard with coolers of tepid soda and beer. At each stop, the products are identical and so are the prices. How any of them manage to sell enough to survive has long been a mystery to me.

The ferries are really just homemade platforms of slapped-together plywood lashed to a sawed-off canoe. Luckily, it's dry season and the river crossing is short. While we waited (and waited) for the ferry to return, I bought a lukewarm can of something from the nearest vendor who was swarming the sagging rear end of the bus. The last one to make her way through the fray was only about ten years old. She hauled her bright blue Pepsi cooler over the tailgate to show us her wares: the same pitiful selection of sweating, faded cans, swimming in a pool of brackish river water.

"Co' Pepsi?" she squeaked cheerfully, "Co' bee-ah?"

Like everyone else, I smiled at her and shook my head, gesturing with the half-empty can in my hand. Unperturbed by our lack of interest, she smiled back and stood up to lower the heavy cooler back down to the ground. Then I noticed her t-shirt. Printed under a cartoon of a rather hysterical-looking hen was the slogan: It Takes Luck and Pluck, Chicken Little!

It certainly does.

Onward to Don Det

The mission of this road trip was not to experience every decrepit form of third-world transport available, as my brother may have suspected. I really wanted to see an Irrawaddy dolphin, a nearly extinct freshwater species found only in the shallow deltas of the Mekong and Irrawaddy rivers of Southeast Asia. Small, snub-nosed creatures that resemble baby Beluga whales more than bottlenose dolphins, they are usually pale gray or white, sometimes even pink. The locals revere them for good luck and even consider them magical, but illegal dragnets and dynamite fishing are a huge threat to their survival, along with loss of habitat. As they're slow swimmers and don't surface very often, no one seems to be able to get an accurate headcount. One report estimates that less than 50 remain in the entire Mekong delta, so I prepared myself for probable disappointment.

Even without the dolphins, the deep south is well worth exploring. In Champasak town, we hired a rusted buggy/motorbike contraption and set off for the ruins of Wat Phu, a 6th-century Khmer temple complex. Although an official UNESCO Heritage site, restoration efforts in the backwater have been slow and there isn't much information available about it. Still, it's a beautiful, peaceful setting and worth wandering through (I took a few photos of the ruins and the valley, link below). It's no Angkor Wat, mind you, but then again, you’ll never get Angkor Wat all to yourself for a morning.

After this very satisfactory detour, we continued south -- another dusty and monotonous song-thaw ride. At one memorable junction, the vendors sold (only) roast chickens on sticks -- small, whole chickens with their naked heads twisted neatly to one side, tongues extended, feet bound together with a piece of string and the whole mess skewered on a length of bamboo, dripping yellow grease. As the truck slowed down, a dozen chicken sellers hopped up on the rear bumper and began shoving their wares at us. Nothing kills my appetite like parrying greasy, dead poultry, but a few of the local passengers deigned to examine the goods, pulling a crucified bird from the bunch to sniff it closely or even lick its neck (to check for freshness, I assume) before returning it to the vendor's aromatic bouquet. I must have been hysterical by then because I found this very funny. By the time we pulled away from the barbeque stop, I was mopping tears from my cheeks along with layers of red dust and a smear of chicken fat.

We ferried across the Mekong once more to reach the tiny islet of Don Det. Don Det jumped on the tourism bandwagon fairly recently. A few basic guesthouses are scattered around the island, with the larger ones offering generator-powered electricity for 2-3 hours a day. There are no roads, and other than one or two motorbikes, the only vehicles are push-bikes and small wooden pirogues. Fishing and farming are still the main sources of income, although there are plenty of entrepreneurs happy to sell you a dolphin-watching trip. I figured our chances were better if we separated ourselves from the herd, so we decided to try the DIY (Do It Yourself) version.

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Dolphins in the Mist
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Early the next morning, we rented one-speed bikes and pedaled down along the shady, eastern edge of Don Det on a narrow dirt track. Crossing to the larger island of Don Khun via an old French railroad bridge (never used by a train), we weaved through battalions of children on their way to school, sing-songing "Hello! Good Morning! How are you!" all the way. On the other side, after repeating "Dolphin? Dolphin?" to everyone we saw, we paid 90 cents each for an "entrance ticket" to Don Khun (waterfall viewing included) and were pointed the right direction, down an increasingly bumpy trail. Near the end, the deeply rutted track dipped into overgrown forest. By sheer luck, neither of us fell off or got a flat tire before the rocky trail spit us out onto a wide, deserted beach. Parking the bikes, we trudged through fine sand to the riverbank, where a few boat drivers glanced up at us and continued their early morning card game. No one else was around.

Uncertain what to do next, we stood there looking at the motley collection of pirogues until one of the boat guys came over. "Dolphin?" I inquired again, and he nodded, using a blackened finger to draw his price in the sand -- 80,000 kip, or about $8 US. We nodded back: deal. Our guide retrieved his fuel bottle from its secret hiding spot and we struggled into a craft barely wide enough to sit single-file, already riding low in the water. Our boatman spoke no English, so we cruised through the misty wetlands without speaking at all, listening to the popping growls of the two-stroke engine and scaring up a heron or two along the way.

As the driver maneuvered expertly through the mist, dodging bent trees, rock formations, and occasional light rapids, we passed several fishermen on tiny canoes and waved to a few other motorboats ferrying supplies to God-knows-where; there were no villages or settlements in sight. After about half an hour, our guide pulled up to a flat rock in the middle of the river and steadied the boat so we could get out. Holding onto his boat with a tattered rope, he gestured toward the coast and whispered, "Cambodia." Standing there on a rock the size of a kitchen table in the middle of the Mekong, I wondered for the first time whether this was pointless -- aside from the nice boat ride, of course. After all, with only 50 dolphins left in the entire Mekong, what were the odds we would spot one from this particular rock?

It was so unlikely, it almost HAD to happen. We'd been standing there only 10 minutes when the boatman touched my elbow, pointing excitedly across the water. I couldn't see anything. I shook my head and he patted the air -- the international gesture for "wait." So we waited, straining to see through the bright glare of the sun. Another minute passed and then I saw it: a small but distinct dorsal fin, and the hump of a dolphin's back as it performed a slow arabesque. Breathlessly, we watched it swim, too far away to make out more than the occasional cursive loop of its body breaking the surface, and then, even farther out in the water, we saw another one.

How many? I signed to the boatman. He shrugged, holding up his fingers and silently counting them off: maybe five to ten.

We watched in awe until the dolphins were just black dots disappearing against the Cambodian coastline, then gave the boatman a big thumbs-up. He smiled back, looking pleased. I liked him for keeping so quiet, and for not offering to chase after the dolphins in hopes of a bigger tip (an unfortunately common scenario, from what I've heard.) We puttered back to the beach and collected our bikes for the bumpy ride back, just as a tourist minivan struggled down the hillside toward the beach. The card players got up and began to ready their boats for the day. I looked back at our boatman, but he just smiled and shrugged. The dolphins were already gone.

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Slideshow -- Click here to see a brief slideshow of Southern Laos: http://www.flickr.com/photos/laurielou/sets/72157594445571749/show/

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(c) 2007, Laurie Weed. All Rights Reserved. Please feel free to forward, reply, comment, or lambaste, but do not copy or reproduce any portion of this content for any purpose without my permission. Thank you.