Jenna and Edan's Travels

Civilization

2006-12-13T11:13:00.000+07:00

Back in Bali …. Ahhhh …. Good coffee, whole wheat bread, broadband internet, flushing toilets and soft pillows. After returning from the wilds of Flores, we headed back to Ubud, the artsy tourists’ Mecca of Bali. For about a day and a half we ate well, relaxed and shopped for traditional wood carved masks and shadow puppets.

Having dove to our hearts content, we decided to head to Kuta (the commercial tourist Mecca of Bali) to try our hands at surfing. I can safely say that I will never try surfing again (sorry, Kathleen). Edan started our lesson with an unfair advantage having tried surfing a couple of times on the shores of northern California. I, on the other hand, was a complete disaster.

The truth is, it’s not that hard to stand up on the board and to “ride the wave” for all of three glorious seconds. The real problem is that getting out far enough and positioning oneself properly to “catch the wave” is a real bitch. I wasn’t even so bothered by the paddling, which is what most beginners complain about. I just didn’t enjoy getting pounded down and bounced around by the waves like a small fishing boat in a massive rainstorm. After two hours, our eyes stung our nasal passages had been corroded from several flushings of salt water and the sun had burnt us to a crisp despite that we were wearing t-shirts commonly known to surfers as “rash guards”. Today, my abdominal and arm muscles are killing me and Edan’s forehead is so red that I’ve started calling him Lobster Head. Well, it was an experience, I can say I’ve tried it and Edan might even be crazy enough to do it again.

One of the greatest things about spending our last two days in Kuta is that our friend Marie, one of our fellow divers in Flores, returned to Bali at the same time. We decided to meet up at Bali’s trendiest restaurant, KuDeTa. This was the polar opposite of Labuanbajo. The restaurant is set on a private beach with huge lounge chairs facing the water. Inside, the restaurant and bar had the same trendy minimalist design of many places we’ve frequented in New York.

Upon arrival we passed several security checkpoints, no doubt an effort to assuage tourists’ fears of terrorism. We were ushered to our table, already reserved by Marie – the first reservation we’ve made for the whole trip! Before ordering we were served bread and olives …. REAL olives, not the canned ones that have made appearances in other Southeast Asian restaurants that try to be trendy and western. The food only went uphill from there. After dinner, we adjourned to the beachside lounge chairs for desert where we watched the surf pound the beach under spotlights.

Today we will nurse our aching bodies and watch movies (our hotel rents dvd players for $2.25 at day). Tomorrow, we’re off to Kuala Lumpur ….

Flores, Komodo Rinca – No Lakes, No Hominids, Plenty of Fish

2006-12-13T11:00:00.000+07:00

Flores didn’t work out entirely as we had expected, largely because of our poor planning. We went with three goals: visiting the three volcanic lakes of Mount Kalimutu ; seeing the archeological sites where scientists are still uncovering evidence of the life and times of Homo Floresiensis: and doing some high quality diving. We went one for three, but can’t complain. And I still haven’t quite found a sense of balance in Asia . When I lived in Egypt I learned that the rules of traveling there were quite simple – bargain for everything; never plan anything in advance because “full” or “too busy” doesn’t exist; and whatever you do, don’t ever pay for anything in advance.

Jenna and I haven’t really worked out the Southeast Asian rules yet. Most transport has to be booked in advance, and much of it must be paid for in advance too. Some visas need to be procured in advance too. But on the other hand, this doesn’t mean that the people you pay for their services in advance can be trusted.

Our flights from Bali to and from Flores , for example, were a mess. We booked on one airline, and arrived early at the airport to discover that they routinely cancelled most of their flights (as they had ours, despite having confirmed it the night before), and through sheer luck got on another flight with another airline on the outbound leg of our trip. We went through some shenanigans on the return leg too. Hence – don’t book in advance, don’t pay for transport until you are sitting on the vehicle. On the other hand, we didn’t plan adequately for Flores – it is a large island with terrible infrastructure, and we couldn’t get around it with any kind of speed or comfort. It takes advance planning and patience to get around – you need to rent a car, or find a reliable airline and clearly plan your travel around their most reliable flying dates. And the one place we did book ahead – our dive company – was fantastic. If we had booked farther ahead they might have found us a room in a very nice hotel (which was full!), but as it was they found us a tolerable space in the least offensive hotel in the fishing village turned port city of Labuanbajo . So, we’re still working out the right balance of planning vs. not planning. Is it a necessary exercise, or a painful bother that just unrealistically raises your expectations? Haven’t worked it out, and with only a short two weeks left in the region, we don’t expect to.

We landed in Labuanbajo on Dec. 2^nd. Our first impression was of fierce heat and dust. We later amended it to include bad food and noise. The city really has very little to recommend itself, but it is an interesting study in development policy. Labuanbajo was a backwater fishing village with nothing more interesting than a squid-fishing fleet just a few years ago. Although it was situated on the doorstep of Komodo National Park , the place had absolutely nothing going. It still has nothing very good going, but it’s quite a busy place. A few years ago the Japanese development agency paid to build a proper set of piers and a harbormaster building in Labuanbajo. It’s safe to say that it’s revolutionized the place. The bay itself is something of a miracle – it’s still covered in soft corals, starfish, juvenile reeffish, and sea urchins. But the daily pounding from the greatly increased number and size of boats and their concomitant dragged anchors, dumped motor oil, and the general Indonesian disrespect for the natural world (God’s great rubbish bin) is doing an efficient job of rendering the harbor into yet another murky and detritus choked bight, as seen all around Southeast Asia . The locals figure it will take another two years, tops. Still, can’t be too hard on the Indonesians, I could have substituted the name of any other group of people there. To add to its dirty “charm”, the city is going through a noisy and explosive building spurt. Although I can’t be sure, I’m sure it is a direct result of the pier – suddenly people are coming to Labuanbajo, trade has certainly increased, and the net result is development.

The growth is good for most of the people of Labuanbajo, even better for the expats and Javanese who run the big businesses, but unnecessarily destructive. I cannot tell you how many times one can look around the city and see something that could be done better and with less harm to people and nature but isn’t – roads in steep hills that the government starts but doesn’t finish, virtually assuring increased erosion and damage to the shacks of the poorest residents who live by the water, inadequate electricity that causes people to run generators in their homes and breathe in diesel exhaust. And of course, like all intelligent Indonesians, the good citizens of Labuanbajo have the normal degree of fear and distrust for the police – those officers of the peace who buy their office and then have to earn the investment back through extortion, bribe taking, and the invention of minor rule violations which they then so kindly agree not to report. At least no one fulfilled my nightmare of offering to sell us fossils (see our Bali blog updates).

So, Labuanbajo was unattractive from the start, and failed to grow on us. And we discovered that Mount Kalimutu was on the far end of the island, some 500km (and at least 15 hours travel overland) away. To get to it, climb it, and come back would take at least 3 days and a considerable additional investment of money. Similarly, the archeological sites were in a difficult to reach locale with the added obstacle that no one in Labuanbajo knew anything about them apart from the fact that they existed. Confronted with these problems, and the fact that there was fantastic diving in Komodo National Park , we took the path of least resistance.

We spent six days diving the park with a great outfit called Reefseekers. We made friends with other divers, had a lovely time with one of the owners, a passionate diver and conservationist named Kath, and generally enjoyed our time away from Labuanbajo. In addition to the diving we also managed to hike around Rinca island (one over from Komodo) and see Komodo dragons, chase illegal fishing boats out of the national park with Kath, and generally enjoy the deserted beauty of the islands off of Flores ’ west coast. The scenery is arid, sunbaked, equatorial scrub. Islands of rock and red earth that look so much like mountain peaks you can never forget that’s what they are. They’re covered in dry brush and leafless trees during the dry season (which should have ended by now, but there’s been no rain in 11 months), their shores fringed in the always bright green of mangrove swamps.

Flores, Komodo and Rinca separate the Indian Ocean from the warmer tropical seas that end in the Gulf of Thailand , and the islands themselves are separated by fairly narrow straits. The result is many currents and thermoclines, fast water and tricky navigation for small boats, and massive tides – up to 3m difference between high and low. It’s not a world record by any means, but it’s a significant thing when you wake up in the morning and find half the boats in the harbor are beached because the tide has pulled the water out some 100 metres.

Two oceans, small straits, lots of islands, strong currents, hot and cold waters, and strong tropical sunlight as your energy input – you get lots of plankton, lots of other marine life, a huge diversity of habitats, and fantastic diving. We’ll try to post pictures, but I’m not sure we’ll manage it. We now have hundreds. We’ll winnow them down and post the very best when we get home. We’ll also try to put a few more videos on YouTube.

For those of you who dive:

Flores is worth it. The currents can make it tricky, but Reefseekers makes it safe. We were jumping into cold water with all kinds of crazy currents – upwellings, downpulls, laundry machines, and strong currents that can move you at 3 knots in one direction, stop, reverse direction at a speed of 2 knots, then pick up again. But sometimes you would hit a site and there’d be nothing at all – you could hover until your air was done and you’d still be where you started. Regardless, a quality dive shop makes all the difference. They read the water, knew what we should expect, and planned the dive accordingly. We never lost a diver, never got separated, and never really got scared.

And the diving is fantastic and cheap. It’s not as cheap as Egypt or Honduras , but compared to most places in the world, US $65-90 (depending on the distance to the site, some are three hours by boat) for two dives is not bad. There was more coral than we had seen anywhere else, including in Bali . On one dive we hit a patch where I think I saw every species of clownfish (anemone fish, “Nemo”) in the books in less than 10 minutes. We saw healthy reefs, and as a result we saw with little difficulty animals that don’t live or are difficult to see elsewhere: fish of unusual size, hawksbill turtles, gorgeous nudibranchs, a giant trevally over 1 metre in length, and countless sharks, bumphead parrotfish, napoleon wrasses (one close to 2 metres), and of course the ubiquitous damselfishes, anthias, gobies, etc…

There are also some very unique spots – we did a wall dive with zero current at a site called Batu Bolong that blew both of us away. We had dived Batu Bolong three days earlier with a fierce and crazy current – one of the divers had been spun in a laundry machine on his way to the surface. With a strong current it is a beautiful but, by Komod standards, ordinary site. But when we came back the island waters were still.

The wall starts at around 7 metres and bottoms out somewhere outside of vis, maybe at 40 or 50 metres. Without a current we didn’t need to hug the reef or hide on one side of the island – we started at 26 metres on the southeast side and came up to around 7 on the north side, then went over top of the wall and nearly died – the view was phenomenal, like floating over creation. There were snappers and groupers and wrasses and sharks until your head exploded, the corals were healthy and widespread, and the clouds of smaller fish were so thick I almost felt that it was harder to swim through them. Jenna couldn’t stop talking about it when we hit the surface – it looked like she was going to cry.

We did a very different but beautiful dive in a haunting channel at the south end of Rinca island. There is a horseshoe shaped strait that separates a small island, Nusa Kode, from the larger Rinca. The channel is fairly cold – 24 degrees, and full of plankton. It means that the visibility is terrible, so things kind of pop out at you from the gloom. The small life down there was incredible. There are nudibranchs that have not been found anywhere else and are scientifically undescribed. There are sea apples – anemone-like animals (probably in the anemone family, certainly in their order) with a bulbous base and tree-like limbs that come in every combination of blue, green, red, purple, and yellow that you can think of. The limbs of the sea apple grasp plankton and are individually drawn into the mouth. It’s like a tree with a hollow at the top of the trunk that individually draws down and sucks in the branches to strip them of food, then pops them back up. Each branch is drawn down in turn, then released to find more food. It goes on, but you get the idea.

We cannot recommend it strongly enough to anyone who reads this and dives: Dive Komodo and Rinca – you won’t regret it. Just be sure to use a very professional shop – currents are tricky and that can mean that a great dive site yesterday will be crap today. You are often several hours from land, the radio doesn’t work everywhere, the nearest recompression chamber is in Bali, and that means that if all goes perfectly you are at least seven hours from serious help in the event of a major decompression event. So don’t have them. And you need to have oxygen onboard (Reefseekers did, a few of the other diveshops apparently don’t). We recommend Reefseekers – they are extremely safety conscious, ardent conservationists, thoroughly professional divers, and are building a resort on their private island which should be open next year, thereby considerably enhancing the Flores experience by limiting your exposure to Labuanbajo. We dove with a Finn who has been throughout Europe and the Red Sea, a Frenchman who has dived Australia , Tahiti, and much of the southern Pacific, and dive instructors who have dived Thailand , the Carribean, Egypt , and other parts of Indonesia . All agreed that Flores, Komodo, and Rinca contain many of the greatest sites they have ever seen.

How Hot is It? Eight degrees.

2006-12-01T12:18:00.000+07:00

Eight degrees from the equator. That's damn hot. It's taken a while to get used to it, but Bali is an easy place to get used to.

We left Jogja over two weeks ago and landed in Bali. We immediately went north to spend a week in a time share resort in Candidasa, a small fishing village on Bali’s east coast. The week was a gift from Linda, Jenna’s mom, and we milked it to the fullest. This was by far the nicest hotel we’ve stayed in on the trip. We had our own bungalow with a pool outside our door. The ocean was 20 steps from the bed, as was the restaurant, and they even offered room service in case you couldn’t be bothered with the walk. Most importantly, it was our good fortune that the resort was on the same harbor as Gili Mimpang, Gili Tepekong, and Gili Biaha – some of the best dive sites in Bali. We used the resort’s dive company, and it was a 3-6 minute boat ride
(depending on the site) from our resort’s pier to the mooring lines for the nearest dive sites.

The diving was wonderful, although the currents were fierce at times. On one dive at Tepekong we ran into currents of about 5 knots at a depth of 10 metres as soon as we descended. There was no mooring line to hold and nothing to do – we kicked as hard as we could and were still moving backwards until we just held onto the reef to stay in place. There was no waiting it out, and after 12 minutes of furious work we had exhausted over half our air. We aborted the dive, and promised to try it again another day. Sure enough, two days later we headed back and were rewarded with calm (although very cold!) waters and a gorgeous reef.

Before we go any further, here’s the part you have to take on credit, because it is more than a fisherman’s tale: we saw both an oceanic sunfish (mola-mola) and a whale shark, and have no photos to prove it. The whale shark was a fast visit during a wall dive at Tulamben (a few seconds, nothing more), and we found the mola-mola on a camera test-dive at Gili Mimpang (I had just re-lubricated the o-ring on the camera case and wanted to take it down sealed and packed with tissue paper to ensure there were no leaks).

The mola-mola was really incredible. We were down at around 20 metres in a mild current with a visibility range of about 10 meters at Gili Mimpang, and the sun was in front of us, so that objects we approached were silhouetted. Our guide motioned up and to the left, and looking there I noticed that we were very slowly approaching a large and somewhat triangular black shape, almost like a rock overhang or pinnacle that I had somehow failed to spot earlier. Then I realized that although the pinnacle was getting bigger, I wasn’t moving. I was in the middle of one of those Obi-wan Kenobi “that’s no moon” moments, and before I could communicate with Ms. Skywalker at my side we were face to face with a mola-mola. It was huge – at least two meters tall, and a meter and a half long. There were full grown butterfly fish and moorish idols picking at the scales around its back, and they looked like pimples compared to the big fish. We spent a good 15 minutes hunkered down on a few pieces of coral watching the mola-mola do her thing. Mostly her “thing” consisted of hovering in place and letting the smaller fish scrape off whatever was growing on her. Occasionally she eye-balled us to be sure we were keeping a fair distance – I think that her eye was big and yellow – kind of like a shark eye.

In short, life in Candidasa was splendid. We were having one of those terrific Bali experiences that you here people talk about at dinner parties – the weather was stunning, the diving was terrific, we were in a quiet little backwater and being pampered every which way. There was even a massage table by the ocean where you could get a traditional Balinese massage ($7/hour) while listening to the waves break on the concrete pier below. We also rented a motorbike and took a spin up to the north coast to the village of Amed – another Balinese diving mecca. We checked out Eco-Dive, a great dive shop that we ended up diving with for a few days, and on our way home Jenna took the wheel as we took the long way home. The long way was a winding coastal rode that stretched out for nearly 50km up and down the hills of northeast valley. It was the Balinese equivalent of driving in the Gaspe peninsula. But instead of small Quebecois fishing villages around every beautiful bend of a well paved road, we had a narrow and bumpy road, often with no guard rail, small and quite poor Balinese fishing villages, and a surplus of mango trees laden down with ripe fruit. I can’t count the number of times I wanted to hop off the back of the bike and sneak into some farmer’s orchard to snag a ripe fruit. And to top it off, we had stunning views – of the ocean, of Mount Agung (Bali’s highest peak), of narrow valleys, terraced hillsides, and children bathing in the waterways by the roadside (apparently most of the villagers in Northeast Bali do not have running water in their homes).

After we left Candidasa the diving stayed as good, and perhaps even improved. We spent a few days in Amed and used them to dive in Amed, Tulamben, Gili Selang, and another small bay near Amed called Bunutan. Tulamben is famous as the site of the wreck of the Liberty, an American naval vessel that was torpedoed by the Japanese in WWII, beached, and then sank when it was pushed out to sea by a volcanic eruption in 1963. Today it is an amazing dive site – a wonderful artificial reef where I saw the biggest groupers and sweetlips I’ve ever seen – each was well over a metre long, and we have a picture of the sweetlips to prove it. But the sites up north are also great for finding the small and hard to find creatures that are the real divers treat – we saw ghost pipe fish that looked so much like coral you almost needed to poke them to see them. We found a crab so well camouflaged that I couldn’t find it whenever I looked away for even a split second – it was brown, slightly hairy, and looked so much like a hard coral that it took me 30 seconds to find the head even after the dive guide had pointed me right at it. We’ll try to post up a few pictures, but as always, connection speeds are quite slow.

Tomorrow we’re heading to Flores. We’ll use it as a home base to dive the islands of Komodo and Rinca. Hopefully our next update will have photos of Komodo dragons, and of hiking on Flores. With any luck we’ll hit two important sites. The first is a series of volcanic lakes in the mountains of western Flores that allegedly change color throughout the day as the chemicals in them react with sunlight. The second is the archeological site where Homo Floresiensis (“Flores Man”) was recently discovered. Apparently, a different hominid group was alive and doing quite well as recently as 13,000 years ago, until Homo Sapiens showed up on Flores. There’s a good article on them that we found in the Scientific American special issue on evolution that came out in August/September. If you have time and a curious mind, it’s a neat issue to get your hands on.

The gist of the Homo Floresiensis story is that they migrated to/were trapped on Flores long ago and evolved separately from other hominid groups. Like many animals above a certain size, they “dwarfed” when trapped on an island as a reaction to the ecological conditions of island life (I don’t know what these are exactly or why they tend to lead to dwarfish, but this is something I picked up from the Sci-Am special issue. It seems that animals below a certain size (roughly that of a rabbit) have the opposite reaction and grow to “giant” sizes for their genus. Thus the Flores man was full grown at 3.5 to 4 feet, and hunted pygmy elephants. If we can learn more on Flores then we’ll share. Unfortunately, I’m afraid we may get the chance to learn too much, and too close. In theory the archeological sites and their artifacts should be closed to all but official tours (if there even are any), but Indonesia is flagrantly corrupt, even to our naïve tourist eyes, and some specimens from the Flores digs have already disappeared. I hope to find a local museum, or archeology buff, or an official tour schedule, but am scared we will be offered fossils that we have no business laying our hands on.

We’ll report back in a while. We probably won't have decent internet access again until we reach Kuala Lumpur. After Flores we fly to Kuala Lumpur for a few days to renew our Indonesian visas, then we will spend a week in Jakarta with Sidney, Wayne, and Sam again. After that we'll head off to Hong Kong for a few days, then we're done, back in New York. Thanks for reading, we'll be in touch again in around two weeks.

Jakarta to Bali

2006-12-01T11:34:00.000+07:00

We arrived in Jakarta on November 15th and were met in style by Wayne and Sidney, close relatives of Jenna. They were both working and babysitting their son Sam and his friend Jacob when we arrived, so they sent someone else to meet us at the airport. We had a blast at their house, even if it was only for a quick 15 hours or so. We even had bagels, which we’ve seen only through closed eyes since September.

We didn’t really have much of a chance to see Jakarta, since as mentioned above, we left no more than 15 hours after landing. First impressions: traffic, plenty of the combination shopping mall and condominium complexes that I’m beginning to think of as the standard ex-patriate pod - hermetically sealed against the developing world. You can live for days without leaving the mall/condo. The city is also poorer than Bangkok, or less committed to beautification. In Bangkok the slums are hidden, while in Jakarta they are clearly visible from elevated highways.

Very quickly we all hopped a plane to Jogjakarta, the second city of Java, once an important capital city and major trading centre. Today it is a busy city of several million people, but seems a little light on tourist attractions. It is, however, cheap and possessed of a number of good value restaurants. We were a little touristed-out anyway after Bangkok, and having two six year olds in tow takes a slightly dull sight and makes it unbearable. So we paid lip service to the idea of seeing important sites and made a fleeting visit to an old palace in the middle of the city. But we really spent most of our time splashing around in the water. Jenna and I checked into a modest and quite lovely hotel with a quaint little swimming pool, then immediately took a cab to go meet Sidney, Wayne, Sam and Jacob, along with Jacob’s dad, at the Hyatt Grand. The pool at the Hyatt made our hotel’s pool look like a puddle. The Hyatt pool had water slides, linked sub-pools, and enough space for a water-football game. We all had a great time.

The main attraction of our hotel was the owner’s collection of birds. We first noticed them at dawn. I was awakened by songbirds, close to the room. I went outside and discovered that there were nearly 100 different birds across the courtyard (and that the owner had considerately caged a small but quite loud bird in the starfruit tree in front of our room). Most of the birdcages were arranged in a penned and roofed area on the other side of the swimming pool. The owner looked to be a retired man with time on his hands, and I noticed that it took him nearly two hours just to feed his birds - every morning. In addition to parrots and talking birds, he had dozens of smaller songbirds that I couldn’t begin to describe. Each bird or pair had its own cage, most of them the old fashioned cylindrical kind that tapers to a ring at the top, suspended from the roof or supported from below. The birds must have made the man particularly happy, because two hours of pouring water and cutting papaya before you get to really start sweeping up the bird crap is not my idea of a good time. I feel that if you’re going to put that much energy into an animal, you should at least get a meal out of it in the end.

Which brings us to Bali. I’m currently writing from Ubud, a hill city in the middle of Bali. We are renting the upper floor of a villa here, and from our window this morning I had a lovely view of a flock of ducks waddling around and eating in our neighbour’s rice paddy. I am pleased to watch them waddle around and be cute, and content in knowing that they will soon be “bebek tutu” (smoked duck), a classic Balinese dish. Feeding ducks that will one day feed you: that I understand.

Thailand Wrap-up

2006-11-18T11:50:00.000+07:00

We've had a few emails from people wondering why there haven't been any updates lately. The truth is we've been extremely lazy and consequently haven't had much to report. However, we've just arrived in Indonesia opening a new chapter in our adventures.

From Phuket we went to Koh Lanta a quiet island off the west coast of southern Thailand. We chose Lanta because of its proximity to the second best dive sites in Thailand. People told us it would be much more relaxed and less built up than the famous Koh Phi Phi where "The Beach" with Leonardo DiCaprio was filmed. The diving was definitely fantastic but after two days of that we decided to save our diving money for Bali and other parts of Indonesia. I lobbied for an extra day in Koh Lanta because the bed in our beachside bungalow was the most comfortable we had encountered in Southeast Asia. The Thais seem to have a special talent for finding the most uncomfortable matresses in the world.

From Koh Lanta we passed through Khao Sok National Park which lies between the east and west coasts of southern Thailand. Khao Sok is famous for guest houses comprised of treehouse bungalows and jungle treks. Unfortunately, we ended up staying in a bungalow that was firmly on the ground. Our big activities in Kao Sok were cruising down the river on inner tubes and following the jungle path from waterfall to waterfall. Mostly, we took it easy.

After 2 days in Khao Sok we headed to Koh Samui, an island off the east coast. In Samui we stayed in a bamboo hut that was less than 20 feet from where the waves lapped up onto the beach. This setting inspired true laziness. We spent about three days sitting on the beach reading and relaxing. We had a couple of nasty rain storms and we were surprised and happy to see how well our bamboo walls and thatched roof held up. That said, on our last night we opened the bathroom door to discover a cockroach taking an evening stroll across Edan's toothbrush.
We took in some serious entertainment in Samui. One night we attended a Thai boxing match which was actually comprised of 7 separate matches between opponents ranging in age from 5 to 25. Thai boxing is reputedly one of the most vicious forms of boxing in the world so it was pretty bizarre to see the little kids going at it. Definitely not something you'd see at home. On our last night we saw a fantastic Philipino cover band who played everything from U2 to Alanis Moriset and Metallica. They put on an incredible show including a number that involved balancing large bottles of liquor on their heads while performing various stunts with their instruments and random parts of their bodies set to the music of Pink Floyd's The Wall. Very entertaining.

From Samui we headed to Bangkok where our main objective was to get fitted for our custom-made suits. We took in a couple of movies - Thai movie theatres are really plush, like sitting in your living room with a massive screen. In an attempt to be good tourists we went to the famous Jim Thompson House and yet another temple but couldn't be bothered to stick around for very long.

We landed in Jakarta on the 15th and fell happily into the embrace of family hospitality. More later on our adventures in Yogjakarta with Sydney, Wayne and Sam (my cousins) .....

Warning: Explicit Content - Phuket Vegetarian Festival

2006-11-03T12:46:00.000+07:00

We had the good luck to be in Phuket during the annual vegetarian festival. The event is a nine day festival running for the first nine days of the ninth month of the Chinese calendar, and honours nine emperor gods. The festival consists, in most of Thailand, of the public preparation and consumption of vegetarian foods. In Phuket and a few other cities it becomes far more complex, a ritual celebration involving acts of self mutilation and street processions. The local myth is that the festival rose to prominence some 200 years ago, when a wandering Chinese circus troop took ill in Phuket. Thinking that they had offended the nine emperor gods, they engaged in various painful rites of flesh-mortification to appease the heavenly ennead .

According to our guide book, a more likely explanation is that the ascetic traditions of neighbouring Indian communities migrated to Phuket. Regardless, it's a bloody and good show.

Our boat from the Similan Islands docked on Oct. 28th, and the festival ended Oct. 30th. The night of the 29th involved fire walking, but owing to a misprint in the english version of the info pamphlet, and given the paucity of directions, by the time we found the shrine they were raking up the coals. So we set out early the next morning to visit a different local shrine that was to be the starting point for one of the final street processions. We arrived a little early, just in time to see people lining up their cars and setting off fireworks as a prelude to the grand parade. Jenna was soon bored, and asked whether this mulling around was all we had come to see. As if on cue....

Similan Pictures

2006-10-29T18:25:00.000+07:00

Here are a few pictures we took while on the liveaboard. The first is a shot I took of Jenna with a leopard shark. The shark is lying on the sea floor at 32 metres, and is about 2 metres long. The next shot is Sail Rock, a formation on one of the Similan Islands that has become rather famous around here. The third picture is a pretty high res shot of a sea feather, and the fourth is a macro shot of a staghorn coral at dusk, when the coral polyps come out to feed. The final picture is of the Octopus in Question, he that I communed with for so long on one of our dives.

Cuttlefish Mating

2006-10-29T18:21:00.000+07:00

Here's a link to a video that Jenna shot on one of our last dives. It's quite choppy, but it's a rarely seen sight.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z4idVVJBOKY

Similan Islands

2006-10-29T16:24:00.000+07:00

We left Koh Tao on what should have been a short trip to the Andaman coast island of Phuket. Instead it took 20 hours. We bought a “joint ticket” from a travel agency and got on an overnight boat that took us from the island of Koh Tao to the mainland town of Suratthani, where, in theory, the other part of our ticket should have kicked in and we should have been taken by minivan across peninsular Thailand to the bridge-connected island of Phuket.
But since we seemed to be the only travellers headed to Phuket, the minivan driver decided to save himself the trouble of taking us where we were going and just drive us to a different city (Krabi) with everyone else from the boat. It took another 8 hours to correct his “oversight”, but eventually we arrived in Phuket.

We found the diveshop we had contacted earlier – Calypso Divers – without any trouble. The next day we went out on their boat to the islands of Ratya Noi and Ratya Yai for a total of four dives. The diving was terrific – mild currents, good visibility, and we took some pretty good pictures.

While the diving is great, Phuket itself leaves much to be desired. The pizza is the best in Thailand, but that's pretty much the only thing it has going for it. It has Southern Thailand island pricing (take the Bangkok price and double it, at least) without island charm. It's loud, garish, and touristy. It's too pricey and commercial for backpackers, and too plebeian for the jet-set. It's the geographic equivalent of a fat, middle aged drunken white guy in a hawaiian shirt with his belly button showing.

Still, the diving makes up for it. We just spent 6 days on board a liveaboard dive boat – the Jonathan Cruiser. Owned by a Swede named Tomas and run by a Swedish instructor named Mattias and a Thai dive-master named Yay, the boat was a terrific time. We met four lovely English kids, a terrific Frenchman who is a phenomenally experienced diver and an old Bali hand (gave us two pages of tips and maps), and a very nice Finnish woman.

Dive boats are simple: sleep, eat, dive. When you're diving you burn a lot of energy keeping warm. Water is a very efficient conductor of heat when compared to air, so keeping your body at 37 degrees even when the water around you is a balmy 30 degrees still takes quite a great deal of energy. The consequence is that you can eat big meals often, pretty much after each dive. We had pounds of eggs, bacon, and toast for breakfast, buckets of thai food and western dishes for lunch and dinner, and even a snack in between.

For the divers out there, this is what diving is meant to be. Great vis, great currents, phenomenal macro life, and even a few pelagics. It's one of those situations where you don't know where to look, you keep spinning in ecstatic circles, taking it all in at the same time. The best stuff is all between 10 and 30 metres, so no technical diving skills are needed to access the best sites. The deepest we hit was 32.5 metres, and that was just to check out a shark. We did four dives at Richelieu Rock (use google earth), and I think it's the best site I've ever dived. Despite seeing no whale sharks, no rays, and only one leopard shark (and it was resting at bottom) the diving was still phenomenal. On our only wreck dive of the trip I spent a good 15 minutes bonding with an octopus at 20 metres. I looked at him, he looked at me, and there we were. For quite a while. We also managed to arrive in the middle of cuttlefish mating season, we've seen a few of them and Jenna took a great video of what appears to be a male humping a female while two more females hover and watch. And we've been told that there is only better to come – Bali, Flores, Komodo, and Rinca are apparently good enough to make you cry.

For those of you who don't dive, I can't even begin to describe how great it is. The pictures won't do it justice, it's one of those things you just have to do to understand. As noted above, we did take some half decent pictures. Unfortunately, posting them is proving difficult. We'll try to post a few more small ones, but the big stuff will probably have to wait until we get home and have oodles of time. We'll try to post a few small pictures now, and perhaps get the cuttlefish video onto Youtube. I'll update again with links as soon as this is all done.

Diving in Koh Tao

2006-10-21T14:41:00.000+07:00

After a brief interlude in Bangkok - during which we scoured the city for a good tailor and ordered several custom-made suits – and a rather unpleasant overnight bus, a three hour wait and then a four-hour boat ride, we arrived on the island of Koh Tao to begin our scuba adventure. Koh Tao is located off the eastern shore of southern Thailand in the Gulf of Siam. It is a beautiful little island catering entirely to tourists and almost exclusively to scuba divers. Scuba shops are as ubiquitous as restaurants here and conversations are filled with stories of shark, turtle and barracuda sightings.

Our plan for Koh Tao was to brush up our scuba skills, get comfortable with our new equipment and relax. All accomplished.

The beaches are pure white and the water is clear turquoise. We settled into a comfortable bungalow on the beach and signed up for some classes with a very reputable dive shop. We’ve been diving here for 4 days. In that time, I’ve received my advanced diving certification (bringing my level up to Edan’s) and Edan has been certified with a deep-diving specialty (he’s now certified to go down 40m while I’m only certified as deep as 30m), and he took an underwater photography class using the special case that accompanies our camera. Some of his first good shots are posted here. No joke, he actually took that shark picture – we saw lots of sharks and they were quite friendly. I highly recommend that you download the photos to your own computer so that you can open them in a lager screen. They look much cooler that way.

The visibility has been fantastic so we’ve seen some incredible stuff down there, including the sharks, blue-spotted sting rays and moray eels! We even did a night dive (this was a required element of my course) and got to see all the nocturnal fish and feeding coral that you don’t see during the day. All in all, a magical experience.

Now we’re off to the western coast where we’ve arranged a live-aboard dive cruise beginning on Oct. 23 (ending the 29th). We’ll be sailing around the Similan Islands and enjoying some of the best diving in the world.

Hope everyone is doing well! Love from both of us.

The Genocide

2006-10-13T14:28:00.000+07:00

We’ve arrived in Phnom Penh , and the city is one of those strange and contradictory places. Not if you walk in and know nothing – then it’s just a typical Southeast Asian city – great food, loud, lively, dirty, and often garish. But the life, the neon, the noise, and the bustle are all juxtaposed against what we come to see as tourists.

Tuol Sleng, a torture center for the Khmer Rouge from 1975-1979 is perfectly unobtrusive except for the barb wire perimeter. It’s an old high school converted to a prison camp, and so it is smack in the middle of an old residential neighbourhood. Which makes it so much more jarring to go from the hordes of touts, beggars, and cabbies all clamoring for your money and walk into a pit of horrors.

Jenna and I were both shaken. This is a “fresh” genocide – the cab drivers and waiters and shop owners are either old enough to have lived through it, or to be the equivalent of our parents generation – born right after the Holocaust. And the questions I want to ask of strangers but don’t dare are almost overwhelming. They are the same questions that I have pondered since I was young and first learned what the Holocaust was. But here there are different questions too – there is no consistent Other in the Cambodian genocide, which complicates the normal dichotomies.

I don’t want to write too much about Tuol Sleng, or about the killing fields at Chouen-Ek. We’ve seen the mass graves, the piles of skulls. We walked on paths with scraps of clothing and white bone erupting through the dirt at our feet. It took a very long time to get through Tuol Sleng because we stopped and looked at every picture. I couldn’t do otherwise, it was the least we owed these people. There were thousands of pictures.

Angkor

2006-10-13T14:26:00.000+07:00

There are really no words to describe the wonder of Angkor. We spent three days exploring the ruins of the Khmer Empire, built between the 9th and 13th centuries, the most famous of which is Angkor Wat. When the Khmer Empire collapsed its cities were abandoned. Some of its temples remained in use until 100-200 years ago, but many of the sites were neglected completely. European archeologists began restoration of the sites in the 19th century. Although many of the structures are in ruins, some of the carvings are in incredibly good condition.

Out of the 15 odd temples we visited over the three days, I think we spent the most time studying the bas-reliefs on the inner galleries of Angkor Wat and exploring the temple of Ta Phrom. Ta Phrom has been completely taken over by the jungle. Immense trees grow right out of the stone walls while their muscular roots twist through every crack and crevice. The jungle is simultaneously destroying and supporting the ruins. We found it impossible to comprehend how such marvels could be neglected and forgotten for so many centuries. Their beauty is striking as is the thought of how many human and material resources went into to building them.

Although it rained for the entire first day and part of the second, we managed to catch one magnificent sunrise over Angkor Wat. The rain was a bit of a downer but it also meant that we were battling fewer tourists along the way.

Cambodia is a country of marked contradictions. Siem Reap, the city closest to Angkor and used as a base by tourists who come to visit the ruins is jarring against the backdrop of this ancient marvel. Every hotel and restaurant has appropriated the names of Angkor and other major temples and sites. Their signs are garish and overwhelming, lit up in neon with their staff bombarding you for your business at every turn. It felt almost filthy. But, then, who am I to judge a people whose country has been broken so many times and who have no choice but to focus on surviving from day to day. They do what they need to do and the signs of (slow) development are everywhere. Construction is rampant and the people are incredibly enterprising.

Signs for the People’s Party of Cambodia lining the streets are ubiquitous. Once in a while we saw the sign of one of the opposition parties but these were few and far between. Our guide explained that most people do not support the People’s Party and do not give permission for the party’s signs to be mounted in front of their houses and businesses. Nevertheless, it keeps winning elections as a result of its support from the Vietnamese.

Our bus ride from Siem Reap to Phnom Penh was actually hilarious. They played what we determined were sing-a-long TV shows, karaoke style. There was also some bizarre Cambodian sketch comedy which the lady behind us seemed to be enjoying immensely. The driver honked the horn for the entire five hour journey – we’re not sure what at. That’s what we get for taking the $6 bus rather than the $9 one. It’s a good thing we didn’t go for the $3.50 option.

(Apologies, internet connections are slow here so no pictures for now)

An experiment

2006-10-08T11:06:00.000+07:00

Many of you have asked to see pictures. Given the slow connection times in internet cafes over here, this has proved more difficult than we expected. So, here are three for your viewing pleasure. The first two were taken during our two-day drift down the Mekong and the third is a view of the Lahu village where we spent the night on the treacherous trek. We hope to upload more as soon as possible.

Everything moves slower in Luang Prabang

2006-10-04T11:47:00.000+07:00

We've been enjoying Luang Prabang and the surrounding areas for a few days now. The city is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, notable for its colonial French architecture and beautiful temples (wats). The downtown historic core of Luang Prabang is situated at the confluence of the Mekong and Khan rivers. So it's a rather thin and long city consisting primarily, from a tourist's point of view, of a riverside avenue, a main street, and a few lateral streets and alleys that branch off the two big streets in either direction. The town is quiet in comparison to Thailand, even the hawkers in the night market wait patiently until you approach them and show sustained interest.

And the food, as everywhere else we've been, is just terrific. Good baguettes with vegetables and cheese, tuna, pork, or egg are available for no more than $1. You can get a filling and vegetarian (but rather greasy and bland) meal in "food alley" for about 50 cents. If you're willing to pay $5-6 for a meal, you're eating very well indeed.

Besides "chilling out", the primary activities for a tourist in Luang Prabang include buying handmade cotton and silk textiles, elephant riding, visiting the local waterfalls (friends have told us that they are just stunning, and we've scheduled a visit for today, so hopefully they will feature in the next update), and of course, trekking.

Needing to rid ourselves of the memory of our last "trek", we signed up for one here, and spent the past two days in a rural district no more than two hours drive from the city. This trek was worlds apart from the Pai experience. Our guides, Sompon and Ni, were young, energetic, fun, and communicative. And the trek itself was slow-paced and lovely. The whole thing happened in a river valley, with stunning mountainscapes as the backdrop for everything and a slow moving river below.

Interlude - Apropos of Landscapes

When we find the time and a decent connection, I want to post an album of landscape shots - there is a fantastic landscape ecology story to be told about Laos. We have tons of pictures of natural resource use - logging, teak plantations, fishing, slaughtering animals by the riverbank, slash and burn agriculture on the hillsides, and other shots besides. One of the more interesting moments on the slow boat for me came when I sat next to someone who commented on how wild the mountains looked. I couldn't help think that they looked anything but - it was a completely human managed landscape. The ridges of the mountains look relatively untouched, complete with mixed hardwoods, but from the ridgelines to the river it's all human intervention. I grilled our guides on land use policy - the short version is that in river valleys with any villages, outside of conservation areas (and sometimes in them) the land is all in use for agriculture, hunting, and logging. Despite the communist past most land is owned privately, not by village councils (of course, this is not coming from authoritative sources) and farmers practice slash and burn on a three year cycle. In areas that have been fallow for two or more years bamboo takes over pretty quickly, and when you look at the mountains you notice definite habitat patches in very clearly human-made shapes. The bamboo, of course, is also used as a building material and food source. In and near the villages (on the rivers) farmers plant rice and small teak plantations. That seems to be the main purpose of the forestry and agronomy schools that we see everywhere.

Back to the Trek

The first day involved an afternoon bike ride (great, except for the last half hour when my seat broke and I did a very awkward last few k's). The roads were rutted and rocky, but the trekking company chose a good stretch of road with quite a few downhills and only a few bad uphills. They didn't provide helmets so we couldn't cut totally loose, but we still hit some pretty wild speeds. We stopped halfway through for a nice lunch in a local Khmu (pronounced Ka-moo) village. According to our guides there are three major ethnic groups in this part of Laos: the Lao, the Khmu, and the Hmong. We saw villages of all three types on our trek.

After our ride we arrived at a large Lao village that housed the local boarding school, which drew students from many surrounding villages, including Khmu and Hmong villages. The first thing we discovered, as we biked in over a bridge, is that the villagers had built small dams in the river to create run-of-river micro hydro installations. The next day I went down to inspect the small turbines and discovered that none of them were operational (which explained the diesel generator we had heard the night before). I was hoping for an explanation but never got it. I can't help but wonder if it's not just another failed development project, and why this one failed. Oh well, the grid is scheduled to get to the village next year.

And the villagers didn't seem to mind. When we arrived there was already a small drinking party underway. Some friends had dropped by from another village so a family whose house was located 10 metres from our "guest house" had us over to drink lao whisky and eat pork cracklings and grilled fish that they had just caught, seasoned with galangal and ginger. It was terrific! After some drinking we went to inspect the local school. 80:1 student/teacher ratio, no lighting in any classroom, and the kids couldn't care less - they were having a fantastic time and seemed to be learning either algebra or physics, hard to tell from a cursory look at the blackboard when it's written mostly in Lao. We then went back and had a great dinner, and slept soundly.

I woke up in the morning and swore I could hear a pig screaming. I went outside, and sure enough, a pig was being slaughtered just down the way from us.

STOP HERE IF YOU DON'T HANDLE GRAPHIC DESCRIPTIONS WELL.

The pig, a big 50 kilo sow, had its feet bound and was being held down flat by two men, one of whom was also pressing a large bamboo pole into its middle. By the time I got there another man had already slit its throat and was draining the blood into a blue bucket, which he swirled continually with his left hand while occasionally widening the throat incision with the knife in his right. When most of the blood had been collected they left the pig to go through its final spasms. A metre away they had a large pot of water and leaves boiling away over a cooking fire. When the pig was quite dead they took a few thin metal spoons, and ladling boiling water over its skin they began to scrape away all of its hair. This took about 15 minutes. After all the water had been used and the hair was nearly all gone, the pot was removed from the fire and the pig was thrown on top of the pot-stand, to singe away the remaining hairs (and presumably make the skin easier to work with. After a 15 minute singeing session the pig was trussed up on a sturdy bamboo pole and the three man slaughtering team moved down to the river. At the river we watched as they scraped down the carcass a final time before slitting it open from belly to ribs and extracting all the internal organs. The small intestine was cut off first, and its contents emptied into the river. After flushing the waste out of the intestine one man cut a thin bamboo rod which he ran through the entire length of the tube to ensure it was clean. Then this procedure was repeated with the large intestine. The whole spectacle attracted hundreds of fish, which nipped at the intestines, the spilled waste, and the small bits of flesh or whole glands that the butchers threw downstream. The rest of the internal organs were also cleaned and the head was severed. The remaining carcass was cut in two and then the meat was brought up to the women for cooking. Unfortunately, when cutting off the head one of the men had noticed small white ovals, looking very much like eggs, throughout the brain and in some parts of the pigs flesh. When the women saw the eggs they had a quick conference. Our guide explained that the pig was diseased, and that they would not eat it. All of the meat was thrown out, and then another pig was butchered, following the same method. This time we didn't stick around.

GRAPHIC DESCRIPTION IS OVER. COMMENCE READING.

After breakfast we headed out for a lovely and slow day of rafting. The river is quite low as the rainy season is just ended, so the most we could hope for were some class 2 rapids. Basically, Jenna and I got splashed a few times, but essentially we spent the day drifting, sleeping, and swimming our way down a gorgeous river. Time was moving as slow as it could, and it looked like little had changed around the river in a very long time. Old women were making bamboo fences to keep water buffaloes out of their vegetable gardens. Young boys were fishing with hand woven nets and trapping shrimp and crabs with traps made of woven bamboo. Even the boats we saw were being made largely by hand - the boards were cut with a two man saw. With the exception of some steel knives and one electric sander, the entire process was done as it had no doubt been done 200 years earlier. The whole thing was magic. We eventually pulled out of the river in the afternoon, and headed back to Luang Prabang. Fortunately, it's a city that works on slow time too, so it wasn't much of a disruption to head back in. Now we're here and luxuriating again - electricity, a great shower, and internet cafes. Hope you've enjoyed reading, expect another update here, or from Cambodia.

We've made arrangements to fly from here to Cambodia (via Bangkok) on Sunday. Our next stop will be in Siem Reap to allow us to visit Angkor wat, ancient and ruined home of the Khmer empire.

Next time check for a sink

2006-10-01T15:07:00.000+07:00

For those of you who don't know, the best way to get from Northern Thailand into Laos is by crossing the Mekong and then taking a two day slow boat to a wonderful Laotian city called Luang Prabang. We had heard horror stories about the hard wooden slats used as seats on the slow boats. However, after reviewing our options in terms of time and money, the slow boat was the best way to go.

We crossed the Mekong border from Chiang Khong on the Thai side to Huay Xia on the Lao side at about 8am and found our boat shortly after that. All in all, it wasn't as bad as everyone said. There were some small cushions and there was enough space to move around comfortably. We figure this has to do with travelling in low season - we each got a bench to ourselves for the entire journey. The scenery along the Mekong is absolutely fantastic and it's quite a wonderful feeling to cruise along reading a book with the wind in your hair. The boat is covered from rain and sun but open on the sides.

Halfway through the journey the boat stops for the night in a town called Pak Beng. Since we were tired and hungry on arrival we chose the first guest house that seemed reasonable. Big Mistake. The room cost about $4, which turned out to be $4 too much.

After dropping our stuff and heading out for dinner (a lovely Indian meal, it turned out), we returned for a shower. I reached for my toothbrush and went to brush my teeth only to discover that our dank bathroom lacked a sink. I went to check the shared bathroom facilities (we has splurged on the extra 50 cents for a private bathroom). Low and behold, no sink. There was actually no sink in the entire place!

Ok, no problem, we thought, just brush your teeth in the shower. Unfortunately, the shower would be better described as a drip than a shower. After cleaning ourselves to the fullest extent possible under the circumstances, we surveyed the bed and the creepy crawlies that inhabited the room with us. It was at this point that we decided to brandish our handy mosquito tent, generously provided by a couple of our friends as a very practical wedding gift. This way, we figured we'd be protected from anything flying or crawling around the room as well as from anything living in the matress. This would be our flealess bag inside a true fleabag.

We awoke the next morning to the now familiar sound of roosters. We couldn't get out fast enough and were among the first people on the boat and ready to go.

The remainder of the journey was beautiful and peaceful. We arrived in the wonderful city of Luang Prabang and decided to splurge on an upscale guest house. For a mere $20 we got a room that even our parents would have enjoyed. We also had an outstanding Lao meal for $13. Ahhhhh, all is right with the world.

More on Luang Prabang as we explore it further.

Post Script to The Trek

2006-10-01T15:02:00.000+07:00

In retrospect, it was an amazing experience. In particular, the trek gave us the opportunity to meet and get to know some fantastic people. Emily, Jarrad, Ullie and Evelyn were amazing and always kept a cool head. We were really lucky to spend so much time with Emily and Jarrad who lived up to reputation and, with a beer in hand, took everything in stride like true Aussies.

The Trek

2006-09-28T22:53:00.000+07:00

We thought we had found quite a special place in Annie's "Darling Guesthouse". There where a few long term residents (two true hippies, and some young Austrian women who were sticking around for a few months), and the whole place felt more like a small family than a guesthouse. We asked one of the hippies about trekking in Pai, and she replied that Annie was a licensed trekking guide and would probably organize a great trek - off the beaten path, very small, and a great deal of fun. Mind you, she had never trekked with Annie herself, and as such didn't really know of what she spoke. And we, being fools, listened. When we asked Annie about it, her face lit up. She was excited to go on a trek, we would go visit some friends of hers in a Lahu village where other tourists almost never went. We would leave tomorrow morning, 6:30a.m. She didn't reveal any more information, and when asked, she would simply say that we would trek for 3 days, and it would be fun.

We woke up on Day 1, extremely early, a little tired but nonetheless ready to go. As we finished packing, Annie (the guesthouse owner and trek leader) came in sobbing. She explained that she had gone out the night before to run errands and see some friends, while carrying an obscene amount of money that she had meant to use early this morning to pay for construction supplies for a new addition to her facility. But she woke up in the morning, realized that the money was gone, and now had to scramble to figure out where she had lost the cash, and could we please wait a day to go trekking? Of course, we told her, we would be happy to wait a day (Pai is a great place to kill a day) while she straightened things out. We helped her through the next few hours, gave her shoulders to cry on, and Jarrad (the Aussie) drove her around while she retraced her steps and contacted the police. Of course we all avoided the obvious question - what kind of idiot goes out carrying a small fortune? As we later discovered, Annie is not the most logical thinker we've ever met.

By that night Annie was slowly coming to terms with the fact that the money was gone, and she announced that the trek would begin the next morning. She asked everyone to meet at her bungalow at 6:50 the next morning. We tried to ask questions: where exactly would we go, what would we do on the trek (most treks include elephant riding, rafting, and visits to multiple villages, with a few hours of light hiking interspersed among them). Annie was vague, but we thought all would work out for the best.

We awoke on Day 2, same extremely early hour, grabbed our packs, and headed up to the main house. Annie was puttering around, and as I was the first one there she asked me how much water I thought we would need - two bottles each, or three. I told her that I didn't know where we were going, what the route was like, and how long it would take. She didn't offer any more information. I said that without knowing more, we should take as much water as we could carry - at least 3 bottles each. The Aussies arrived shortly afterwards. The two Austrian girls (Ullie and Evelyn) were a little slower out the gate. We went to round them up at 6:45, and by 7:00am we were all ready to go. We piled into Annie's pickup truck and drove into town. We arrived at the bus station at 7:10, which is exactly where and when things started to go wrong. Apparently Annie hadn't arranged to rent four-wheel drive vehicles. She had chartered a single minibus and instructed them to meet us at the station at 7am. However, since Annie had blown them off the day before, the driver had only waited until the agreed time, 7a.m., before taking off to look for a more reliable customer. Annie ditched all of us except Ullie at the corner, saying it wasn't a problem, and headed back to the guest house. She returned in about 45 minutes having repacked some of the food into a new backpack weighing some 20 kilos. Ullie had swapped her small bag for her large trekking pack, which had also been loaded with some of our food and water and weighed as much as the new pack. Annie asked us all to pile into the back of her pickup again, we would use it as our vehicle for the next three days. Apparently this would not be a jeep trek.

Annie's pickup truck is, charitably, a piece of shit. It's an old Nissan that has seen many years of bad driving (Annie drives a stick only slightly better than I do), and had been washed away in a flood at least once. The thermostat was busted so the engine tended to overheat in mountainous terrain if not driven carefully. Off we went.

Since Pai is in a valley surrounded by gorgeous and imposing mountains and since the roads involve steep grades and hairpin turns, we overheated about an hour out of town. Fortunately we were at a gorgeous lookout. I have never seen anywhere as shockingly green as Thailand during the wet season. The hills are exploding with different shades of green, and every available inch is covered in new growth, brilliant and vibrant and indescribably lush. We kicked back for around an hour, waiting for the engine to cool sufficiently so that we could add some water and be on our way. The rest of the drive was mostly downhill, at least for the next hour, and since the uphills only kicked in again after the engine had a chance to cool, we managed to arrive at out starting point without overheating a second time (though it was close).

At 11:30a.m. we pulled into a small Lahu family compound on the Pai river, near a point popular with rafters. We got out of the car, Annie went in to chat with her friends, and we met the guide that she had arranged. He is a charming, largely silent, Lahu man from the village we were to trek to, and as we discovered later, he is an absolute machine. Nothing phased him, he just smiled as he hefted two packs (!), one on his back, one on his front, inspected his machete, and began to walk. Jarrad and I both shouldered the big packs (some 20 kilos each), and off we went. We walked up the road in the sweltering noon heat, and within ten minutes we were sweating. The air is thick and humid in the wet season, and a rainstorm is always just around the corner. After a relatively short walk up the road, we ventured off onto a dirt footpath, through a river for a few minutes, then alongside it in shallow mud. Within twenty minutes we were veering away from the river, and everyone was sweating profusely as the path moved from a 15 degree grade to around 20 or 30 degrees. Thereafter the grade varied between 30 and 45 degrees for most of the rest of the day. No exaggeration. There were only a few flat bits along some ridge lines, and then towards the very end. At least 80% of the trek was spent going up and down (mostly up) very steep paths.

As soon as we left the river Annie and the guide struck up a brief but animated conversation. In turned out that Annie had not spoken with the guide about the particulars of the route and had expected to walk the whole way along the river. Apparently the guide told her that during the wet season that path was impassable, he had another route in mind. No one but Annie and the guide spoke Thai (and he spoke it poorly as his first language was Lahu), so their conversation was relayed later by Annie, to Emily (the Australian woman) in a self-serving and rather cursory fashion. We asked Annie how far we were hiking, and she said that the guide thought it was 35km. The average person walks, unencumbered, at between 4 and 5 kilometers an hour. You can barely cover 35km on flat ground, and that's if you walk all day. Knowing the 35km figure to be bullshit, we just kept walking, figuring that we'd get there when we got there. We spent the next half hour or forty minutes struggling through patches of incredibly thorny plants, still fighting the steepness. (Fortunately, we found ourselves eating the same thorny plants in a soup two days later so we got our revenge) By the end of this first hour and a bit we had all exerted ourselves far beyond expectations, and certainly beyond what was normal for a tourist trek in the north of Thailand. There are proper mountaineering treks, but that's not what anyone had envisioned. Everyone was already dripping sweat, and we literally wrung out our t-shirts and watched a pool of water form at our feet. We asked Annie how much further, she spoke to the guide, and then said about 20km. It didn't sound so bad. If by the guide's reckoning we had just covered 15km in an hour and a half, then surely the whole trek would be a little over three hours, getting us into the village in the mid-afternoon. But Emily was suffering from shortness of breath, and couldn't go on. Annie wasn't looking great either. She offered to walk Emily back, and she would drive on to the Lahu village.

Jarrad and I were incredulous! There was a road to this village? Why in bloody hell were we carrying 20 kilo packs with two days worth of food and water in excruciating heat and humidity if we could have just driven the supplies to the village? Annie and Emily switched packs with us, and the plan was to have them meet us at our endpoint - the Lahu village of Wae San (pronounced "Wee San", and not marked on any maps). At least, I think that's what our endpoint was called. It's the name that our Lahu guide kept using, and it was either the name of his village or the Lahu word for home. At any rate, Emily and Annie set off back down the path.
For the next half hour we labored upwards, stopping briefly a few times, before finally pausing to rest a while and drink at least one litre of water each. We asked the guide, this time in sign language and with gestures at wrist watches, how much longer it would be. The answer was three. Three what? Jenna and Jarrad thought he meant 3:00pm. Ullie, Evelyn, and I thought he meant three more hours. Wanna guess who was right?

By three we were all absolutely exhausted, and becoming a little concerned. 3 p.m. found us in a rice field on a very steep hill, approaching the first summit of the day (two more were to follow, although they were connected by short ridge lines that dropped only a few hundred feet between peaks). We had already decided that this was "bullshit", far more exertion than anyone had signed on for or been mentally prepared for. We now had only a Lahu guide whom we couldn't commnicate with, didn't really know how much longer we would be trekking, and had finished about half the water we had with us. Evelyn was fighting for breath and needed to stop continually. Jarrad and I had worn ourselves down with the large packs during the first hour and a half, and the next hour and a half didn't help things. We stopped and took some photos in the rice field. Despite our discomfort the view was incredible, and we set about enjoying our little break. Then things got worse.

We walked on a few more minutes, then our guide lost the path. We backtracked through a banana field, and into the rice again. I think that our guide knew exactly where home was, but didn't know where the paths were to get there. He basically looked at the peak we were on, the next one over, and seemed to draw a line bisecting them. I think he knew that along that ridge there lay a path, but didn't know quite how to get from here to there. He ended up losing the path two more times over the next hour, and it was a brutal slog. From the rice field on there was no real path to speak of. Our guide was literally bushwhacking, cutting out every step with his machete. The walk was becoming decidedly less of an adventure and far more troublesome than anyone had bargained for.

The rest of the hike was absolutely miserable. While the scenery was stunning (dramatic views of valleys on each side, trees covered in hundreds of orchids) our condition was poor. The path along the ridge lines was quite sketchy at points. We cut past a small farm in a valley - one house, a pig pen, and about a dozen chickens scurrying about, turned through a dramatic limestone gulley, climbed out of it, and continued on. After 5 hours of absolutely brutal hiking we finally hit the road leading to the Lahu village. Our guide had more than earned his keep. Evelyn was wiped, Jarrad and I were fading fast, and even Jenna, who is in top physical shape, had been pushed near her limit for the day. A half hour walk along the road finally ended at the Lahu village. The road had us worried - it was steeper in places than the roads that had burned out Annie's engine earlier in the day. But the village looked fantastic - we climbed down the final hill into the valley, scared a small herd of village pigs that were lying in the road, crossed a log bridge, passed under a "spirit gate" (to keep out the bad ones), and entered Wae San.

I've never been so glad to see a place with no running water and a smoky cooking hut in my life!
We quickly discovered our problems hadn't ended - Annie and Emily had never arrived! It turned out Annie had never even driven to this village before and had no idea what the road was like. With awful thoughts of a car wreck in our heads, we frantically tried to communicate to our guide and his fellow villagers that we needed to borrow a scooter and go look for Annie and Emily. Jenna saved the day by drawing out a picture of a car wreck on a bandage wrapping, and Jarrad hopped onto the back of a villager's scooter to go find his girlfriend and Annie. The rest of us, realizing that there was nothing we could do, headed down to the river to wash the sweat and dirt off.

While we were bathing, Jarrad got a first hand look at exactly what the whole road looked like. Past the spot that we had cut onto it was even worse - part of it was eroding, and there were ruts and mossy patches that made it almost undriveable in parts. "Sketchy" doesn't even begin to describe it. Jarrad and his Lahu driver, both experienced motorcyclists, skidded out at one point and the motorbike's front wheel started going offroad and down a cliff. The driver hit the brakes, and both he and Jarrad vaulted off the back and grabbed at the rear of the bike. They managed to wrestle it back onto the road and kept going. Another 15 minute drive brought them to a big muddy patch. Annie had nearly overheated her engine and had spun the front-passenger side of the truck off the road into a ditch. Both she and Emily were fine, but the car was stuck until someone could get to another village in the morning and get help. Between the villager carrying Jarrad and another man who came up from behind they managed to load five people and two large packs onto the two bikes, and made a terrifying return trip to Wae San, arriving a little after dark.

We were overjoyed to see Jarrad and Emily, and while we were all happy to find Annie safe and sound, we couldn't quite find the words for the situation. Over dinner (cooked chicken, fried green beans and a liver curry, all of which we had brought with us), Annie said that she was glad everyone was in Wae San, and that we shouldn't worry about her truck. We had all our food, and the next day she would deal with the truck while we and our guide did an 8 hour trek to some nearby waterfalls. We politely but firmly told Annie that a continuation was out of the question. We would be turning back in the morning for Pai.

That night was ours to enjoy in Wae San. The place was incredible - we had wanted the authentic experience, and we sure got it. To cut it short we spent a long and unforgettable night drinking homemade whisky, grousing about the day, and barely sleeping. The next morning I wandered around the village and saw village life - old people in traditional garb, toothless women feeding scratch to the chickens, two women having a fight while the whole village turned out to watch (from the hand gestures our guide made to me as we cleaned our morning vegetables, it seemed to be about his decision to sleep in one house instead of another) a man slaughtering a rooster (I was invited to breakfast, but we had already accepted at another house and I couldn't ditch), pigs rooting around the toilet, etc. Really, the place was something special.

We left after breakfast. It took four hours to walk back along the road to the next village, at least two hours of which was a steep and winding downhill. We all got to see what the bikes had covered the night before. It became clear exactly how irresponsible Annie had been - there was no bloody way her truck would ever have made the trip, and she had wandered in, with responsibility for six other people, completely oblivious.

The next few hours were frustrating. We were exhausted and just wanted to be home. Instead, when we pulled into the village and found Annie with her truck, she told us to wait at the convenience store while she would just be next door with a friend who had been expecting us. Tired, hungry, and incredibly thirsty, we told her we were ready to go straight back to Pai and would wait. In the meantime we raided the convenience store for water, beer, and junk food - anything with sugar and a high calorie count. We glutted ourselves for around an hour, and then Annie came back. We expected to heave ourselves into the back of the truck and head back to Pai. Instead it turned out that Annie had been using the last of our food to cook lunch with her friend for us - "it's a surprise!". We'd had more than enough surprises, but not wanting to offend the family we sat down to eat a meal that no one had any appetite for (and which was actually quite bad, consisting of a bland chicken and potato curry and some salted greens and pork that had been in our backpacks for the better part of two days). It was just par for the course, another example of Annie's inability to communicate, even when asked direct questions.
The way back to Pai felt a little better. Annie overheated the car again. After the engine cooled down we put her in the back with the girls and Jarrad drove the rest of the way. We finally got back to the guest house, made immediate plans to leave Pai with Jarrad and Emily, showered, and headed into town to begin recuperating.

All in all a strange learning experience. We're definitely laughing now and are fine. On to Laos.

The Quest for a Trek

2006-09-28T20:59:00.000+07:00

So, we didn't go on a trek as soon as we had hoped . .

Initially, we checked into a very reputable guest house with an affiliated trekking company. After reviewing the options, we decided that we wanted to do a four day trek to a more remote area. Trekking is very popular among tourists in Chiang Mai and there appears to be a very common 2-3 day trekking route. We decided to seek out a more authentic experience. Unfortunately, the company needed a minimum of 6 people to run a four day trek to a more remote region. When we signed up there was an Australian couple, Jarrad and Emily, signed up too. We befriended them and decided to wait an extra day to see if another two people would join. In the meantime we'd found some cool people to hang out with and decided to take a cooking class.

The next morning, we were off to the market bright and early. Edan was in his element. We learned all about the different types of curry, what makes them distinct and how to prepare them. One important lesson was that the smaller the item the stronger the taste - small chili, big taste, as our cooking teacher, Oh (pronounced like it is followed by a question mark) repeated frequently. As Edan bombarded Oh with questions and tried to taste and/or buy everything in sight, she dubbed him "Big Hungry". The cooking was a lot of fun, we learned how to make a red curry, hot and sour soup, pad thai and spring rolls and got a recipe book out of the deal.

Later that day we set off to look at another wat (temple). This one is unique because it has a series of tunnels underneath it that were built several hundred years ago for a hermit monk. It seems the King at the time was having trouble locating said monk and decided to build him a little hideout. We met a young Thai student who was meditating when we arrived. He told us about the wat and showed us around the tunnels. There are some beautiful paintings on the walls that were in the process of being restored. After all the glitz and glamour of the Bangkok wats this experience felt uniquely touching.

We returned to the guest house to discover that there were still no more takers for our trek. Many people had recommended Pai, a small city 5 hours north of Chiang Mai. Since it's smaller and nestled in the northern Thai mountains the treks from Pai were supposed to be cheaper and a little more authentic. The Aussis seemed to have heard the same reports and so the four of us decided to set off for Pai the next day.

After a long and uncomfortable bus ride with such a lack of leg room that even I felt like a giant, we arrived in Pai. Pai is a town of about 3,000 people - 2,500 Thais and 500 hippies. The pace is slow, the scenery is spectacular and the company is fantastic. A lovely British girl in Chiang Mai had recommended "Annie's Darling Guest House" in Pai. Armed with a business card and a completely inaccurate map we set off to find it. As the frustration mounted, a Thai woman on a motorbike pulled up and asked if we needed somewhere to stay. She said she had bungalows for 200 baht ($6). She showed us her business card and, lo and behold, it was the same one. We had found Annie who calls every foreigner "darling", hence the name of her guest house.

Our darling bamboo bungalow seemed like paradise. It was perched on a hill overlooking the river and the town of Pai with majestic mountains in the background. There was a private bathroom with a western toilet! We thought we were in heaven, and so it seemed for the first day or two. We quickly learned that Annie herself was a registered trekking guide and that she'd be happy to take us and our Aussie friends on a trek. It turns out that two other Austrian girls who were staying at Annie's were also waiting to go on a trek with her. It seemed perfect. She seemed to know the area well and have personal connections with the hill tribes (mostly Lahu) in the area.

We spent the next day enjoying Pai, which included checking out the nearby hot springs and just generally relaxing. Northern Thailand is breathtaking. I've never seen so many shades of green with rice paddies scattered throughout the hills and valleys. We later discovered that much of the Northern wildlife was living in or around our bungalow, including geckos, snails, ants and cockroaches inside; and roosters and water buffalo giving us a wake up call in the morning. But who cared? We were geared up for our trek. Little did we know what was in store for us . . .

Big Adventures

2006-09-28T11:49:00.000+07:00

We've had some pretty incredible adventures in the last week. At the moment we're off to catch a bus to the Thai-Laos border. We hope to spend some time online in the next day or so giving a massive update. Stay tuned ....

We're Fine

2006-09-20T09:52:00.000+07:00

Thanks for all your emails and expressions of concern. Everything is fine. We were on an overnight bus to Chiang Mai when we first heard about the coup. Upon arrival people here seemed to be quite calm about the event and several have expressed support for the coup since they were unhappy with the reigning Prime Minister. As far as being a tourist is concerned, everyone here seems to be quite happy to serve us food and take us on treks, the political situation notwithstanding. The BBC is reporting that both Thais and tourists are excited to have a photo opportunity with tanks in Bangkok and soldiers seem to be smiling and waving at people.

All in all, Chiang Mai is a beautiful city with all the wonders of Bangkok but less hussle and bustle. We're looking forward to going trekking in the jungle, which we'll m0st likely do tomorrow. This means we'll be out of touch for at least four days.

Take care and great to hear from everyone.

Bangkok: Wats, Wats and More Wats

2006-09-19T14:30:00.000+07:00

We've been in Bangkok for a couple of days now and have seen a lot of wats (temples). They're absolutely stunning but we must admit that we've gotten a little watted-out. This city is as amazing as everyone said it would be - full of the hussle and bustle of a teaming city with all the sights and smells of Asia.

There is no shortage of street food with a vendor every 2 metres. Edan has to stop and marvel at every one. So far he's tried dried squid, fried worms and crickets and many round and square rice things with other mystery items inside. I've had bite of almost everything but have stuck to more tame choices for my snacks and meals. Thais have perfected the use of the plastic bag, many of which are puffed up and contain everything from condiments, fruits and vegetables or dumplings to entire meals. We haven't yet figured out whether the puffed up bag is intended to make the food look better or to keep it from getting squished ....

Today we took a canal tour. We originally intended to find the public canal taxi in order to pay a couple of cents to ride along and look at the scenery. However, after a mistaken ferry trip across the river and much haggling we succombed to the 1 hour tourist boat as no one would point us in the direction of the public canal taxi. Not for foreigners, we supposed. At least we met a nice German couple to share the cost of the boat and we're planning to meet up with them for future adventures.

In a couple of hours we will take an overnight bus to Chiang Mai (northern Thailand). From there we hope to do some mountain trekking, possibly a cooking class and then head overland to Laos.

For those of you who've heard about the bombings in Southern Thailand, we're obviously fine and far removed from those provinces. We aren't going diving in Southern Thailand for another month and have no intention of going to those provinces.

We're still working on the most efficient method of uploading pictures and will let you know when and where you can find them online.

Welcome!

2006-09-14T09:14:00.000+07:00

We're off! We plan to keep this site updated on a regular basis to let friends and family hear all about our adventures in Southeast Asia. We will post a couple of pictures here but will also include a link to another web site that will house many more of our photos. We'll try to let you know when we update the site but feel free to visit often as we may not always manage to do so. Since this is our honeymoon and the start of our life together as husband and wife, we'll start with a wedding picture. More later ....