Looking Back

The year end provides a good opportunity for me to reflect on what has been an active, fun, and far reaching year. This journal is about travel, and travel to places near and far was a big part of my year.

 I counted up something like 36 separate flights taken, and I rested my head in more than 30 places over 110 days on the road. I danced in the Arctic Ocean, swam with sea lions, and overcame a fear of kayaks in Alaska and Baja. I touched gray whales, smelled their breath, and listened to chants echoing in Buddhist temples in Cambodia.  I hiked tropical jungles, lava flows and tundra. I pitched tents on desert islands aand on permafrost. I learned to say hello and thank you in some new languages and met nice people eeverywhere I went.  I ccelebrated family birthdays, and reconnected with friends from boarding school, college and cub scouts. I felt like I covered a lot of ground, but the funny thing is that I probably saw some teeny fraction of 1 percent of all there is to see in the world. Makes you think.

Oh, and one more thing - I am thankful for the guides who made all of these trips fun, educational, and safe. They are characters one and all - I think it takes a special soul to be a guide. These are pics of some of the guides I traveled with this year:

Cambodia - Chor and Yut / Alaska Kenai - Charlie and Kim / Mono Lake - Michael / Vietnam - Hung
Baja Kayaking - Jorge and Celia / Baja Whale Watching - Armando / Alaska Arctic - Steve and Jeff

Pieceing it Together

Well, it was bound to happen. Arriving in Cambodia pushed me past my saturation point, and all that I learned in Thailand, Laos, and Vietnam are now scrambled together in a cultural, architectural, historical, political, religious blender. Histories and destinies are woven together and each country has a slightly different recollection of the region's history. Invasions from Siam, Kemer, Cham and China in earlier days and recently China (again), France, United States Russia, and Vietnam played, and continue to play their parts. Hinduism, Buddhism, communism, capitalism, Confusionism, royalism, imperialism. We traveled with a guide whose grandaddy was a North Vietnamese official during the war, and another guide whose dad was a South Vietnamese soldier who stayed in the country to face two years in a "re-education" camp after the war. We traveled with two guides in two different countries who had been Buddhist monks before they were guides. We traveled with one guide whose dad avoided death in the killing fields of Cambodia by having dark skin, like a peasant, not an intelectual. We met young girls who cherish light complexions.
Culenary school, land mine museum, village kindergarten, POW museum, Cambodian circus, typhoon, Buddhist shrine, old market shopping, slick shopping center.  Bus, van, plane, taxi, skytrain,  tuk tuk, boat and bicycle. All fitting together into a puzzle.

 

Ha Long Bay

The remains of the largest typhoon in recorded history is headed towards us in Hanoi, but we are scheduled to leave before it arrives. The last two days on Ha Long Bay were fabulous, but with an undercurrent of concern as news of the devastation in the Philippines reached us. Our guide, Hung, kept a happy face as he gave us updates and discussed alternate plans if the typhoon were to hit Hoi An, where we were to head next. Happy face, but concern on the inside.

The bay is home to multiple small floating fishing villages, pearl farms, and thousands of tourists. For much of the time, we are happy that our boat avoids the other boats. Sometimes, however, there is an attraction that draws the tour boats into a wet traffic jam and the experience is diminished. The landscape is eye-popping and carved into thousands of small islands; formed by the thrashing of the tail of a giant dragon - a long, long time ago.  Of course!

Now, we are in the boarding area for our 5pm flight to Da Nang and our hotel in Hoi An. At this moment, it seems that fortune is smiling on us.

 

One day in Hanoi

I am on line to visit Ho Chi Minh. His body lies preserved in a mausoleum in central Hanoi,  near the simple stilt house that served his modest presidential palace. The line snakes along a covered walkway, under the watchful eyes of the honor guards whose elaborate white uniforms look à little baggy to me. They remind us to take off hats and sunglasses and hold gloved fingers to lips to politely shush us. The line moves quickly and in twenty minutes we reach "Uncle Ho" who lies in a dimly lit large central room but his body glows in the illumination of his glass chamber. Hard not to get goosebumps. We visit Ho's house which is remarkable for its simplicity  and the simple French colonial style furniture. In his study, a lone bust of Lenin catches my eye.
There are very few reminders of  "The American War" in Hanoi now; most of the seven million Hanoi residents have only read about it in schoolbooks. Our young guide says Vietnamese people say let bygones be bygones and I believe him and that the country has eyes very much on the future. We do see some reminders of the war - some wreckage of a B-52 bomber lies in a small lake in a busy old part of town, ignored by locals and commerated only by a small plaque on a nearby building. We also visit the prison (the "Hanoi Hilton") that housed American pilots, captured down during the war. Significantly, most of the prison has been torn down for the construction of a slick new shopping center. The propaganda in the museum is pretty understated, but still makes me uncomfortable. The prison gates must have seen horrible things, but I must take photos for my door hardware portfolio.
With the war behind us, we visit the central confusions temple and are swallowed by a crowd of young students who have come to take graduation photos. The women are all fabulously pretty and stylish,  the men are trying to look cool in dark suits; there is an exhausting energy of laughing an posing for pictures. I much prefer this memory of Hanoi.

Hmong Visit

In Laos for only a few days but they are busy days. All around Luang Prabang yesterday and today was are all wearing strands of magic string around our wrists as reminders of our welcoming ceremony last night - keep them on for three days then hide them in a secret place to ensure good fortune. Now we are on a nice six mile walk (hike?)  from a traditional small Hmong village through fields, hills and jungle to a sweet public park with a lovely waterfall.

Hmong.  These are representatives of the region's hill tribes that have fought to maintain their traditional ways since the dawn of time, when they moved into the region from Southern China. These are the guys that fought beside US soldiers and against communists in the 60s and 70s. These are the guys who are independent even today, maintaining language and religious beliefs separate from Buddhist Laos. We start a walk at a village that displays structures built from nearby materials; lumber,  bamboo, and thatching for roofs. Before we begin our walk, our guide Toubee, who tought us hello and thank you in Lao yesterday now repeats the process for the Hmong language. I notice him slipping some Lao kip to a villager to greese the wheels as we entered their domain. As we wander, we are regarded with either indifference or tolerance by the adults but curiosity by the children who wave in the street or just peek from doorways. We are walking through a classic history textbook only updated by the TV satellite dishes at each house.

 

Morning Encounter in Chiang Mai

Been in Thailand for three nights but I am up with the roosters and still not adapted to the change of time zones. I think I'll walk to the nearby temple that my friend David mentioned and see if there is anything interesting to photograph in the soft dawn lighting. Now I am on the street that was so busy when I arrived yesterday but this morning it is empty and I feel a little conspicuous in the unfamiliar city. Chiang Mai is much busier and more "urban" than I have imagined,  and I wonder if street chrime might be a possibility. I soon see another early morning riser; a man jogging towards me on the narrow sidewalk - a very tough looking guy - shadow boxing as he runs. I imagine him as a brutal and cunning Thai kickboxer; a feared Muay Thai fighter. I get a tighter grip on my camera as he nears, but as he passes he is breaks his cadence as he puts his hands together in a traditional wai greeting, including the small bow. I can't help but smile.

Bangkok

I am in Bangkok for a few days and know I'll never come close to seeing all there is. It's a huge city but there are any number of ways to get around, so today I try a few. Walking to the Skytrain station I detour through the large Lumpini Park, and take in the early morning tai chi groups as well as families settled in for the day at the picnic sites.  Oh, and three foot long monitor lizards rising out of the lake to bask on the grass. The Skytrain takes me three stops to the bank of the river and I manage to find the right boat which takes me to stops at Chinatown, and then to the temples of Wat Arun and Wat Po. Then a mile more walking to a small canal and a high speed boat through the center of the city to the Jim Thompson house.  More walking back to the hotel. I manage to avoid the taxi come-ons and the tuk-tuk drivers who pull up to the curb next to me but I'm awful hot and sweaty by the time I get back to the hotel.
Impressions? Bangkok seems like a city working hard to make it's future, but it stumbles with the effort. Everywhere there is new construction, but even on the main streets, I am forced off the sidewalks by piles of trade goods in front of shops or by food vendors whose customers block the way. Parts of the downtown are so frightfully busy that they have a Blade Runner-esque feel - multi level transportation with trains an pedestrian skyways, gigantic advertising, chaotic intersections; everything but the announcements recruiting people to a better life on the off-world colonies. Many of the places I saw today were free from foreign visitors, but at the religious sites of Wat Arun and Wat Po,  the crowd is thick with tourists and it is difficult to appreciate the extreme religious devotion that inspired their creation. Even at the busy sites, I look forward to finding areas of tranquility. At Wat Po, the main attraction is a huge guided reclining Buddha and visitors crowd each other for photo angles.  But nearby, the main temple hall is much more tranquil with worshipers and visitors sitting side by side on the floor before an ornate alter. I sit to contemplate for a while and enjoy the breeze from circulating fans that line the space.

What Happened to Laos?

I am leaving at the end of this month to travel in Indochina. So, to prepare, I began looking into the phone networks that might be available there and I found an interesting coverage map.

I will be visiting Thailand, Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia and was glad to see there is extensive cellphone network coverage throughout the area. Everywhere, that is, except for Laos. What's up with that? It is just simply off the map. I don't know if this is due to incomparable networks, or what, but I think this calls for more investigation. When I look it up, there seem to be four carriers available, so that's a positive sign.

Humm, let's see - I'll try Lao Telecom:
(Not much help here)





















No, wait, there's a link to an English version. let's see what comes up:
(I think I have an opportunity to vote for Miss Laos - 2012?)

 

A little further down the page there is a list of helpful links; almost all of them "Coming Soon".

 

To cover my bets, I just arranged with AT&T to "unlock" my new phone, so I can buy local sim cards when I travel, but four countries means four different networks to negotiate. I suspect that other countries may be just as opaque to deal with so I may just rely on hotel wi-fi to upload travel posts to the blog.
Seriously, it's easy for me to poke fun at a country's cell service, but the amazing thing is that there is coverage nearly everywhere there are people, if you have the patience to investigate.

Visas

I recently got my passport back in hand with needed visas for my trip to Southeast Asia in a few weeks. I worked with a local visa service rather than having to deal separately with three different embassy offices in SF or DC. When I got them back, I looked over the documents from Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam and definitely approve of the graphics. Very Official. Vietnam is actually the only one that requires me to get a visa prior to leaving the US, but I went ahead and got all now to head off any potential hassles when making entry. I'll be in Thailand too, but they don't require a visa for entry.

After I scanned them so I could carry a copy (just in case), I thought they would make a nice collage...

Sadly, the story of the national flags for these countries contains remembrances of all the blood shed in struggles throughout that region.

It is interesting that Cambodia, which was devastated by the murder of millions under reign of the insane Khmer Rouge in the 1970's, chooses to look beyond that in the description of their flag. (I've never seen a flag that attempts to represent the structure of the universe - I rather like that.)
I picked up this from Wikipedia:

Thailand 

The red stripes represent the blood spilt to maintain Thailand's independence. The white stands for purity and is the color of Buddhism which is the country's main religion. Blue is Thailand's national color and it represents the Thai monarchy. The blue is also used to honor Thailand's World War I allies, Great Britain, France, United States and Russia, who all had red, white and blue flags.

Laos

The Red stripes represent the blood shed in the country's fight for independence. The blue stands for Laos' wealth and prosperity and the white symbolizes unity and justice. Another interpretation of the Laotian flag states the white circle symbolizes the full moon over the blue Mekong River, which runs through and alongside the majority of Laos.





 
 Vietnam 

The red base represents blood spilt during the country's fight for independence. The star represents Vietnam's unity and the points on the star represent the union of the workers, peasants, soldiers, intellectuals and young people working together in building socialism.





 

Cambodia 

The blue color symbolizes the country's royalty. The red represents the nation and the white represents the religion, beginning with Brahmanism, and the current major religion - Buddhism. The emblem of the temple represents the structure of the universe.

 

Mono and Bodie

I am in the Mono Lake Basin for the weekend, meeting up with a group led by my friend Michael Ellis.  It is a perfect time of year, with fall settling in. Crisp days, cold nights and the aspen are starting to show their fall color. We spend the days getting an introduction of the region's natural history. Friday is a hike up Lundy Canyon, leading west into the Sierras, with streams and lakes peppered with beaver dams, and mountains above dusted with early snow.  Saturday is a hike up Black Point, a volcano that erupted under water during the last ice age and is now an exposed, desolate cinder covered mound with wonderful views. Two entirety different pieces of the puzzle that makes up the area.
After we say goodbye on Sunday, I plan to visit the gold mining ghost town of Bodie which is nearby to the  north and I discover that one of our group has great grandparents who lived in Bodie and are buried there.  I hope you visit their gravesite and Heidi asks if I could photograph the headstones to help identify a non family member who shares the family plot.
Access to Bodie is by one of two routes: ten miles of washboard gravel,  or paved road most of the way ending in three miles of really bad road.  I opt for washboard.  When I get here,  Bodie is exposed to a growing wind, and seems vulnerable under a moody sky.  I am thinking that someone who loves to photograph old doors will be cloud nine here.  There certainly is much to see, but here's the thing - it's a really sad place.  After a short while of wandering and peeking into windows at interrupted lives,  the place starts to get to me.  Schoolroom with books on desks, and lessons on the wall. Bedroom with faded wallpaper and a lonely sewing machine under the window.  Hotel with dusty pool table and potbelly stove that has been cold since the last manager left and locked the door behind him. I do have success in locating the headstones in the  cemetery but this does little to lighten my mood.  The family plot is well cared for but the majority of the cemetery is disheveled and overgrown. It is time to leave.  I leave by the really bad road and turn on the radio for company but a soul searching Pink Floyd song doesn't help my mood either. I am finally uplifted when I come across a large flock of sheep, luminous in the late afternoon sun, complete with fluffy white sheepdog and young shepherd sitting on a folding chair.