Serendipity

I’ve been in Nepal for about a month. I’ve still got some things I wanted to write about Tibet, I think the situation there calls for some calculated ranting. But as I’ll be shooting off to India anytime now (prying myself away from Nepal is becoming a seemingly daunting task) I’d better write something while I’m here and still have some impressions of the place.
I’m starting to really like Nepal. Laos is great, but not many people speak english. China is an alternate universe. Tibet is different and interesting, but the plight of the people there makes you want to cry.
I’ve started off here volunteering for two weeks, working in a small village to help build a new orphanage. I had basically hitched a ride to Nepal from Tibet, coming from everest base camp with a group of volunteers based in Kathmandu. I rode for 3 days in the rear of a Toyota landcruiser, lying on backpacks. It was a bone-jarring experience, but I was happy to have a ride. They were a really fun bunch and when we arrived to Kathmandu I continued to hang out with them, just relaxing, partying and chilling out in Thamel, and staying up all night on the roof of our hotel room. It was good to hang out with some friends again! Eventually I decided it wouldn’t kill me to do some volunteering. It turned out that we didn’t do much work after all. The first week we got some good days in, but the second week it rained almost every day so I was just hanging out in the nepali home in the small village where I was stationed.

For the first week of work it was myself, Eddie, and Adrian. Eddie was from Scotland and Adrian from England. After the first week we, along with another friend decided to go on a rafting trip down a really fast river. We were a bit scared because the river was going so fast, it looked pretty mean. But we all managed to climb in the raft. the first bit was really intense and quite a rush. no one fell out of the raft. Our guide would yell at us when to paddle to shoot the rapids and move along the safe path. After skirting “certain death” as we joked, we were all in high spirits and that night we had a party along the side of the river. For some reason there were no other tourists there and we had the stereo and pool table for ourselves. The next day we went on the same river route, it was fun but we had lost the fear so it wasn’t as much of a rush.

Thamel is the home base of operations here in Kathmandu, the capital of Nepal. It’s a sort of small traveller’s city within a city, an oasis for backpackers caravaning through asia–where visions of hot showers, western food, and the trappings of decadent western life materialize in the midst of the otherwise normal city. You walk from your hotel room, get breakfast, check internet, maybe watch a movie. Not that there aren’t hassels–you are a moving target for all sorts of hawkers. “Hello sir”, “OK! rickshaw!”, “smoke hash?”, “go trekking sir”. You don’t dare look around, appear to be new, lost, or looking for anything in particular–an innocent lamb for the lions

After my brief volunteering stint I went to Pokara to see the place and maybe do a trek. I ended up going for 6 days. It was really nice because everything was so easy. I hired a porter/guide to carry my bag and show me around because I didn’t know where to go. I didn’t have to worry about anything except walking, which was quite blissful. And trekking in Nepal is a little different than what you might expect. Along the main routes there are little restaurants and guesthouses everywhere–pretty cushy. some places we had really good food, and some lodges were so comfortable. One reminded me of a ski lodge! It rained a couple of days, and we had to contend with these little leeches that climb onto your shoes and try to get to your skin–every little while you have to sweep them off with salt. It was early in the season, still the monsoon time. Usually it’s pretty dry. I’d like to come back some day and do the annapurna circuit trek. It takes 3 weeks and you circle around the himalayan annapurna range.

Pokhara was a welcome change from Thamel. It was so peaceful and quiet, mostly because the main tourist season hadn’t started yet. Plus my room at the guest house was very clean and comfortable; when I wasn’t on the trek I mostly hung around and read, relaxed, and caught up on some meditation in my room. Looks like I’m turning into mom and dad! The food was good too so I took advantage of the room service. Pretty cushy.

Upon returning to Kathmandu I finished up the Reiki course that I took to supplement and refresh my previous training. The people at the center were really nice so sometimes I just went in to hang out and chat. I also collected my Indian visa from the embassy, which was a big relief due to the long lines there. At this point I began to realize I was really starting to like Nepal, and I’m a bit attached to the place.

The political situation here feels like it’s almost at a crisis point. It appears to be an insoluable problem. There is a unscrupulous king controlling the military and who almost nobody likes. There is an innefectual coalition of political parties who are corrupt and lacking in popular support. And there are the maoists, who are popular with the poor peasants in remote areas of nepal, but who lack political legitimacy and representation. A couple of weeks the maoists called a ceacefire and lately there have been many more pro-democracy demonstations. Students and party leaders were arrested, beaten, tortured by police. the other day I went out to try to take a bus and there were police everywhere just standing around with guns and bulletproof vests. they had closed off this street where the buses normally wait for apparently no reason. this city seems so crazy, but yet above the noise and traffic and army everywhere it seems so relaxed and peaceful, and the people are just going about their daily business. but sometimes i see somebody’s face and get a sense of the tension. it’s a magic place.

the finger

i saw a girl turn around and give me the finger
it wasn’t meant for me
probaly the guys passed her were rude
she was wearing jeans and had dark eyes

caught up to her and her friend
the other one had a picture of Che
looks like she made it herself
lots of protests lately

the town is buzzing, will there be a change?
maybe it’s part of it, the jeans girl, the finger
bring down the king, change something
then those boys wont be rude any more

After getting back to lhasa a few days after the festival, I headed off the next day to do some combination day hiking and monestary visiting. I had a nice day hiking to a Ngingmapa monestary, where later I slept outside on a wooden bench (there were too many rats in my room). Next day I had another really good trip to Samye monestary, and after taking that in for an afternoon, I decided to go the next day to the Chimpu cave hermitage up in the hills nearby. It was around a 6 hour walk.

Getting to chimpu was really fun. I set out from Samye monestary in the morning about 9. I had taken as little as possible and still be ok without a guest house: my sleeping bag, stove, food supplies (muesli, instant oatmeal, lentils, some dried yak meat, and dried fruit), water, andmy notebook and tibetan novel that i purchased a few days before. I also had a stove and my jacket. Although there was a road with little tractor buses most of the way to the hermitage, I hiked there anyway to make it more fun and scenic. On the way I saw a new irrigated farm project being constructed. The walk wasn’t very difficult but halfway up I was feeling low on energy, so I stopped and had a lunch of dried yak meat, water, and raisins. the senery was beautiful; as I climbed up nice views of the valley could be taken in. the skies were beautiful as well as i was coming to expect from the tibetan climate. the moon was also visible to the west. A small stream was flowing down from the ridge, and the trail met up with it from time to time. Around the stream were lush grasses, which was quite striking since the rest of the valley was arid desert: sand dunes could be seen down the valley and also on the ridge to the west. As I walked up I was assed several times by small trucks loaded with pilgrims, both going and coming from Chimpu. At about 1 I reached the end of the driveable road, and up there was a tea shack where pilgrims and tourists could eat and drink and have a rest.
I walked in to the small room and naturally attention was drawn to me, I was wearing my now standard cowboy hat, and loaded down with my bright blue and black backpack (I had bought it in China). Although lightly packed, it’s still a large pack. I sat down and used my few words of tibetan to order sweet milk tea. The interial was a small rectangular room, with about 7 benches placed around the walls, and 4 tables shared in front of the benches. So everyone was facing each other; there were about 8 people in the room, including 2 chinese tourists. My tea was poured into a small cup; it was sweet and hot, and refreshing. The tibetans in the room were very friendly. I smiled at my neighbors, and with usual tibetan frienliness they offered me food. I accepted some flatbread that when dipped in the milk tea was quite delicous. A tibetan lady to my left urged me to drink my tea, in a way that an aunt might; and the fellow across from me refilled my glass and offered me some yak meat on the bone, which I declined. (It looked good, but I was shy to take it) I was also impressed that the people were sharing food with the chinese tourists–who are not well thought of by many tibetans I spoke with. The bus horn outside sounded loudly, and soon it was time for everybody to leave. I was comfortable and stayed to have some more rest. Now left in the tea shack were the family who ran it, the mother and two daughters. There was also a man but I was unsure he was the dad. One of the girls showed an interest in my camera (a common event) and I showed some pics of the day before. Since I wanted to sit back and relax, I gave the camera to them to browse. The man/dad was looking through the pics with the girls. In this way a digital camera is a wonderful communications device! After a few minutes they came across the “tibetan Robert Johnson” video in Ganden a week before. I turned the volume up on the camera and played the song. Soon the room was filled with the sound of a bluesy tibetan folk song. This was a great hit with the rooms remaining occupants! The man offered me some cigarrettes and I was glad to accept one.
By this tiem the girls had developed an interest in having their photo taken, which was an excellent opportunity to take some more portraits. We had a lot of fun taking pictures–when I showed them the resulting pictuer on the camera they would laugh and giggle and want more. The mother said something I couldn’t understand, but with them pointing and gesturing toward the camera, I figured that they wanted the pictures. With similar charades I offered to send them the photos, and after that even the mom got into the photo session! She set up some prop drinks on the table resulting in some cheesy shots. Afterwards I sat back for some more relaxing, and with the father humming the blues song everyone seemed content. Another fellow took a nap beside me and we all seemed like family. Finally I noticed it was around 3pm and I made my way to leave. The family refused payment for the tea, and offered me to stay there for the night. I was really pleased but not that surprised. I put my pack on and said see you tomorrow as I headed out the door into the hot afternoon.

Finally some stories from Tibet! I’m in Nepal, and have been staying in a village the past two weeks. So I have a lot of stories to catch up on. Guess I’ll start from arriving in Tibet.

I had just arrived on the plane from Chengdu a few days back. Lhasa is 3400m above sea level, and I was feeling pretty uncomfortable with the altitude for 4 days. I checked out the main sites like the Potala and Barkhor square. Despite the fact that it is now surrounded by chinese-built modernity, the Potala is still an impressive building. I also went to a monestary nearby.

I was staying in a cheap hotel, in a 4-person dorm room. My roommates for the first while included a hiker/climber from Poland, a japanese person studying languages, and a swiss girl travelling towards china.

After staying a few days in Lhasa and consulting the guide book I still wasn’t too sure what to do, but then out of nowhere come the japanese dudes I had crossed over the Chinese border with back in Laos! It was nice to see a familiar face, and I wondered what had happened to them. Turns out they disguised themselves as Chinese hitchhikers and hitched all the way to Lhasa. They told me about their stories and hanging around in a place in western Yunnan where the bartenders were rolling joints! We hung out later that night and they told me there was a festival in Ganden monestary. I decided to go, but we didn’t really co-ordinate and I ended up going on my own to the monestary.

I didn’t buy a ticket, but just got up at 5 in the morning, put my backpack on and headed out the door. There were many buses going to the festival, and I just hopped on a random bus. It was still dark outside. I was happy to be with local Tibetans. As we neared the mountain where the monestary was, the sun started to come up. And as we turned off the main road to go up the steep winding road the traffic stopped. The road was saturated with buses. After an hour or so of stop-and go traffic, people just started getting off the bus and walking. I came to estimate that it was about a 500m climb to the top. I had packed a fairly large bag since I planned on staying up there for a few days, so the hike was quite a struggle for me. Probably I would have given up if it weren’t for the men and old ladies hauling their kids up on their backs!

By the time I got to the top I was really tired, cold, and feeling again the effects of the altitude. But I made it and that was the important thing. After some searching I mangaged to find where the accomodations were, although the place was jam packed with people there were still rooms available–I guess most locals don’t stay there. I put my bags down and went to the restaurant/tea house downstairs. It was a really rustic sort of place; there were wooden tables and benches in rows with mostly tibetans sitting and drinking yak-butter tea, bowls of Thugpa (tibetan noodles) and also rice and chinese dishes. There were stacks of dried yak-dung (used for fuel) on the far wall, which was probably the source of the smoky atmosphere in the place. By then some other tourists had come (who were to be my room-mates in the guest house) and we all managed to order some food from the very chaotic serving area. To be authentic we acquired (after no small effort) a thermos of yak-butter tea, which has a taste that cannot really be described. But after having it semi-regularly in Tibet I must say I wouldn’t really miss it if I did not have it again! It is made with some variety of tea, black I think, mixed wth salt. That by itself is somewhat gross, but somehow due to the harsh environment, cold, and altitude it is pleasing to drink. After that it is churned with yak butter in a sort of piston-like contraption, to yeild a sort of milky oily concoction. Sometimes it tastes good, othertimes disgusting. A common staple meal of tibetans is to have a bowl of plain barley flour, to which butter tea is poured on top. It then forms a kind of paste which you eat. That’s called Tsampa.
Anyway, by the time we got the tea down it was time to go off and see what the festival was about. The main event was the hanging of a huge banner depicting an image of a tibetan Diety, I never found out exactly which one it was. But it had already been mostly hung down, and was very large and impressive. Pilgrims were throwing white prayer scarves up at the image, which I think is a gesture of good will and blessing. The mix of tourists and devout pilgrims was pretty interesting.
There was also a really cool folk singer I made a video of. He was some old albino Tibetan, and I thought of him as a sort of Tibetan Robert Johnson. I listened to my recoding of him many times during slow moments. I will try to upload it!
I ended up staying at the monestary for 3 days, which was a good experience. The monks were pretty friendly but it was hard to interact with them because of the language barrier, and the fact that they don’t generally lounge around and talk to tourists. But for me it was fine. There was this old blind man who hung around the convenience shop out front, at random times he would start singing some song that he probably made up. And anyone who was around would stop and have a listen and a laugh. People gave him pocket money to get by.
I did the standard activities around the monestary, like hiking around the “kora” which is just a pilgramige path that goes around the monestary. I met a nice old lady pilgrim that I walked the path with, and she showed me the place where you squeeze your hand together and look through your fist at some rocks in order to see visions. I tried it but couldn’t manage to see any. But she said that she did see.

I also hiked up some high ridges which had a really good view, and met a yak herder with a pimpin’ yak.
I caught a random bus back to Lhasa, and planned to stay one night and then take off to some other monestaries, as well as do some more day-hiking. I looking forward to getting back to lower ground!

maybe it’s because of the busy atmosphere in China, but I didn’t feel like writing much, and hence the long drought of posts to this weblog. And when I was chilling out there were no computers around.
In “the Hump” guesthouse in Kunming I saw a sign advertising a place to train kung fu that sounded really ideal. For about 60 dollars a week you got 6 hours training a day, 2 meals, and a place to stay with a family in a small village. It sounded good to me and I tried to phone the number but could not get through. I tried for a couple of days with no success but managed to get directions to the place from a german guy that trained there before.

I showed up at the village at 8:30 in the morning, after spending the night in a cheap hotel near the nearby town’s bus station. Apparently no one had ever tried to find the place without phoning before; but luckily, at the time I arrived one of the family members was coming back from the market. Since the training is the only tourist attraction, she looked at me with surprise then took me to the house nearby. Everyone was surprised but it was no big deal, I got a bed and got to know the teacher and the other student who was there.

The teacher’s name was Ding Yi, he was 24 and had been training since age 3. He was a very nice guy, energetic, and enthusiastic. He was really laid back and friendly and liked to treat his students like family. His philosophy was that Kung Fu should be used to help your life and your body, so you should do it for yourself. I explained to him my time limitations, I only wanted to spend 1 week there. He said it was very short and recommended to do some training on basics like stretching, stances. He taught me a Nei Gong form as well which is an internal energy form used to fill the body with more chi. After 1 week I liked the training and atmosphere a lot so I decided to stay another week. There was myself and an Israeli guy named Eldad.

There were two basic rooms with two beds each, a courtyard with some plants, a well, and about 300 flies. There was thankfully a hot shower, and the toilet was a concrete outhouse about 30m away. That was pretty cool because for entertainment, you could watch maggots crawl in the waste that you produced only a few days before! That’s pretty gross but I after a while I think I got used to it.

After the first week, two more Israeli guys came, so for the second week it was more like Israeli boot camp than a quiet training camp, but anyway everyone turned out to be pretty cool. We practiced speaking Ding Yi’s special brand of english (Dinglish we called it) for our own amusement. It involves cutting out all articles and using only a few key nouns and verbs, and a totally new grammatical structure. There’s not much to do in the village. Sometimes we’d go to town and everyone would stare at us, it was pretty funny to see folks’ reactions to us.

Training was tough but I was pretty happy with the results in the end, after 2 weeks my stances were better than after 5 years of laziness! It actually would have been nice to stay longer there but I figured I had learned what I wanted to learn, and I thought it would be better to move on.

the photos

After that I felt pressed for time since my 30-day visa was going to run out, but I wanted to see a few places in western Yunnan. The itinerary after staying 11 days in Zhe Hai ended up being:
Kunming 1 night
6 hour bus travel to Dali
Dali 2 nights
Ride up the Dali’s mountain by horse to Highland Inn
Highland Inn 2 nights
6 hour bus back to Kunming
20 hour train to Chengdu
Chengdu 2 nights, arrange Chinese visa extention
12 hour bus to “the Yosemite of China”, JiuZaiGou park
2 days in the park
12 hour bus back to Chengdu
Arrange ticket to Lhasa
3/4 nights in Chengdu, get sick and recover from fever
Flight to Lhasa

Needless to say there is a lot to write about there, but it isn’t really necessary because the highlights were hiking and seeing nature. So hopefully the pictures will be enough to tell the story.

Here they are!
hiking near Dali in Can Shan Mountain, Western Yunnan province

visiting JiuzaiGao park in northern Schezhuan province

before entering Laos I realized I would miss the opening of Star Wars episode III, the only one i had been looking forward to. last night I watched it–in Chinese. i paid about $1.25 to see chinese jedi warriors create the fate of my childhood fantasy empire. i must say that it was a great way to watch the film. i will probably see it again in english, but i’m betting that i will like the chinese version better.

i’m sitting on a wooden seat in a seemingly makeshift theatre, sharing cigarrettes with a chinese neighbor. we take in the opening sequence and you can tell we are both impressed. obi-wan has just taken down a tough opponent, and he leans over and says “chinese kung fu!”. and i’m thinking, yeah, i can totally buy that. for a while i’m watching some futuristic chinese martial arts warriors battle it out. the ship crash lands on the capital city, and it’s beijing 2200. the jedi HQ is some rebuilt version of a feudal temple in Lhasa.

anyway despite the fact it was chinese i think i didn’t miss much, we already know the story, the rest is just details, no?

i saw return o f the jedi in the theatre with my dad, and the mythology of that movie really put the hook in me. sure empire was better, but i think i was too young to appreciate it. “jedi” was a bit kitch, but it showed the power of a story. at one point the ewoks were going to roast the band of heros to have with a pint or two. they weren’t going to help them at all. but then they told their story, of how vader gained control of the galaxy, and the ewoks understood that story. and they decided to join in the fight. watching this movie in the same way here, in chinese, i think maybe is a little similar. (ewoks are more cuddly i think) i mean the story just seemed really native, like it was totally natural that the characters were speaking a different language. on the way out of the theatre a little girl was clinging to her mom, she looked kind of scared or disturbed. maybe she was just tired , but maybe she was scared. maybe she saw the evil that fear can conjure.

wow i haven’t done an entry for a long time… i don’t know how many people check this site regularly but if you want to be updated when i write on it just register for the site and i’ll send an email to you. there is so much i could write about but there’s just no time to say it all. so i have to let my experience settle for a while then more or less summarize it, or select a story or two to tell.

I’m in China now. Prior to this, in Laos, I’d spent the last two weeks happily stuck in Luang Prabang, chilling out and living the local lifestyle. at first the place reminded me of Kyoto, because it is a lovely town/city with many temples, beautiful and tranquil surroundings, and is overrun with tourists. However it being low tourist season, things were quiet key and the place became very difficult to leave. That was fine with me because i had to network a bit to find a buyer for my motorbike (or scooter depending who you are). here I had a nice place to stay, with many good cafes and restaurants, and my own transportation. so let’s just say i was not exactly going door to door in a hurry to sell the bike. after a week or so of chilling i met a local girl, chit, who took me around the town and to a waterfall. my dumb ass managed to slip down this path and bang my legs and knee on rocks, dumping me into a shallow pool. i could tell chit was really impressed. that night i also decided to play badminton at the local hall. by the time i got home i felt like a wreck. so of course i decided to go to the disco, to drink some beers and numb the pain. i made some friends at the badminton hall too, some local expats and a lao fellow as well. we al decided to go around 10. it was a saturday night and the place was pretty jammin’. lao discos are really unique. they close around 12 midnight consistently, which means it never gets too crazy, but they compensate for being busy just about every night! the music alternates between a dj and a live band. the dj plays a mix of hip hop, disco, and lao techno, as well as some cheesy lao line-dancing songs. My theory is that Laos is the Alberta of Asia. more on that later. getting back to the disco, tonight was saturday night and the DJ was on a roll with the hip hop. At some point there was an Eminem track mixed in flawlessly and the place just went nuts, well as nuts as Lao can get anyway. There were about 10-15 farang (whites) in the place, some of whom started to climb up on stage. Some chick who looked like she walked off pacific beach started grinding some lao dude up there. As for myself i was feeling no pain and began to work it as best as i could. Its fun to bounce when you are a foot taller than everyone else on the dance floor. Well things were so crazy the club stayed open super late, 12:30! I had been hanging out with the farang group, and in a display of serendipity, one of them was interested in buying my bike! cool. they were in the mood for an after-party, so we all headed over to a house to chill and talk. it was more of a chat than a party but i was happy to speak some english using long lost articles such as “the”. I hung out for a while and when home to my nice comfortable guest house. it had been a rough day.

I had to take it easy after that since my legs were super sore, I bought a CD player and listened to it down by the river, got some massages, went to cafe, etc. This chinese made CD player is quite something, it cost about 30 bucks, can play VCDs and MP3s, has a DSP and even a remote control! well it is my new little precious yes… it took another few days to finalize the bike deal, in typical slacker fashion. I took more of an interest in Chit, and we hung out every other day or so, going for fruit shakes, and hanging out. She said she wanted to marry me, but she wouldn’t let me touch her which drove me crazy, and at this point i think i bought some blues CD to listen to . anyway she was fun to hang with. The last day at my guesthouse, I bought food from the market and I wanted to cook for everybody. Earlier I had taken a cooking class and learned to make vegetable curry; I wanted to try cooking it. We had 2 dishes, the curry and some tomato/bean concoction that i fried up. Chit brought over some mushroom soup with rice noodles. With all that, and the rice, it was quite a feast; we managed to feed about 8 people. I had help cooking the curry, and i must say that everything turned out quite delicious (aroy in Lao). Later that night a group of us went to a more low key disco, and we had a good time. On the motorbike cruise home I sang “you’ve lost that lovin feeling” in the feeling of Top Gun. I stayed up listening to music and overslept, packed my things in a hurry, said goodbye to guesthouse staff, and took off to the bus station. Goodbye Luang Prabang!

hello china… i couldn’t have asked for a more novel way to enter china. north of Luang Prabang had a really frontier feel. there was a 5 hour bus ride north, to oudomxai. there were about 7 of us on the bus, and 4 of us were travellers heading to china. One was a monk from france, two Japanese, and myself. we formed an unoficcial and unlikely team. oudomxai was no place we wanted to be. we stayed overnight and took the next bus to china. we were joined by Erik, an American defector to China. he had not been home in 9 years. The contents of the bus to china were thus:
1 French monk
2 Japanese guys
another Japanese guy (not sure where he came from)
1 white Chinese guy from Minnesota
1 Canadian/Indonesian guy trying to find a place to surf
2 Lao bus drivers
We didn’t talk a lot together but I had a chance to talk about buddhism a bit with Felix, the french buddhist. He was from the Bugu/Dzogchen sect, which I believe is similar to the one of Khempo rimpoche who I’d met in LA before I left. I asked him about differences between Tao and his practice and could not find a lot to tell them apart. but I digress.

see photos here

The Lao china border is awesome, there is nothing there except a shitty road and a few border officials. Our bizzare team crossed without much incident, but our Monk mistakenly overstayed and had to pay a fine. China quickly became another world, the border town had decorated storefronts, and landscaping with flowers. what was quite tacky seemed beautiful. our Chinese guide from Minnesota negotiated bus fare for all of us, and we proceeded on to the closest urban center. The bus ride was a short distance, but the road was windy and mountanous, very similar to Lao, and it was slow going. We arrived around 4pm. I’d about had it for buses that day. The france/japan team wanted to travel on, but Erik and I were through with buses. That was fortuitous because Erik could show me around the town.

I crashed out for a couple of hours in my dumpy hotel room, then we hooked up again for dinner. we walked into a nearby restaurant, and instead of looking at a menu, Erik just walked into the kitchen and told the cook what to make! “China is really casual” he says while we sip tea. We order a beer (the first of many) and soon after the food comes out. We have 4 dishes (more food than we can eat) and about 5 large beers, all for about 7 dollars. unfortunately, i decide to sample the local whiskey. it was poured out of a large glass bottle which contained all manner of roots, herbs, and twigs. it tastes like cheap tequila. I had to go pee from drinking all that beer. bad thing to do in China after dinner. in China the public toilets are disgusting. they have to be seen to be believed. the reek of them is fantastic. what a horrible smell. the toilets are just concrete troughs that lead down into some nameless filth. i hope no one has to clean them.
Well after that we headed down to walk around the town. we came across a disco (i guess this post is about discos) It was saturday night, and people were gearing up to party. the music wasn’t too bad, but it was a bit harsh–the kind of blaring, pounding tecno remixes that asians seem to like. a lot of tables had ordered the platter, basically a mountain of beer set upon your table, with a plate of fruit on top. i’m not sure how much it costs. we had already had plenty of beer so we skipped the platter. In China cigarretes are an icebreaker; people often offer them to be fiendly. the people in the disco were especially friendly, and soon enough we were being offered cigarretes and beer. i was feeling a little queezy from that awful tequila-like concoction, but it wasn’t so bad so i kept on going and dancing. it was a really fun time, especially since it was my first night in china. the next day i felt really bad though, and i could smell that whiskey coming out of my pores. i dragged myself to the bus station around 11am and got on to the next town. it was good to be on the bus as I had assimilated a lot of info about china and had to sort through some of it.

i made it in by 4 and one of the touts at the bus station led me to another dingy hotel. i was alone, and began wandering around the town. at this point i realized that i was completely unaware of where i was or where i was going, and i could not find anyone that could speak english, or even an english map. i looked at the signs on the bus station for kunming, the capital of this province (yunnan), and there were none. that’s where i wanted to go eventually, but had no idea how to get there. i also had no more money left and it being sunday, could not get any at the bank. i decided it would be a fasting day and i’d only drink water. well i just wandered around aimlessly and went into a lot of shops and had a look around at everything. the next day i’d figure something out.

It sure is cool to be in China, i think i’ll end up liking it a lot but for now i’m taking a wait and see approach. I really want to gain an appreciation of the language, to figure out how a system of writing and communication could in part produce such a diverse and unique place. I will try to learn some of the language, I would really like to be able to make some sort of meaning out of all these seemingly indecipherable symbols, to see what mysteries they may contain.

There are children raised in sorrow
On a scorched and barren plain
There are children raised beneath the golden sun
There are children of the water
And children of the sand
And they cry out through the universe
Their voices raised as one

I want to live I want to grow
I want to see I want to know
I want to share what I can give
I want to be I want to live

Have you gazed out on the ocean
Seen the breaching of a whale?
Have you watched the dolphins frolic in the foam?
Have you heard the song the humpback hears five hundred miles away
Telling tales of ancient history of passages and home?

I want to live I want to grow
I want to see I want to know
I want to share what I can give
I want to be I want to live

For the worker and the warrior the lover and the liar
For the native and the wanderer in kind
For the maker and the user and the mother and her son
I am looking for my family and all of you are mine

We are standing all together
Face to face and arm in arm
We are standing on the threshold of a dream
No more hunger no more killing
No more wasting life away
It is simply an idea
And I know its time has come

I want to live I want to grow
I want to see I want to know
I want to share what I can give
I want to be I want to live

words and music by John Denver

Travelled through Thailand pretty quickly, it is nice country but I didn’t find it all that interesting to travel in. I was looking for something more exotic, and so for me it was too developed and not so different from where I have been in Indonesia. But I met some really nice people there. My first day out of bangkok I was adopted for a day into a Thai family, they let me stay at their house for free. They lived on a farm with only a few houses around, and it was really quiet and peaceful. I bought them some food from the market and we had dinner together, and drank beer and ate durian. the mom was really funny, while the rice was cooking she put on some boy-band VCD and started dancing around the living room. hilarious.

Im in Laos now. It’s a really beautiful country. I crossed over the mekong river from Thailand into a town called Thakek. There were very few tourists there, as it is not the season now. The town was not crowded at all, it is so laid back. I got the inspiration to get a motorcycle there. Near the hotel I stayed at there was a restaurant, and there I met a really good local guide, who went by a name sounding like “air”. he was around 24 and taught himself to speak english from a book. he never wen t0 to school but was really intelligent. anyway he helped me to buy a motorbike. the bikes in asia are realy small, but it’s really cool for me to ride one, since i always wanted a bike but never had one yet. it’s a “Kolao”, Korean made for Lao market. 110 CC’s of personal motorized goodness! it was funny, we just went to the motorcycle shop, paid the money, and drove off. no registration, no insurance, nothing! i don’t even have an intl. drivers license. The bike cost about $750 US. I should be able to sell it for a hundred less than that.

There’s a lot of beautiful scenery around Thakek; there is a special “limestone forest” area, with interesting rock formations formed by the water and limestone. Air showed me a very pretty cave that had water flowing out of it. There are also caves with buddha statues inside, placed there by people hundreds of years ago. it was a really great experience to cruise around and look at the scenery flowing by.

It took some time to learn how to ride the bike. After riding up to the next village on the road, i decided to go to this huge river cave called Konglor cave. To get there I had to go to Konglor village which was 40km by dirt road. It had just rained the day before, and i had to endure a hellish 4-hour muddy slog–from feet to knees i was soaked in mud. I met lots of nice water buffalo on the way. They looked at me with expressions of bored indifference.

IMG_0524

some damn fine water buffalo

Well I arrived to the village around 1pm. As I putted through the village all the people said hello or waved. Although they must get foreigners somewhat regularly, still some people stared as if I were from another planet. It was pretty awesome. I really loved the kids of the village; they seemed so natural and carefree. When I went down to the river to get on the caving boat, many kids were playing and swimming in the river. It was a really happy scene.

The cave itself was immense, it goes on and on for 7km. You go upriver to enter the cave, and to get into the cave you have to get off the boat, then the boat drivers remove the engine and push the boat up the rocks. It’s just a little river-skimmer boat, and the driver bails water out every 2 minutes or so. So on this thing you enter this, deep dark cave, with only a lamp on your head to see. For the first 5 or 10 minutes I was totally freaked out by this. I guess there was nothing really to be afraid of, but i couldn’t help but wonder what foul demon or prehistoric cave-dwelling monster might be lurking in the shadows there. On this day i did not have to do battle with any agents of darkness, and we reached or way safely back to the light.

The ride back from the village was much better; the roads had dried up a bit and i was now a much better rider. There was only 3 hrs left until dark, so I really pushed the bike and tried to go fast, finding the lines and keeping the bike in the proper gear. It was a lot easier to ride the roads aggressively and i made it back in 2 hours. I was exhausted. I had wanted to get back that night because there was a wedding in the village i was staying at, and I wanted to crash it. I was so tired i could only stay out for a couple of hours. but it was quite a fun event. It was a total Hobbit scene. Lots of food and drink and merry-making. Hobbits rule. I actually came as a guest to the wedding through an invited englishman and his Lao wife, and i was honored by having a dance with the bride. It was Lao style dancing which involves moving around and waving your hands up and down, with some wrist-turning action thrown in.

I’m in Vientiene now enjoying the city life for a couple days before heading up to Luang Prabang, it’s a village where there are a lot of monks hanging out, and it’s a main traveller destination in Laos. I’ll hang out there for a while and look for some fun stuff to do. Or maybe i’ll grab a robe and shave my head

I’ve spent the last 11 days at and around a place called the sanctuary. It’s located in a cove on the island of koh pha ngan, about 40 minutes ferry ride North of koh samui. Over time it has turned into a sort of center for yoga practitioners, spiritual seekers, and travellers looking for a different sort of vibe than the usual backpacker center. Here you can wake up in the morning, look outside your balcony to the ocean, then head up the hill for your morning yoga session. Have breakfast in the vegetarian/seafood restaurant downstairs, and listen to chill out music while you sway in a hammock, sipping your tea. Or like many, have a beer and a cigarrete and go tan in the sun. The bungalows are built up on the hillside among the trees, and there are butterfles, lizards, and a multitude of chirping,m clicking , and singing insects to serenade you at night. It’s all rather nice.
Then there are the people… “It’s not the normal cross section of society”, says Chelsey, a beautiful soul from vancouver island, who sings when she speaks. The regulars here (those who decide to take up a month or longer residenc) are often training to become yoga teachers. Seems like most have either come from some training in India, or are going to some training somewhere else soon. The first night here I met sherri, who had come from a month long Buddhist training in Nepal (now working on her yoga skills as well). She told me of a 3-day breathing mechanics workshop starting the next day. There I was introduced to ryan, who taught the workshop in the living room of his house. The room happened to be a deck looking over the ocean, with a thatched roof, attached to a small bedroom. Everybody thought it was a great place. Ryan taught us how to breathe with our diaphram. He was able, while inhaling, to push his belly so far out that he apperared to have swallowed a watermelon. Among other things we learned some diaphram stretching exercises that produced highs that I did not think were possible without consuming illegal substances.
As for the rest of my time here, I have just completed a 7-day cleansing fast. For a week I consumed nothing but psillium husk/bentonite clay shakes mixed with watermelon, coconut and other juices, herbs, and the nightly dinner of vegetable broth. Added to that activity is the twice daily water/coffee colonics, which are quite weird, eventually tolerable, but never quite comfortable. I will spare the details. After a week of detox, and producing strangely abundant volumes of some strange green mucousy substance, I feel quite well and am getting back to eating solid food again. I have lost about 10 pounds which brings me down to a lean and scrawny 135. Strangely, during the fast I felt quite energetic, although quick to fatigue. Much hammock-lying was done. I finally got to read “Life of Pi”. It was great.
The usual schedule:
7 am psillium/clay shake. yum.
8:30 herbs
9 colonic: water goes in, water + strange things go out, inspect, wash
10 shake again
11:30 herbs (sensing a pattern here?)
1 PM shake shake shake
2:30 herbs herbs herbs
2:50 lymph flush drink. good actually! carrot juice, garlic, and some other thing
4 last shake!
5:30 colonic again
7 dinner! vegetable broth with a side of lime and chilli, and salt if we’re lucky
8:30 herbs
9 probiotic pill

Repeat 7x

It sounds tough but there are lots of friendly people there to go through it with you, the days go by fast, and there is the spa, massages, yoga classes, a nice beach and beautiful surroundings. I’m feeling ready to travel on so whenever I’m back to a normal diet I’ll get going… probably to north east thailand.

cheers

just arrived in Thailand… ended up doing a visit-with-family marathon and barely made it out of jakarta!! It’s amazing how time flies. Basically the biggest project was to go to the beach with whoever was able to make it during the weekday, which basically means those willing to follow in the time-honored (by me) tradition of hard core slacking.

For those interested in chilling indo-style, here are the photos.

Now I’m in Bangkok, just arrived to the touristy area… first planned to take a cab for 400bht but figured that I was a pro so I took the train for 10bht (which is about 25 cents). Was going to take a cab from the train station but then somebody told me how to take the bus which was 5 bht. I walked from there and already found how to get visas for Vietnam, Laos, and China. They can do everything but you have to trust the agent with your passport, which I have done with some trepidation. She said not to worry….

There are tons of backpackers and tourists here; after travelling as a local indonesian for 3 weeks I must say I don’t really feel in the same frame of mind. So I ate here:

Don’t think i will stick around here too long, I plan to go to an island near ko samui tomorrow or the next day; my visas should be ready in about 1.5 weeks.