Nomads for a year

Genealogy and Gastronomy

2010-08-31T14:01:00.000-07:00

Forgive me, friends, for I have slacked; it has been 3 months since my last blog post.

Having left off as we arrived home for our unscheduled three week 'vacation' from our travels – which was filled with wonderful reconnections with friends and

family for me and plenty of much-needed 11 year-old buddy-bonding for Colin
– we set back out at the end of May with our batteries fully recharged to finish our European travels. After Asia, India and Africa, our two months in Greece, Italy and Switzerland had been a cushy and gastronomic delight, and we were looking forward to completing our tour of Switzerland and spending a nice long summer month in the south of France. We arrived in Paris, where we had leased a car, and drove for two days to my brother's house in Zug, Switzerland, after spending a lovely night with our French couchsurfers from the summer before.
This time they were the hosts and we were the surfers, enjoying a homemade salmon dinner and walks around the neighborhood and through the palace grounds a few minutes walk from their apartment at the edge of Paris. Having slept off the worst of our jetlag, we set out through the rolling countryside of Champagne, Bourgogne, and Franche-Comte, landing for a night in Montbelliard, where my great-grandfather may (or may not) have been born (more on this later...), before crossing back into Switzerland and arriving in Zug two hours before my nephew's 3rd birthday party.
The kids spent the afternoon bouncing off all manner of padded and spring loaded padding at the gym hosting the party before consuming cake and super-sweet juice and various other sugar treats. Suffice to say, these things always end badly, but in the meantime great fun was had by all! ;-)

In the morning, Colin and I headed south in search of sun, which was nowhere in evidence in northeast Switzerland – nor in fact in northwest, southwest or central Switzerland this particular end of May. We did find a small pocket of the bright stuff, though, in the far southeast, along the Italian border (I was loving the independence of movement our car brought!).
We arrived in Lugano and scouted for a campground, finding a friendly family-owned site right along the river separating Switzerland from Italy, complete with pizzeria, giant chess board and pool.
We stayed a week, exploring the local castles and mountaintops, and found a a falconry, which had been a goal since being disappointed by a canceled demonstration in Italy before our visit home.

Highlights included a trio of castles that formed the backbone of modern-day Bellinzona and a trip to the top of Mount Tamaro, where bobsled courses and a cave-like church with majestic views ruled the roost.
After immersing ourselves once again in the rythym of travel, we set out over the gorgeous Simplon Pass for a small village outside of Vevey near Montreax (of the famous jazz festival), where an until recently long-lost cousin lived. My mother had located her some years ago, and with the help of friends and neighbors we hosted her teenage son in Seattle for a semester of high school a few years earlier.
We spent the night with her before picking up my mother at the Geneva Airport to continue her quest – more family research in Switzerland, France and Germany, which would occupy us for the next two weeks. We returned to cousin Marion's for a lovely dinner on her deck overlooking Lake Geneva and another night's sleep before setting off.....

Next stop: La Chaux de Fonds, home of also recently-found cousin Marc, owner of La Semeuse – a fabulous Swiss coffee and chocolate company: my personal version of 7th heaven.

Our visit included an incredible introduction to “puppet therapy” and Marc's wife's puppetry workshop, where she works with children suffering trauma through creation and role-playing with puppets that represent the children's hopes, fears and challenges. Then on to La Semeuse headquarters and factory, where we got a full tour of the facilities and left loaded up with enough coffee, teas and chocolates to last us a year! From there the next several days would take us into less familiar territory – looking for records of family not yet found or long deceased, to finish putting together the family history.

We headed north and across the border to Strasbourg, into the countryside in Alsace, France, and to Kronau, Germany, searching for the missing pieces of a puzzle that my mother had been slowly assembling over the past decade.

What we know so far (to the best of my abilities to follow it all):

My mother's name is Moch, pronounced “mock.” All Mochs with the same pronunciation and spelling come originally from Alsace – no exceptions. Moch means “tailor,” her family's long-ago profession. Later Mochs were horse-sellers in Switzerland and (when the law permitted) watchmakers in both Switzerland and France. My great grandfather – the second generation of Mochs to emigrate to America – was a watchmaker and set up shop in 1904 in Montesano, Washington.

The Mochs were Jewish, and took a variety of different paths in their efforts to avoid persecution in Europe. In 1808, a contingent of Mochs went to Russia, recruited by Catherine the Great as farmers with the promise of free land and a market for the fruits of their labors. That worked for about a hundred years, until Stalin came to power and executed nearly all of them. Some Mochs stayed put in Alsace, where Hitler later placed the only concentration camp built on French soil. Still more converted and moved to Germany – several dozen Moch families have lived as Christians in and around the border town of Kronau for at least five generations (this we discovered in the town records when we visited). Yet another contingent went from Alsace to Switzerland, and some continued from there to America.

Two generations of our family arrived separately in the new world from Switzerland and headed west, settling in the Pacific Northwest – the first in the 1850s and the second in the early 1900s. The latter was my great grandfather. When he arrived, I can only imagine that he was scared for his life and/or liberty, worried that government-sanctioned anti-semitism would follow him to the Americas. He married a fiercely anti-semetic woman, presumably without her knowledge of his past, and hid. In 1949, following Hitler's era but on the cusp of the McCarthy era, family members in Switzerland wrote to him requesting help settling in the U.S. He refused. In the 1970s, a European relative traveling in the U.S. knocked on his door. His wife answered and immediately slammed it shut (so maybe she did know). My grandfather only learned of his own father's history as he was packing to leave for the 1936 Olympics in Germany, where he would compete as coxswain for the American crew team from the University of Washington. My grandfather planned to bike around Europe with some buddies following the games and would drop in on a few family members en route, so his father decided it would be best if he knew they were Jewish, “but dont tell your mother.” Despite this revelation, my mother was raised pure wasp, and didnt find out the “family secret” from her father's father until she was a teenager. Hitler would have been so pissed if he had known who was competing in his Olympics, for sure. My grandfather's crew team brought home the Gold.

My mother ran into an interesting side note as she sorted all this out. The first generation of Mochs to arrive in America came in the form of two cousins. One headed west, and was joined a generation later by my great grandfather. As a result of a chance encounter with a surprised-looking man named Moch at a social workers' conference in Chicago a decade ago, my mother learned that the other Moch cousin settled near New Orleans and shacked up with a woman he wasn't allowed to marry – not because he was Jewish, but because he was white and she was black. She was a free black woman (a bit of early American history most Americans don't know anything about) and they had a long life and a child together. As a result, there is an extensive family of African American Mochs in the southeast U.S. who are part of our extended family. My mother has been attending their semi-annual reunions for eight years now. She has also found a branch of the Mochs in the Dakotas, where two of the Moch cousins landed after escaping Stalin's pogroms.

Anyway, to make a two week story very short, we traveled through the ancestral homelands, digging in city hall archives and chatting up records clerks, finishing up in Bern back in Switzerland where we had a wonderful lunch with the parents of friends from home (John and Rosemay, our neighbor Fiona's parents), and ultimately came away with one or two possibly significant new leads to more of the family history.

In the next few days, we fit in a visit to Gruyere, attended my cousin Anthony's military school graduation, and danced late into the night at a fabulous lakeside party at the Geneva Dive Club in Montreax, before returning my mother to the airport. She was on her way to England, to meet the cousin who my great grandmother slammed the door on, who lives in Sherwood Forest – boy was Colin mad not to be going along! Instead, Colin and I headed south, once again looking for sun. We overnighted in Besancon, back in France, and found the sun a day later, in Provence. Oh darn, we thought, guess we'll have to stay a while.....

Up Next: A Week in Provence

P.S. Despite the title, I realize I entirely neglected to include the “gastronomy” part – believe me, I'll make up for it in the next entry, as the delights continued and only got better as we ventured further and deeper into France......

"Awestruck," by Colin

2010-07-04T09:56:00.000-07:00

Southern France is well known for its summer thunderstorms....

Awestruck

Boom! Crash! Bang!
The sky is illuminated by a blanket of light,
the rolling thunder close behind.
A jagged bolt briefly bridges two clouds,
and we stand as it begins to rain, awestruck.

-Colin Diego Sackett

Travel fatigue in paradise

2010-07-03T06:41:00.000-07:00

We woke on our first morning at Lake Como in Italy with oddly little motivation to explore. Tom had just left us to go back home, the weather was dreary, and though we hadn't noticed it yet, travel fatigue was beginning to set in.
Lake Como is reputed as Italy's home to the rich and famous – George Clooney has a vacation home here, the lakefront town of Bellagio is known as the high-roller capital of the jewel-wearing elite, and paparazzi make a living scouting the scene from intimate cafe tables on sun-drenched plazas.
We, however, were bored. We wandered down the lovely lakefront trail to the village center, had a pleasant lunch and perfect gelato, then passed the afternoon reading and staring at the water. The second day was much of the same, but our lunch neighbors at the cafe surprised us by being from Seattle. They were a honeymooning couple in their 50s, and he turned out to be the manager of Seattle's West Point Sewage Treatment Plant, so we knew many of the same people. The encounter also made me realize I was a wee bit homesick.

Determined to get my but in gear, I amped myself up for an afternoon hike up the steep hill behind our pensione in Varenna to see the small castle perched at the top, and discovered a beautiful little stone village adjacent to the castle. The castle also had its own falconer, so after talking to him and learning that he had a morning show the next day, I decided to drag Colin back with me. We returned the next day, arriving at the top panting and sweating but thrilled to see the show, only to have the falconer tell us his morning show was canceled because a school group had called to say they were coming in the afternoon. After trying to soothe Colin's disappointment, we decided to wait, have lunch in the village, and return to see the afternoon show with the school group. The falconer had retreated inside the castle, so we turned to the ticket-taker with a cell phone to her ear behind the counter: “What time?” we asked. “I don't know,” she replied, returning to her cell phone call. “Soooo, how will we know when to come back?” “I don't know,” she replied again, clearly annoyed. “Well, can you ask the falconer?” Not understanding Italian, we're pretty sure she then pretended to call the falconer, but really only continued chatting with her cell phone buddy, before telling us once again that she had no idea what time the school group would come. Sigh. Colin was pretty much beside himself by this point, but we did our best to let it go. We enjoyed the view, visited the small cemetery next to the castle, had a very wonderful lunch when the small restaurant in the village opened, and were more or less contentedly walking down the mountain when the school group passed us on their way up. “Forget it,” Colin said. “I don't want to see their stinking show anyway.” Good – we would find friendlier venues somewhere else along our journey, I was sure.

Earlier in the week, we had contacted a cooking school up in the hills above Varenna. The following morning, the chef/owner of the restaurant offering the class picked us up at our guest house and we wound our way up to the very small village where the restaurant – housed in a 1,000 year old stone house – has been run by his family for eight generations. Two other couples joined us in the cozy timber-beamed dining room, facing a large wooden table where our chef and mentor rolled out fresh pasta, chopped asparagus, and formed perfect round pork meatballs, inviting us to pitch in and take turns folding raviolis, slicing and tossing long ribbons of tagliatelli, and peering over his shoulder as he sauteed and seasoned and generally made magic. The meal was incredible, the company excellent, and both the culinary and cultural experience fantastic! -- easily the highlight of our week at Lake Como.

Full of food (and, for me, wine), our host dropped us off at the ferry terminal, and we ventured across the lake to Menaggio, where we were booked into the a hostel for the next couple of nights and again succumbed to sluggishness before catching a bus into the mountains and across the border to Lugano, in Switzerland. From there, Colin and I caught a train to Zurich, then a connection to Zug, where my step-brother Brian and his family were waiting for us.

Brian had moved to Zug the year before, following a brief stint in Luxembourg, and after nearly 20 years in Moscow. He works as a CEO and financial advisor to international corporations, and Zug is the center of Switzerland's “free-trade” zone – the epicenter of “Swiss bank accounts,” as I understand it (which is not very well). Colin and I were still were functioning at half-mast, but being with family – especially the very energetic 2 and 4 year old cousins/nephews – put a bit of a spring back in our steps. We spent the next day exploring the many levels of the nearby “Techno-rama” - a giant of a science museum on the outskirts of Zurich - and running around and around the living room couch with the boys (it was pouring rain out - nonstop). When the boys went to nursery school on Monday morning, the rest of us piddled around Zug, wandering along the lakefront and exploring the shops. We had tickets on the overnight train to Budapest the next evening, and Colin and I had decided to spend that day in Zurich, visiting the National Museum, the Observatory, the Old Town, and if time allowed, taking a boat tour across the lake. We said our goodbyes to Nate (4) and Marty (2) in the evening, and to brother Brian and sister-in-law Irina in the morning, and set off on the commuter train from Zug to Zurich. We stashed our bags in lockers at the central Zurich train station and wandered off in the direction of the museum.

The Swiss National Museum is housed in a beautiful old castle, less than a five minute walk from the train station. We spent a pleasant hour + exploring the rooms and exhibits, before Colin – doing his usual acrobatic moves down a flight of stairs – fell and twisted his ankle. We limped around the museum for a while longer before realizing that he wasn't going to just shake this one off, so we hobbled back to the train station to find a seat and give it a rest. It didn't help. We had 7 hours to go before our night train to Budapest, and it became clear that we were going to spend every one of those hours sitting in the Zurich train station, popping anti-inflammatories, with Colin's foot iced and elevated. At hour 6, we finally had a revelation – despite our best efforts, we'd been dragging for over a week now, and needed a break. We took a look at what a plane ticket from Budapest to Seattle would cost us, and were surprised to find that they were cheap! If we went home for a visit, we'd spend less on airfare than we would on our travel budget for the same period. Hmmmmm.....

Before we could rethink it, we were booking a flight. Halfway through the process (I'd selected our flights and just gotten to the payment part), I glanced at the clock and realized we had less than 5 minutes before our train to Budapest was leaving!! Our bags were still in a locker downstairs, the train was leaving from the upper level, and we didn't even know which track it was on. Yikes! We aborted our booking and raced down to the lockers and up to the tracks. We made it with at least a minute to spare (there must've been some kind of time warp involved), and after catching our breath, completed our booking via a cell phone call to my mother in the U.S. She got online and wrapped it all up with a bow, including a promise not to tell Tom what we were up to. We then settled in for a night of sleep aboard the Zurich-Budapest Express, waking to a distinctly different, and subtly austere, farmscape outside of our window. Arriving in Budapest, we stopped in at the rail station tourist office, booked a hotel just a block away, and dropped our bags before setting out to explore. We had just under 24 hours before our flight home – as a result, one day in Budapest would be the entirety of our “eastern” European visit, and we intended to make the most of it.

We sought out a pleasant, shady plaza I had read about in our guide book, settled into a table at a recommended restaurant, and enjoyed a feast of “deer shoulder” (Colin) and duck (me) while people-watching all the foot traffic along the tree covered promenade -- perfect intro to Hungarian food.
We then took a very long walk (slowly, due to Colin's still aching foot) to the Szechenyi Baths – a complex of luxurious outdoor soaking and swimming pools of various temperatures set in the central courtyard of a beautiful historic palace, plus saunas, steamrooms, cold plunges and even a snow chute churning out chunks of the crumbly cold stuff that you could take into the impossibly hot sauna with you to drip over your head. We stayed for three hours, plunging and soaking, until we were weak in the knees.
As we were dressing, a monster thunder storm hit, sending us running from the baths to the nearest cafe – set aside a lovely lake in the neighboring park. We eventually called a cab to take us back to our hotel, got a good night's sleep, and woke early in the morning to head for the airport – and our date with home.

24 hours, one canceled flight, one rerouting through Canada, one late arrival and subsequently missed connection, and one extra layover later, we walked in the door just as Tom wait awaiting our (falsely) scheduled skype call. Surprise!!! Hugs, some tears, and a lot of laughing, then collapsing, once again, into bed before beginning our three week visit home. My own bed had never felt so good!

Up Next: Genealogy and gastronomy... on wheels

Vistas & Vino

2010-06-18T06:28:00.000-07:00

We landed in Milan, after starting the European leg of our trip in Greece, and headed straight for the main train station - and on out of town. We only had Tom with us for another 12 days, and our priorities were (1) the Cinque Terre, (2) Tuscany and (3) Venice. We were headed south to Genoa, jumping off point for entering the Cinque Terre the next day. Our first night in Italy was spent in a beautiful (and inexpensive) suite in an old Italian boarding house near the train station, complemented by a fantastic meal of pasta and pizza in a simple trattoria. Good start.

In the morning, we took the train to Vernaza, the second of the Cinque Terre's five villages, and Tom and Colin settled in at a cafe with a view of the village's castle overlooking the small harbor while I scouted for a room.
We decided on a pair of rooms in private rental apartments (one for 2 nights, and another for our 3rd night) and after hoisting our bags up the many, many stone steps required to reach ANYplace in in Varnazza, we enjoyed the rest of the day clamboring around the harbor rocks, lounging on a small pocket beach, and drooling over all the local produce, cheese, wines and salumis beckoning from every shop window and spilling out onto the cobblestone streets. There are practically no cars in Varnazza, as the villages of the Cinque Terre are 5-10 minutes apart via the frequent trains connecting each of the towns. Alternatively, you can walk from one to the next via the cliffside trails – breathtaking views and heart stopping drops in 15 minutes to one and a half hour hikes each. I decided that a couple of those hikes were at the top of my “to do” list while we were there.

The next day, I started off early to hike to Monterosso, encountering a very wild dog or possibly a wolf, in the mountainous forest along the way.
Fighting off my vertigo, I oogled at the views from the trail, which hugged the cliffside, with only token wooden barriers providing a false sense of security. In fact, at the one place where my foot slipped on the slick stones that formed the trail, the lower wooden railing had fallen away – right where my fall sent my leg over the precipice! It wasn't too wet, and I didn't slide far, but it took me a good 10 minutes sitting on a rock at a wide point in the trail to slow my heart rate, regain my confidence, and continue on. I met Tom and Colin getting off the train in Monterosso, and we beelined for the Farmer's Market I had seen at the trailhead when I entered the village.
We browsed through all the yummies and came away with bread, cheese, salami, fruit and wine to enjoy as a picnic lunch along the waterfront, and visited one very bizzare church dedicated to the dead.
Tom returned to Varnazza via my hiking trail – in reverse – while Colin and I hopped the 5 minute train back to town.

Buoyed by the beauty of the previous day's hike, I took off again the following morning to hike in the opposite direction to Corniglia – again an hour and a half hike along steeps cliffs. This time, I encountered a pair of wild boar along the trail – I was apparently a magnet for the local wildlife.
Again, I headed to the train station upon arrival to intercept Tom and Colin and save them the hassle of climbing the steep steps leading up to the town where we had agreed to meet – Corniglia is the only of the Cinque Terre villages perched high on the cliffside, rather than snuggled down in the harbor. Unfortunately, this time they had arrived on an earlier train and we freaked each other out by not being where we were expected. Two hours later, we were finally reunited in Varnazza, after frantic searching on both sides, and after calming down I had to do a “mea culpa” since I was the one not at the agreed meeting spot in the town square. But seriously, when is Tom ever early?!?

Determined not to let the mix up ruin the day, we hopped the train to Manarola, the fourth village in the chain, and enjoyed a late lunch at a quintessential Italian cafe while a rainstorm scoured the town and left the cobblestones gleaming.
Then together, we all walked the trail – an easy and short one – from Manarola to Riomaggiore, the last of the villages, timing our walk with the sunset and passing through the trail zone known as Lover's Lane - where local couples affix padlocks as a symbol of their love (or lust) along the fencing installed to prevent rockslides from barricading the trail or knocking smooching couples on the noggin.

Reluctantly, we left the Cinque Terre the next morning, continuing along the rails to Pisa, where we took a picnic lunch break on the lawn at the Field of Miracles, shadowed by the Tower of Pisa, before continuing on by bus to the town of Volterra in the Tuscan hills.
We hiked from the bus station out of the Volterra's fortified castle wall to the Monastery overlooking the valley below, where we had booked a
room.
After a walking circuit around the beautiful old stone town (where, incidentally, the Italian part of the Twilight trilogy is set), we settled in for some food and wine at Vena di Vino, a hole-in-the-wall cafe/wine bar with dozens of bras hanging from the timbered ceiling and a rock cave basement boasting a home-made karaoke machine crafted from a personal computer and a dentist's chair (it's one of Rick Steve's favorite stops in Tuscany). It was love at first sip, and I knew that even though we only had a few days in Volterra, we'd be back, again, and again, and again....

.... starting with lunch the next day.
We returned to Vena di Vino after visiting the Duomo (cathedral square) and original Estruscan Arch forming one of the entryways into the village. The entire town is surrounded by the old castle wall, with an impressive Roman ampitheather and bath ruins set into the southern section. We also visited the archeological park within the walls on day three, and Tom and Colin toured the archeological museum while I stole some quiet time for myself.
Our last dinner found us back at Vena di Vino, because we couldn't bear the thought of leaving the next morning without one last visit. Each day that we went, the owner brought us more gratis snacks with our chosen wines, until on our last visit he gratised us so thoroughly that we had an entire dinner for free. Gotta love a place like that!

Early the next morning, we had to catch a bus for Florence, where we had a simple room for one night near the open market and an easy walk to the Cathedral and Leonardo da Vinci Science Museum. Then it was on to Venice – perhaps the only remaining city in the world that I can honestly say was on my “bucket list” (mostly filled by visits to wild and remote places). It was stunning.

From the moment we stepped off the train, I was smitten. Instead of the usual bustle of traffic and cars outside of the train station, there was only the quiet gliding of boats on a wide canal and occupied the corridor which in any other city would have been a noisy, horn-honking street.
We boarded the public ferry “bus”, disembarking ~50 meters from our guest house and settling in without even breaking a sweat. Our room overlooked the city's produce and fish market, with a view of the grand canal itself. We needed only to cross the bridge or follow the narrow walkways along the canals to find fantastical pockets of old Venice, tiny cafes, inviting shops (for Colin – he's the shopper in the family), and gelato stands.
We started with a visit to Piazza San Marco, fed the pigeons, and felt like we were in a classic Italian film. It only got better from there. We spent three days indulging all senses in the wonders of Venice, walking everywhere, and having some of the best meals during our entire year of travel.

Highlights included a visit to the Jewish Ghetto and – for Colin – Venetian mask browsing, in shop, after shop, after shop.... It was wonderfully romantic, but also bittersweet, as it was Tom's final few days with us before he had to return home.

On day four, we retraced our steps (and the canal) to the railway station and boarded a train back to Milan, checking into our hostel with no great expectations. Dinner that eve, however, took an unexpected twist....

We asked at the hostel desk for a recommendation for an inexpensive dinner nearby. We were directed to an Italian pizzeria a couple of blocks away. When we arrived, we were bustled to a table along the back wall by some very frantic waiters, who immediately asked us what we wanted to eat. Saying, in our rudimentary Italian, that it would be nice to see a menu first, a waiter brought us one, but shouted out suggestions before we had a chance to look it over. We had to repeat three times that we'd like a minute to think about it before they left us for two(!) whole minutes to decide. They then came back and shouted suggestions again, but this time in a more demanding tone. The waiter was certain that we couldn't read a single item on the menu and asked where we were from. When we said “The United States” he said, “Oh, I'm from Iraq! I kill you! Bang, bang!” with his fingers in the shape of a gun pointed at our heads. “Ha! Ha!”

We had stumbled into an Iraqi owned and operated Milanese pizza house, and were clearly out of our cultural element. We finally managed to ask for three items that looked good – linguine con vongole (clams), a pizza, and spaghetti bolognese. I also asked for a small pitcher of the house red wine – a failproof strategy for a decent vino throughout our travels in Italy. The wine came first. I sipped. It fizzed. Fizz??! I tried again, and it fizzed more. Uh-oh. Reluctantly, I called the waiter – who was now bustling and shouting at a half dozen other tables – and said that I was very sorry, but I didn't expect the red wine to be fizzing. Could I please have a decent bottled red instead.... um, Please?

The waiter was suddenly struck dumb – dead silence. And the evil eye. Oh, crap. He recovered himself, rolled his eyes, shouted something I'm pretty sure was offensive (about me) to his colleagues, and strode off with the fizzing pitcher in a huff. But he did bring a nice bottle of red wine, and miraculously, a friendly attitude with him when he returned. And a free platter of flatbread. And a few moments later, the largest platters of food I'd had ever seen. The vongole could easily have feed four, the pizza took up an entire table, and the bolognese would feed our whole family for dinner and lunch the next day. Instead of cold-shouldering us for the rest of the meal, he kept coming back to our table for chit-chat, back-slaps, and an offer of a job in the kitchen for Colin.

The capper came when we stuffed all we could of the feast on the table into our bellies, and quietly asked the waiter if it would be alright if the stupid Americans took some of the leftovers with them, though we know its not usually done in Italy. We could see take-away pizza boxes stacked up in the kitchen, so thought it was worth a try. “No problem!” he said. He arrived at the table with boxes, and prepared to take the whole shebang into the kitchen with him. Not wanting to be any trouble, and generally preferring to box up my leftovers myself, I told him to just leave the boxes and I'd take care of it. With a little hesitation, he did so, and I – stupid American – proceeded to box up our leftovers with the blessing of the restaurant staff.

We hadn't asked the neighboring tables, though. Through my entire proceeding, the woman seated next to me stared vehemently with shock and disapproval. Conversation stopped. Eyes were averted. I finished, we left an inappropriately large tip, and the three of us shuffled out with our hands full of boxes. No regrets, though: after taking Tom to the train station first thing in the morning, Colin and I got both breakfast and lunch out of our take. And we returned for dinner again the next evening – sharing just one pizza and a salad. We still couldn't finish it all, and once again took the remains for our morning breakfast, heads held high.

Prepared for several days of low spirits after saying goodbye to Tom for the next three months, we aimed next for a quiet place to lay low, landing at a small rooming house above a cafe in Varenna on Lake Como - a short train trip out of Milan. But without Tom, our travels had lost a bit of joie de vivre, and so as not to spoil a perfectly good blog entry, we'll pick up again in the next installment....

Up Next: “Travel fatigue in paradise.”

Roadtripping with Zeus and Aphrodite

2010-05-19T14:26:00.000-07:00

Leaving Egypt behind, we flew to Greece – as close to northern Africa as San Francisco is to Seattle – passing directly over Santorini Island (where we would be in a week).
Landing in Athens, we hopped onto the Metro and emerged at the Acropolis – a beautiful, ruined mass of granite and marble pillars on a steep slope overlooking the plaka – Athens' old town – and our hotel, aptly named “Acropolis View.” Mom and son duo Susan and Liam (my and Colin's good buddies from Seattle) would be arriving a few hours behind us for a two week vacation to celebrate her 50th birthday.
In the meantime, we set out to explore the neighborhood and find a place for lunch. The hotel recommended a taverna near the New Archeaological Museum, which had great people watching from its outdoor cafe tables strewn along a busy cobblestone pedestrian street, but the food was a bust (fortunately, it turned out to be our only meal in Greece to merit that complaint). Wandering back to our hotel along the base of the Acropolis, we found Susan and Liam right on schedule, but with an unfortunate tale of a taxi rip-off (at 5X the going rate) to kick off their trip. We were getting all the bad stuff out of the way on Day 1, so we could all enjoy the rest of our visit!
Waking in the morning, we wandered through the neighborhood, settled at a cafe table (for coffee and gelato) next door to the disappointing lunch cafe of the day before, and waited for George – Susan's ex-husband's college buddy - who had offered to help us get oriented to Athens and Greece. He arrived with a sack of goodies, including a local cell phone, GPS unit for our rental car, and handful of maps to help guide us on our way.

Together, we wandered the back alleys of the old town, explored the Sunday flea market, passed dozens of partially-excavated ruins (the old city is dotted with them) and had a lovely lunch on a view terrace tucked into a steep and narrow sidestreet – the first of many stellar Greek meals to come!

In the morning, Susan and the kids and I scrambled up the hill to the Acropolis to tour the Parthenon and assorted temples before wandering down the street to pick up our rental car for the next week. We were headed to Delphi and the Peleponese Penninsula for Susan's 50th, and to immerse the boys in the places that inspired the tales of Homer's Odyssey, which they had been reading for the past few months. After a two hour delay, we ditched the agency (Hertz) where we had originally booked our car (they wanted to give us a different car from the one ordered, and one too small to actually carry our luggage), grabbed a substitute from a neighboring competitor, and finally hit the road.
Stopping in a cozy fantasy-themed coffee house along the way, we made it to Galaxidi as the full moon rose over the neighboring bay and snuggled into our cozy Bed and Breakfast in a beautiful old villa, feasting the next morning on the hostesses homemade jams, chutneys, pastries, eggs and bacon in the morning – a perfect start to the big '5-0' birth-day itself.

Somewhere around the lazy hour of noon, after a moms' walk around Galaxidi harbor, we headed back up the mountain road we had descended the eve before, climbing to the current town and ancient ruins of Delphi. We stocked up on picnic supplies in town, tasting and selecting a mix of cheeses, salamis, bread, cured fish, fruit, veggies and vino, before spending the afternoon wandering around the ancient city.

In Greek mythology, Delphi is considered to be the center of the world, where heaven and earth meet. It was also the home of the Delphic “oracle” - a priestess channeling the god Apollo, who thousands pilgramaged to visit to seek advice. Though the famous ampitheater at the site was closed due to falling rocks, the rest of the site was intriguing and we enjoyed stunning views over the slopes of Mount Parnasus and down to the sparkling blue of the Corinthian Gulf.

For the next several days, we made our way around the Peleponese Peninsula, visiting Olympia and the site of the first Olympic games (incredible! Colin and Liam ran the length of the games field – a pretty cool experience, especially since Colin's great-grandfather won a gold medal in the 1936 Olympics).
We also visited Pylos, Sparta and the Mani Peninsula.

My personal favorite was Mystras – the ruins of a castle outside of Sparta – built upon an impossibly steep mountain, designed to ensure that it was an impenetrable fortress. We were also fortunate to see the Good Friday ceremony while overnighting in Kardamili – a bizarre event involving fireworks, a religious procession, and the burning of a hanging-man effigy by the seawall after dark (when the burning wasn't progressing fast enough, the crowd dowsed the figure in fuel, causing the top to burn so quickly that the head fell off and rolled into the sea – a very bizarre sight).

We returned to Athens at the end of the week to meet Tom - arriving from home on Easter Sunday. Since noone was traveling that day in Greece, we made record time driving back to the city and had no trouble finding him when we disembarked the metro at Syntagma Square, in the heart of the Plaka. We caught the day's only ferry to Santorini Island, arriving after midnight and heading straight to bed in Thira, where we would spend the next week.
Santorini is best described in photos, and since I am soooo far behind on this blog, I am going to let them speak for themselves.....

Suffice it to say, we hiked, ate, explored, ate, watched sunsets, ate, and chilled out, big time. Magical place.

We returned to Athens a day before Susan and Liam's departure, with a vague idea of how we would move on to Italy. In the end, we spent a few more lovely days exploring Athens with Tom, then flew to Milan for the start of our Italy adventure.

Up Next: Italy: Vistas & Vino

Of Pyramids and Pharaohs

2010-04-25T03:59:00.001-07:00

We arrived in Egypt after a stop in Sudan, where more than half the passengers who had boarded in Nairobi got off – they were mostly aid workers doing a stint in Africa's hardest nut to crack. Despite the fact that we didn't have to even get off the plane if we weren't staying, I still felt a bit uneasy until we closed up the doors and took off again – I imagined a sudden mechanical failure and cancellation of the rest of the flight.... how do you get a transit visa for a country with no functional government?
We touched down in Cairo about an hour later, and were met by a representative and driver for GAP Adventures – Egypt was the one place where I had booked us into an organized tour; never having done one before, I wasn't sure what to expect. I had to admit that it was nice to have a car waiting at the airport, not to mention being whisked off to a five star hotel in the center of Cairo.
Cairo
We had a large suite in a hotel that was like a city unto itself – three restaurants, two pools, shops, gym, spa, nightclub and casino. We had arrived a day early, and our group wasn't scheduled to meet until the following evening. I am embarrassed to admit (though Colin, as instigator, was beside himself with joy) that after a delicious night's sleep in our lux suite, we didn't leave the hotel grounds the whole following day. After six months of independent budget travel through Asia, India and Kenya, we apparently had a lot of R&R to catch up on! At the end of the day, we met our guide, along with the rest of our group, in the hotel lobby – as an Egypt “Family Tour” the group included quite a few kids: three boys and three girls (besides Colin), all between the ages of 9 and 16. Colin was set! Our guide, Magdalene, gave us the run-down for the next two weeks, then left us to scout out our dinner and prepare for our departure the following morning.

Our first full day of touring was stellar! To kick things off, we headed straight for the Giza Pyramids – a trio of mind-bogglingly huge monuments to the pharaohs once entombed within, sitting right on the outskirts of modern-day Cairo
(they were once, apparently, far off in the desert, but the expansion of Cairo over the years has them now just a stone's throw from the KFC across the street).
At the foot of the rise the pyramids occupy sits the Sphinx – quintessential symbol of all things Egyptian. We had a couple of hours to wander around on our own (this was not a hit-and-run style tour, thank goodness!) and enjoyed watching the camel-hawkers as much as marveling at the pyramids as we scouted it all out. We entered one of the pyramids that was open to visitors, crouching down to walk through the stone tunnel stretching deep into the center of the structure, sloping down, then back up again to emerge in a small room once hosting the sarcophagus and the Pharaoh's treasures. The air in the center was thin and stifling – we had to breath slowly and shallowly as we realized how little oxygen gets into the middle of a pyramid. The contrast between the cramped and claustrophobic space inside the tomb and the enormity of the external structure made the grandeur of the pyramids even more striking.
It was also the first inclination (of many to come) of the egos of the pharaohs who ordered them built! Each pyramid was constructed of tens of thousands of enormous rectangular stone blocks, the smallest of which weigh ~2 ½ tons. It was an incredible sight, and a great introduction to Egypt.
We also had a not-so-stellar moment, when Colin ran off to find a bathroom and disappeared into a small alley between an office building and a sand heap – when I followed his path, he was nowhere to be seen. I climbed the sand heap and yelled for him at the top of my voice, but got no response. I ran around another building which housed the exit of a museum and started to run inside when I was stopped by a guard. The guard and two onlookers sitting outside told me a boy matching Colin's description had gone inside to use the bathroom. Calming down, I sat outside and waited... and waited, and waited. As I became more agitated, they kept assuring me he was inside, but the guard wouldn't let me go look. Finally, Colin emerged, and I dragged him off for a lecture on not disappearing among pyramids in strange countries. As we walked back through the alley I had followed him through, the guard approached us from behind. There was noone else in the alley, the guard was armed, and he had his hand out, demanding “baksheesh” for 'finding' my son. !!!! I whirled on Colin once again, with steam coming out of my ears, and must have looked more funny than menacing, because I could see the guard starting to laugh out of the corner of my eye. Ignoring him, and his outstretched hand, I tightened my grip on Colin and marched out the other end of the alley, leaving the laughing (and empty-handed) guard behind us. I then collapsed on a rock and let all the fear and outrage of the previous half hour drain from me before I could stand and walk again. I would pay a guard “baksheesh” before leaving Egypt, but not yet, and not for blocking me from finding my son!
The afternoon had more treats in store for us –
we stopped at a papyrus shop and perfumery, both of which came with demonstrations and (I'm sure) commissions for our guide, but the highlight was a visit to Cairo's National Museum. Outdated and cramped, the National Museum is still an impressive treasure, containing whole tombs (typically two layers of sarcophagi housed within three “coffins” of increasing size – including one on display standing 10+ feet high and 20 feet long and gilded in gold). The treasures of Tutankamen's tomb (one of the only not raided by thieves before being discovered) are housed there, along with remnants of countless archaeological sites throughout Egypt. The contents of the museum are overwhelming, with many of the treasures stacked unlabeled in cases reaching from floor to ceiling. The construction of a new National Museum with about triple the capacity is currently underway to properly organize and display the museum's contents.

That evening, we boarded the overnight train to Aswan, falling asleep to the swaying of the train and waking to views of the Nile and mud houses passing by the windows as we sipped our morning coffee.
The middle part of the day, after checking in to another great hotel and when the heat was at its peak, I gave over to Colin's desire to stay tethered to the outdoor pool with a view of the Nile. Most of the other kids had the same notion, so after months of having minimal playtime with other kids, Colin was in 7th heaven. As the tour progressed, there would be at least a couple of hours like this every day.
Aswan

We finally gathered ourselves together around 3:00 and boarded a boat with our group to head off for a camel tour through the desert on the other side of the river (Aswan's “West Bank” - every Egyptian Nile town has one). Unfortunately, the wind was whipping – specifically into Colin's eyes: just as we were disembarking, a torrent of sand flew into his face, blinding him and scratching his eyes horribly. At the same time, the dry air took its toll and Colin's nose erupted in a gush of blood that wouldn't stop. We had to sit out the Camel ride, but enjoyed a quiet and scenic Nile cruise with the boat to ourselves while the captain floated downriver to pick up the riders at the end of their tour.

The entire group was then transported in the back of two pickup trucks up into the hills for dinner at a homestay with a Nubian family. We sat around a long table on the floor, enjoying hibiscus tea and a buffet of traditional dishes as the sun began to set over the desert hills – it was the most unusual sunset I can ever remember seeing: a stark white setting sun, while the sky gradually darkened without any color, but with the most incredible quality of light.
We bounced back down the road in the pickups after dinner, motored back across the river, and were deposited back at the hotel to wind down and rest up for the next day's adventures.
Day two in Aswan, we were left to do as we pleased.

Colin and I got up and headed to explore the souk (market), an easy couple of blocks from our hotel. We spent several hours perusing the local crafts, spices, and food shops, scoping out prices and honing our bargaining skills - “first” prices were often 10x higher than a reasonable final price, even with the ubiquitous “tourist tax” taken into account. We bumped into others from our group on and off throughout the morning, and gathered with a group of them for a simple lunch at a rotisserie that was swarmed with kids on lunch break from the local school – it was cheap, delicious, and amusing, as many of the Egyptian girls took a particular interest in Vic, the 10 year old daughter of Syzan, a single mom from Canada doing the trip with her son (Jack, 14) and daughter. Post-lunch afternoon was given over to the hotel's pool again, until early evening when Magdalene took us all back to the market for a bit of a guided tour, and introduction to the souk's best spice shop. The rest of the group headed off to an evening light show at a nearby temple, to be followed by a few hours of sleep before a 3 a.m. wake up call to go to a more distant temple in the desert, requiring a convoy escort. Colin and I decided to forego both, in favor of some more solo time in the market (I caved and bought a pair of silver earrings with a traditional Nubian design) and a quiet evening – sleeping, instead of sitting in a bus caravan through the desert.

Early in the morning, we took in the Temple of Philae, where the previous night's light show had been, while the rest of the group was driving back from their excursion.

The temple sat on a small, rocky island only accessible by boat, and was gorgeous in the morning light. We were able to wander freely through the grounds, admiring the relief carvings on the walls and the enormous statues honoring the gods.
Our favorite was a small, dwarf-like god – depicted playing music with a group of musicians in a closed-off part of one of the lesser temples on the grounds. A sign prohibiting access to the temple interior due to restoration work was summarily dismissed by a guard who signaled to Colin that he should follow the guard inside to see the carvings. I followed behind and dutifully shook the guard's hand – with a 10-pound note (~$2) – to thank him as we left: I was learning that “baksheesh” was an accepted way of life here. In fact, I suspected that the “no access” sign may have been falsely posted just to ensure some “tips” for the guards on duty that day.....
Luxor
Once everyone was back at the hotel that afternoon, we piled into a van for the drive to Luxor, our next destination.
Once again, our hotel sat on the banks of the Nile, with extensive landscaped gardens, two outdoor pools, and a lovely little sheesha bar (light, flavored tobacco smoked in colorful water pipes), decked out with tapestries and cushioned benches hanging over the riverbank. We arrived too late for the kids to inaugurate the new pools, so they spent the evening playing President (a card game) – the new pasttime of choice everytime they had 5 minutes to plop down on the ground while waiting for a something to happen.
The first morning in Luxor brought fantastic delights!

We were picked up by a cushion-bedecked long boat at our hotel's breakwater and crossed the Nile to the West Bank, where we mounted 16 donkeys for the hour-plus journey to the entrance of the Valley of the Kings (no photos allowed). The Valley of the Kings is where generations of pharaohs built their tombs: a replacement for the ostentatiousness of the pyramids - which screamed out “Here I am!” - the tombs here were constructed underground, where they'd (theoretically) be less of a beacon for grave-robbers seeking to steal the treasures the Pharaohs buried to take with them into the afterlife. Over time, most of the underground tombs were raided as well, but a couple did survive, including the tomb of 14-year old Tutankhamen, a minor pharaoh now known the world over because the treasures of his tomb - buried slightly beneath another, larger one that was stripped of its contents - was still intact. The treasures of Tutankhamen's tomb now sit in Cairo's National Museum, but his mummy remains in his tomb in the Valley of the Kings (thanks to an overzealous archaeologist who partially unwrapped him to satisfy his curiously upon discovering it, causing damage that has forced Egypt to leave the mummy in place in his tomb – lucky Tutankhamen! He's the only one who hasn't been removed from his chosen place of burial). We entered several of the tombs, marveling at the construction of the complex and the intricate carvings and paintings remaining on the walls – after 2,000+ years, the colors are still vibrant and give a hint of the adornment of the tombs when they were built for their future occupants (pharaohs had their tombs constructed while they were still alive – if they procrastinated and their tombs were unfinished when they died, they stayed that way forever, and the pharaoh was buried in an unfinished – a.k.a substandard – tomb).
Following the Valley of the Kings, we drove to the nearby Hapshetsut's Temple – Egypt's first female pharaoh... and literal Drag King.
In order to gain acceptance as a female ruler, Hapshetsut went to great lengths, including marrying her brother (to “borrow” his maleness in an effort to legitimize her rule) and having all of her likenesses – statues, paintings, etc. - represent her with a beard and in men's clothing.
The temple itself is in an unexpectedly modern style, and also distinguished by the fact that most of the images of Hapshetsut herself are “erased” - rough, chipped stone shows the outlines of where she was, but were all defaced by her son after her death. She continued to rule after her husband's death in lieu of handing the reins over to her then young son – apparently, by the time she died, he had some serious “mommy issues.”
We headed back across the river to the hotel again for the requisite daily pool time before heading out again for a night on the town of Luxor.

Climbing into horse-drawn carriages, we clip-clopped down the waterfront road for a visit to the Mummification Museum, catching the sunset along the way. The horses then took us for an evening ride through the city, crossing over the Avenue of the Sphinxes, around the Luxor Temple, and into the Old Town before dropping us at a lovely traditional restaurant that our guide had selected for dinner.
We sat at outdoor tables in a quiet alley and feasted on the kind of Egyptian food that our hotels – nice, but tourist oriented as they were – could not provide for us. Delicious! We could glimpse the local souk stretching off into the alleys near our restaurant, but were too tired and satiated by the time we finished dinner to take it all in. Colin and I decided we would return in the morning....
(zzzzzzzzzzzz interlude)

...and explore all the old and colorful booths and alleys. Colin spent the morning in hard-core bargaining mode. He'd decided on a couple of things that he really wanted to take home as his mementos of Egypt and was on a mission. Finally – after three hours of scoping and eventually narrowing his choice down to two competing shop owners – he bought himself an alabaster candle lamp. Proud of the price he had negotiated, and immensely pleased with his purchase, we headed off to meet Syzan, Jack and Vic for lunch. After rejecting a restaurant that had been recommended by a friend (we had a disappointing appetizer while waiting for Syzan), we squeezed into a small hole-in-the-wall behind an open grill just outside the souk and munched on Egyptian falafal, grilled sausage, and french fries (ubiquitous in Egypt – even at our traditional Nubian village dinner!).

The afternoon was given over to poolside lounging, and for Syzan and I, an after-dark visit to the sheesha bar to sample apple-flavored tobacco, smoked through an ornate water pipe while watching dhows sail by on the Nile. Perfect.

Our final morning in Luxor, I rose early and left Colin sleeping in the hotel room while I snuck off to the Temple of Karnak – lauded as a sight on par with the pyramids. It did not disappoint.
Connected to the smaller Temple of Luxor by the Avenue of the Sphinxes (which is still being excavated and renovated), the Temple of Karnak was built by Pharaoh Ramses II (and Luxor for his wife) in the 1300s B.C.
Covering many acres and including several additions constructed by subsequent rulers over a period of many centuries, the most impressive part of the temple is the Hypostyle Hall - a walled courtyard filled with 134 columns, up to 60 feet high and nearly 10 feet around, with ornate tops representing papyrus plants (the whole installation was meant to mimic an enormous papyrus forest). Standing in the midst of it and looking up, I had the sensation of being completely overwhelmed by the intensity of it, in a way the open desert of the pyramids obscured (the pyramids exist in a scale that matches their grandeur, while the closed in feel of the hall made the heft and bulk of its column/forest that much more impressive).
Looking up also afforded a view of the underside of the stone arches linking some of the columns – the painted designs there had been protected from the sun and rain by their positioning underneath the arches, so were still vibrant even from a distance of 70 feet and after more than 3,000 years.
After wandering through the rest of the temple grounds, I returned to the hotel in time to wake Colin and rejoin our group for the next leg of our trip – a five hour drive through the Sahara Desert to the beach resort town of Hurgada, on the Red Sea.
Hurgada
We had essentially nothing planned for our three days in Hurgada – after a whirlwind week and a half touring through Egypt, GAP Adventures had decided to just leave us alone. Everyone decided they hadn't had quite enough, though, so asked Magdalene to arrange a snorkeling trip for the following day. Part of the decision was in response to the strange starkness of the town itself – like Cancun, it had been plopped down (with a lot of assistance from concrete) in a place where previously nothing but desert met nothing but water. Half the buildings in town were unfinished – the result of a building boom interrupted by the global financial meltdown. The hotel's four restaurants (breakfast and dinner were included), beach cove, swimming pool, nightclub, spa, and assortment of shops was designed to encourage guests to stay within its walls, but most of us weren't so much that type. The resort's mostly Russian package-tourists also encouraged us to flee at every opportunity – they took cha-cha dance lessons by the pool, sent their children to the nightly “mini-disco” to ring-around-the-rosie, piled huge plates of roast beef and pastries on their tables at the restaurants' buffets, then drank themselves silly in the hotel's lobby bar(s). A day out snorkeling was just what the doctor ordered – an antidote to the sloth threatening to engulf the end of our trip.

The Red Sea was choppy and cold the day we set out, motoring past the offshore islands, but a bright crystalline blue that made up for any discomfort. The kids couldn't have cared less about the waves and the temperature – they dove in and chased the gorgeous tropical fish schooling around each of the three reefs we stopped at.

I made it through two of the three before the chill in my bones made me use the excuse of wanting to photograph everybody else in the water to sit out the final splash-fest. The fish were fantastic, though much of the reef looked to be struggling to hang on (apparently the last reef was more healthy and vibrant than the others). Colin went with the snorkel guide on the last swim since I stayed on board, and had a blast following him down on every free dive, checking out deeper coral and scaring the shyer fish out of their hiding places. It was a fantastic day, but didn't substitute for the daily pool swim – the kids headed straight there as soon as we got back! While they splashed, I headed for a local coffee house with Magdalene and a couple of the other parents (Canadians Janice and Greg – a physiotherapist and geologist). Surrounded by Egyptians smoking sheesha, we enjoyed Egyptian coffee (same as Turkish – a thick layer of coffee grounds in the bottom of the cup, meant to be drunk black and sweet) and marveled at the layered three-flavor fruit smoothie topped with fresh kiwi and pineapple that Greg ordered. We determined we had an ethical obligation to return with our kids to taste one of those concoctions before we could leave Hurgada.
The final day in Hurgada, we finally gave in to the sloth. We lounged by the pool, dipped our feet in the ocean, and overindulged at the buffets, but did manage to get out long enough to return to the coffee house and fulfill our parental obligations to treat our children to ambrosiacal fruit smoothies.
Cairo Redux
The end of the trip began to loom as we boarded a small plane the next morning for our return to Cairo, but we still had one more day of touring Cairo to look forward to before we were done. Thoroughly enjoying a great meal at the highly recommended yet economical Felfela in Cairo, we headed to bed knowing that the next day would be our last in Egypt. In addition, Cairo had become cold enough in our absence to make swimming in the hotel pool unappealing even to the kids (!)
We woke and were whisked off by Magdalene to the “Pharonic Village,” a Colonial Jamestown-style reproduction of Egyptian towns and life in Pharonic times. This was the first and only misstep of the entire tour – aside from the slightly interesting narrated boat tour that brought us to the village itself, and one fairly well executed reproduction of the inside of Tutankhamen's tomb as it was originally found, it was a loooong three hours trapped in a 3rd-rate touristic disaster. Fortunately, the day was saved by the afternoon visit to Khan-El-Khalili, Cairo's oldest street market, still going strong in the narrow twisting lanes of the old town.

We wandered for a couple of hours, getting lost in the maze of lanes and admiring stalls of silverwork and gemstones, before it was time to find the square where we'd been left off (easier said than done!) - at the last minute, I once again caved and bought a small blue-glass and metal sheesha pipe (completely impractical!) in a padded carrying case (giving me hope of actually getting it home safely) for $4.
We finished off our Egypt excursion with an unabashed tourist dinner cruise on the Nile, to celebrate Vic's birthday.
Colin danced his touchas off to live traditional music (he had an interesting interpretation of the rythym, but the musicians seemed indulgent enough),
Jack thoroughly enjoyed the belly dancer, Vic

was thrilled with the whirling dervishes, and we all enjoyed the lights of Cairo from the upper deck. Even the food wasn't bad.

When we got back, Colin and I returned to our upgraded top-floor view suite (our partying neighbors
the night before had set off the hotel fire alarm three times in the middle of the night - I wasn't up for a repeat performance and the hotel manager was trying to keep me from taking the matter into my own hands) and Colin made a pearl and bead bracelet for Vic as a departing/birthday gift. We delivered it before saying goodnight - and goodbye - to her and Jack and Syzan – they had a 3 a.m. flight, so would be leaving in the middle of the night. We had the relative luxury of sleeping in until 6 a.m. before rising and heading to the airport. The next leg of our trip would take us to Greece, where my good friend Susan and her son - Colin's buddy Liam - would be meeting us to celebrate Susan's 50th birthday....
but that's another chapter!

Next up: Road tripping with Zeus and Aphrodite

Colin's Wildlife Haiku

2010-04-11T02:36:00.000-07:00

Graceful, bulky beast;
elephant slowly loping
across the grasslands.

and other poetry...

Hartebeeste posing,
posing on a mound.
Hartebeeste with horns,
twisted spiral horns.
Hartebeeste with beauty,
strong graceful beauty.

Kenya Part 2 – Mama Lucy & Mohammad's Birthday

2010-04-11T00:52:00.001-07:00

We flew from Nairobi to Malindi, a mid-sized coastal town renowned as an Italian resort destination, and apparently providing a vacation spot for money-laundering Italian expats with mafia connections.

It is also home to “Mama Lucy” and her 30 charges – orphaned children ranging in age from one to seventeen, living together in the simple but wonderful Heart Children's Home.
Mama Lucy (aka Nuru Said Mohammad) met us at the airport with the orphanage's “public relations” volunteer, who with her four year old daughter spends every weekday afternoon at the orphanage, but was on her way to Nairobi the next day to check in on her business and her clients – she is one of Nairobi's (Kenya's?) only two sex therapists, and a hoot to talk to. Her daughter would stay behind in the care of Mama Lucy for the five days she'd be gone, and unfortunately we'd be leaving just hours before her return. The following morning we were scheduled to meet Cocky, the director of the small volunteer placement organization that matched us with Heart Children's Home. Until then, we settled into our small apartment off the back courtyard of the orphanage and began to get to know the kids.
Within minutes, Colin was deep into the game of soccer raging in the dustbowl that is the side yard – Moses, age 13, was the best soccer player of the bunch and quickly became Colin's new best friend.
He was an amazingly talented athlete, a caring big brother to the younger kids, and a warm and friendly boy who seemed mature beyond his years. All of the kids, in fact, displayed the most incredible caring for each other, helpfulness in all domestic chores, and responsibility for themselves and their (very) few belongings. I couldn't help but compare them to the kids we know and have at home – how much easier parenting would be if all kids behaved this way! Considering the difficulties these kids had been through in their lives – the types of stories that are behind so much of the delinquent and criminal behavior among young people in the U.S. - it struck me as even more amazing.

Many of the children had lost their parents to HIV/AIDs; some had been abused or neglected by their relatives before arriving at Heart; and none of them had anything more than a notebook, some shared clothes, and their bedsheets to count as their personal belongings. The home had one soccer ball, on its last legs, a few additional balls made of bound-together plastic bags, and a few puzzles as their entire “toy” stock for the 24 resident children (the remaining six were at various boarding schools, coming home only on holidays). They shared five bedrooms in the common house, which also housed the office, the preschool, and the kitchen. Mama Lucy slept in a back room in the adjacent landlord's house, and the small apartment off the back was reserved for visiting donors, volunteers and other guests, as well as serving as a reception room and an overflow kitchen area. Ugali, cabbage and beans serve as the home's staple fare, and the kids walk 12 km on their two roundtrips to school and back each day.

When we first arrived, trying to help “around the house” was a loosing battle, so we laid low and assessed the situation, trying to figure out where we could fit in and be of some help. While meeting the kids and wandering around, we sussed out what needed doing, and where we could provide some value. When Cocky arrived the next morning, we asked if we could make dinner for the kids and crew one night, and suggested taking the whole group for a field trip to a place of their choosing over the weekend. Both suggestions were enthusiastically received, so we headed out for the local markets and left Mama Lucy to find out where the kids wanted to go and to set up transportation. Colin also discovered that they had been trying to create an online presence, and hadn't yet figured out how to create a “group” page for the orphanage on Facebook, so he had his work cut out for him. Over the next few days he created a Heart Children's Home group page on Facebook and trained Mama Lucy and Steve, the oldest boy, on how to use it, upload photos and develop their network of “friends.”
It was a huge success, and Steve became an instant Facebook addict. ;-)

Over the next few days, I developed blisters hand washing laundry, we cooked up spaghetti bolongese to feed 30, and generally pitched in here and there washing dishes and looking after the younger children while the older ones were off at school.
Noone could resist taking turns entertaining Lydia, the youngest (age 1), who compelled me to sing “Lydia, oh Lydia, oh have you seen Lydia; Lydia the tattooed lady!?” (sung a la Michael Jeter, the homeless cabaret singer in “The Fisher King”) over and over again. We capped off our visit with the promised field trip - the kids hadn't been anywhere except home, school and church since last summer, so were beside themselves with excitement.
Filling two matatus with children and chaperones we headed off to Gede – the ruins of an ancient Swahili village –

and then to the beach, where we picnicked and played in the surf till the late afternoon.
The next morning, Mercy – a brilliant 13 year old Masai girl who had lived at the home for just over a year – asked to speak privately with us. We had decided to sponsor one of the children, and asked Mama Lucy to decide how best to use the contribution. She had decided that we should send Mercy to a private school – she had tested at the top of her class at the local government school since arriving at the home and needed a more challenging education that would open up more opportunities for her. Mercy hoped that we could increase our contribution so that she could attend as a boarding school student, allowing her to escape the distractions of so many children in so small a space at the orphanage in order to focus more on her studies. We sympathized with her request, but explained that we were contributing the most that we could and that if we were able to raise more funds at home we would once again leave it to Mama Lucy to decide how it should best be spent. We hope to be able to continue to cover her tuition for the five or so years until she completes high school, so if anyone is interested in contributing or sponsoring another of the home's children, be sure to let us know!
We'll also be sending periodic care packages of soccer balls and children's clothing, so feel free to drop your seconds off at our place. :-)
Our five days at Heart Children's Home sped past, and it was suddenly time to head back to the small airport a few minutes down the road and catch our flight to Lamu, a small island off the coast, in time for the annual celebration of Mohammad's birthday – a weeklong festival marked by donkey and dhow (sailboat) races, bao game tournaments (a complex variation on mancala), and music and arts exhibitions.

Arriving by prop plane across the channel from the island of Lamu, Colin and I walked our bags along a short path through the trees and then out a long dock to the waiting boats serving as informal ferries to Lamu town, the hub of the island. Lamu boasts all of two cars – one for the “chief” and one serving as the donkey ambulance. The rest of the island's transportation is by donkey (thus the need for the ambulance), bicycle, boat and foot.
The town's winding lanes are too narrow for anything wider than a donkey cart, restricting the two existing vehicles to the seafront road, which also served as the donkey race track for the Maulindi (aka Mohammad's Birthday) Festival. We arrived the day before the official start of the festival, without a reservation for a room, but since that was 24 hours earlier than most Kenyans' make plans, we had no problem taking our pick. By the next night, the town was full and rooms were getting scarce, and by the day of the donkey and dhow races, the squeeze was on. We picked a room in a private home owned by a Lamu native, now living in Amsterdam, who was visiting home for the holiday. He was one of Lamu's many easygoing rasta men, who incongruously live side-by-side with the island's strict Muslim majority without any obvious rancor.
Colin demonstrated a knack for making friends with most of the rastas in town, learning to play several variations of the bao game from them, and exploring their art galleries and other local haunts. He also picked a silversmith in town to set a stone (containing raw ruby and zoozite) that he had found in India into a ring for him, which he says I can wear until he grows into it. ;-)
Dana – the Czech we had met in the Mara (see Kenya Part 1) arrived on Lamu the same day we did, and joined us for a visit to Shella Beach the next day. We hired a skiff to ferry us to the beach and walked far enough to leave most of the other sun worshippers behind us.

We plopped down in view of a pair of camels lounging by the sea and splashed into the bathtub temperature water. After Colin had had his fill of surf and sand, we wandered down to the camels and found their owners – Colin negotiated a price for a ride and enjoyed a leisurely saunter down the beach on the back one of the quirky creatures.

Most of the rest of our visit to Lamu involved watching donkeys and dhows race (respectively) along or offshore of the seafront, and wandering the charming narrow lanes while marveling at the juxtaposition of a woman in a full black burka passing a Masai man in a short red toga while sauntering past talking with one of Colin's newfound rasta buddies.

Lamu is interesting.

We had one last weekend to enjoy in Nairobi after leaving Lamu, but only had one night with Candace and Bob before they left for the weekend to pick up two more Methow neighbors from their Mt. Kenya climb, so we headed for the home of a “friend” we'd never met: Flora Okuku was an old graduate school buddy of my mother's neighbor Scott. He had connected us through Facebook months earlier, and we'd written back-and-forth/off-and-on during our travels. She had invited us to come spend the weekend with her and her family – husband, son and daughter (her kids were a little younger than Colin, but still in peer-to-peer playing range). What a great connection! Flora is funny, irreverent, and completely comfortable to be around. She was born in Kenya, went to graduate school (graphic design) in New Orleans, moved to Zimbabwe when she was first married, and had been back in Kenya for a year when we arrived.
She had a beautiful old colonial home along a green belt, with plenty of space and a lovely lawn for picnicking and sunning ourselves while the kids all played outside.
They let us cook for them (not one of our most stellar efforts at pasta with unfamiliar ingredients, but the kids seemed to love it), were hugely enthusiastic about the bottle of red wine I shyly brought out (the majority of people in the last three countries Id been in had been fairly judgmental about alcohol of any kind), and made us a couple of lovely meals of Kenyan traditional dishes that we ate on the floor of their living room – including a meal featuring fried ants (Colin was thrilled!).
It was just like being at home, but not! Perfect. We adored their company, their hospitality, and the comfort of being at someone's home, if not our own, though they made it feel as though it was (thanks Flora!). On our last day, they dropped us at the local mall to see the morning screening of The Lightning Thief at the cinema before heading off to the airport – our next stop was Cairo, to begin a two-week tour of Egypt (my first organized tour – ever!). But that's the next installment.....

Up Next: Of Pharoahs and Pyramids

Kenya Part 1 – Lions and Cheetahs and Leopards, Oh My!

2010-04-07T22:55:00.000-07:00

We arrived in Kenya at 7 a.m. following a 4 a.m. flight out of Mumbai, India. We had friends in Nairobi – neighbors of our camping cabin in the Methow Valley – who had arranged for a car to meet our plane and transport us to their home in a U.S. Embassy-owned house on the outskirts of the city. Candace and Bob both work for U.S. AID (Agency for International Development) and had already left for the day when we arrived, so we were let in by the housekeeper and immediately fell asleep until early afternoon. As we drove out of the airport, an accacia-dotted savanna stretched off to our left and brought tears to my eyes – it had been 25 years since I'd been in Kenya studying wildlife management for a semester in college and the view of the savanna again took me by surprise and overwhelmed me. I had finally made it back.
We spent the weekend enjoying Candace and Bob's hospitality, catching up on our cooking, and setting up our logistics for the following three weeks in Kenya. Candace and Bob also took us about 45 minutes south of Nairobi to the game ranch I lived on in college – it was a three month School for Field Studies program in Wildlife Ecology and Management, and we lived and studied on the Hopcraft Ranch, surrounded by herds of gazelles, wildebeest and giraffes on a daily basis.
It was all still there, but now as a collection of cabins for rent where our tents had been and a restaurant where our we had had our communal kitchen and classroom. It was a very cool and nostalgic feeling to be back, and we enjoyed a wildlife-filled drive around the ranch after finishing our lunch at the open air restaurant among the accacia trees.
On Monday morning, we were picked up by our driver for our next six days on safari – order of business: Masai Mara National Park, Lake Nakuru National Park, Lake Naivasha National Park and Crater Lake Wildlife Sanctuary.
We headed out of town and about an hour later arrived at the rim of the Rift Valley, pulling over to look out over the beautiful, stark scenery. We stopped again in Narok for a local lunch of ugali (similar to a sticky polenta) and beef stew, before completing the last leg of the five hour drive by heading south into the Mara along an unpaved track through fields of cattle, gazelle and zebra, before finally arriving at the park's southeastern gate.

Our camp was just outside of the gate, overlooking the small outpost at the entrance – a Maasai town of small rickety shops, cattle enclosures, and a traditional village dependent on the tourist trade. At every swing through the outpost, our jeep would be swarmed by middle-aged and elderly women selling beaded jewelery – beautiful, ornamental decoration ubiquitous among the Maasai, but a bit overwhelming when hoisted within inches of your nose by two dozen pairs of hands backed by a babble of voices quoting prices and entreaties. We waited until the last day to actually select a couple of pieces, so as not to encourage any more of a circus than the standard fare on our several passes through the gate.
When we arrived at camp, we met Garuya, our guide for the next few days, and headed out for a nature walk in the forest behind our camp.
Native Maasai and raised a two-hour walk from the camp, Garuya was a font of knowledge about local plants, animals and birds. We collected and sampled half a dozen medical herbs and found small bush buck and dik-diks in the brush as we followed the ridge above camp. We arrived back before the light faded, and enjoyed a dinner of simple Kenyan dishes served near the fire before heading to bed for the night. We were in canvas tents with two comfortable cots inside, neighbored by outhouses and open air showers. It was perfect – simple but comfy, and only minutes from the park entrance.
The next morning, we woke and ate breakfast on a leisurely schedule, leaving camp at around 9 a.m. for a full day in the park. The Mara was incredible – the smaller portion of the Maasai Mara/Serengeti National Parks of Kenya and Tanzania lie on the Kenyan side of the border, but the area is still expansive and we only covered about half the length of the park during the entire day.

In addition to the standard grazers (we saw Thompson's gazelles, impala, kongoni, dik-dik, bush buck, Grant's gazelles, waterbuck, topi and buffalo), we also found herds of elephants, giraffes, zebras, warthogs, and a couple of black rhinos. Vervet monkeys and mongoose put in appearances, and we saw hyena slinking through the tall grass.

To cap it all, and with the help of a network of cell phones and Garuya's impressive tracking skills, we found a pride of sleeping lions and a pair of cheetahs shading themselves from the sun after devouring their morning kill. And that was all just on day one!
Our day also included a lovely picnic under an accacia tree at the top of a small hill, so that we could see approaching predators, as well as park rangers, since we weren't supposed to be outside of our jeep within the park. We finally made our way back to camp at about 5 in the evening, and found a new resident, Dana from the Czech Republic, had joined our camp.
She was a PhD student in parasitology, investigating the possibility of a lifelong dream to move to Kenya, a la Joy Adamson. This was her first visit, and she was on a budget, so we invited her to join us on our game drives in the park the next day.

We had dinner and s'mores around the campfire that night, and got ourselves ready for an early morning start the following morning, so we could catch the critters that hide by day (Colin's attempt at early rising pictured).
Aside from adding a jackal to our tally and seeing hundreds of brightly colored birds (my favorite being the lilac-breasted roller), we spotted hippos and crocodiles at the river separating Kenya and Tanzania.
We also found a pride of lions on the hunt – incredible! Even more incredible was watching as the herd of buffalo they were hunting turned the tables on them, getting the lions on the run with the buffalo in pursuit! We found many more during our day of wildlife viewing – including a trio of lions which had just snacked on a porcupine and still had porcupine quills protruding from their bellies (our guide found the spot where they'd caught him and retrieved a quill with lion blood still on it as a keepsake for Colin) - and then returned to camp for lunch. On the afternoon game drive, as evening approached, the highlight of the day occurred: a brief glimpse of a leopard skirting the roadside before saying nertz to the growing number of jeeps converging on his chosen haunt and disappearing into the tall grass. We made it out of the park after sunset (and after curfew – the park was already officially closed), and collapsed into our tents happy and exhausted.

Our final morning in the Mara started with a visit to the Maasai village at the edge of the outpost, where we were greeted by young men in warrior dress, given a tour of the homes and livestock enclosures, and treated to a couple of traditional songs and fire-making demonstration before entering the crafts complex where we were obliged to visit each family's area before selecting our chosen pieces.
I selected a simple Maasai necklace as a wall hanging and Colin chose a carved wooden club, used in some of the ceremonial dances.
After one more quick tour through the park (focus of the day: rhinos), we packed up our gear, along with half the camp equipment, and headed for Lake Nakuru, via the site of the coming weekend's race car rally.
We dropped off a dozen canvas tents and some of the camp staff, because the tour company's owner is an avid rally driver and would be hosting a large party throughout the weekend races. Arriving at Lake Nakuru (with Dana, who had decided to come with us), we glimpsed a lion perched on a fallen tree before arriving at a guest house belonging to the Wildlife Club of Kenya – a lodging we found in our guidebook in lieu of camping, partly because the forecast called for rain (in buckets!) and partly because most of the camping gear was needed at the car rally. Turned out we had the guest house – and its kitchen – to ourselves, and spent a pleasant night cooking, eating, reading and sleeping to the sound of rain on the roof.
We woke to views of gazelles out of our window and headed out to circle the lake in our jeep.

We were greeted by hundreds of baboons as we set out, and enjoyed seeing nearly a dozen endangered white rhinos and the lake's famous pink flamingos in our circumnavigation.

Lake Nakuru is a small but beautiful national park, and much more easily navigable than the expansive Maasai Mara – we picnicked at a viewpoint on the lake's western cliffs and dropped Dana off in Nakuru town before heading south to Lake Navaisha.
Dana was headed to Lake Baringo to the north via matutu – the local minivan buses that are packed to the gills with locals traveling on the cheap. We planned to meet her again in Lamu, off the Kenyan coast, if our schedules meshed.
At Lake Naivasha, we were given a choice between the backpacker tents at the lakeside (Fisherman's Camp) or the simple camping cabins with beds at the top of the hill overlooking the lake (Top Camp). We opted for the cabins, mainly because we saw them first, but were later grateful for the peace and quiet that having some distance from the lake afforded us. We went down to the lakeside and had lunch at the campground restaurant, then boarded a small boat for an afternoon of hippo viewing and a visit to Elsamere, Joy Adamson's residence.
Despite our motor failing, we had a nice journey (partially towed by another boat), toured Adamson's house, enjoying her paintings, watching a documentary film about her life in Kenya raising lions and other wild cats, and having tea in her dining room before heading back to Fisherman's Camp for dinner. The down side of staying at Top Camp was being stuck when our driver didn't show on schedule – I had just talked the manager of the restaurant into driving us back when he showed up – to our relief, because our hard-sought ride had just asked me: “I hope you don't mind if Ive had a few drinks?”
The next morning, our driver once again didn't show on schedule, but this time it was daylight and we hiked downhill to the restaurant for breakfast, leaving a note and our bags behind. Just as we were considering calling the company owner at his race car rally, our driver showed up (he had a talent for nick-of-time appearances) and off we went to the highlight of the trip for me – Crater Lake Wildlife Sanctuary, where we didn't need to be in a vehicle to see the wildlife.

We hiked through the sanctuary on foot, walking through grasslands full of giraffes and gazelles, and finally seeing eland – a large, cattle-like antelope that has a reputation for extreme shyness. Nonetheless, we walked within 50 feet of one, joyous at being in such close quarters with so many animals! After a couple of hours, we continued on out of the savanna and over a ridge leading to the crater lake itself – a tiny but beautiful blue lake fringed by a handful of flamingos and colobus monkeys hollering in the trees.
An exclusive, rustic resort sits on the lakeside opposite where we crested the ridge, so we stopped for a cool drink after walking around the water's edge, and finally tore ourselves away to head back to Lake Naivasha and prepare for our return to Nairobi.
We had lunch at a local restaurant on the grounds of one of the many flower orchards bordering Naivasha (Dutch flower growers have come to dominate the local economy in the last 20 years), where Colin played pool with our driver, beating him and winning himself a coke in the deal. Then it was back on the road to Nairobi, arriving back at Candace and Bob's in the late afternoon, and settling in to wait for them to arrive home from work. We had one more night with them before catching a plane the next day to Malindi, on the coast, where we were to volunteer at an orphanage for the coming week. We all went out to dinner that night with friends of theirs at an upscale Asian restaurant in an exclusive gated community, sharing sushi and curries and grilled fish around the table. Delish. But....
I woke up at 4 in the morning sick as a dog – retching and dizzy and as food-poisoned as I've ever been. I don't know if it was the lunch or the dinner, but I was the only one to get sick (thank goodness!). I couldn't even get out of bed and away from the bathroom long enough to go see a doctor, let alone get on a plane. We had to delay our departure to Malindi, making our apologies to the volunteer service coordinator who had made our arrangements with the orphanage. Candace helped to reschedule our flights, and Colin took care of both himself and me for the next two days while I slept and recovered. When I was finally able to think straight again, I discovered that our flight had had to be delayed by a full four days, because of the limited availability of seats.

So we made a few more plans for sightseeing in Nairobi, taking in the National Museum and visiting the Giraffe Center, where endangered Rothschild's giraffes are bred for reintroduction to the wild, and the Elephant Orphanage, where young elephants orphaned by poachers are raised and reintroduced into National Parks throughout Kenya. Colin “adopted” an elephant, and earned himself the right to visit in the evening when the babies are being put to bed for the night. Unfortunately, we didn't get the opportunity to return for that visit, as we finally had tickets out to the coast that afternoon, and were eager to get started on our belated stay at Malindi's Heart Children's Home....

Up Next: Mama Lucy & Mohammad's Birthday

India Part 2 - Backwaters and Hill Stations

2010-03-24T02:22:00.000-07:00

Leaving the coastal backwaters of Kerala with a car and driver, Kelly, Lex, Colin and I traveled the three hours by road up into the Western Ghats – a ridge of mountains paralleling the southern Indian coast.
We arrived at the gates of the Thattakad Bird Sanctuary and were met by Sudha, our hostess, who led us – to our surprise – through the gates and into the sanctuary itself to her home – a beautifully painted two story house with four guest rooms. We were served “tea” - a spread of heaping dishes served with chapati and fruit – by the four generations of women who made up the family, and had about an hour to collect ourselves before heading off on a bird walk with Sudha. Despite already being in the sanctuary, we had to walk the opposite direction – back out of the gate – for our walk because elephants were a short distance up the road and walking in that direction would not be safe (this is the first time we heard the phrase “big problem” to refer to elephants ahead – we would hear it again and again over the coming days – Indians take the threat of marauding elephants very seriously).
The walk circled a lovely lake with a temple on one side - the evening's temple events were beginning as we finished our walk, sending the sound of bells and drums over the water and surrounding forest.
In the morning, we rejoined our car and driver for the road trip back to the coast, where we would catch our train to Calicut. Mid-way, we stopped at the Malayattor Elephant Camp, where elephants are trained from a young age for work in the temples and fields.
The elephants are walked to the neighboring river each morning, where for a tip/bribe (“baksheesh”) you can wade in and help bathe them alongside their mahout (handler). The kids had a blast helping to scrub the babies (still large enough to crush a couple of 11 year-olds in a single squat) and the image of elephants bathing and dancing (really!) in the river will be one of my lasting impressions of our entire trip – magnificent.
After a traditional breakfast at a local B&B, we continued to the coast our driver dropped us at the train station for our connection to Calicut, where we settled into a cheap (read: slightly dodgey) hotel and sought out information on transportation to our next destination – a homestay near the Mananthavady Hill Station back up in the mountains. The following morning, we headed up with another car and driver, arriving at Varnum Homestay – my favorite of all our lodgings in India - in the early afternoon.

The Varnum family – mom, dad, daughter, grandmother, and one college-age son who arrived home for a visit on our last day – lived in a traditional Keralan-style house, served meals on the outdoor terrace, and seemed completely unperturbed by all manner of foreign eccentricities (including the hard-drinking, bald Mongolian woman who wore colorful bustiers and sheer fabrics and arrived with an Italian boyfriend she had met just days earlier – we loved her!). They were warm and welcoming, easily voiced their opinions on social and political matters, and had an extensive network of relatives that were able to provide us with just about any service we required. Their home neighbored a rice-paddy frequented by elephants (“big problem”) and was in close proximity to wildlife sanctuaries and scenic mountains and waterfalls. We spent the next four days taking in some of each, and getting so relaxed it was hard to leave both the place and the Varnum family.

Day one nearly trapped us in the pleasant lull of hanging around the courtyard nibbling on the kitchen's ever-emerging snacks and watching the kids play badmitton, but we finally pulled ourselves away to walk to the nearby road and take the bus to the local town to shop for food (the kitchen was open to guests to use as they please, and Colin was determined to make use of it). After some browsing, we found something reasonably similar to pasta, plus butter, garlic and tomatoes, then headed back to the Varnum's to wait for our afternoon game drive to nearby Tholpetty Wildlife Sanctuary.

The two-hour game drive turned up dozens of sambar (a large Indian antelope), deer, wild boar, an abudance of birds, and a lot of enthusiastic school children, but the “big problems” managed to elude us – until after we left. Our driver, not wanting us to be disappointed, drove us to an area just outside of the local town, where he knew elephants often foraged in the early evening. Sure enough, as we rounded a bend in the road he slammed on the brakes and pointed into the foliage at the edge of the forest. After a moment of peering into the brush, we saw a movement of white tusks, and then the rest of the outline of the elephant emerged. It was our first sighting of elephants in the wild. We saw four more elephants, also foraging within sight of the road, before finally heading back. We ate the Varnum's amazing dinner, and slept incredibly well that night.
On day two we rose early and headed to a nearby trailhead for a 14 km roundtrip trek to the bat caves at the top of a mountain. Early into the hike, Colin complained of heat and became so uncomfortable, I didn't think he was going to make it. At about 3 km, our guide convinced him to go just a bit further to a fire lookout tower at the midway point of the ascent where he could rest in the shade.
The view was incredible! We watched birds swooping from our vantage point at the top, and were able to see a herd of buffalo cresting a ridge in the distance. After a bit of a rest, Colin decided that he was up for the rest of the trek, and we headed off again. At the top, we scrambled into a cluster of boulders and stepped over a couple of deep crevices to find a spot to cool off and have lunch – some bananas and a thick rice-flour based porridge that you broke off pieces of and rolled up in your hand to eat.
As we headed through the rest of the rocks to get to the bat caves we came to one wide crevice that brought on a bout of vertigo for me, and I couldn't cross it. The rest of the group went ahead and I turned around and waited on the trail just beyond the rocks.
It was a beautiful solo, quiet half hour of looking over the high ridges, watching birds and butterflies, and listening very, very carefully for anything rustling in the brush – we had passed tiger scat on the trail on the way up, and that was the closest I wanted to get to any big cats while sitting up there alone. When Kelly and the boys returned, they too had headed back after the boys decided the final rock climbing ascent to the cave entrance was too much, and Lex had nearly fallen into the crevice that defeated me (its apparently not supposed to be crossed from the opposite direction – the guide had planned on a different return route after visiting the caves). Despite none of us seeing the bats that had been our destination, it was a wonderful hike, and we all descended happy and satisfied – except for a pesky blister that Lex had developed on the way up – ouch! Each and every stream crossing going down was an excuse for the boys to dunk their heads in the frigid water, fill their hats, and walk on in the heat of the day with alpine water streaming down their faces. Nice.
When we returned to the Varnum house that afternoon, the Mongolian and her Italian consort had arrived.

They joined us the next day for our last field trip – a beautiful waterfall a short 15 minute walk through the forest. Kelly and I lolled on the rocks by the water, the boys braved the frigid temperatures and climbed the rocks at the base of the waterfall, and the Mongolian and Italian did it all – climbed to the top of the falls with our guide, splashed in the pools with the boys, and posed for photos along the base of the falls. Heading back to the Varnum's, we stopped in Mananthavady in search of ingredients for cooking again (unsuccessfully) and booze – our driver sent Kelly and I into a hotel in search of a bottle of wine, where we were bounced from bar to restaurant to dark, dingy hovel, only to come up empty handed. The Mongolian and Italian were looking for something stronger, so we finally convinced the driver to take us to the local “government shop” - half an hour and a lot of haggling later, everyone returned to the jeep satisfied with their acquisitions. I believe that half of Mananthavady talked about the strange group of westerners at the booze shop for weeks afterwards – Kelly was a woman alone with two children (I had stayed with the bags in the jeep); the Mongolian was a bald woman dressed in a short, sheer dress over a very visible bikini; and the Italian was a tall, gangly guy who talked loudly and smiled at everything and must have been variably interpreted as their mutual consort or pimp.
That last night, the Varnums all joined us for dinner, talking about local norms and the plans they would eventually make for their son's and daughter's arranged marriages. While strange from our perspective, it was wonderful to have a conversation about the local traditions so openly and easily with someone who was comfortable with foreigners but could also explain and defend the local traditions with ease and confidence.
Their son would be coming home from college for a visit the next morning, giving us a chance to meet him before we left – he was extremely charming and fantastic with the boys. We were so sad to leave the Varnums, and the mountains, but had a date with the beaches of Goa starting the next day, and a long way to go to get there.....
In the early afternoon, we climbed into a Varnum cousin's car and headed down, down, down to the coast. Arriving in Kannur, we had a few of hours to kill before catching our train, so we checked our luggage into the bag room at the station and asked our driver to drop off at the beach, just in time for sunset.
The rest of Kannur seemed to have the same idea, and the beach was a festive gathering of families enjoying the cooling air that came with the end of the day. They also enjoyed us – we were swarmed first by children and then by whole families interested in where we were from and why we were there. We even received an invitation to stay with one of the families at their home that evening! If we hadn't already bought our train tickets, I think we would have happily taken them up on it.
After sunset, we had a long hike out of the beach area, crossed a very busy street (dodging rickshaws in the effort) and ate dinner at a hotel restaurant before returning to the train station. We boarded our 3AC (triple decker, air conditioned) car, had an on-again/off-again night of semi-sleep as the train chugged north up the coast, and arrived in Goa the next day.
For a few days before our arrival, Colin had been having some listening problems, so we needed a day on our own to stabilize and talk things through. Kelly and Lex headed straight to the guest house she had booked for us on Agonda Beach, while Colin and I went to Palolem Beach for the day to spend some mom-and-son time.
To make a long story short, Palolem Beach was beautiful and we began to think maybe we should spend a night, while Kelly discovered that our booked guest house had given away our rooms and went looking for something new. We wound up spending the next three days each at our beach of arrival, and reunited on the last day for the continued journey to Mumbai. Once again, I think the break did the kids some good – they had been on-again/off-again bickering in the mountains, and we all had three calm days to relax and recoup before taking on the big city.

Palolem Beach was a gorgeous talcum-sandy beach, with clusters of rocks at one end and Palolem Island at the other, forming a calm crescent cove. The water was shallow and bathtub warm, and the beach was lined with thatched-roof “bandas” for rent and open air restaurants with hammocks and beach chairs for lounging over a drink or snack.
We did absolutely nothing other than to lounge and swim on our first day, taking in a nice dinner on the beach, where Colin fell asleep in the hammock while waiting for the food to arrive!

The second day we explored the beach and small town a little more, browsing in the stone and gem shops (Colin's favorite), and enjoying the sight of fully dressed women playing in the surf and cows lounging on the beach - sacred cows can go anywhere they want, and why wouldn't they want to be sunning themselves on the beach? In the evening, we found a cafe at the far south end of the beach that was showing Avatar against a broad whitewashed wall, and enjoyed local fish curry as we watched the movie. Except for an extremely hard soccer ball kicked straight into my thigh in the late afternoon, it was the perfect relaxing day. (It was also Valentine's Day, and I had managed to arrange for a bouquet of flowers to be delivered to Tom at home – an evening skype call home confirmed that they had arrived – yay!)

On our last full day at Palolem, we repeated the lulling pattern of swimming in the morning and hiding from the sun with a good book in the afternoon, then we walked to the north end of the beach at sunset and found a small boat to take us up the Palolem “River” for a bird watching trip. It turned out to be perhaps the best birdwatching hour of my life – kingfishers and brightly colored songbirds and herons, etc. Lovely! And a perfect end to our stay.
After a lazy morning the next day, we caught a rickshaw to Agonda Beach to meet Kelly and Lex, lunched at a very yummy Italian restaurant and continued on to Goa for our overnight train to Mumbai. This time we traveled in 2AC (only 2 bunks high, rather than 3) and slept for most of our journey north.

We arrived in Mumbai early the next morning, caught a taxi to the Salvation Army-run hostel we had booked in advance, and waited to check in while the staff conducted their morning prayers in the communal breakfast room. The rush on rooms at check in time (9 a.m.) was intense – we selected a four bed room with a private bath, to the ire of another prospective guest who insisted he had been in two hours earlier and had claimed that room for himself (having booked a few days in advance and by virtue of having children with us, our claim trumped his. In the end, we abandoned the room late in the evening, because while we were out sightseeing during the day, the staff sprayed the room opposite ours for bedbugs and were exceedingly overzealous with the insecticide – the entire floor reeked of pesticides late into the evening, and permeated every room on the floor. Finding it unabated after dinner, we jumped ship for a business hotel across the street at twice the price, but with the peace of mind that comes from knowing you are not being poisoned while you sleep).

Having an early start to our one full day in Mumbai, we walked around the Taj Mahal Hotel directly across the street and boarded a boat for Elephant Island at the port ferry dock. On the island, we explored the massive cave temples and enjoyed watching the island's monkeys threaten unknowing tourists who were bold or foolish enough to wander around with open bags of chips and fruit.

The temples were impressive – carved into solid stone over several generations, they included 10-meter high columns and likenesses of various Indian gods and goddesses. At one time, there had been a 30-foot tall stone elephant – the island's namesake - standing guard at the entrance, but it was damaged in a rockslide that permanently closed the temple's main entrance and was later restored and moved to the entrance of the Mumbai zoo.
We hoped to take in a Bollywood film at a local movie theater that afternoon, but none of the films showing in Mumbai had English subtitles, and we would have been completely lost seeing them in the original Hindi, so we wandered the sidestreets and stumbled onto a fantastic little pastry/coffee shop just blocks from our hostel – a fair exchange for missing the opportunity to see Bollywood in India. We finished the day with a tour through the lobby of the Taj and a nice dinner of grilled meats and veggies, before doing the hotel shuffle and drifting off to sleep.

We arranged for a car to pick us up in the morning and run us to one of the city's large indoor bazaars and the Ghandi Museum before dropping Kelly and Lex at the train station and heading for the airport ourselves to wait for our flight to Nairobi. The Ghandi Museum was a highlight of the visit to Mumbai – it was housed in the house he lived in when in the city, and gave a thorough history of his own personal history and political development, as well as the process of decolonization from England.
As for our hours-long wait at the Mumbai Airport, suffice to say that it was – hands down – the worst airport experience of our trip. If you ever must pass through there, minimize your time and maximize your patience, and make sure you've got ample rupees in your pocket to pay for the privilege....

Up Next: Kenya – Lions and Cheetahs and Leopards, Oh My!

India - Part 1: Backwaters and Hill Stations

2010-03-13T10:49:00.000-08:00

Trivandrum
We arrived in India following a night of little sleep – an all-nighter in the Kuala Lumpur Airport (which boasts a 24-hour chocolate shop!) and an early morning flight into Trivandrum, capital of Kerala, at the southern tip of India. With the 2-1/2 hour time change (what the heck is that ½ hour about?!) we landed at around 8:00 a.m. and caught a pre-paid taxi (helps limit taxi scams) to the YMCA, where Kelly had booked rooms for us and for her and Lex. They would be arriving later in the day from northern India, where they had spent the first week of their trip from Seattle. They would be joining us for the next three weeks as we made our way up the coast, visiting the Kerala backwaters and national parks up in the hill stations, on our way north to Mumbai. This would be the first time since leaving home that Colin had a same age buddy to travel with, and we were eagerly looking forward to it.
Taking a brief walk around the “Y”'s Trivandrum neighborhood, we were searching out something for breakfast, and one of the first things I noticed was that I was the only woman out on the streets.... or in the cafes, or anywhere I could see. Huh. I hoped that this was just a case of capital cities being notoriously provincial, and that this wouldn't be a sign of things to come. I'd heard good things about Kerala – center of the Indian women's rights movement, first democratically elected communist government, etc. OK, so: where the heck were all the women?!?
We had chai and chapatis at a small hole-in-the-wall cafe in an alley off the street around the corner from the YMCA, under the stares of a half dozen men taking a mid-morning tea break, then wandered across the street, dodging rickshaws and motorcycles (but nothing compared with SE Asian cities) to the government-run handicrafts warehouse, which had tables piled high with regional and tribal crafts from all parts of southern India. We browsed the silk and pashmina scarves, the soapstone carvings, the incense burners and jewelery, the masks and oversized wood carvings in the two adjacent warehouses. As we were preparing to leave, we noticed one more small hut around the side of the buildings, with a sign identifying it as the discount clearinghouse. We poked our heads in and Colin immediately noticed the plastic jars full of beads and stones placed among strings of of the same hanging from the wall. He spent the next half hour identifying all the gemstones he could find, and settled on buying a string of lapis lazuli – about 50 small stones – for 100 rupees (about US$2.00).* (*more on the stones later).

We headed back to the “Y” and found Kelly and Lex, just arrived and ready for some buddy-time (moms and kids alike!). That afternoon and the next morning, the boys horned in on some local kids' games of badmitton and ping-pong, and crashed a music class (with the encouragement of the music teacher) – the “Y” proved the perfect place to be with a couple of over-energetic 11 year old boys. ;-)
The second thing I noticed about Trivandrum that evening, as I headed out to get Colin an ice-cream from the corner store, was that in addition to no women, there was no beer, wine or booze to be found anywhere. I was beginning to get the feeling that Id fallen into a strict male-dominated muslim society, rather than the “enlightened” tales of Kerala I'd read and heard about. Fortunately, as we moved north starting the next day, women appeared with more regularity, and although the only wine to be found in Kerala was at government stores surrounded by down-and-out looking men, it did, at least, exist. Kelly's and my quest for the occasional bottle of wine became the source of some of our most trademark tales of India.

Backwaters
Leaving Trivandrum, we caught the train north to Kollam, where Kelly had reserved a beach cottage. When we arrived in Kollam, we went for lunch in town and called the cottage owner, only to discover that he had given away our accommodations to someone else, but had another place he wanted to show us instead. He picked us up in his jeep and drove us out of the city, past a couple temples, and down a narrow road to the seaside.
The cottage he had for us had three rooms, two of which were occupied, but he said we could share the third – a small, simple room around the side of the cabin with bamboo slat walls, and an excellent sunset view location with a small sandy beach next to the breakwater where the boys could play in the water.
He owned a restaurant in town and could bring us our meals upon request, and it was cheap. We agreed, on the understanding that we'd have the two front rooms the following day, which didn't materialize, but in the end really didn't matter. Once we'd figured out how to (kind of) pronounce the name of the beach we were on (Thirumullawarum) and where the local bus stops were, we were good to go.

That night, we walked to a nearby temple where an elephant Festival was taking place, arriving just in time for the grand finale of elephant processions, temple floats, drumming and highly stylized theater/dance on the main stage, where all the players were men, half of whom were dressed up in exaggerated drag.
It was a spectacle, fascinating, LOUD, and I can't imaging seeing anything like it anywhere else in the world. We caught a bus for our return, but when we realized it wasn't going in our direction, hopped off and walked the half hour back to our cabin in the dark, ducking the occasional headlight-less rickshaw or motorcycle. That night we slept well, despite the cramped quarters and occasional buzzing mosquito looking for an opening in our gerry-rigged nets.
Day two in Kollam, we took a rickshaw into town to take a tour of the Kerala backwaters, which start here and extend north.

We had a wonderful day slowly drifting through narrow canals, visiting boat building, coconut rope-making, and fishing families, and climbing coconut trees (well, Colin did anway). When we returned to our cabin in the evening, we moved into one of the two front rooms in the cabin, and found that a new couple of guests had arrived – they were Isreali toy makers who lived on a kibbutz. We had lovely conversation with them over a sunset dinner, and again fell hard asleep.
When we woke in the morning, it was time to move on again. We were heading to Allepey, further north along the backwaters, and again caught the train. We rode in an unreserved sleeper car, meaning we had to scramble to snag seats together (the seats and fold-down bunks are only reserved at night), but had the benefit of cushioned benches facing each other and open windows to catch a breeze and watch the passing countryside.
There were three young (20-something) Indians (one man and two women) who talked to us along the way and insisted on taking photos of us – we were to find ourselves repeatedly a local “tourist attraction” for locals as we traveled up the coast. ;-)

In Allepey, Kelly had booked a wonderful “homestay”-style guesthouse right on the backwater canals outside of town. When we arrived, we rejected the rickshaws crowding the station entrance for a full size taxi, so we wouldn't have to pile our baggage on our laps. The car dropped us at a small bridge, where our homestay host was waiting with a bicycle to help us transport our bags along the canal-side trail - 10-minutes later, we arrived at a nice two bedroom cabin fronted by hammocks and the backwater canals.
Every few minutes, a rattan-covered former rice-barge turned floating B&B chugged by, giving us hundreds of opportunities over the next few days to take romantic photographs of these beautifully-crafted and weathered boats.
At the same time, just a few days into our trip, the boys had been bickering and arguing, and after four months of not missing this aspect of life with an adolescent boy at all, I found I had no tolerance for it. As soon as Colin said “I think we need a break,” I agreed, and we spent the next day on a mom-and-son solo tour through the backwater canals in a pole-pushed dugout canoe.
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We drifted by beautiful clusters of lilypads, numerous large-beaked kingfishers, kids playing with toy boats by the waterside, and families doing laundry and bathing in the canals. We eventually spotted a sign for ice cream along a bulkhead. We asked our boatman to pull over and scrambled out to find not just ice cream, but an elegant, mature fishing eagle sitting on a perch out in front of the shop. Colin was fascinated, and the shop owner placed the bird on her arm and brought him over to Colin. The raptor proceeded to sit on Colin's arm, shoulder, and nearly his head, before he managed to return it to the shop owner with a minimum of talon scratches all over his body! The bird was also anointed with the characteristic red dye spot on its forehead that many Indian men and women wear. It was a delightful day, and the break seemed to do the boys some good.

That evening, we had a lovely candlelight dinner sitting under thatch-covered tables next to the canal – an assortment of vegetable curries and freshly fried fish – yum!

On our final day in Allepey, we made our way to the beach, playing in the surf and basking in the sun until sunset. Keeping to a stretch of sand fronting a resort set back in the trees (in order to avoid multi-species feces that pepper many of the beaches in the area, but are regularly removed by the resorts), we had the beach nearly to ourselves, not counting the pack of wild dogs a short but comfortable enough distance away.

The next morning had us on the train once again, headed for Ernakulum and historic Fort Kochi. We had a homestay a short walk from “downtown” Kochi – a charming neighborhood of narrow streets and cafes and crafts shops. At the end of a brief walk about town to get our bearings, Lex fell into one of the ubiquitous holes in the sidewalk in the fading light as we walked back and really banged up his leg. We tried to take his mind off it and compensate by playing a group game of Caton – truly fun! (if you haven't ever played it, run out and get a board!). The fates conspired instead though to make him more miserable - he woke up in the morning sick as a dog with food poisoning and was entirely out of commission for the day.

Despite feeling awful for him, Colin and I couldn't help but enjoy the town – it was the first walking-friendly place we had visited in India and we spent the day browsing in the shops, eating at the sidewalk food stalls, and watching the operation of the Chinese fishing nets along the waterfront.
Colin found a handmade drum seller and managed to get an hour-long lesson from him in how to play the traditional drums we was selling before finally breaking down and buying one (for more than he should have probably, but he was thrilled with his purchase anyway). In the evening, Lex was feeling well enough that we all went to the town cultural center for a sitar concert – beautiful!

Then came the mandatory cooking class – in the morning, Kelly and Colin and I all arrived at Leena's cooking school, in her kitchen, across from the town park, while Lex went back to the cultural center for a sitar class (he's a classical guitar player at home). While the food was great, the class was actually the one disappointment in our cooking adventures to date – instead of hands-on as all the others had been, we were expected to sit, and watch, and take notes on what Leena was doing. Hmm.... four hours of lecturing does not make for the most memorable “cooking” experience, especially for an 11 year old. Oh well, they cant all be standouts.
The evening made up for it though – we took the local ferry into Ernakulum, Kochi's modern sister-city, to attend another Elephant Festival.

We caught this one from the beginning, watching the elephants in their slow procession through the city streets and the temple musicians in concert in the light-strewn courtyard full of children playing and old men sitting beneath the trees as the night darkened. It was very cool, and again quintessentially Indian.

With only one day left, we crammed our last full day in Kochi (and the backwaters!) full to bursting.

We woke early in the morning for a full day touring the Kerala backwaters – a van picked us up at our homestay and took us to a houseboat where we would cruise the more open backwaters, dotted with islands, and enjoy a traditional Keralan lunch.

We then boarded several small dugout canoes and entered the narrow canals, getting out here and there to visit a small village, see a sight along the shore and sample local clams, tea, and "toody" - a coconut flower beer.

In the evening, we returned to the Kochi Cultural Center for a performance of Kathakali, Kerala's traditional theater/dance, arriving early to watch the preparations of makeup and masks necessary for each performance. We ended the day with a late dinner back at Beena's Homestay – one of many delicious and beautiful meals she and her husband prepared for us. In the morning, we would leave Kochi for an overnight trip to Thattakad, a bird sanctuary in the mountains a few hours drive northeast from Kochi - but that's beyond the backwaters, so part of the next blog post.....

Up Next: India Part 2 - Backwaters and Hill Stations

Thailand: Adventure and Sloth

2010-03-10T06:14:00.000-08:00

Bangkok
Our introduction to Thailand was traffic – Bangkok traffic. Arriving at the airport from Phnom Penh at 6 p.m., it took over two hours (longer than our flight from Cambodia) in bumper-to-bumper exhaust before we finally arrived in the city. Once there, traffic moved, but was otherwise utter chaos: cars, buses, trucks, motorbikes, bicycles, rickshaws, etc. squeezing into every available space, transforming a two to three lane road into a dozen multi-modal streams. I was grateful to know that we only had one night in this crush before catching a train north to Chiang Mai – we had only to get to our hotel, sleep and move on – but then we turned out of the traffic and into a narrow alley full of sidewalk cafes and multicolored lanterns.
The mood was instantly relaxed and festive, the lane full of pedestrians and just a handful of motorized vehicles – we were on Rabuttri Street, smaller sister to Khao San Road, and our hotel - midway down the lane - was in a courtyard set back from the street, with a fish pond in front and a pool on the roof. Suddenly, I was looking forward to our 18 hours in Bangkok. Aside from getting a good night's sleep, we passed the time browsing the crafts stalls along our lane, eating at the cafes, and swimming in the hotel's rooftop pool. We then made our way to the railway station for our overnight train to Chiang Mai.

Chiang Mai
Chiang Mai is a sprawling northern Thailand city centered by the fortressed old town – once inside, narrow lanes replace multi-lane highways and small guest houses with leafy gardens provide a respite from both heat and the external bustle. Chiang Mai is also adventure tourism central – high canopy ziplining, river rafting, and elephant trekking is all on offer, and we made a good effort take advantage of it all! We also – once again – met up with Meg, who we had met in Japan and crossed paths with again in both Korea and China.

On the evening of the day we arrived, the Sunday Night Market was in full swing. We wandered through the pedestrian plaza outside of the old town's main gate, browsing through northern hill tribes' handicrafts and contemporary Thai jewelery, nibbling on (mostly mysterious) thai snacks and sweets, and sampling locally-made fruit wines.
Earlier in the day, we explored old Chiang Mai on foot, found Meg, and discovered the innocuous-sounding but deadly “Long Green Bean Salad” - easily the hottest dish I have EVER encountered (and one of the best!). Feeling oriented, we laid out plans for the next few days, starting with satisfying Colin's persistent travel obsession – a Cooking Class!
The most ambitious one yet, the class started at 9 a.m. with a trip to the local produce/meat/fish market, and continued for the next six hours, through at least as many dishes and lots and lots of eating....
we made coconut cream from scratch and several curry pastes by hand with a mortar and pestle, fried a whole fish, and cooked up dishes colored by shades of red and green chilies until our eyes crossed. Yum!
Day 3 started early with an hour long drive into the northern mountains for a day of visiting hill tribe villages, elephant trekking and river rafting. The villages we visited were short but pleasant stopovers geared mostly to demonstrating and selling handicrafts, and the elephant trekking proved to be mostly disturbing – the mahouts (elephant guides) carried spiked sticks and were not shy about using them – but we did our best to focus on our own elephant, who was guided by Colin instead of a mahout, with a bundle of bananas instead of a stick (we had one more passenger in our group than there were seats in the “chairs” on the elephants, so Colin scored the prime spot astride the elephant's neck usually reserved for by the mahouts).

The highlight of the day though, was the river rafting. We had been warned not to take anything that couldn't get wet – it took a lot of insistence to convince me to leave behind my camera! It turned out that in contrast to the bamboo rafts we had ridden down the Li River in China, these bamboo rafts were nothing more than 5 to 6 bamboo poles lashed together – once on board, we were sitting in 4 to 6 inches of water. And as soon as we were underway, the rafting guides began a water war that lasted for the entire two hour trip downriver, sending waves of water splashing from boat to boat and trying to topple each others' passengers. Fortunately, we all managed to stay attached to our rafts (except Colin, who jumped back and forth between the two), but another raft that passed us by was not so lucky – our two boats' guides attacked the third boat and dumped one of its passengers overboard, smoking cigarette and all!

The next day brought more wandering around the city, to markets, teahouses, temples and then dinner at a hilltop restaurant a harrowing 20 minute ride up a steep ridge in the back of a shock-less pickup truck – it was our farewell dinner with Meg, who would be making her way to Australia after our months in SE Asia, whereas Colin and I would be jumping over to India next...
Our final day in Chiang Mai we decided to treat ourselves to an extravagance – ziplining through the rainforest canopy (read $$$). Ive always wanted to see the forest from the top, and Colin was gung-ho to fly from tree to tree.
It was an amazing experience – more thrill ride than nature immersion, but fantastic all the same. And to our guide/instructor's surprise, we saw gibbons! (in several years leading ziplining tours, he's only seen them a few times, and never before with a group of zipliners trailing along). Unfortunately, about two-thirds of the way through our course, a guide who had been joking with Colin pretended to drop him about 10 feet down an abseiling (direct descent) part of the course (the part that was already challenging Colin's courage) and he wasn't able to recover from the fright enough to enjoy the last few ziplines. Up until then, though, he was a flying banshee, whooping and cackling as we flew from tree to tree.
Another overnight train took us back to Bangkok to meet Suzy, who was enroute from Montana to join us for two weeks in southern Thailand. Returning to our lantern-lit Bangkok lane, we went off in search of a barber (! - Colin had decided to cut his hair - !), then took an afternoon nap so we could stay awake for Suzy's arrival. Sitting at an all night beer garden set up in the street, we greeted her as she emerged from her taxi at about 3 a.m. before finally collapsing into bed.

The next day, we took a river taxi to the Grand Palace, where we were identified by the gate guards as “indecent” and sent to the clothing office to borrow long pants for Colin and a wrap-around skirt for Suzy before we were permitted to enter the grounds. The temples and statues were amazing – incredibly ornate and beautifully painted in bright colors and painstaking detail. Then on to the airport for our flight south to Phuket....

Southern Beaches
Day One in southern Thailand was spent on the beach in Kata, doing nothing more than lounging, sunning, swimming, eating and drinking.
Suzy had just emerged from several weeks of back-to-back trials (as a prosecutor) and needed the complete beach bum experience. The following day, while I recovered from a pesky cold, Colin and Suzy made the spa and shopping circuit of Kata town. After one more good night's sleep at our cozy guesthouse (Southern Fried Rice: good food, great family, host to the local chess club, and a pool table to cap it off) we headed to Phuket Town for an afternoon/evening of exploring (with Suzy still in shopping mode), then the morning ferry to Ko Phi Phi, where our really great adventures would begin.

Ko Phi Phi is a small island in the large bay between Phuket and Krabi. Its a classic tropical party destination – beaches, bars, guesthouses, and souveniers.

Fortunately, it is also a short 20 minute boat ride from Phi Phi Ley, a very small uninhabited island just offshore of Ko Phi Phi, and where Suzy had made advance arrangements for us to go camping with the only outfit in Thailand with permits to stay on the island overnight.

It was a magical night – stopping to snorkel and kayak along the way, we arrived on the island just as the sun was setting and the last of the day visitors were leaving. The island is formed of karst mountains, with a picture-perfect sandy beach – Maya Bay - hidden away in a small cove. Colin played soccer on the beach with some of the twenty 20-somethings we were sharing the trip with, while Suzy and I wandered the beach and took photos of the sunset. We were served a beach picnic dinner and slept on the beach, under the stars. It was easily the most beautiful spot I have ever had the pleasure of soaking up (and the filming location for the movie “The Beach,” which Ill now have to see one day).
The following day had us waking up on the beach at Phi Phi Ley, and trying to pretend that we didnt have to leave – which we finally did, to catch our ferry connection from Ko Phi Phi to Rai Ley, the final leg of which was in motorized longboats that deposited us on the beach, where no cars can access because of the surrounding karsts.

We held our bags over our heads as we lowered ourselves off the boats into the surf, and walked directly into the resort Suzy had booked for us – right on the talcum sand beach and with a palm shaded pool and view of the sunset. I decided I liked this 'tell visiting friends to set their own agenda' thing – it was working for me!
After an evening sitting on bamboo mats on the beach surrounded by lanterns and eating duck curry, Suzy took Colin rockclimbing the next day, “to give mom a break.”

It just kept getting better! I spent the day wandering the island, finding the world's most perfect beach (after Maya Bay - but this one had its own fertility shrine) and getting a foot and leg massage.

A Dutch solo traveler Suzy met joined us for dinner, and we spent the next day kayaking around some of the offshore karsts with him, which Colin could not help but climbing at every opportunity. The day and night was capped by a visit to the “backpacker” side of the island, lined with under-the-stars bars, music and assorted entertainment, the nature of which at our choice – Last Bar – included fire dancers, snake charmers, music and dancing. Colin was the hit of the evening, and continued to be identified as “snake-boy” and “dancing-boy” by strangers we passed on the beach in the following days. At 3 a.m., Colin and I finally packed it in, leaving Suzy and (Dutch) Hans to whatever the rest of the night would bring....
Suzy climbed into a longboat with her bags in the morning – Colin and I had decided to stay another night, as I couldnt manage to pull myself away from Rai Ley quite yet. We had a lovely last day and night, going for a short paddle, lazing by the pool and eating dinner on the beach before catching the return ferry to Phuket the next day.

Back at Kata Beach, where we had left our bags, we spent one last night in Thailand before hiring a car to take us to a north Phuket beach for dinner and then to the airport to catch our plane to the Kuala Lumpur Airport, where we spend the night in the airport's 24-hour chocolate shop before leaving on our 6 a.m. flight to India to meet Kelly and Lex, a Seattle buddy/mom for me and her son, a school-mate of Colin's, who would travel with us for the next three weeks up the southern coast of India, from Trivandrum to Mumbai..... but that's the next installment. ;-)

Up Next: India's Backwaters and Hill Stations

Journey to Angkor Wat

2010-02-17T21:23:00.000-08:00

On New Year's Eve 2009, we departed Ho Chi Min City, heading for Can Tho and then the Vietnamese/Cambodian border town of Chau Doc, on the Mekong River. Our bus deposited us at the boat jetty in Can Tho, where we boarded a motorboat, then a punting (pole-propelled) canoe through the canals on the outskirts of the town, visiting rice paper and coconut candy workshops along the way – with the requisite pet python and rice “wine” tasting stops (the rice wine is approximately 80% proof, and contains snake bile, whole snakes, and the occasional sodden dead bird, for extra pungency).
Ho Chi Min to Phnom Penh
After wading with our luggage across the partially submerged gangplank, a larger motorized boat then took us (there were about 20 in our party) upriver along the Mekong for three hours until we reached a floating hotel – a large houseboat with a dozen rooms on the lower deck and a open air cafe/bar on the upper deck. We settled for the night across from the lights of the town of Chau Doc, where the local New Year's Eve party was underway at the village's “ritzy” waterfront restaurant (see Blog #13, Holidays in Vietnam, Part 1). The highlight of the night, following midnight toasts, was bearing witness to a sole fire-lit paper lantern, rising above the town and flickering its wishes into the moonlit night sky.

On January 1, we crossed the border into Cambodia by “slow boat” - not meaning it was much slower than the “fast” boat, it turned out, but meaning that we had to wait for it for an extra two hours at the border station, and that instead of padded seats and hammocks, it had only hard benches. After many (5 or 6) hours, during which we passed stilt houses, rice paddies, fishing skiffs and water buffalo in numbers too great to count, we sidled up to shore and transferred to two vans which took us the remaining 45 minutes into Phnom Penh.
Landing at the Capital Guesthouse, conveniently located on the same corner as the bus station, a cafe and an ATM, we had dinner and bought tickets for the six hour bus to Siam Reap the next day, then settled in for the night – never once having to cross the street in the traffic madness that is Phnom Penh.

Siam Reap and Angkor Wat
The bus from Phnom Penh to Siam Reap was comfortable and friendly, filled mostly with Cambodians returning from shopping trips to Phnom Penh or visiting family in and around Siam Reap. We were given pieces of tart green mango in chili powder to taste by a woman traveling with her three sisters, and Colin passed the time entertaining the two toddlers sharing a seat in front of us while their mother snoozed. The one other Westerner on the bus was a Canadian, who invited us to join her for dinner. We threw in our lot together to find a room when we arrived, Colin and I landing the last room at a budget guest house called Red Lodge, and she at a similar place next door. Dropping our bags, we headed out to “Pub Street” in backpacker central a few blocks away to scout for a restaurant, and discovered the most perfect “village” of Cambodian and international cafes, live street music, and craft booths spilling over from the nearby Night Market.
We chose a Cambodian restaurant with a free traditional dance performance on the upper deck, and discovered “amok” - a local coconut fish curry thickened with egg – delish!
Awakening on our first morning in Siam Reap, we decided to move slow and get the lay of the land. Two blocks from our hotel, Artisans d'Angkor ran training workshops for traditional arts, including metalwork, silk painting, and wood carving. The workshops are open to the public, where you can watch the artisans at work and purchase the finished work in the on-site fair trade crafts outlet. In the afternoon, we headed north for our first view of Angkor Wat.
To get to Angkor Wat, you hire a tuk-tuk and driver for a “short” or “long” tour, depending on the distance you plan to go. Once hired, you have your transport for the day – the driver takes you where you want to go and waits for you to go to the next temple and/or back to town when you are done. Entering the temple area, you pass through the national-park-style control gate, buy your entry ticket (one or three day or one week pass), and proceed along a stately tree-lined boulevard until reaching the edge of an enormous moat – and catching your first glimpse of the outer temples of Angkor Wat. Angkor Wat is itself only the largest of the dozens of temples scattered over many acres and connected by a series of roads and rough paths.
Some of the temples have been painstakingly restored, while others are overgrown and their structures collapsed under the weight of centuries of vegetation. Angkor Wat is, individually, the most impressive of the temples and is also the best restored. Despite this, there is nearly no limit to where visitors can go – nearly the entire temple complex is open to unrestricted exploration, allowing you to find nooks and crannies where you can escape the crowds and enjoy a quiet moment to be overwhelmed by the grandeur of the place, despite the thousands of visitors the temple receives each day.
Outside of the main temple, a line of food and crafts stalls provides a place to grab a cold drink, a meal, or an assortment of local crafts and/or cheap souvenirs. After a few hours exploring the temples, we found ourselves at one of the cafe stalls cooling off with a drink as the heat of the day began to dissipate. Several children of the stall owners came by with small items to sell, but stayed to quiz Colin on his name, his age, and where he was from.
Colin was happy to be drawn into jumping rope and climbing trees, and we stayed through sunset while he played with a half dozen of the kids. As we finally left, one of the kids – a twelve year old girl who had initially mistaken Colin for another girl – repeatedly called out after him “Can I love you!?” Despite his embarrassment, we decided that after seeing some of the other temples, we would have to come back to the outer courtyard of Angkor Wat to see them again. We crossed back over the moat, climbed into our tuk-tuk and headed back into town. That evening, we watched a beautifully filmed video about Angkor Wat at the hotel restaurant across the street, and planned where we wanted to go the next day....

The second day, we decided we wanted to guide to help us better understand what we were seeing – good in theory, but not so great in execution. Our hired guide climbed into our tuk-tuk with us and we headed to our chosen temple complex – Wat Thom, one of the most extensive, which we figured would take us a whole day to properly explore.
Wat Thom is famous for the faces carved at the top of dozens of its temple spires, and is surrounded by numerous ancillary structures like the Elephant and Leper Terraces. Our guide was enthusiastic, but long-winded – I started to lose focus as the morning passed and Colin was practically crawling out of his skin. We had to repeatedly drag our guide into the shade while he gave us long background stories on each feature – all of which were in the blazing hot sun – and my efforts to “guide the guide” as to what we wanted, how much and for how long, were pointedly ignored. After a couple of hours, we finally made a stop for a cool drink, and ordered some food to stretch out the time. I was considering dismissing the guide, and trying to figure out how to do it diplomatically, when he returned to collect us and had apparently had an epiphany – despite the fact that he didn't seem to be able to adapt his guiding routine to the needs of an 11 year old boy, he did realize that we weren't happy, and suggested that we go swimming for the afternoon instead.
We'd seen a fair amount of Wat Thom already, and under the circumstances it sounded like not a bad idea at all. So we hopped back in the tuk-tuk and went to the West Baray, an enormous impounded lake. Our guide led us down a boat ramp, around a bend and then over a rickety bamboo walkway along the water's edge. The walkway followed a line of thatch-covered shelters, slung with hammocks and occupied nearly entirely by locals.
We settled into one, a woman brought Colin an inner tube, and Colin and our guide jumped into the lake. When they got out, the guide ordered some food, and two women with a small grill and a half dozen squid came over and cooked them up whole over the flame. We dipped them in hot sauce, and ate – they were fantastic! After a couple of hours of lounging, swimming and eating, we decided that since we were already halfway there, we'd continue on up the road to the second Artisans d'Angkor workshop, where the silk-making and weaving workshops were housed. The afternoon was saved, and we had a couple of great experiences we would have otherwise missed. We decided on no guide the next day, however! We asked our driver, a very kindly elderly man with an extremely warm smile, if he would drive us again for our third and last visit to the temples.
The next morning our driver was waiting, and Colin and I headed out to the temple we were both most excited to see – Ta Phrom. Ta Phrom is still largely overgrown, and much of it is crumbling, but it is astounding. It looks like something out of an Indiana Jones film, and for good reason – several of the jungle ruin scenes were actually filmed onsite. The overgrowth also meant that there was more shade, and we happily scrambled around for a few hours before the midday heat became overwhelming.
Back in town, we rested up before heading back to Siam Reap's Pub Street for a Cambodian cooking class.
Colin wanted to learn how to make the fabulous fish amok we had had our first night, and we also selected green mango salad, a sweet green bean dessert, and a few other dishes – four each – for our menus. Colin wound up doing both his work and mine (not that he minded) because my back finally gave out – three days of clambering around the ruins at Angkor Wat had taken me down. I sat and drank wine and watched, while Colin was a whirling dervish around the kitchen, cooking for both of us and delighting the two women who were teaching the class. The end result: delicious! We followed it with a Khmer (traditional Cambodian) massage, and spent the rest of the evening wandering around the vibrant Night Market, until Colin was so tired he was weaving and tripping. I decided Id better get him back and to bed before people mistook my 11 year old son for a staggering drunk.

We boarded a return bus to Phnom Penh the next morning, after a last stop at the Artisan d'Angkor crafts shop so Colin could choose his memento of Siam Reap (a small silver plated elephant box). We had left our large bags at the Nice Guest House in Phnom Penh, a sister-hotel to the Capital and just a few doors down, so settled in for one more night on the same corner that had comprised our entire first visit, but this time we grabbed a tuk-tuk to take us to the waterfront. The Grand Palace sits across a road and a wide expanse of royal lawn from the river, making a dramatic backdrop for the sunset. Colin finally found his roasted grasshoppers at a roadside cart, and was steeling himself for a sample, when a police vehicle chased the (apparently) unlicensed vendor away, as fast as it was possible to pedal a bike cart weighed down by heavy vats of grasshoppers, grubs and assorted insect snacks. Denied his crickets, and much to my relief, we settled instead for a dinner of Spanish tapas on a restaurant balcony overlooking the river. The food was so good we ate there three times in as many days, returning for lunch each of our next two days in the city.
We also enjoyed the rare opportunity to cook for ourselves. Our last night in Phnom Penh we spent couchsurfing at the apartment of an American expat who lives above an Irish Pub across from the Royal Palace.
We woke the morning before heading to her place, managed to cross the street without the aid of a tuk-tuk for the first time (!) and delved into the depths of the Rousso Market, in search of ingredients to take to Mariam's, our host. After several circuits through the covered interior of the market, and a few wrong turns resulting in wading through masses of chicken feathers and offal, we emerged victorious with fresh fish, lemon grass, garlic, onion, tomatoes, and rice.
We had another wonderful couchsurfing experience, cooking a fish stew for Mariam and her third couchsurfing guest, trailing along as her guests to her favorite Cambodian dance club, and sleeping on her enclosed outdoor patio overlooking the palace – nice!
On our last day, after a last lunch of tapas, we loaded ourselves and our gear into our last tuk-tuk in Cambodia, and headed for the airport. By evening we'd be in Bangkok, and ready to start another chapter....

No WiFi

2010-02-13T07:44:00.000-08:00

Please excuse this interruption to our regularly scheduled programming.... we are in India where wifi is practically nonexistant, so I cannot upload new blog updates from my personal laptop. Once we are in a country/location where it is feasible, Cambodia, Thailand and India itself will be posted.... Namaste!

Vietnam for the Holidays - Part 2

2010-01-13T03:21:00.000-08:00

Hue to Ho Chi Min

We woke on the train approaching Hue, on the central Vietnam coast, just in time for the legendary Hue-to-DaNang stretch, said to be the most beautiful in the country.
The train cut across the steeply dropping mountainsides as they descended straight into the South China Sea, occasionally crossing high trestles where deep valleys cut into the range. On the trestles, we appeared to hang in mid-air while watching the waves crash onto the beaches below. Here and there, brightly colored wooden fishing boats lingered offshore, and clusters of round “basket-boats” laid nets closer in to the beach. It was gorgeous, and a nice introduction to the next phase of our trip.

We disembarked at Da Nang, and took a taxi the 45 minutes to Hoi An, where we planned to spend my birthday.

Hoi An is an historic town, relatively unscathed by the Vietnam War, and since listed as a World Heritage Site for its original wooden homes, shops and bridges and mix of French, Chinese and Japanese architecture.

It completely charmed us, and our plan to stay three nights extended to four and then five, before we finally pulled ourselves away. We loved wandering the narrow streets and exploring the shops and waterfront cafes.

At night, most shops would light lanterns, which added to the mesmerizing quality of the historic “old town.” One evening, we ate on the upper terrace of a small cafe with no menu, just the chef/owner's daily four course menu of fish, meat or vegetarian dishes – fantastic! On my birthday, we ate at the cluster of street stalls across from the river, where each picnic table was serviced by a different cook – we couldn't decide between them all, so would up eating twice at two of them. ;-) Our Singaporean bunkmate from our overnight train was in town too, and joined us for the celebration. On another day, I finally broke down and let one of the local tailors (the town is famed for them) fit me for a tailor-made dress – but just a simple linen dress, rather than one of the fancy silk numbers most travel here for.

The highlight of our visit was a day with the Red Bridge Cooking School, which started with a morning visit to the local market, followed by a ½ hour boat ride up the canals to the riverside cooking school (Colin got to steer the whole way – there and back), and then the preparation and eating of five local dishes, including making our own rice paper for fresh spring rolls (!) and a fabulous eggplant clay pot dish that probably requires that I change all our cooking and eating paraphernalia when we get home.

Our next destination after Hoi An was Mui Ne – a coastal fishing and bungalow/resort strip a few hours north of Ho Chi Min City. It was a long haul from Hoi An to Mui Ne, so we broke it up with an overnight stop in Nha Trang, in/famous party beach town.
The beaches were beautiful, but the snorkeling was a bit of a disappointment – very poor visibility and enough tiny jellyfish to set Colin's skin stinging and chase him out of the water. The boat trip out to the reef, though, was very scenic. The next day, we boarded an open tour bus – the top line of comfort with comfy beds in place of seats! - a nice surprise given that we had about six hours on the road between Nha Trang and Mui Ne. The bus dropped us at the door of our “resort,” where we would stay through Christmas.
We booked it sight unseen before leaving Seattle in September, and it turned out to be lovely! Individual little bungalows, a cabana-style bar/cafe with pool table, and a beautiful emerald-green pool just inside the gate leading to the beach.

The beach was even better, with talcum-powder white sand, bathtub-temperature water and basket-style fishing boats scattered in both directions, not to mention the beach-massage peddlers waiting to pamper you whenever the mood struck. They also did the most fascinating variation on “waxing” Ive ever seen – a piece of string and complex two-handed, double-dutch string dance and they could pull every last bit of hair off your legs... given enough time. I took advantage of the massage, but passed on the rest. ;-)

Christmas morning, we hid Colin's gifts – a Kindle (to try to keep him in books as we traveled) and envelopes containing mostly cash for various purposes from family back home – under the small Yule tree set in the tropical landscaped gardens outside of our bungalow. We munched on treats friends had sent from home (including a package of opened bubblegum for Colin – hmmm, wonder who that could have been from...?) and reveled in the weirdness of it all.
Then we hiked off to the “Fairy Stream,” which ran through red- and white-colored sand dunes and ended in a picture-perfect waterfall just right for a shower. On the way back, we scrambled up steps cut into the dunes for a cold drink at a small hut we spotted on our way in, and relaxed in the company of several coconut-eating chickens.

After a few days of lazy bliss, we boarded another bus for Ho Chi Min City, which dropped us in backpacker central, an easy half block from our guest house. Even crossing the street wasn't as bad as in Hanoi – there was actually a traffic light to (kinda) help! Id been warned that Ho Chi Min traffic was more “mental” than Hanoi, but the mere existence of traffic lights helps immensely in my book – maybe its just all in my head, but still...

To my surprise, Tom took to Hi Chi Min immediately. We had already decided to spend his last few days in the Mekong Delta, but he would have been content to explore the city for longer, I think. He went wandering off for a look around while I crashed exhausted in our room – buses always sap my energy. The next day, we were on another one, bound for My Tho, capital of the Mekong Delta. We had decided to go with a local bus this time, rather than book our visit through a tour company. Wow.

One taxi to the bus station, one shuttle bus to the other (aka “right”) bus station (that we should have gone to to start with), one bus to My Tho, and yet one more taxi to our hotel – simple enough, right? Wrong. The shuttle bus slowly filled until Tom, Colin and I were all shoved into sardine-sized spaces at opposite ends of the bus, legs wrapped around our bags with extra ones on our laps, when suddenly we were being shouted off the shuttle to board the bus for My Tho, which had appeared inexplicably at the side of the road instead of at the bus station, where everyone could have gotten off the shuttle and actually let us out. Since that didnt happen, we had to hand our bags out the window to waiting runners (but which way would they run with them??) and climb over the other passengers and bags to get to a door so we could follow after our bags and get to the bus.... OK, whew, we and most of our belongings made it – but I had to retrieve one bag from the seat of a motorcycle where the luggage “helper” had stashed it, and chase down the (same) guy wandering off wearing Colin's conical hat, which he had been painstakingly transporting since China. This bus too, was full to bursting, and had tinny speakers blaring a screechy comedy showing on the TV at the front, but the windows let in a nice breeze. It was fine (for me – but Colin and Tom weren't so thrilled) until we reached the outskirts of My Tho and we were once again ejected at the side of the road with no bus station in sight. This time, a gaggle of motos (motorcycles for hire) surrounded us, vying to transport us into town – child, luggage and all. Oh boy. Fortunately, one of them spotted a driver they knew spoke English and waved him over. He called us a taxi, gave us his card (he was a tour operator), and refused to take a tip for his help. Score. We'd use him for our day touring the delta.... Once safely settled in town, we learned we could have done the whole trip for less in a nice air-conditioned tour bus by catching a ride back with the day-trippers from Saigon. Grrrrrrr.

Our hotel was nearly empty, but we had a top floor room with a terrace overlooking the Mekong.
The river is wide and busy so far down the delta, with huge barges transporting cargo and dredgers harvesting the fine river bottom silt – quite a different operation from the farmers we'd seen scooping buckets of the stuff to load on their oxcarts in smaller towns. The farmers were harvesting nutrient-rich mud for their rice paddies; the dredgers were mining silt to make cement to support the ever-present construction that had awakened us nearly every morning we'd been in a Vietnamese city or mid-sized town.

My Tho itself wasn't much to speak of – reminded me strangely of Manaus, in the Brazilian Amazon -

but we had a great day arranged by our savior/tour operator touring the nearby islands by boat, paddling through the canals, visiting coconut candy workshops, playing with pythons, biking through the countryside, feasting on whole fried “elephant-ear” fish, and catching fireflies after dark. Nice.

After our cushy return to Ho Chi Min City, we explored the central market, stocked up on a few souvenirs, and had a nice dinner out before saying goodbye to Tom – he left for the airport about 8 p.m., and we left Ho Chi Min early the next morning for our journey up the Mekong River to Cambodia.....

Next up: Journey to Angkor Wat

Vietnam for the Holidays - Part 1

2010-01-05T04:55:00.000-08:00

It is New Year's Eve on a tributary of the Mekong River, a stone's throw from the Cambodian border.
We are sitting below the full moon on the deck of a floating hotel struggling to keep our eyes open until midnight. Colin throws in the towel at 11:30, collapsing onto the mosquito net-draped bed in our room. I persist, and cheer the new year as a ship going by in the dark channel blasts its celebratory, deep welcome to 2010. A quick round of toasts with the other guests on board and I retreat to a chair on the lower deck to watch the clumps of lily pads float by on the blackness of the water. From a lighted patio across the river, music from Chau Doc's only New Year's Eve party wafts across the wide channel. Then, about 10 minutes into the new year, a soft light on a rooftop on the far side of the water catches my eye, and rises slowly. A single, fire-lit paper lantern drifts upward, then sideways, then up again, crossing through the shaft of moonlight. It is a lazy, somehow hopeful, sight – I imagine that it holds collected wishes for the year ahead. For several, long minutes it bobs slowly in the air as it ascends, then flickers. The flame dims, and high above our houseboat, it silently disappears.

Happy New Year, Vietnam.

We have just finished nearly a month of travel through Vietnam, starting in Hanoi and ending in the Mekong Delta. North to south, our path stretched from Sapa, pressed up against the Chinese border, to Ho Chi Min City (old Saigon, and Vietnam's largest city) in the far south.

Arriving at Hanoi's airport, we taxied into town and I was pleasantly surprised to see a somewhat Caribbean-looking city with faded green, pink and blue buildings, none over six stories high - a style my mind dubbed “concrete-colonial” - in contrast to the modern Asian high-rise metropolises we had come to expect. It looked historic, charming and full of explorable nooks and crannies. All true – so long as you didn't have to cross the street. We quickly found that despite Hanoi's charms, you could not GET there from there. While the locals strode out into the street, appearing to magically step through eight or ten lanes of motorbikes, trucks, taxis and bicycle carts, we cowered on the curb, looking for a break, and finding absolutely none. The first large intersection we eventually conquered left me jelly-kneed and Colin shaking from head to toe with rage and anxiety – in addition to the whizzing, weaving traffic around us, the high-pitched blare of a thousand horns in our ears rattled every last nerve we had. It went against all of my maternal instincts to attempt it a second time, so we hopped, helmet-less, on the back of a motorbike (for hire at every corner) and entered the frenzied flow of bleating, honking traffic for the return – in this context, it was the safer alternative.

We had several days before Tom was scheduled to arrive, and decided we'd have a better time if we got out of dodge, so we booked two tours back-to-back to span the five days we had until his arrival – the first to Sapa, in the mountains, and the second to Halong Bay, on the coast. That night, we were on an overnight train, sharing a sleeper car with an entertaining English couple and playing Quiddler until we couldn't keep our eyes open. In the morning, we were awakened before daybreak as we pulled into Lao Cai station, and shuffled to a nearby cafe to meet our connecting minibus to Sapa.
As we climbed the road into the mountains, the sky lightened over views of rice-paddies, lush mountainsides and the occasional waterfall. It was stunning, and couldn't have been farther from the press and noise of Hanoi.

We spent the next two days lounging on the patio of our hotel, with an unobstructed view of the mountain range, and trekking to nearby villages along mazes of interconnecting paths with our H'mong guide, Me.
Me (pronounced exactly as it looks) was strong, petite, smart and funny, and had a habit of rewrapping her leg coverings or long hair coil whenever we stopped for a refreshment break or swim – her hair, done up in a continuous circular wrap around her head, hung to her knees when released, and had to periodically be retwisted and rolled back into place as we hiked up and down the mountain paths to the outlying villages. Chatting on the trail, she revealed that she was three months pregnant, but the only signs of it were the small green mountain apples that she continuously munched as we walked – their sour taste satisfied her cravings and kept her energy up.

Me was also unwittingly the source of endless humor throughout the day, in a very Laurel and Hardy kind of way:
BJ to Colin, running ahead on the path: “Colin, wait for Me!”
Colin: “Why do I have to wait for you?”
BJ: “You don't, but you have to wait for Me.”
Colin: “Huh? Do I have to wait for you or not?!”
BJ: “No you don't, but Me is behind me – you have to wait for HER.”
Colin: “Ohhhhh... Why do I have to wait for Me?”
BJ: “Well of course you have to wait for you – you don't really have a choice do you?”
...and on and on. It got funnier the next day when we met Yu (but at least the names were easy to remember!)

Sapa stunned us.

Each ethnic group in the villages had distinctly different clothing and hair- or headdress styles, characteristic crafts and food, and many lived in villages comprised exclusively of their only their minority group -- some villages combined three or four ethnic groups, but apparently never all. And the scenery was to die for. We gazed over miles of mountains ridges and valleys alternating between the dark shade of the forest and the lighter hues of the rice-fields cut into ridges climbing the slopes. The sky was spotless blue, and ripples glistened through the landscape where streams cut through.

We swam in waterfalls and returned exhausted and happy at the end of our days.

On the third night after leaving Hanoi, we once again boarded the night train for our return, arriving back in the city at 4 a.m., an hour ahead of schedule. Not wanting to wander the streets with an 11-year old in the darkness, we settled onto benches in the train station to wait for sunrise. Except for the one borderline looney who insisted on reading my newspaper at the same time as I was – squatting beside me reading the back side of the page I was reading, or leaning over with his head on my shoulder to read my side from the seat behind me – it was a hassle-free and uneventful wait. After a detour for breakfast, we then headed for the van taking us to our next destination – Halong Bay.

Halong City – port to Halong Bay – is a long drive from Hanoi. By the time we arrived at the docks 4 -1/2 hours later, I wondered if this trip would be worth it (buses are among my least favorite modes of transport, perhaps matched by the shockless tin-can minitaxis we found in smaller cities in China). Halong Bay is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and I had been oogling photographs of the limestone karst-dotted sea for years – I hoped it wouldn't disappoint.

2,000 karst islands scattered through a 1,500 square mile bay.

Some house cavernous limestone caves accessible from the outside, allowing a peek into the interior of the spires, while others are cut through by arches large enough for a kayak to access an otherwise invisible oceanic lagoon.
We feasted on seafood, and jumped from the decks of our overnight junk into water just the perfect temperature to refresh from the sun, but not cool enough to ever feel it was too cold to jump in again.

We played harmonica on the roof deck, and watched the sun set over one of the world's most celebrated settings – it definitely did not disappoint.

Colin promised to buy one of the wooden vessels for Tom and I to retire on, at least for a year, if he became a celebrity chef with loads of cash. I think I'll take him up on that. ;-)

We headed back into Hanoi again the next day to meet Tom's plane, due in the following morning.
He arrived with bags intact this time (yay!) and we introduced him to our favorite cafe that didn't involve crossing a street before venturing further afield. By day's end, we had found a street light and crossed the road that defeated Colin and I on our first day. On the other side was a lovely lake with a temple in the center, accessed via a red wooden bridge. We took our time circling the lake, snapping photos of the photographers snapping photos of wedding parties. At the temple,

Colin and Tom climbed trees and we all watched groups of old men playing Xiangqi – a more complicated, Chinese version of chess.

Hanoi was beginning to feel manageable, but we still decided we wanted to day-trip to the Perfume Pagoda the next day, rather than navigate the streets to the city's sights. We had a night train booked out to Da Nang at 7 p.m. the next night, requiring that we be back in the city and at the train station by 6:00. We found a tour through the local backpackers hostel that guaranteed our return before six, and drop off at the train station if we were running late – perfect. And too good to be true. We boarded the bus with our bags the next morning, to the consternation of the guide, who was surprised to hear that the company had promised to drop us anywhere other than at our pick up point. As we squeezed into the last seats on the minibus, our guide started to run down our itinerary for the day – two hour drive to the river, boat trip to the mountain, hike to the pagoda, lunch at the top, cave visits on the way back down, return boat trip, back in the van, and if all goes well, we'll be back in Hanoi by 7:00. What!?! Slam on the brakes, quick negotiation, unsatisfactory result, exit the van, drag bags from the back, and stand on the street corner in an unknown part of Hanoi as the van drives off, leaving us to figure out our next move....

But all's well that ends well. We taxied back to the backpackers, received a full refund plus taxi fare, and set off for the Army Museum, Hanoi's repository of the history of the U.S./Vietnam, French and all other wars Vietnam has suffered or provoked throughout the years.
We caught our evening train, slept in comfort in our “tourist class” 4-berth cabin with a Singaporean bunkmate, and woke the next morning just north of Hue, on the central Vietnam coast.

Up next: Vietnam for the holidays – Part 2 (Hue to Ho Chi Min)

Happy Holidays!

2009-12-24T21:05:00.000-08:00

...from Mui Ne, Vietnam.

Wishing you great adventures and a happy new year!

Bali: Ceremonies & Sunsets

2009-12-20T01:35:00.000-08:00

Our trip to Bali was an unplanned detour, by way of Kuala Lumpur, where we had flown in order to escape the below freezing weather than had engulfed southern China, and only after discovering a glitch in our plan to take the train over the border from China into Vietnam: the train to Vietnam originates in Beijing, and only four berths are saved for passengers boarding the twice weekly train in Guilin – our point of origin. In order to get one of those berths, however, you must relinquish your passport for three days – the amount of time it takes from booking to ticket delivery from Beijing. Ouch. Foreigners cannot go anywhere in China without a passport – we'd have to stay in Guilin (see previous blog – NOT happening) while waiting for our tickets, not to mention the anxiety of simply letting our most valuable travel possession out of our hands. We started looking for alternatives – another traveler we met decided to head west and cross at a different border, and the bus to the border and then another to Hanoi was a possibility, but required at least 10 daylight hours to make the journey. Then we met a Malaysian woman and her daughter who had flown direct to Guilin from Kuala Lumpur (KL) for less than $100. From there, it was similarly inexpensive to get back up to Hanoi – altogether only a little bit more than the train, but without the passport hassle. But the real clincher was the $50 AirAsia fare from KL to Bali. We had three weeks until we needed to be in Hanoi, so booked our flights – paradise, here we come!

We landed in Denpasar, Indonesia and were picked up by our hotel and deposited in the center of Bali's surf and nightlife mecca: Kuta. One day of that was all that we needed to arrange a shuttle transport to Lovina, a relatively quiet beachfront town on the north coast – beautiful! and with a view of the mountains on Java when the light was right.
We spent a week watching sunsets and (mostly) fending off the ever-present fruit, seashell, and massage vendors on the beach, while marveling at the ever-present flower and incense alters and offerings to Ganesha, Allah, and Buddha at every storefront, house entry, and street corner in sight.
Faith and ceremony marks every moment and otherwise routine slice of life here, injecting thoughtfulness and beauty into the simplest walk to the corner market to get a refill of water.
Our homebase in Lovina was an unexpected treat! We booked a room for $25/night – higher than some alternatives, but at a place I felt reasonably assured we could get a good night's sleep and not worry about leaving our meager valuables in the room. For that price, as it turned out, we got a luxury resort – complete with extensive tropical gardens, two pools, a play area and treehouse, poolside restaurant, bar and onsite spa, and only half a block from the beach.
We spent our week snorkeling; heading to sea in a fishing boat at daybreak to look for dolphins (successful!); and touring the temples,waterfalls and hot springs in the nearby mountains.

We enjoyed our Thanksgiving dinner poolside with a whole duck roasted in banana leaves, and ventured as far as Menjagan Island offshore of Bali Barat National Park for a day snorkeling at the edge of a steep, deep reef shelf with the most spectacular coral formations and diversity of tropical fish Ive ever seen (and that's saying something!).
We began to make friends with the family that owned the neighborhood market closest to the hotel (Colin discovered during a blackout that they all play chess), and were invited to attend a cremation ceremony, unfortunately scheduled for the day after we decided it was time to move on.... next stop – Ubud: food mecca of Bali, nestled in the hills north of Denpasar.

We found a driver to take us there, so we could stop off and visit Singaraja Market, the 400 year old Beji Temple, Batur Volcano and a coffee farm on the way. When we arrived at our guest house in Ubud, we discovered preparations for another cremation ceremony underway on our small street, so spent the evening watching the large wooden bull that the body would be placed in for cremation being carved. Bali was beginning to grow on us, but the best was still to come...
On the third night we were to spend in Ubud, our guest house was full and we had to find new digs. Colin's prodding encouraged me to check Couchsurfing for hosts before booking a new room. There were indeed people listed in Ubud, and we got an almost immediate response from our first inquiry – that evening, we found ourselves at Villa Kubu Merta, a luxe villa on the outskirts of town, being preparing for use as a guest house and future home of the Bali Institute (www.baliinstitute.org) by its resident diver/owner, Elsha.
In the meantime, having been a couchsurfing host in Hawaii before moving home to her native Indonesia, she had opened up the villa's elegant rooms and lovely pool (watched over by Ganesha, no less!) to couchsurfers, as a means of training her staff and simply b/c her heart and her spirit are just so dang big! Wow – Kubu Merta was not only beautiful in itself, it was filled with the coolest, most inspired travelers and adventurers of all sorts. We had an incredible three days, finding ourselves almost reluctant to even leave the grounds and the company to continue our own explorations around Ubud. We did manage to see a few things during our time there, though... most notably:
Odalan

We happened to be in Ubud on the anniversary of the central temple, an occasion celebrated at temples throughout Bali with special ceremonies and offerings.
In the afternoon, after browsing through the public market, we wandered across the street in the general direction of some enticing music, and found the local gamelon orchestra in the courtyard of the Ubud Palace rehearsing for their performance at the Odalan ceremony that evening.
In the adjacent courtyard, we found two young men practicing with the dance master for their own roles in the proceedings. We kept bouncing back and forth between the two, inhaling the incense that perfumed the grounds, and taking in the music and dance, until we noticed a procession of women passing on the street outside the gates.
We stepped out and ran smack into the arrival of the offerings for the ceremony – elaborate headdresses carried by even more elaborately dressed women and containing layer upon layer of fruits and flowers to be laid out in the temple as an offering to the gods. Each person to enter the temple grounds (open only those appropriately dressed for the occasion – we were not) was sprinkled with holy water by the guardian of the gate. After a ceremony lasting several hours there would be a public performance of music and dancing in the town square – we were too wiped out to make it that late, though, so were content with our early glimpse into the preparations and headed “home” to get some sleep before the roosters started up (they seemed to think 4 a.m. was sunrise - not so!)
Sacred Monkey Forest
In the center of Ubud sits an expansive park containing forested and moss-covered temples and a holy spring, criss-crossed by serene trails, and decidedly NOT serene, mohawk-wearing, crazy monkeys! At the slightest sign of a banana, say in a two-year-old child's eager hand, they will jump upon the banana carrier, snatch the desired fruit, and proceed to munch away while sitting on your shoulder.
Should you have been so foolish as to enter Monkey Forest with such a thing, you will not be abandoned by the monkey once the fruit is gone. Said monkey will linger on your shoulder, on your back, off your hip, and in your backpack if at all feasible, looking for more “gifts” to appease his appetite. If you have been wise enough to abstain from carrying fruit through Monkey Forest, this can all be widely entertaining... until someone gets hurt. We were fortunate enough not to see bloodshed, but apparently it does happen. Despite this, the monkeys are damn cute, if also a little intimidating.
They even look nearly regal when perched atop the stone carvings of the temple.

If you want to escape monkeys while in Monkey Forest, then head for the banyon tree and holy springs – the most peaceful and mysterious park of the park is inexplicably free of monkeys, and absolutely lovely.

It was finally time for us to conclude our detour and head back to our regularly scheduled programming, but not without a stop en route in Kuala Lumpur to visit Elaine and Tasha, our Chinese travel mates who had turned us on to our detour to begin with.

We flew out of Bali – again just a day ahead of a new cremation invitation (!!) - and landed in KL for a brief look around before continuing to Vietnam.
Our day with Elaine and Tasha included a visit to Batu Caves - a temple in a limestone karst and home to more monkeys (where Colin got to hold a live python); a wonderful Malaysian lunch at a crowded, locals-only (except us) cafe; and a romp in Lake Gardens Park, before setting off on our own to tour the KL Bird Park – home to peacocks, hornbills, scarlet ibises, and hundreds of other fascinating and exotic birds in what is billed (no pun intended) as the world's largest open-air aviary.
Not normally one for tourist sights, this one was pretty spectacular. We also ate our way through Kuala Lumpur's international panopoly of foods – the highlights being succulent Moroccan kababs
and halal-prepared Spanish tapas. Yummmm.

Up Next: Vietnam for the holidays....

Yangshuo & the Li River Valley

2009-12-05T00:32:00.000-08:00

We left Shanghai on the overnight train to Guilin in Guangxi province, entryway to Yangshuo and the Li River valley. We traveled in “hard sleeper” class – 6 to a berth, piled three bunks high, 20-or-so berths to a car, with no doors or curtains, so its like one big 100+ person slumber party. Colin and I had the bottom bunks – advantageous for securely storing our bags between us and providing a small window-side table for playing cards, etc., but with the drawback that our beds also served as communal seating for the upper bunk occupants during the day – not a problem, really, since we are both short. ;-)
The only real issue with hard sleeper class was the lack of sound barriers throughout the car – all conversation, snoring, and over-amped iPods created a constant low din of noise around-the-clock that made earplugs an absolute must to make the “sleeper” part of the journey a reality. Not a lick of English was spoken by any of the staff on board, so despite the occasional food carts going through the train, we were relieved that we'd brought our own food, as we hadn't the slightest idea what they were offering! (unlike street food stalls, none of the food was on display). Once in Guilin (after several hours of constantly asking “Guilin?”, “Guilin?” as we approached each station), we scurried our bags across several lanes of unyielding traffic to find our hostel off the main drag, checked in and chilled out for a few hours before heading off to find dinner. We planned to see the city the next day and find out how to get a ride aboard a boat down the Li River to Yangshuo.

Guilin proved to be a challenge. Taking our cue from the numerous signs around our hostel warning of pickpockets and bag snatchers, we slung our daybags over our heads and across our chests, fastened the latches, and kept one hand on the clasp at all times.... except when eating ice cream. Oops. I wish we could say we were Shanghai'ed in Shanghai – at least that would have some poetry to it – but instead it was in Guilin that Colin had his camera lifted right out of his bag without so much as a bump or a tug. Another traveler at our hostel had her phone lifted the same way the same day, and just like that, Guilin lost its appeal.
We'd been trying hard to find its charms, with limited success – some nice pagodas at a park, a raft ferry across the canal - but decided at that point that our hostel was the best thing about the city, and so we stayed put honing our pool-playing skills until the next morning, when our ride to the riverboat (arranged by our hostel) arrived to take us on our next adventure – and once again, just like that, our fortunes turned – the river journey to Yangshuo was downright, unbelievably, spectacularly AMAZING!

If ever a picture was worth a thousand words.....

Our “bamboo raft” (the bamboo deck on most has been replaced by plastic tubes over the years) left us in the town of XinPing, where we hopped on a local bus to Yangshuo, about 45 minutes away. Once in Yangshuo, we negotiated a price for transport to our guest house in a small village about 4 km outside of town, only to find our “taxi” was a tri-wheeled motorcycle with an open bed on the back just large enough for Colin and I and our bags.
I was about to bail out, when I saw the look of glee on Colin's face, and since “real” cars don't have seat belts in China anyway, figured we weren't any worse off – in fact, the view of the passing countryside was better this way!
About 15 minutes later, we arrived at the collection of farm houses that make up the Outside Inn, were greeted by a young Chinese woman who spoke perfect Australian-accented English (??), and were led to our room overlooking the mud-brick complex and surrounded by choruses of crowing roosters. Later that afternoon, we met the Swiss/English managers and their children, who became Colin's constant companions and playmates for the next week.
A twenty-minute walk at sunset through the neighboring rice paddies brought me to the edge of a tributary river to the Li, and endless views of karst mountains leading off into the distance. In my dreams, this is what I came to China for. I couldn't stop grinning from ear-to-ear.

The next week was a wonderful slow immersion in the charms of the Guanxi countryside:
a day biking along dirt tracks to a neighboring village and its thousand-year-old “Dragon Bridge;”
a visit to the local fan “factory” - family compounds of artists who hand down the skills of fan-making and painting from generation to generation; a couple of wonderful Chinese cooking classes; several walks through the karst hills into Yangshuo; and a couple of side trips to catch market day in the surrounding towns.
On our last evening we treated ourselves to a performance of Liu San Jie (“Illuminations” in English) – a mind-blowing 600-person dance, music and light spectacle on the Li River, viewed from the riverside, and created by Zhang Yimou, the director of the Beijing Olympics Opening Ceremony. Shown only after dark, karst peaks up to a ½ mile away were illuminated to stunning effect for parts of the show, dancers appeared to walk on water, and cormorant fishermen bobbed in and out of view in the shadows – it was really quite indescribable, and given the scope and darkness, very hard to photograph, though Colin managed to capture one or two lovely images.

It was hard to tear ourselves away, but given the below-freezing temperatures most of our time there, and the lack of central heating in this part of the world (our only heat was a wood stove in the common room, and an electric blanket in our room – both of which are nearly unheard of luxuries here), we decided it was time to head for warmer climes. The Chinese railway wanted our passport for three days in order to issue us one of the few sleeper cots left on the train to Vietnam, so we abandoned that plan in favor of AirAsia's super cheap flights, and bought a ticket to the only place they fly from Guilin – Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. From there, we figured we'd catch a flight back up to Hanoi, but only after adding a side trip after learning that Bali is only $50 from KL on AirAsia! - so off we went... from 30 degrees to 90 degrees in a single day. Bali, here we come!

A week in Shanghai

2009-12-02T17:18:00.000-08:00

I am so far behind -- sorry folks!
My last entry left us arriving in Shanghai....

Shanghai was inside-out when we were there - half the city torn up for construction and renovation in preparation for the 2010 Shanghai Expo. The riverside walk along the Bund - Shanghai's signature historic architecture district - was walled off to build a new esplanade, and nearly every intersection had at least one corner piled 10-feet high in rubble. It made it kind of a pain, and kind of exciting, at once - a city in the throws of renewal.
Our favorite parts of town were unaffected though - the "old towns" whose charm is in their timelessness and history, rather than their newness. While most of Shanghai is gloriously "shiny," the old towns' draw is in their narrow alleys, interspersed courtyards, tiny shops and food stalls, and roving vendors.

Our favorite was Qibao, far to the southwest of the city center, and cut through by a canal with boatman ferrying visitors up and down on pole-pushed, covered rafts.

Colin's new-found love affair with tea continued to grow in Shanghai, and as usual we ate our way through the city - dumplings on Yunnan "Food Street," Nanxing steamed buns in the central Old Town, unbelievable seafood at an otherwise nondescript Chinese cafe, chocolate mousse in the French Concession, and noodles, noodles, noodles...
Our low point was a half-day blown at the International Hospital on the advice of Colin's doctor to check out some stomach cramps - a full work up, x-ray, surgical consult.. and huge bill!.. later and he was pronounced fine, with a word of advice to lay off the spicy food. ;-)
The highlights were our hostel itself, immediately off of People's Square, where Colin learned to be a pool shark from the many resident backpackers, and a night at the Shanghai Circus - dancers, acrobats, contortionists, jugglers, hoop jumpers, chair balancers, magicians, and five CRAZY Evil Kneivel-type guys criss-crossing high speed motorcycles inside/upside-down/and every-which-way in an enormous wire mesh globe.

On our final day, as the rains came in, we toured the incredible Shanghai Museum before heading to the train station for the overnight train to Guilin, entryway to our target destination: Yangshuo and the Li River in southern China.

Next up: Shangai'ed! (but not in Shanghai)

Blog 10: The slow boat to China

2009-11-23T21:40:00.000-08:00

We boarded the 17-hour international ferry from South Korea to China at the port city of Incheon, about an hour by subway from the center of Seoul.
Arriving at the international ferry terminal, we first noticed that there was not a single other “gaijin” in the terminal – we were the only westerners taking the boat to China. The second thing of note was that 90% of the other travelers were dressed in identical red vests and hats – the ferry was filled with hundreds of group tour visitors from China heading back home.

When we bought our tickets, all the cheap spots were full, so for an extra $20 we booked a twin room, instead of the usual 6 or 8 (or 30!) beds to a room. Turns out that that upgraded us to “royal” class – we had a stately private room with mini-fridge, tv, and our own bathroom with both a shower and tub (we hadn't had access to a bathtub since leaving home!).
The ferry itself was impressive – Colin's first reaction upon boarding was that he felt like he was on board the Titanic (in a good way, though I didn't quite appreciate the comparison).
It was smooth sailing all the way to China...

Arriving at the port in Qingdao, things were a little different. We were immediately assaulted by yellowish, stinky smog that made Colin's eyes sting and our stomachs a bit nauseous. We looked for the currency exchange to change our remaining Korean money to Chinese Yuan, but there was none – in an international terminal – hmmm. We fared no better at the bank down the street – we were told that only the Bank of China could change Korean currency. I did have some Yuan that I had bought in the U.S. before leaving, so we took a taxi to our hostel and figured we'd work out the currency exchange later. In our efforts to change money at the bank, though, we hadn't let on that we had any Yuan, so thinking us destitute, the bank manager insisted on giving us bus fare to get to the nearest Bank of China. I didn't have the heart, or the language skills, to correct her, so off we went with an additional 2 yuan (about .30 cents) in our pocket...

The taxi deposited us at the base of the park where we had been told our hostel was located. I was able to see a sign pointing us to the hostel, so we unloaded our bags from the trunk, sent the taxi away, and started up the stone steps ascending the hill. As soon as we started climbing, people started blocking our path and pointing us back down. They clearly wanted us to go another way, but we only had the posted signs to guide us to where we needed to go, and we were going to follow them, damn it, no matter what! As we got higher, the steps soon ended in a pile of rubble, and a half dozen workers were busily smashing up the concrete stairs and connecting patios, but on we went, climbing over the rubble with our heavy bags, sweating profusely, and alternately cursing and laughing as we plodded up the hill. Once past the construction, we continued to climb the stairs, and climb, and climb... following the occasional signs to the hostel as we went.
We finally came to the top, and were greeting by a wonderful old Observatory housing the youth hostel. We checked in, dragged our bags up two more flights of stairs, and made for the roof, where we had a view over all of
Qingdao, complete with a cafe and bar, a rooftop pool table, and the old observatory dome itself, decked out with cushions and curtains and the resident cuddly kitten.
Score!

A few days in Qingdao brought both rain and snow, which we were decidedly NOT prepared for. So after walking around a bit, finding the street markets, and watching in awe as the locals played beach volleyball practically in the buff and went swimming in the ocean, despite the freezing temperatures, we decided it was time to move south to Shanghai.

Easier said than done.

The receptionist at our hostel suggested taking the overnight bus to Shanghai instead of the train - “cheaper and faster,” she said. I suppose I cant argue with the truth of her statement, but the bus had a confusion factor that wasn't described as part of the bargain.

When we departed for the “bus station” in the cab she called for us, she neglected to include a few details – such as how we would be deposited by the side of a busy road with no obvious bus terminal in sight, and no where to walk without delving by foot into thick truck traffic because there were also no sidewalks in sight;
...or how we would have to stand there and wait until a man approached us flapping a paper with the receptionists' cell phone number on it (this part we only discovered upon begging our cab driver to call the receptionist to ask what the heck we were supposed to do once let out on the side of this busy, sidewalk-less road);
...or how we would have to stand in a 20x20 concrete block with a dozen chain-smoking men for nearly an hour while waiting for our bus to arrive (after diving into the aforementioned truck traffic on the heels of the paper-waving man and skirting a narrow opening between the trucks and a tall barrier wall to find the “station”);
...or how the bus that arrived to take us would have no reclining seats and no bathroom (both of which she assured me the overnight bus would have), leading us to frantically decide whether we should proceed or get the hell off now – after deciding we would use an empty water bottle for a toilet, we reluctantly decided to proceed;
...or how 30 minutes later, we would once again be ushered off the formidably inadequate bus onto a new bus waiting for us in the dark on the side of the highway – this one with a bathroom (yay!) and full of metal bunk beds, three across and end-to-end the length of the bus (double yay!!).

While in the end, all was well, those little details would have been good to know.

We promptly claimed the only two connecting bunks, at the very back of the bus, hung a blanket across the end as a makeshift screen, and settled in for the night. Not luxury, but quite comfy compared to what we thought we had gotten ourselves in for! About 8 hours later, we were suddenly awakened by the bus slowing down and the lights coming up as we pulled into the station in Shanghai, just before 5 a.m. It was pitch black, and my plan to duck into a nearby cafe (non existent), grab a coffee (ditto) and get oriented was abandoned in favor of grabbing a waiting cab, handing over a piece of paper with the address of our hostel, and hoping it wasn't too far or too expensive. Fortunately, it was neither. 10 minutes later, we were leaving our bags with the hostel's night watchman and heading out to find coffee and food. Shanghai was still deep asleep, but our hostel was immediately behind the Marriott, and McDonald's (24/7) was conveniently immediately across the street from the front of said Marriott. Micky-D's never looked so good! Two Egg McMuffins and two hours later, the reception desk at our hostel opened, and we checked in for the start of a week in Shanghai!

Seoul: Part 1

2009-11-22T23:03:00.000-08:00

Oops - just realized I neglected to post "Part 1" before posting "Part 2" - here it is...

Seoul: Part 1
Seoul made the 2008 Lonely Planet's Readers' Poll of the world 10 most hated cities, right up there with Chetumal, Mexico. I'm in agreement on many of the others, but on the selection of Seoul, I'm dumbfounded.
Colin and I originally planned to leave Seoul the day following Tom's departure, staying a total of three days. Instead, we decided to stay an additional five days, then another two.... In all, we had 10 days in and around Seoul, including a short side trip to the nearby West Sea Islands. We could happily have stayed longer, feeling comfortable with the city by the time we left, but like we had just scratched the surface of really getting to know it. The people we saw every day had just started to open up – our morning coffee and waffle vendor broke off a piece of her sticky rice cake to share with us the morning we left, and our inn owner's son had just started to seek Colin out to play the clown and make him laugh when he came home from morning kindergarten. We left before any real friendships had a chance to take hold, but not before falling in love with the city and many of its unique neighborhoods. If Seoul is the worst of what we are going to experience, this is going to be a stellar year!

Arriving at the Seoul Train Station from the southern city of Gyeongju, we easily navigated the subway and found our guest house in an alley just steps from the station stairs. It was also less than a block from Gyeongbukgong Palace – perhaps Seoul's most impressive palace in a city filled with them. Inn Daewon was squeezed in between several simple Korean restaurants serving groups of office workers from the nearby highrises, but inside the inn showed the bones of a traditional hanok (traditional house) with a plant filled central courtyard surrounded by guest rooms and a shared kitchen.
On our first evening, we walked down the wide avenue stretching south from the palace gate – the street left me with the impression of Lincoln Center melded with the D.C. Mall – performing arts centers and museums were interspersed with embassies and national government buildings on both sides of an expansive boulevard accented by a public median filled with walkways, statues, fountains and flower gardens. At one corner, a brightly painted corner shrine was backlit by the lights of a skyscraper, and at another, a palace gate tucked next to City Hall hinted at the many centuries that this same location has served as Korea's center of power and authority.

Returning to our inn after a dinner of seafood dolset bibimbap (seafood and veggies in a very hot pot, mixed at the table to complete cooking and meld the flavors) we slept happy and content on mattresses on our ondol (heated) floor, pleased that Seoul was looking like a good place to be.

Our second day in Seoul clinched it. With only one last full day with Tom before his return home, we set out to experience some of Seoul's most irresistible offerings – the open air markets and the public baths. As we wandered down the boulevard again, we caught the sound of horns and music from the opposite side of the street.
Making our way across, we saw flashes of bright blues and yellows in the crowd along the sidewalk. We had just stumbled onto the changing of the guard at one of the city's many palaces – what a spectacle!
Despite the occasional wink from a “soldier” to a child in the crowd, it was like being transported back in time – beautiful pagentry and incredible costuming. They even had a tent set up where passersby could try on period clothing and wander around the square – very cool. When it was all over, we continued on our way, stopping in a few bookstores and oogling at the many fountains and squares along the way, until we arrived at Namaedum Market.

Entering the market through “Street Food Alley,” we were immediately inundated with new sights and smells. In between whole dried squid and vats of boiled silk worm larvae, appealing options like “knife cut noodles” and Korean mandoo (dumplings) made our stomachs growl.
We spent some time exploring the different alleyways, offering everything from ginseng and iron tools to electronics and mother-of-pearl boxes. The market was a maze of people and wares, and has been going strong in this location for centuries. Once we'd worked up an appetite, we found a bustling stall with tables in the back and piles of steaming dumplings and meats on a grill in front. We squeezed in to take a seat, pointed to a few things that looked edible, and ordered a couple of beers. As usual, it was de-lish! We wobbled out, not able to finish it all, and took in a last swing around the market before moving on.

Our next target – a public bath (sorry, no photos folks!) – led us through side streets and underground passages en route to and around the back of Seoul Station. After carefully following the directions in our guide book, we were left staring at a construction site where the bath should have been. Undeterred, we hopped on the subway and headed to the Olympic Stadium, home of “SpaLand” - one of Seoul's largest public baths. Actually, SpoLand and SpaLand are two halves of the same facility – an olympic sized swimming pool, indoor golf, and fitness center on the sporting (“spo”) side; and hot spring baths, saunas, steam rooms, and jjimjibang – a family area with heated floors, cafe, massage chairs, oxygen room and computer room - on the “spa” side. For the truly hard-core budget traveler, you can stay all night if you want to, sleeping on a thin mat on a heated floor with an awkward but functional square pillow (they used to be wood blocks). For less than ten bucks, you get all the facilities, a locker, and a place to crash.

After nearly three hours of blissful indulgence, we convinced Colin it was time to go – he absolutely loved it and didn't want to leave, so I had to promise we'd come back. Guess we were going to stay a few days longer in Seoul! We went to the airport with Tom the next day, then just moped around our guest house missing him until bedtime – this separation was harder than our original departure in Canada. It took all my self control not to tell him to pack in the job and get his butt back to us a.s.a.p.! But then Id be responsible for all his discomforts on the trip ahead – not sure I want to “own” that. ;-)

Next up - Seoul: Part 2... (Note: there will be a delay in our regularly scheduled programming, due to government restrictions on social networking and blog sites... look for more near the end of November)

Seoul: Part 2

2009-11-22T01:24:00.000-08:00

Seoul: Part 2
We decided to stay in Seoul for another week, because our first couple of days there had us completely hooked . We met up with fellow traveler Meg, who we'd first met in Tokyo, for a visit inside the walls of Gyeongbokgung Palace, just a block from our inn.
The palace is a sprawling complex of grand halls, freestanding temples, and a spacious open air banquet hall constructed in the center of a pond, all connected by stone walkways and dotted with gardens. At the northeast corner, a five-story pagoda houses the National Folk Museum, and just across the road an historic neighborhood of 'hanoks' – traditional homes – winds up the hills of an quiet enclave called Bukchon Village.

After leaving the palace, we wandered through these streets oogling at the doors and arches of the homes, feeling like we were in a Korean version of San Francisco's restored Victorians. In the evening, we met Ji Young - a Korean woman my mother had befriended at a conference in Brazil, who took us to an incredible dumpling soup house in nearby Samcheongdong that we never would have found on our own, and then back into Bukchon Village to a traditional tea house we had seen earlier in the day, but mistaken for a museum(!).
Sitting on the floor, sipping fruit and flower concoctions and nibbling on pumpkin rice cake, Colin discovered a love for tea that has continued through our travels ever since – very cool development!

The next day we sought out the Children's Grand Park, covering many acres far to the southeast of the city center.
Fairly run down, it still provided space for running, plus an old-timey amusement park, an aviary, and an “animal show” featuring doves, seals and monkeys – most of which did what they pleased, rather than what the trainers wanted. ;-) The zoo was a depressing sight though – outdated, substandard habitats and too small spaces.

The evening was a greater success – we rode the cable car up Namsan Mountain, where the N'Seoul Tower is visible from all points of the city. At the top, we were instantly drawn into an Italian restaurant sitting on the cliffside, where Colin was able to get his pasta fix and I had my first glass of red wine in 6 weeks (ahhh..). Walking around N'Seoul Tower after dinner, we took in magnificent views of the city at night.

We needed to get an early start the next day – our inn didn't have a room for us the next night, so we had decided to head out to the West Sea Islands for an overnight visit. Unfortunately, we didn't in fact get an early start, after lazing through breakfast and visiting the nearby used bookstore to exchange books for Colin, so once we stored our bags and took the hour+ subway to Incheon, the port city west of Seoul, we had missed the last ferry to the islands.
Incheon didn't look like much, but we decided to buck up and take a room at the Hong Kong Motel in Chinatown near the subway station, then head to the islands the next day, delaying our return to Seoul. Chinatown in Incheon proved to be pretty interesting – very overwrought and ornate, with a great view of the sunset from the hill at the top of the 'hood. The Hong Kong was equal parts “love hotel” and respectable dive, and the management seemed pretty good at keeping the different types of guests separate - the man checking in before us got a little packet of condoms and accoutrements, while we were simply given our room key (whew). The next morning, we successfully made our way to the ferry terminal and caught a boat to Deokjeokdo – about an hour from the mainland on the “fast boat.”

At the ferry terminal, the tourist information office called ahead to book a room for us and arrange for pick up from the ferry. When we arrived, we walked past the fish and seafood market set up on the dock, and our ride quickly found us (we stuck out like sore thumbs, once again being the only foreigners on the boat). We drove to the opposite side of the island, to Sepori Beach – a lovely 2 km stretch of sand in a cozy bay – and a few blocks into a very sleepy seaside town to our inn. The town looked just about comatose, and we were the only guests at the hotel, aside from a few workers doing maintenance and repairs.
It was the off, off season, apparently. As we headed out to get something to eat, the owner stopped us and asked if we'd like his wife to cook something, because the restaurants (*all* of them, he said) were closed. We said sure and did a quick circuit of town before returning to eat. It was clear that the only thing worth seeing this time of year was the beach itself, which to be fair, was what we'd came for. In fact, we had the beach entirely to ourselves!
During what was left of the morning low tide, a few shellfish gatherers harvested out in the shallows, but once the water rose, our only company on the beach was a sweet little dog that Colin dubbed “Flop.” He stayed with us all day, romping and sleeping in the sand, while Colin built him a royal doggie sand castle and played canine tag. It was perfect, and a great way to rejuvenate for taking on the rest of Seoul.
We watched the spectacular sunset, which seemed to last for hours, before returning to our hotel, having another meal with the maintenance crew as our only companions. I was tempted to wake early enough to climb the mountain behind us to the tiny shrine just barely visible at the very top, but time was too short – we woke, ate some store-bought cookies, and headed back to the ferry for the return to Incheon. By mid afternoon, we were back at Inn Daewon in Seoul and making plans for the evening – a return visit to SpaLand for a few hours of soaking, steaming and leisurely reading stretched out on the jjimjibang's heated floors.

With just two days left in Korea, we mapped out what remaining Seoul sights we most wanted to see. The Shamanistic Temple in the north hills, a restored stream running through the city center, and the famous neighborhood of Insadong made the cut – all fantastic!
We got horribly lost looking for the temple, hiking up and down the foothills of the mountain it was hidden on at least three times, which made finding it all that much sweeter. ;-)
Colin became intimately familiar with Chyeonggu – the restored stream running through the city center – when he fell into it jumping over a series of slick rocks; and we fell hard for Insadong, where we had the best food we'd eaten yet in Korea.
We spent our entire last day wandering the streets of Insadong, visiting the park where the Korean Declaration of Independence was first read, and browsing, shopping and eating our way through the alleys. Exhausted, we headed back for our final night at Inn Daewon. The next day would be all packing and transit, first by subway again to the Port at Incheon, and then boarding our overnight ferry to China....

Next up: Taking the slow boat to China....

Poem on China (Colin, via email)

2009-11-14T05:55:00.001-08:00

Bamboo rafts on the Li
We decide to take one, you and me.
The karst mountains crawl on by
On the raft, we seem to fly.

Week 4: Busan & Gyeongju, South Korea

2009-10-19T01:14:00.001-07:00

Busan
We entered South Korea by way of ferry from Fukuoka, Japan. Our ferry – the Biitorou (pronounced “Beetle”) - is the fast boat. We overtook the slower Camilla Line, which had left port a couple of hours earlier, as we approached Busan's harbor. Boarding and disembarking the ferry was a breeze – until we passed our luggage through the x-ray machines on the final stage of customs and were escorted aside by Korean officials.

Colin had been gifted a pair of Samurai swords by our last couchsurfing host in Japan. We'd wrapped them up in a sleep sack and strapped them to Tom's pack in the ferry terminal, wondering if the U.S. would let us bring them in. Doesn't look like we'll get the chance to find out, as Korean customs promptly impounded them upon arrival – no “knives” longer than 10 cm permitted. Now, I KNOW you can get swords in Korea, but that is apparently irrelevant when it comes to crossing international borders. After some discussion, customs agreed that they could transfer the swords to the Seoul airport for Tom to pick up upon departure – for a fee. Colin's disappointment was intense and palpable – we had to shuffle him away from the customs officials before it turned to outrage, so we wouldn't get hit with a fine on top of it all. We were ushered out of customs with official-looking paperwork on our impounded items, and instructions on where to find the customs office when we got to the airport. A couple of days later, we received an email letting us know that we would have to electronically transfer funds to cover a licensing fee, transport costs, VAT tax and storage deposit in order for the swords to be transferred to Incheon Airport. A quick eBay search indicated that we might break even on their value, but most likely not. AND we still didn't know if the U.S. would allow them in, so we might just be throwing our money away. Sigh. We're still trying to get a response to whether they'll just ship them to the U.S. for us instead, or at least send them back to Japan for our host to retrieve – I hate the thought of them gathering dust in a closet somewhere in the Port of Busan, or worse, decorating some customs official's bathroom wall....

We finally made our way out of customs and on to the nearby subway to find our guest house for the night. We had my hand drawn map and directions copied from the Zen Backpacker's web site.
It was a bit of a hike on both ends, but after circling and staring up at the huge building the directions led us to, we found the right entrance to the building and took the specified elevator up to the 15th floor. The Zen turned out to be a private apartment, whose tenant had turned it into a travelers' guest house to cover the costs of living there. It was gorgeous! Floor to ceiling windows overlooking the city and the surrounding hills, and four roomy bedrooms: three outfitted with multiple bunk beds and one occupied by our host. We also had access to two bathrooms and a fully equipped kitchen, with breakfast fixings and free wi-fi included in the rate. We got out for dinner that night, but the next day, Tom and Colin couldn't be pulled out of the apartment until nearly 5 p.m.! Colin really did need a down-time day after our three week whirlwind through Japan and into Korea, so I let it go – we couldn't have asked for a better place to be lazy. After that one day as lounge lizards, we were once again off and running to see the city.

I had feared that Busan might be a seedy Port city, but not at all. It is a dynamic, intriguing mix of ultra-modern and still traditional commerce and architecture. Street vendors and food carts line densely packed streets, while neon light shows electrify the city's buildings and bridges at night. A string of beaches front onto the South Sea (aka East China Sea), straddling the passage between the Sea of Japan and the Yellow (West) Sea. The food was incredible – as a long time Japanese food junkie, I was surprised to find that Korean cuisine blows Japan's out of the water!
Hoejeon is the Korean version of sashimi, but SO much more diverse, with an extra dose of weird thrown in for good measure. The spices are intense (not an endorsement in everyone's book, but definitely in mine), and the variety of tastes and small dishes served with each meal give every eating experience such diversity and variety that you cant help but find something you like on the table! And finally, the prices make it all an unparalleled value – wow.
Our meals in Busan included a feast of raw and grilled fish at simple, low tables above the central fish market (made more fun by an impromptu lesson in drinking customs and etiquette by a diner at a neighboring table); a meal of grilled pork, onions and mushrooms cooked on a grill set into our table and served with soft tofu soup and dozens of side dishes, which we enjoyed with fellow traveler Meg; a lunch of chicken bulgogi; and dinner at a sidewalk food stall serving up street grilled prawns, clams and some kinda meat (we never did get clear on exactly what kind), along with spicy bean sprout soup and shoju, the local rotgut (tasty and cheap!)

Gyeongju
After eating our way through Busan and sleeping in style at the Zen for three nights, we made our way back to the subway, and headed to the station at the end of the line to catch a bus to Gyeongju. Meg and I had been overlapping since we first met in Tokyo, and she had headed there the day before us, sending along detailed directions on how to find the guest house we had booked.
Sa Rong Chae had come highly recommended by June, our host at the Zen, and with good reason! It was a traditional hanok – a collection of tile-roofed buildings and rooms with sliding rice paper doors set around a central courtyard. Traditionally an extended family compound, this one now hosted travelers from all around the world – there were Japanese and Thai, Germans and Austrians, and a couple of Americans passing through during our stay there. Each evening, the owners - who lived there too - offered a class in Korean arts and crafts or a traditional wooden flute performance, and on Saturday night, they built up a bonfire in the courtyard. Nice.
During our days, we explored the historical and archeological sites the town is famous for – the surreal tumili (earthen mounds serving as tombs for past kings and royal families) scattered around town; the restored palace grounds at Anapji Pond;

the outlying Bulguski Temple, set on a mountain a short bus ride east of the city, and comprised of dozens of temples and shrines housing numerous bronze Buddhas;
and the enormous complex that makes up the Gyeongju National Museum – which we thought would be a two hour visit, but wound up occupying us for an entire day. Each day, we spent several hours walking, wandering from site to site and being in awe of so much that we saw.
And of course, we ate. ;-) Our most memorable meal in Gyeongju was ssambak – an assortment of 28 small dishes ranging from raw spicy oysters and grilled whole fish to marinated mushrooms and several kinds of kimchi, all wrapped in a variety of leafy greens and seaweed. I could easily have stayed in Gyeongju twice as long, but with just two full days left until Tom's flight home, we decided we had to get to Seoul, where Korean bath houses and more food adventures await!....

Kyushu, Japan: Couchsurfing and Hot Springs

2009-10-14T00:08:00.000-07:00

Our final week in Japan – notably different from the others....

Couchsurfing

We arrived in Fukuoka/Hakata (one city, two names) by train from Hiroshima. After a transfer and brief ride on the local train, we were picked up at the station by our couchsurfing host. She had her 1 year-old in the back seat of her car, adding Colin and I and our bags before pulling away from the station. Her English was terrific, so communication clearly was going to be easy. Her manner was informal and casual – not typical of the Japanese folks we'd met so far, but very comfortable for us. We drove to her house on the northeast edge of the city, and pulled into her small parking space next to the front door on a busy street. Entering the house, we were once again reassured that we wouldn't be expected to adhere to a strict Japanese formality and propriety – her house was a refreshing tumble of papers and kids' stuff and piles of boxes and assorted brick-a-brack. Entering and passing through the dining/common room, we dropped our bags in a room with a crib piled high with toys and bedding, a table and chair pushed to one side, and a couple of futons folded up at the edge of the remaining space. This was home for the night, and very much like home - ahhhhh.

After settling in and watching Colin pratt-fall and act the clown to make the baby laugh over and over again, our host prepped, cooked and served dinner all on the central dining table – an electric grill, a thick batter, flower-shaped local onions and bits of pork, and we had a meal of delicious okonomiaki, a Japanese savory pancake. Her first son, age 13, arrived home just as we were starting dinner and joined in. Shy about his English, he pulled out a game of video Taiko drumming after eating (like Guitar Hero, but with Taiko Drums!) and plugged it into the TV for Colin to play. What a hit!

Once Colin had gone to bed, our new friend pulled out a bottle of plum-sweetened sake, and started answering my questions about her father (American) – there was a photo of him on the wall, but he wasn't there, and her couchsurfing profile had alluded to a troublesome former partner. Her story was nearly unbelievable, except for the fact that it had been widely reported in all the Japanese newspapers and tabloids: she told me her “partner” had been an intermittently abusive alcoholic who was jailed by the Japanese police after briefly putting their son (the 1-year old) in an outdoor freezer, and later claimed to have no memory of the incident. Holy cow – chalk one up for breaking down the boundaries of Japanese formality!

Tom was scheduled to arrive the next day, and we needed a more private place to stay while he adjusted to Japan and recovered from jetlag, so I planned to book us into an inexpensive hostel or guest house. Our host called a friend – an American living in Fukuoka who she met through the local couchsurfing network – who wound up offering us his place, since he sometimes sleeps at his wife's family home nearby.
It turned into quite the experience – he is one of the was one of the craziest, most overbearing and generous people Ive ever met (that's all good, by the way! - I don't go for 'vanilla' personalities - but you probably knew that). And he's one hell of a cook, to boot.

The space - labeled in the window as a 'Speak Easy' – is his answer to the Japanese tradition of socializing in “izakayas” and his solution to hitting a brick wall every time he invited Japanese friends to his 'house' for BBQ (they would never show up – its unusual to entertain and visit in people's homes). By outfitting the place as a public space, he simultaneously overcame people's resistance to hanging out there and created a less expensive place to spend an evening drinking and playing darts. His world views lean toward the conspiracy-theory variety, but he opens his home and his world with abandon.

We spent the next day exploring Fukuoka, from its temples to the ornate festival floats on display, and eating a fantastic meal at the open air food stalls along the central river.

On our departure, our new host gifted two samurai swords to Colin, which we are not at all sure will make it through Korean and American customs, but they put a huge grin on Colin's face and the gesture warmed my heart. I am looking forward to reading a few of his stories that he gave me on a flash drive to read and edit for him while traveling....

Hot Springs
Our final days in Japan were spent in Hot Springs Central – Beppu and Yufuin, on the east coast of Kyushu, the southern island of “mainland” Japan (Okinawa is further south, but a distance further on and only accessible by air or ferry).
Beppu is known as the hot spring resort capital of Japan, which is saying a lot in a country obsessed with hot springs bathing. I wasn't as charmed by Beppu as some, apparently – despite the view of steam vents rising from throughout the town as we pulled into the station, it had more sprawl than charm, and proved to be the least friendly of the places we'd visited so far. Of course, we did arrive on yet another Japanese holiday weekend, so restaurant and other tourism staff were probably stressed to the max, but that doesn't explain the crossed arms we received from one restaurant indicating we weren't permitted to eat there if we couldn't speak Japanese, or the cat calling, tongue clicking behavior of the businessmen on the street (ick). Our discovery of (1) an ocean-front onsen/rotemburu (inside and outside hot springs bathing) with a view of the twilight-sparkly mountains and (2) an incredibly friendly Italian restaurant saved the evening! Still, we decided not to push our luck, and day-tripped to Yufuin – a hot springs town an hour into the mountains – the next day. Good choice!

Yufuin was wonderful, if crowded with people enjoying the third day of the holiday weekend. Charming streets full of crafts shops and cafes lining the several streams and canals that run through town; an enchanting thatch-roofed onsen on the banks of a small lake with a partially submerged shrine; and many cool food shops selling local honey and sausages (both regionally celebrated), as well as the usual assortment of dried and preserved fish, eels and mountain veggies.
The town itself sits in a bowl ringed by mountains, with vistas of geothermal steam vents scattered throughout the hillsides.
I was disappointed to head back to Beppu on the last bus, but determined to make our second night's experience there better. We arrived back at the bus terminal and immediately headed underground, to the extensive shopping mall under the train tracks – a common arrangement in Japan. We found the food market and browsed the isles for noodles, sushi and fried fish and veggies, carted it all back to our guest house and had a delightful evening eating and chatting with other travelers. Turned out the guest house had not just computer terminals and online access, but also an extensive English-language manga library, giving Colin the chance to recapture his stolen manga kissa experience (see travel blog entry #5: Week 2+). He was up till midnight and in seventh heaven. The return train the next day took us back to Fukuoka, and on to the international ferry to Busan in Korea.

Up next: Korean customs and samurai swords (hint: bad combo)....

Week 2+: Takayama to Hiroshima

2009-10-10T03:59:00.000-07:00

Takayama

Week 2 started in Takayama, where we stayed 3 nights at the Zenko-ji Temple, enjoying morning markets along the river, centuries-old homes converted to shops and cafes, and terrific soba (buckwheat) noodles, a regional specialty.
We toured the ancient shogun's headquarters, and day-tripped up into the mountains to Shirakawago, a village of traditional thatch-roofed farmhouses interspersed with rice paddies. The tunnels through the mountains were a feat – how is it that Japan can build car tunnels dozens of miles long while Seattle breaks and loses boring machines for its basic sewage lines?... perhaps we need to consider outsourcing the viaduct replacement to Japan. ;-)

Finally slowing the pace a little was very nice. We couldn't resist all the crafts and goodies in the morning markets and picked up a few gifts and keepsakes before moving on....

Nagoya
The train through the foothills and rice valleys took us to Nagoya – a major transit hub and urban center mid-way between Tokyo and Kyoto. Id never heard of Nagoya before arriving in Japan, but it proved to be an impressive city, with the ultra-modern architecture Japan is famous for, and skyscraper malls with restaurants, bars and bowling alleys reaching dozens of floors above the street. Our only reason for stopping in Nagoya was to indulge Colin's request for spending a night in a Manga Kissa – a 24-hour internet/manga comic book cafe, with individual cubicles (choice of couch or futon), unlimited free soft drinks, cheap vending machine meals, and even showers. They are intended to be used to pass the night if you miss your last train out (trains stop running around midnight), but have become the budget inn of choice for the hard-core backpacker set.
The manga kissa was on the basement level of a 6 story mall, but when we finally arrived – after a very fun night out at an izakaya (informal bar/food joint) – we learned that children need to be out by 11 p.m. Oh, was Colin pissed!! His hopes for an all-nighter of internet gaming and manga comics books dashed in an instant! The rest of the night was a bust, as we searched in the rain for a cheap hotel to get us through 'till our morning train to Kyoto. An emergency Skype call to Tom for a bedtime story about Shoguns and warriors somewhat saved the day/night, but it wasn't quite the same...

Kyoto

As Japanese cities go, my favorite yet! Kyoto is Japan's cultural capital, and we had the benefit of staying at a private home, owned by couchsurfing host extraordinaire Shoji Ishizu. Shoji lives a short distance away, but keeps this house just for couchsurfers – sometimes 8-10 at once. During our stay, we just shared the house with one other couple – New Yorkers teaching English in Korea – or had it to ourselves. Shoji himself was amazing – a farmer by day, he volunteers as both a suicide hotline counselor and mentor for children/teens released from juvenile detention.

We spent our days touring palaces, wandering the open air markets and small streets of the geiko (geisha) district or strolling along the river, and of course, making the requisite daily visit to the International Manga Museum. :-)

We were also there for the full moon – the Harvest Moon (most important of the year) - and joined several hundred people at the Harvest Moon Festival at a shrine in the north of the city – amazing.

Nara

We delayed our departure from Kyoto for a day, but tore ourselves away to get in a visit to nearby Nara – home of an immense temple/shrine complex and more than a dozen UNESCO World Heritage Sites. The temple grounds in Nara are also home to a herd of 1200 deer, believed to be messengers of the gods in pre-Buddist times, and now designated as a Japanese National Treasure.
They are beyond tame.... some are very docile and friendly and will eat out of your hands, while others (the males especially) behave like mobsters – if they've got you in their sights, watch out! Colin got head-butted by one and nipped by another demanding payment (deer biscuits are on sale at every shrine).
Once again, we stayed a night longer than planned, in order to have time to visit the main temple of Toji-ji to view the 40-foot high buddha and try to crawl through the hole the size of the Buddha's nostril at the base of one of the support beams. If you can fit through, you are guaranteed enlightenment - Colin made it; I wasn't about to try (my hips are MUCH wider than your average Japanese woman). ;-)

Hiroshima
We arrived in Hiroshima under threat of a typhoon. After settling into a guest room at the World Friendship Center – a local non-profit that runs peace and disarmament programs internationally – we headed out to tour the Peace Park in hopes of seeing the highlights before the storm arrived.
Despite mounting winds and dark gray clouds, the rains held off until after we'd seen most of the park, including the Peace Monument and Peace Flame (intended to burn until the last nuclear weapon on earth is eliminated), the Children's International Peace Monument (inspired by Sadako Sasaki, a young girl diagnosed with leukemia after the bomb, who strove to fold 1,000 paper cranes in hopes of averting her own death, but died before she could complete them – every year, thousands of paper cranes folded by children around the world are brought to the monument), the Peace Mound, where the ashes of unidentified cremated victims of the bombing are buried, the A-bomb Dome – the preserved ruins of the prefecture administration building nearly at ground zero – and dozens of other statues and memorials to the many, many groups of people who perished at Hiroshima – teachers, students, conscripted laborers, etc., etc. That evening, Colin set out to learn how to fold paper cranes, and the next day we delivered a group of paper cranes of our own to the children's monument after visiting the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum.

Next stop: Fukuoka.... & Tom!

Week 1: Tokyo to Takayama

2009-09-30T19:39:00.000-07:00

Our first journal-type blog entry from our worldwide whirlwind.

I don't actually intend to do this year of travel as a whirlwind – our idea is to go reasonably slow and enjoy where we are before rushing off to the next – but I'm a little embarrassed to realize how much we packed into our first week. Granted, there is a lot to see in Japan, and we can't afford to spend three months seeing it, given that Japan is one of the most expensive countries on earth and an extended stay would bust our budget and send us limping home early and broke. So we have three weeks, and the benefit of a country where extensive and efficient transportation links can get us around to see a fair bit of it. So in week one we touched down in Tokyo, Nagano, Yudanaka, Matsumoto, the Japan Alps, and Takayama – spending at least one night in all but Nagano. Here are a few snippets on each.

Tokyo
We left Vancouver, BC on a Sunday, feeling like finally embarking on the whole “around-the-world” thing was somewhat surreal as we said goodbye to Tom at the airport. Crossing the international date line, we arrived in Tokyo on Monday (compared with Seattle/Vancouver, its 8 hours earlier tomorrow in Tokyo). Tokyo was a pleasant surprise. Despite being an enormous and very modern city, we settled into a small and very friendly hostel in a converted urban ryokan (traditional inn) in the historic and pleasantly small-scale neighborhood of Asakusa.
We ventured into other parts of the city, and took in the contrasts between old and new Japan, but always had our narrow, quiet street surrounded by numerous temples to retreat to.

We spent three nights recovering from jet lag and getting our bearings before moving on.

Nagano

Nagano was a brief, 2 hour stop between trains enroute from Tokyo to Yudanaka – home of the Snow Monkey Park. We walked to the very impressive temple and lunched on soba noodles before catching our ongoing train.

Yudanaka
What a treat! We booked an overnight stay in a ryokan: traditional inn, with on-site onsen (inside hot spring bath), optional Japanese dinner/breakfast (we went for the breakfast - tamago, grilled salmon, miso, rice and lots of local mountain veggies), beautiful rooms with shoji screens, kimonos and slippers, and a futuristic toilet (have you ever seen a modern Japanese toilet? I STILL dont know what all the buttons do!) ;-).

After settling in, the ryokan owners chauffered us directly to the door of a mountainside rotemburo (outdoor hot spring) just past sunset, where Colin and I each had a (gender segregated) pool nearly to ourselves to soak in while the moon rose and the lights of the valley twinkled on. Lovely.
The next morning, after our breakfast, we were once again whisked off, this time to a trailhead leading to the Snow Monkey pools: a forested valley where hot spring pools have been specially created for the local troop of 200 Japanese macaques. They were a little "late" in arriving that morning, so we waited on a deck overlooking a spouting geyser and lodge built within view of the pools (with its own human soaking tub on the cliff).
Once the monkeys had arrived, we walked down to the pools, where they ran and played and soaked themselves without the slightest regard for the people in their midst -- well, all except the very little one that grabbed Colin's wrist and tried to dig in his pockets for snacks!

After a while and many, many photographs, Colin settled down to try his hand at sketching them, putting his recent manga drawing class skills to work.

It was a stunning experience - definitely one of the wildlife highlights of my life (and Ive had a few)!

Matsumoto
We had a pleasant though quick overnight in Matsumoto on our way to the Japan Alps. After hosting "couchsurfers" all summer (www.couchsurfing.org), an American English teacher in Matsumoto was our first host for our own surfing adventures.
Before meeting him, we wandered around the old Matsumoto castle, one of just five original wooden castles left in Japan (most have been recast\restored in concrete for preservation).
We then found an intriguing little cafe with a sidewalk counter that we talked our host into letting us take him to in return for interpreting the menu for us. We had an assortment of skewers - mostly pork - that included gristle, cheek, heart, loin, and a few other things we never did get quite clear on. ;-) Back at his place - a futon, a loft, and a lot of musical instruments! - he and Colin had a little jam session before we conked out and he went out to a grown-up jam session with a group of expats at a nearby bar. The next morning we were off again, heading to the Alps.

Kamikochi & the Japan Alps
Our bus from Matsumoto wound us up into the Japan Alps, which looked for all the world to me like the North Cascades Pass and Methow Valley -- except the Japan Alps have the added bonus of being full of natural hot springs! Nice addition. And the park has a few "amenities" lacking (for better or worse) in U.S. national parks: nearly every 45-60 minutes along the extensive trails through the forest, there are mountain "huts" - offering lodging, food, and/or a shrine to pray at.
Our hike took us to a lovely sacred lake and outdoor cafe serving fresh-caught river trout. We also succeeded in putting our tent (carted around to every city and town we'd hit) to good use.
We camped overnight on the banks of the Kama-gama River, and had just barely enough gear with us to avoid freezing our touchas' off overnight, despite the intensely sunny and hot days.

On our way out of the mountains the next day, we hopped off the bus at a tiny mountain hut which served as the entryway to a cave onsen (hot spring), where I soaked and Colin found a new use for the wooden buckets that are provided for pouring water over yourself while soaking... cant blame him - the acoustics are great in there for drumming!
We thought we were out of luck when we tried to leave and every bus that passed was full, leaving us sitting with all of our bags at the side of the road. Then a wonderful old man who didnt speak a word of English stopped and rearranged his entire truck for us, so we could pile in with all our bags. He drove us all the way to our next town....

Takayama
We started our visit to Takayama on the last day of our first week. We had arranged to stay in the Kenko-ji Temple (a branch of the same Temple we had visited in Nagano), and were greeted by "Tommy," the Buddist monk.
The Temple was run much like a hostel - simple rooms, shared kitchen and bath, and travelers from all over the world, but with a spectacular main temple room and alter and beautiful gardens out back, which were serendipitously directly outside of our room. We extended our stay from one night to three, but more on our explorations of the town and our day trips with the next weekly installment...

Haiku on the Japan Alps

2009-09-28T04:05:00.000-07:00

Colin wrote four haiku on his experience hiking along the Azusa-gawa River to a sacred pond and eating river trout at a mountain hut in the Japan Alps.

Silver Trout
Silver, sparkling rainbow scales
Swimming, swimming through water
Swimming through crystal

The Pond
A little ocean
In a temple's forest glade
With clear, fresh water

The Fish
A crunchy fresh fish
It's salty flavor engulfs
All who consume it

The Shrine
Wooden, intricate
Praying, bowing, clapping men
The God's mantlepiece

Air Fares and Travel Costs

2009-09-22T14:09:00.000-07:00

"How did you DO that?!"

This is the surprised refrain I hear every time I answer the question: "How much did your tickets cost?" The answer is $3500 - for TWO of us. It is possible to fly around the world for under $2000, if you are willing to piece things together and only fly when other transportation is too burdensome or dangerous (i.e., we are flying from India to Africa rather than sailing on a cargo ship, but only because the route goes through Somali waters, and I'd rather read about my pirate encounters in books, thanks).

Our tickets are bundled into three types: regular search-engine scouted commercial tickets from North America to Japan (bought first, about 8 months before starting our trip); consolidator tickets, bought several months ahead with the aid of a travel agent who specializes in multi-destination discount air travel; and frequent flier tickets, our intended means of getting back home at the end of our trip, once we've racked up the points to earn the trip.

While we got a great deal on our own from Vancouver, B.C. to Tokyo using www.kayak.com and other travel search engines, working with a consolidator was the key to keeping our overall costs low. International consolidators search worldwide for best fares, including on airlines that do not sell tickets in the United States. It's not the best way to go for everyone, but is worth looking into if you have a minimum of four international destinations (a requirement of most consolidators). While some prepackaged around-the-world tickets may be less expensive than our collection of tickets (but not by much), they only make sense if you find just the right package for your needs (a rarity), or you don't care too much where you go and are willing to let the ticket determine your destinations for you.

Working with a consolidator allows you to customize your own route, skip from one port of arrival to a different point of departure via overland or boat travel, and avoid any time restrictions often included in prepackaged tickets. There is a terrific description of various types of round-the-world tickets, as well as a helpful discussion of how the international airline industry works, in the round-the-world guide book The Practical Nomad. I owe author Edward Hasbrouke a huge debt of gratitude for helping us figure out the best way to ticket our trip. In fact, Hasbrouke once worked for the consolidator we used (AirTreks, www.airtreks.com, 1-877-AIRTREKS), whose agents I now regard as magicians.

So what are we getting for our money?

1. Vancouver, B.C. To Tokyo, Japan – via Japan AirLines, found through travel search-engines (about $800 for the 2 of us – Colin's child ticket a bit under $400, my adult ticket a bit above).

We then travel by ferry from Japan to South Korea and China, and by train overland in each country and throughout SE Asia (with the exception that we may purchase a local ticket to fly from Cambodia to Thailand because of poor transportation links and occasional border disputes, but thanks to inter-Asia budget airlines that have cropped up in recent years, we expect that be less than $100 each).

2. Bangkok, Thailand to Bangalore, India; Mumbai, India to Nairobi, Kenya; Nairobi to Cairo, Egypt; and Egypt to Athens, Greece - consolidator specialists at www.Airtreks.com put this package together for us – about $1700 for the 2 of us – again Colin's ticket comes in at a bit under half, the rest is mine).

Part of the key to this price is that Nairobi is a free stopover between Mumbai and Cairo, despite the fact that our “layover” is 3-1/2 weeks. ;-) While in India and once in Europe, we'll go overland by train.

3. Europe (probably Paris, but we're flexible) home to the U.S. on frequent flier tickets, using mileage we've been been saving up and earned along the way - $0.

Of course, there are overland and ferry travel expenses to add in to the mix, but these are typically much lower than air travel costs, and are an integral part of the journey if you want to see anything other than the major cities. Train and ferry transportation is also a great way to meet people and experience the country, as anyone who has ever traveled the U.S. on Amtrak can confirm. We are especially looking forward to the international ferries between Japan, Korea and China, as few foreign tourists appear to use them, and to the trains in India, which I am so looking forward to! Throw in a handful of buses, and the various forms of urban and rural transportation (rickshaw, bicycle, camel, etc.) and we should be hitting just about every form of transport available by the time we get back home!

Speaking of which, we are on the 2^nd leg of our journey (Vancouver, BC to Tokyo, Japan) and have already traveled by train (1^st leg via Amtrak, Seattle to Vancouver), sky train and water taxi within Vancouver, and now airplane en route to Tokyo from Canada. More on what we find in Japan later....

Visas & Vaccinations

2009-07-20T14:14:00.000-07:00

Two months to go, and we are in the thick of our pre-departure preparations – the theme of the month is *visas and vaccinations.*

Colin and I have been transformed into human pincushions (live vaccines are the worst–ouch!), and my 15 year career of bureaucratic wrangling has not prepared me for the labyrinth of consular requirements created by each independent banana republic (OK, so some of them are big and powerful republics, but the varying visa requirements appear intended only to make those in charge of granting the sought-after stamps feel more important and powerful than we are).

Case in point: India grants visas for multiple entries, each not to exceed 90 days, with entry allowed anytime up to 1 year from visa issuance; while China grants visas for single, double or multiple-entries (depending on how much you pay), most allowing only a maximum 30-day stay per entry, the first of which must be started within three months of visa issuance. So, we have to apply for a visa for India, which we don't go to until February 2010, long before we apply for China, where we will be in November 2009. When you multiply these consular rules – all different – by the 8-10 nations that we actually need to get visas for, account for the fact that we need to mail our passports to the consulate in question to obtain each one and wait for it to be returned before we can apply for the next, AND need to make sure we time our applications with our intended arrival date and in accordance with the consulates' restrictions re: time of entry and length of stay, you wind up with one big bureaucratic flowchart that would challenge the most senior organizational manager. Ugh.

Add to this the vaccination schedules, where one vaccine is needed only once, while the next must be administered in a series of three to be taken on days 1, 7 and 28 from initiation, and the next twice on days 1 and 30. Well, you get the picture. Our summer is governed by consulate bureaucrats and travel clinic nurses.

Here's our itinerary and visas/vaccinations needed for each:

* Japan (September) - neither

* South Korea (October) - neither

* China (November) - shooting for double-entry visa for max. 30-day stay valid for 6 months;

Hepatitis A&B, Japanese encephalitis, rabies, plus malaria prophylactics

* Vietnam (December) - multiple entry visa valid for 3 months;

Same as China, plus typhoid

* Cambodia/Thailand (January) - 30-day visas available at the border;

Same as Vietnam, minus Japanese encephalitis

* India (February) - multiple entry visa valid for 1 year;

Same as Cambodia/Thailand, plus Polio booster

* Kenya (March) - single-entry for max. 30-day stay valid for 6 months, or available at the border;

Hep A&B, typhoid, malaria prophylactics, plus yellow fever and meningococcal meningitis (depending on location)

* Egypt (March) - visas available at the border;

Hep A&B, typhoid, malaria prophylactics, plus yellow fever required if traveling from Kenya

* Greece/Italy/Turkey (April) - border visa needed for Turkey only; no vaccines (yay!)

* Eastern Europe (May) - neither

* Switzerland (June) - neither

* Spain/France (July) - neither

A couple of top recommendations:

VACCINES: Hall Health Travel Clinic at University of Washington (http://depts.washington.edu/hhpccweb/index.php?ClinicID=11)

One stop shopping for all travel-related health information, including all vaccines and prescriptions needed for potential health issues for each country you are traveling to.

VISAS: Travisa (http://travisa.com/)

India outsources all its visa applications to these guys, and they can get you a visa for China, which does not accept applications by mail (you have to have an agent do it for you in person or travel to the nearest consulate yourself - the closest one to Seattle is in San Francisco). They also do other countries, but you can save money by doing those yourself.

Look for our next installation: how to get cheap! cheap! cheap! airfares, plus pre-departure expenses that noone seems to include in planning for their round-the-world trip. ;~)

Three month countdown!

2009-07-02T13:41:00.000-07:00

After 5+ years of planning, my son and I leave in 3 months for our one year around-the-world adventure – the general path is decided, the money is saved, elementary school is behind us…. now for the real nuts & bolts: immunizations, searching out the best and cheapest gear, selecting a lightweight but powerful laptop, and downloading all the vital info to keep us moving forward with a minimum of border trouble…That’s where you (yes, you) come in! If you have hot tips, friends or family that just love to have visitors, or a great source of info for independent budget travel in Asia, India, Africa or Europe, please let us know! We’ll be blogging along the way – Ill be posting profiles of everyday and quietly extraordinary people doing great things for their communities, and my son will be sharing his reflections in haiku and maybe the occasional musical inspiration. We hope to cross paths with other families, friends, sojourners, and locals with an easy attitude and a laugh, stories to share, and bread to break. Perhaps we’ll see you out there!

Anticipating the trip

I am anxious to depart from home

The adventure awaits

– Colin, age 10