Unfamiliar

When you walk in they hand you its still-beating heart in a shot glass of its own blood.

Actually, they hand you its still beating heart in a shot glass of its own blood and some fermented bile. If you're a wuss, you shun it. Turn it away in disgust. In disbelief of so savage an act.

But if you are a true traveler, you grab it. You gulp it down. You try something new - or rather something old. You embrace the carnivore inside. You return to your roots. Instead of cringing at the loss of this beasts life, you accept the reality that you and he will become one anyhow. That each day when you have a burger, when you eat chicken in the street you've derprived a similar being of its independence. You devour his life-giving organ, as fresh as it can be.

I, my friends, am a wuss. So is Ben.

We stumble upstairs, leaving the heart to soak in the liquid it once pumped. But in our defense, we did partake in the blood and bile. We drank from the fountain of savagery, we embraced the carnivour. We just needed someone to hold our hand. We needed baby steps, apparently.

And then we ate the rest of him. Boiled him, fried him, wrapped him, rolled him. At him like chicken off the bone. As chowder. As soup. If bubba were here, he's still be telling forest all the different ways we discovered to serve him up.

We drank from the liquid in the tank soaking hundreds of snakes. It nearly made me puke, but I did it more than once.

And all the while we got to know our host a little better. The receptionist from our hotel who brought us here. The man with whom we enjoyed our first glass of snake blood; and whose name we did not know until the cab ride home.

And then we washed it all down with a few beers on the street corner.

It's not a war afterall

As we left Phonsavan, Laos, we were full of excitement, of unspoken anticipation of the mythic nation next on our list. We boarded the bus for what would be another typically, painfully slow ride to the border. We had one stop over, of course, in a border town, and loaded up into the back of a jumbo tuk tuk to head across the rest of the way. At which time the driver promptly took a nap.

So we waited in frustrated misunderstanding as to what our fate was to become. A few hours pass, and for some reason he decides it's time to move the truck. We back up to the nearby market, and load the entire thing into the back. 30 people. Bags of vegetables. Meat. A pig's head. All of it. One pickup-sized jumbo. Then it starts pouring rain.

So we get to the border to find that you could easily just walk past the border station and no one would care - except the Vietnam side, who with all their bureaucratic efficiency (it took them the better part of an hour to figure out that the aussie guys next to us had visas which weren't effective yet) would stop you and send you back. So we got our stamps of exit despite the ease with which we could have become illegals. On the other side, we hop some motorbikes, which take us down the two hundred feet of pavement and miles of dirt road into a small town whose name we do not remember. We pay for a bus ticket for a ride to Hanoi. A 12 hour journey, we're told.

Sure enough, 12 hours exactly we arrive. However, they neglected to tell us that the first 3 hours, literally, would be spent driving back and forth in the town - over the same maybe 1 km of road - honking trying to get other passengers (which we miraculously accomplished).

In Hanoi, we realized that although we had no certain idea of what we expected from Vietnam, this was not it. A city bursting with life like the fountain at belagio. A mix of preserved culture (rice hats, street vendors, bamboo baskets of goods, street markets), alonside an almost first world feel. Big buildings, development. Granted, prices are dirt cheap, and the World Bank claims Vietnam to be among the least developed Asian Nations, yet poverty appears rare in this city - or at least in our little corner of it.

This is, in short, not the war-torn, tattered, communist north Vietnam I unknowingly imagined. Just as the US is not defined by the civil war, and as Germany is still known for Beer over genocide, and today's France is not forever overshadowed by Napoleons gaze, Vietnam is not defined by war.

In fact it is uncertain yet what the war even accomplished - this is not communism at all. Not from what I've seen. This is a capitalist society, resembling most other capitalist nations of the third world. (Meaning a fairly poorly run capitalist society, with ample players who could - I hate to say this, as I've always sort of thought the institution pointless - use a trip to business school. Cough. Gag.)

So we spent the first day just taking it in. From 6 am to late night, we soaked up the city. We saw the "Temple of Literature" (dedicated to the name of Confucious in about 1000 AD), we bought from street vendors, we sought out dumplings, we were invited into a small teahouse for free tea, sweet potatoes, and to watch a match of ping pong (China whooped Hong Kong). We did not get harassed as we had been warned we would. We did not get ripped off (other than those couple times) as we were warned.

And as of yet we have not had to pretend we're from Canada.

So as we move into the left lane to pass the image of war and communism into the rearview, we instead head for natural wonder. To Halong Bay, full of towering limestone cliffs jutting from the water. Certainly, it's not fjordland, it's not milford, but it's not bad, either. And it afforded us the interesting opportunity to converse with other travelers for what really was the first time this trip.

And, as expected, we were stunned by it all. The traveler unwilling to eat anything new (including eggs that weren't warm). The travelers totally oblivious to the people here, content instead to embark on tour after tour with like-minded whities. At least they're here, yes. At least they've crossed the imaginary frontier into a very foreign, very sovereign nation. At no, I suppose there is no right or wrong way to travel (to an extent), but I'm sure glad I'm not on their itinerary.

Now back to Hanoi and rushing up north. Not wasting any time as within a week or so, Ben will soar back across the ocean (and take as much time to do so as it took us to get the two hundred or so miles from Ba Na to Phonsavan in Laos) and I will be on my own - free to slow down or speed up as I please.

As for now, I'm going to just continue to let Vietnam blow my perceptions into oblivion.

Alrighty, so much to say and this teeny little time frame/space in which to say it. SO I last wrote you from Nong Khiew, I think. From there we took the boat another hour upstream to Muong Ngoi, where we found ton more guesthouses and restaurants than anything else - though the town does still largely subsist on, well, subsistence fishing and farming - more sticky rice than you could ever imagine. And apparently I'd never had sticky rice before coming here. Stuff is crazy. You just ball it up and it sticks. Then you stick spices and whatnot to it. Good, but also not that good. Ben likes it a lot.

So we stayed in the very last guesthouse in the row, for 1$ per night each for our own bungalos only because the tour guide in Luang Prabang owns the place. And he came in on Saturday and stayed there for a night - the first night that he got to spend in MNgoi with his family all year - which realy gets you to thinking about how much your extra 50 cents of bargaining power means to him vs. you. And I guess at this point in my life it does mean a lot to me, but not nearly so much...

Anyhow, he invited us for dinner with his family, as we were the only ones staying there, so we obliged. Drank lao Lao (rice whiskey stuff - stronger than....) and had some delicious lao food - which is, as always, spicy as hell. Then we hit the sack. Oh, and at dinner - this was sort of weird - it was by candlelight outside (no electricity), and with only his wife, his brother, and another guy who we didn't discern his identity.
That day (before din) we had hiked up to Ban Na, a village about an hour away from MN, and liked what we saw - a Lao farming community with a sole guesthouse, so we decided to come back to stay the following night. In the interim, we went on a hill tribe trek, which is very different here than in Thailand as the cultures have not been destroyed already here, and as they are being better-managed. So we went to a Khmu village and a Hmong village. Which was cool, but not really that cool. Our guide was very very nice, though, despite the fact he was afraid of all animals. Weird.

Also on that hike it was hotter than the center of the sun. I mean, it made you want to literally die. Hotter than the hottest day in the heart of the apocalypse. Oohhhh...I came up with SOOO many good metaphors in my journal, if only it were here and internet weren't so expensive (whcih, of course, means that internet is less than 5 vcents per minute). But we made it back alive, barely, and somehow mustered the strength after the 5 hour jaunt into the jaws of hell, to hike for another hour to get back to Ban Na, where we ate and passed out.

Next day sort of just recovered from the heat by reading a ton, getting to know the family at the guest house (again, we were the only ones staying there - and we shared a bungalo. Pretty sure they thought we were gay...or just really really cheap. Which we are...the latter, that is).

Also we played a little soccer with some kids, and badmitton which is pingpong here. All the while avoiding the water buffalo poop in abundance. This game of soccer becomes sort of interesting later.

So then we got up the next day and headed out hiking again to a nearby (2.5 hours) Khmou village. The clouds were out the entire hike up, which was great, and it was a gorgeous hike. Very, very cool.

When we got to the village, two old men (one of them eighty!) invited us to sit with them and through our language barrier had a great time. It really was like walking into the 1800's. Thye marveled at our cameras and shoes, and then one of the women made us an absolutely DELICIOUS lunch of squash and sticky rice, cooked over the open flame in the kettle in the house. (by the way, bamboo is amazing - you eat it, build with it, burn it to cook...it does everything). (That said, this particular house was wood).

Then we headed down to a waterfall nearby with some kids and a guy from the village. On the way back up from the fals, the sun came out in force, and hte fears of heat stroke re-emerged, but we made it back to town alright.
Then that night (back in Ba Na), we hung out a while reading, I had a beer, etc. Then we ate Duck Laap - which is sort of a mince-meat dish here - Then, and what trip would be complete without this, I began to violently throw up. I felt it coming before dinner, but I don't know what the deal was. Near as I can tell, it was severe dehydration again, as it was reminiscent of when I broke my face years ago, and I think the violent vomiting/diahrrea (which, Oh YEAH came about in this round as well) were attributed to dehydration then, too. So I puked out of a couple ends for abit, until about 11:30 at night, and then my host, Boonyang, gave me cold black coffee, which i was willing to try out of sheer desperation, and that did the trick, amazingly. still felt like crap the next day, but at least not puking crap.

Yesterday we woke up to find UXO (Unexploded Ordinance) operations going on the soccer field where we played a few days earlier. Turns out, much of the "mines" in laos aren't mines, they're cluster bombs that didn't explode, and are all over the damn place. The US fought a "Secret War" in Laos while Vietnam was going on, and droped 1000 lbs of munitions here for EVERY PERSON IN LAOS. On the story just gets more and more outrageous as you learn more and more about it. Absolutely indescribable, really. Unbelievable. SO everywhere, there are bombs hidden. In a school nearby - sam neua - they found 356 bombs on the schoolyard, only to continue going back to find more. Here in Phonsavan, where we are now, there are houses decorated with old bomb casings, etc. Villages make candles out of landmines. It's absolutely nuts. ANd because of all this, the country can't develop, because you CAN'T BUILD A ROAD OVER BOMBS. And you CAN'T FARM OVER BOMBS. AAAAHHHHHHH SO STUPID!!!!

Ironic though how things just come together. In the book that I'm still reading now (salman rushdie), Rai is just now talking about this very issue of both loving and hating the US of grand old A. Anyhow, then we hiked out of Ba Na, managed a boat back to Nong Khiew, and hung out for the bus, which was slated to arrive sometime between 7pm and 12 pm, as it was coming all the way from Vientiane. It came at 11 pm as we were sitting in the toll booth reading, and we jumped into the vacant seats in the back row, which had a little step in front of them instead of a drop - you know, where your feet should go. So that was terrible.

But not really. What was really terrible was that that bus took 11 hours. That's right. I think we went a total of a little over a hundred miles in ELEVEN HOURS!!! And then got on another stupid bus for stupid 5.5 more HOURS to get to Phonsavan, which has so many different names here that when you tell people you want Phonsavan, they just look at you blankly. Why? we don't really know yet.

As touched on, this was pretty much the heart of carpet bombing during the war in Laos (again, more bombs dropped here than on Germany and Japan in WWII combined). And we intend to check out what it has to offer in the next couple of days before heading on over to Vietnam.

And such is the life in laos.

Dreams of the unknown ...again

In nature there exist certain patterns rarely broken - 1) There are people in your life that you will not hear from for months, years, until one day a mass email emerges, usually the result of that person heading on some far away journey that he for some reason believes your life will not be complete without the details of. 2) At the beginning of that email, those people will always apologize for the quantity of people in the "to" section, and for the impersonal nature of the email. 3) Many of the recipients will receive the mass emails with genuine apathy - one such statement a few years ago from a friend on this very list: "If you went just to tell people you went, then what's the point" - and the experience that the following individual obviously has: "I hope this correspondence will be more than one of those traveling dialogues, that can't help but become slightly arrogant while listing the sights seen or money spent while always finding it strangely appropriate that everyone know the weather patterns of where they are," or even just the "Good lord that's long, I don't want to read all that"So, as I begin what will no doubt be a torrent of informal mass emails, I'll begin with this standard fare: Sorry, don't read if you don't want to, blah blah blah. But I'll also say that these emails aren't wholly for you - they're for me as well. In traveling, no matter the location, the senses are inundated 24 hours a day. From the new foods, the new language, the new customs, the new aquaintances, new challenges, new flora, fauna, and yes, new weather patterns, it becomes difficult to find adequate time to simply sit and reflect. To examine in one's mind what has happened, and what he wants to happen tomorrow, or the next day. The mass email also allows me to simply escape from the new back to the ordinary. It provides a platform for escape back to my biscuit-eating, comfort-loving easy-chair lifestyle for just one moment. And after all, even after climbing the highest mountain or escaping to the depths of the unknown, who doesn't enjoy a cold beer? Well, this is my cold beer - a conversation with friends. And if I can have that conversation with all of them at once - all the better.

So in words transcribed by Salman, and introduced to me by Mr. Winkler (though I may butcher this quote), "What we forbid ourselves we pay good money to see....the traveler...if in [him] we did not see our most basic needs, we would not reinvent him repeatedly in movies, books..." Here I am, the traveler. Pushing my limits, sort of. But really just trying to understand what I don't yet understand. This quest for whatever may be brought into my possession a ticket to Thailand (one-way, of course), where I immediately encounter just what I subconsciously knew I would - partying tourists and people waiting to steal their money away for services and items they do not need - including all the crap they paid thousands of dollars to fly halfway around the world to get away from - a breakfast of bacon, eggs, and toast, for example, when two meters away the locals dine on their rice noodles, fish sauce, peppers, and something resembling fat, but texturally more reminiscent of intestines, though for lack of fluency in Thai, I really have no idea. So we got the hell out of there. If Khao San Rd. never comes into my life again, I will not be disappointed. And as we crossed the Border into Laos (The french, ever enamored with unecessary letters, added the "s". Spoken and written, it's correctly "Lao.") we found the guidebook to be correct (a phenomenon I find more and more annoying - for if the guidebook knows it to be true, just where is this "unknown" into which we endlessly strive to launch ourselves?) - we took a big sigh of relief. The people here are kinder, hassle you less, are more fair in their treatment. The landscape is infinitely more impressive - more as you would expect indochina to appear - rice fields expanding hundreds of yards to the base of limestone cliffs culminating in mountain peaks - if you can call them mountains, closer to pillars, perhaps. They put the devil's tower to shame.

After talking to who we could, and riding bikes to spectacular caves. And after almost wrapping myself in a spiderweb created by its master almost the size of my face. And after enjoying papaya salads, and Lao Beer at the riverside bungalo (which we gladly tossed ourselves into). And after passing thousands of buddhas (in caves, temples, streetsides, mountainsides), and hundreds of small villages that we long to enter and understand, we now sit in Luang Prabang - a tourist haven (though less than others, a haven nonetheless), trapped within our own lack of proficiency in the Lao tongue. We learn more everyday and strive for as complete a understanding of this place and what it means to be Lao (an utterly impossible feat to accomplish before the Visa expires - a mere 15 days).

And so far, the journey has been excellent. And I'm only Five days in.