Tim's travels, 2008

Day 0: Moving out of 18 Day Street

2009-01-29T11:19:00.000-05:00

Jan 29

Jess and I packed our last boxes, moved one full Zipcar pickup truck of boxes to Caleb and Sarah´s basement, and proceeded to pack, throw away and give away until we were left with pretty much just the stuff for our next 5 months of traveling. We then swept and cleaned the apartment, left our keys on the kitchen counter, and walked out for the last time. It felt strange but liberating. That´s the end of our time in Boston.

We spent our last night on the air mattress at Jon and Karen´s. I stayed up late trying to take care of last-minute things like doing my taxes and figuring out exactly how to get from the Taipei airport to my first hostel. I had to be up for a 6am cab to the airport.

Days 1-3: Boston to Taipei

2008-02-28T11:32:00.001-05:00

Jan 30 - Feb 1

After a few hours sleep, I had a fairly rip-the-bandaid-off-quickly 6am goodbye to Jess, Jon, Karen, and Henry, and then I was abruptly on my way to the airport. I've been telling people that these last two weeks have been a crunch because of three things happening all at once: 1. tying up loose ends after ten years living in Boston, 2. moving out of our apartment, getting rid of as much as possible and putting everything else in boxes, and 3. preparing for five months of travel. Bleary-eyed, sitting in the back of the cab, nothing was sinking in yet. I was just on my way to the airport.

To get to Taipei from Boston, it's about the same distance whether you go east or west. I happened to be stopping in San Francisco. As my flight landed, I thought that I'd be making this same Boston to SF flight about five and a half months later when Jess and I move out there. But what a lot of stuff was going to happen between now and then.

I was already feeling a little crummy from my six-hour first flight, and wasn't excited about the upcoming 14-hour one from SFO to Taipei. I was a little concerned that my airplane neighbor was an extremely talkative southern baptist preacher. The plane was having electrical problems, so my neighbor and I had a quality two hours sitting on the runway to get to know each other. Don't get me wrong: I have nothing against devout religious people, and they're usually much better and aware people than most. But this guy told me really long story after story, followed by a longer story about this (what seemed to me a pyramid scheme) costco-like business he had started with his evangelical buddy two week ago and which was already doing incredibly well, so he said.

And then I had my first bit of good luck: the flight was cancelled. United put everyone up in hotels and provided meal vouchers. I couldn't have been happier because I was in no rush to get to Taipei and I could use a break, a shower, and a good night's sleep before the marathon flight.

When I got back on the plane the next morning, I had my second bit of good luck: the preacher guy had gotten himself re-seated next to his wife, across the isle, and I had an empty seat and then the isle next to me. Having that extra space was an incredible boon for my comfort during the flight.

Chiang Kai-shek International Airport was nothing special other than its name. Even though my flight itinerary had this name printed, the terminal announced "Taoyuan International Airport" instead. This is an example of a nation-wide movement to remove Chiang's name and image from public spaces. Over his 20+ years in power in Taiwan, he was an able state governor who laid the groundwork for Taiwan's future economic success, but he was also responsible for the imprisionment, tourture, and murder of over 100,000 Taiwanese people.

I followed the directions from the hostel to get on the "lai lai" (east) bus line into Taipei city, and then had a bit of a hard time figuring out when to get off. The city began with slummy, run-down outskirts and turned into a mix bewteen Bogota (a big city in a developing country) and Manhattan (wide streets, lots of cars, brightly-lit stores, and bustle).

After getting off the bus, I had a hard time finding the tiny lane at the end of which my "Taipei Hostel" was. I paid my 300 NT (less than $10) and was shown to my dorm room bed. It was meager but clean, not including the bathroom that was damp and smelled strongly of mold. I'm pretty tolerant of such things, but it was revolting. It was then that I realized the whole hostel, and Taipei itself was humid and damp. Not hot humid, but pretty cold and damp, due mostly to the heavy mist that envelopes the city and looks disturbingly like smog. There were also many people, and all scooter-drivers, wearing filter masks. I learned later that Taiwanese wear masks when they feel themselves getting a cold, attempting to not spread the cold to others. But the scooter drivers wear them for resperatory purposes, not so much due to smog, but I think just because there are a lot of vehicles on the road in close proximity.

It was now Friday evening, after leaving Jon and Karen's place on Wednesday morning, flying for 20 hours, a long layover, losing a day when crossing the international date line, and navigating to the hostel. I hit the sack hard at about 9pm, Taiwan time.

Days 4-5: Bev and Dharma Drum Mountain

2008-02-27T12:05:00.001-05:00

Feb 2-3

My first morning, Saturday Feb 2nd. I awoke pretty early, so things were quiet around the hostel. There was a good internet connection, so I decided to try skyping using my Nokia N800 mini computer. The timing was right (13 hours earlier, in Philadelphia, it was early evening the day before), and I was able to get my parents on the phone, calling them for two cents per minute. It was incredible how clear and instantaneous the connection was, maybe better than my cell phone connection normally. I called my brother after.

The Taipei metro is very easy to navigate, and I took it to meet with Bev at 10am. It was great to meet with a familiar face in a foreign land. She took me to eat some breakfast, and we caught up. Bev was a resident tutor in Cabot for pretty much the whole time I lived there, and we played ultimate frisbee together among other things. She is an East Asian Studies PhD student, studying East Asian religions, and is on a one-year Fulbright in Taiwan, studying Buddhist self-retribution practices in particular. She showed me the famous Longshan Temple and explained about the various gods and worship practices. We walked around a little more, and then we took the bus to Dharma Drum Mountain (DDM), a Buddhist monastery complex where she is currently living in a professor's vacant apartment. It was a two-hour ride into increasingly lush, green mountains, though still very overcast and damp like Taipei.

Upon arriving, we were greeted by a DDM volunteer who put her hands together in front of her chin in a prayer-like fashion and bowed her head. We did the same in return, and to most other people we passed. It's the Buddhist way of saying "Hello there" to passers by. Since she was not wearing the monk brown and black robe, and her head was not shaved, it was clear that our guide was a lay person and not a monk. She spoke very good English and began giving us an introduction to the compound. Even though Bev was living there, she had never had a tour, so we agreed we would like a one. Our guide took us to a few sites and explained to us some of the basic beliefs and practices of this monastery.

After the tour, Bev and I went to her apartment to drop off our bags, and then she showed me around the compound some more. We visited a large sculpture of the Buddha on the top of a hill, and then went to the main space of worship where there was a service going on. The space was impressive: large and open, with three large Buddha sculptures watching over. The monks chanted in unison, singing an ever rising and falling line. Bev and I sat and watched for about 20 minutes.

As we headed the dining hall for dinner, Bev gave me some instructions: women sit apart from men, eat everything you take, bow to the statue of the Buddha before you sit down, and eat in silence. The dining hall was a basic, low-ceiling room with rows of metal table tops with small plastic stools facing the center where a self-service food line was. I grabbed a metal bowl and served myself a little of everything: whole grain rice, long-steamed carrot, yam, sprouts, green (like chard) and tomato, fresh orange quarters, and a tofu-derived substance. Buddhists believe in not hurting living things, hence the vegetarian meal, and also in keeping things very simple, hence no spices or intrusive foods like onions or garlic. While I used metal chop sticks to eat my delicious meal in silence, with only the sound of metal hitting metal, chewing, and slurping, I considered what it would be like to be a monk.

After the first course, you returned to the food isle to serve yourself soup with noodles and other goodies like mushroom. This was a nice way to close the meal, since the liquid of the soup, which you slurp from the bowl, fills whatever space you have left.

After the meal, we walked around the grounds some more and then returned to Bev's apartment. Still getting over jet lag, I went to bed on her comfy couch in her warm sleeping bag.

The next morning, we had breakfast at 7:30am and then Bev brought me to the main entrance where I caught the bus back to Taipei.

Day 5: Exploring Taipei

2008-02-27T07:13:00.001-05:00

Feb 3

After returning from Dharma Drum Mountain, I had a full day of exploring Taipei by foot. First stop was Chiang Kai Shek Memorial Hall, soon to be renamed to the National Taiwan Democracy Memorial Hall. The large square had a beautiful entry gate and two performance halls on either side. The fourth side was CKS Hall with a statue of seated Chiang, similar to the Lincoln memorial in Washington DC. A wide grin on his face, he faces west towards China. In the hall was an exhibit which was a reminder of everything bad related to Chiang's tenure -- great juxtaposition!

I had lunch / dinner at a little dumpling joint where I watched the staff working at their dumpling stations, and then spent a while finding my way to the Happy Family hostel which was incorrectly placed on my Lonely Planet map. The problem with staying at cheap hostels in a huge city is that they're usually on back lanes and locals have ever heard of them, so they can be challenging to find. Happy Family had a very friendly caretaker who showed me to my very cheap single room. This place was cold in place of being damp and moldy, a situation I much preferred. I hung out talking to some travelling snowboarding Aussies who spend half the year in Japan and the other half in Australia, following the good snow. They were in Taiwan for a few days since Japanese tourist visas expire after three months. They would get new ones when they re-entered the country.

I put on all my clothes and got under two coverlets, and was able to use the hostel wifi to check email. I also ran my photo ftp backup program over night, and it worked like a charm.

Day 6: Taichung, Topeak, and arrival in Tainan

2008-02-26T08:06:00.001-05:00

Feb 4

Taiwan is a small island country not much larger than Massachusetts but with three times the population: 23 million (and 22 million cell phones). 75% of homes are connected to the internet, but it is not safe to drink the water, even in Taipei. In the last few decades, it has had an extremely flexible and fast-adapting economy, changing from being a leader in textiles and cheap consumer goods to high-tech and computer chips. And it has a well-maintained highway system with signs in both English and Chinese.

Chiang Kai-shek's KMT made Chinese the official language of Taiwan in the 50s, and most everyone speaks it, though as you move south in the country more people (especially the older generation) also speak Taiwanese and / or Hakka, indigenous languages. English is a required class in all schools, so the younger people tend to understand and even speak it well, as well as plenty of older people. I learned that Taiwanese are informed about U.S. politics and that the U.S. has military presence near Taiwan to protect them from potential Chinese (communist) attack.

Taipei is the largest city, in the north, Taichung is in the middle, and Tainan towards the south (I believe that "pei" means top, "chung" means middle, and "nan" means bottom).

JC used to work for a company which imports and distributes bicycle accessories from a Taiwanese company, Topeak. JC helped me get in touch with a guy named Mike from Topeak to get shown around, and on Monday morning I took a train from Taipei to Taichung, about half way down the country, where Topeak is. With each mountain tunnel we passed through, the sky seemed to get brighter until finally there was blue sky for the first time since I arrived in Taiwan. I was met by Mike in his car, and he brought me to Topeak, an office of about 30 employees. We had an interesting conversation about the bicycle industry and Topeak's place in it. I had grand visions of being led to a huge factory where lots of 10-year-old boys with small hands would be assembling bicycle pumps, but learned that Topeak outsources their production. Then Mike grabbed one of his sales workers, Delia, to join us for lunch at an Italian restaurant across the street. It became clear during the meal that Delia was going to be my host for the rest of the afternoon, showing me around Taichung. During our lunch conversation, Mike and Delia were listening attentively to what I showed interest in, and determined that I would enjoy seeing the electronics market and the science museum in Taichung, correct on both accounts.

After lunch, Delia took more time out of her work day to show me the NOVA electronics market where she helped me score an 8-gig SD card for about $30, less than half of what I paid for the same thing in the U.S. a month before. While we were price comparing, she called her cousin who worked downstairs and got her inside advice. I was in good hands.

The science museum was closed since it was a Monday, so we just had a nice walk back to Topeak. Mike and Delia spent some more time showing me around before we all left in Mike's car. I told them I was visiting my friend of a friend, Pei-yu, in Tainan after visiting Topeak, and they got in touch with her to coordinate my travels. On the way to the bus company, we stopped while Delia jumped out to get me some authentic Taichung "sun cakes". When we arrived at the bus company, Delia bought my ticket and told me they would call Pei-yu to tell her when I would arrive. Throughout all this, Topeak was picking up the tab for lunch, cab rides, my present, and my luxurious two-hour bus to Tainan. This was my first encounter with what I learned is standard but amazing Taiwanese hospitality and generosity.

Pei-yu met me at the Tainan bus station, deftly navigating speeding scooters and agressive car drivers, and brought me straight to a night market. It was packed with people and rows of vendors providing everything from food to baby bunnies to the popular basketball game common in American arcades. We tried a number of interesting and generally gross foods including spicy fried fish balls (no, balls made of fish. Fish don't even have testicles.), and congealed pig's blood. Not exactly my cup of tea: frenzied, senseless consumerism and fried food. But fun to witness.

My Topeak hosts had helped me make a reservation in a hostel in Tainan, but when Pei-yu found this out she called to cancel the reservation, saying that I would be staying at her place. And so began my second encounter with Taiwanese hospitality.

Days 7-11: Tainan (and back to Taichung) with Pei-yu

2008-02-25T02:50:00.001-05:00

Feb 5-9

Pei-yu lives with her parents in a fairly simple but spacious three-story row house above a drug store in Tainan City, and I became their guest and fourth member of the family for my four days there. My first full day, all four of us made a trip to the Alishan National Scenic Area, about 2-hours drive away and up steep, lush green mountains with little towns scattered on the way up, supporting the tourist industry. The drive up was scenic and steep, and then we hiked around for a while.

My second day, Pei-yu took me out to the Tainan markets just around the corner from her house, and then gave me a tour of sites and tastes of Tainan. In the evening, the four of us had a fun game of traditional Chinese mahjong, a game similar to the card game Gin Rummy. I had to learn the Chinese characters for 1 through 9. I even won a round!

My third day, we took another family trip to the largest Buddhist monastery in Taiwan, Fo Guang Shan. After, we went to a touristy island off the coast famous for its seafood, and then walked along the colorfully-lit riverbank in Kaohsiung, Taiwan's second largest city, south of Tainan. Both places were packed with Taiwanese on family outings during the Chinese New Year.

My fourth day, we drove to another town to visit Pei-yu's grandmother and other family. Since this is the Chinese New Year, the country grinds to a hault and is filled with people visiting relatives and doing family outings. There were lots of family present, and we basically sat around all day eating and talking. Pei-yu acted as a great translator, as few other people spoke any English. There were a number of cute babies present, and it was generally a fun family time and low-pressure since there was a large number of people there.

At one point in the day, five of us went with Pei-yu's farmer uncle to his land a five-minute drive away. We watched him cut fresh tomatos, celery, potato greens, and huge heads of cauliflower and cabbage. He then explained in frantic Chinese how to tell when the corn was ripe for picking.

Hanging out with Pei-yu's extended family all day emphasized the importance of family in Taiwanese culture, something I had found also in Colombia. In fact, it seems common in a good portion of world cultures to live close, often in the same building or neighborhood, with your extended family, and for children to live with their parents as their parents grow old.

Throughout my my four days staying with Pei-yu, I ate all my meals with her and her parents. For a number of meals, we had "hot pot", which is basically a hot pot of boiling broth with all kinds of things thrown in, including hunks of chicken on the bone, sausage, cabbage, mushrooms, corn on the cob, and other unidentifiable bits. There are always at least two forms of rice. For non-hot pot meals, there is always soup similar to that from Dharma Drum Mountain, but now with meat. Everything is heavily cooked, and we rarely drink anything at the meals (though you get liquid from the soup). I can't say the cuisine is my favorite, but it's at least been interesting to learn what others eat and to try a few new things.

On the 9th, Pei-yu and I left early to catch the bus north to Taichung and spent the day with her friend Ann who is an electronics hardware engineer. Pei-yu and Ann chatted away in the front of Ann's car as we stopped off at various sites, including a bustling food market, a winery, a saxophone factory, and an outdoor flower garden. We had yummy dinner in an enormous food court inside an enormous shopping mall, and then Pei-yu and I said goodbye and took the high speed railway back to Taipei.

Day 12: Taipei National Palace Museum and taking it easy

2008-02-24T11:21:00.001-05:00

Feb 10

Today I had a great visit to the Taipei National Palace Museum, starting with a 10am English tour. We wore receivers with headphones, and our tour guide had a microphone attached to her chest. Her voice was projected into our headphones, which made it very easy to hear her even when there was a lot of noise in the room or when she was far away. I was impressed by this little piece of technology.

It's a modern museum and well laid-out, with an informative orientation room where our guide gave us an overview of Chinese history and Chinese art. Then we dove into the collections, and the excellent tour lasted about an hour. I enjoyed having time on my own to slowly wander around the museum and the grounds, and enjoyed a delicious slice of coffee walnut cake and a pot of black tea in one of the museum's cafes.

Back at my hostel, I decided to spend the rest of the day relaxing. I was staying at the Hostelling International Taipei Youth Hostel which was twice as expensive as my previous hostels, but well worth the extra cost. I was reminded of what I love about staying in hostels: there was an excellent environment for meeting fellow travelers, and I enjoyed a few exchanges of stories. Andrew was an Irish guy who lives in Tibet, working for an organization that preserves China's national parks. He was visiting Taiwan with his mother who had spent a few years teaching English there in the 1960s. Danielle told me about her cycle touring across Canada, Japan, Taiwan, and beyond. And then we all enjoyed free dinner that the hostel prepared for the Chinese New Year week.

Day 13: Travel day from Taipei to Hanoi

2008-02-23T11:57:00.001-05:00

Feb 11

I flew to Bangkok, met up with Laura who was finishing some vacation in Thailand, and we flew together to Hanoi where she lives. I'll be staying and maybe traveling with her over the next week. Nothing of particular note from the long journey, other than Bangkok airport is new and cool, and I snapped this picture of the bustle. Even monks sometimes have trouble finding The Way.

Days 14-20: Hanoi and Halong Bay (Vietnam)

2008-02-22T11:23:00.002-05:00

Feb 12-18

I spent five days in Hanoi staying at Laura's comfortable apartment, and then we took a two-day trip to Halong Bay. Here's a shot of Laura's apartment, with her big windows overlooking the lake:

Laura has lived in Hanoi for over six months working on U.S. government public health programs on AIDS. It was great to be in the care of a person who knows the city, the customs, and the language, and I also had time on my own to explore while she was at work. But my first few days I spent relaxing in her apartment, unwinding from my busy time in Taiwan, and then going out with Laura for dinners. Our first evening, we had an exciting ride on Laura's motorbike to a restaurant where you left your shoes at the entrance and sat on the floor next to tables that were barely off the ground. The food was spicier and more vegetable-oriented than in Taiwan, but that might have been just because of the particular food we ordered. I particularly enjoyed the "banana salad" which had no banana flavor (we think it had some banana leaves in it), but instead had shredded vegetables in a light, spicy sauce.

I think one reason why I didn't venture out too much during my first days in Hanoi is that I was afraid of what was out there: a bustling, fast-paced, polluted city where the traffic was aggressive, street vendors and motorbike taxis were constantly asking you to use their services, and always with a soundtrack of car / motorbike horns honking. I couldn't wear my contact lenses because the smog in the air made my eyes uncomfortable within a few hours, and the sun didn't come out the entire time I was there. On the plus side, people usually spoke enough English to get by, and many restaurants had English menus, not including the myriad hole in the wall restaurants with squat plastic tables and chairs that the Vietnamese frequented.

On my third night, we ate dinner from the restaurant immediately next door to Laura's apartment where she is a frequent customer. It is a family-run operation, where they converted their ground floor into a restaurant and live in the upper floors of the building -- common throughout the city. They knew Laura by name and greeted her when we came and went from the apartment. In Vietnamese, Laura ordered a few things from the menu, and then pointed next door, implying we would like to "take-out". A few minutes later, back at the apartment, a woman from the restaurant appeared with our food, removed her shoes at the door, and placed the food, on real plates, on Laura's dining room table. We brought the food upstairs to the living room, ate watching "Superbad", and then returned the plates next door and paid.

That third evening, Laura gave me a lesson on riding her small-engine motorbike. I had never ridden one, but it was pretty straightforward: left foot shifts gears (with no clutch to engage), right foot has one brake, right hand has other brake (squeeze) and accelerates (twist), and left hand does nothing but sound the horn, an important role. There was little traffic since it was late, so I took the bike for a five-minute ride around Laura's lake. It was challenging, somewhat dangerous, and a thrill, similar to the bicycle ride JC and I had around Bogotá. In the background of this photo, you can see Laura's apartment (white) and the restaurant next door:

My fourth day, I was determined to get out and see some of the city. I had my first bargaining interactions with a motorbike taxi, a skill that I've found takes guts and practice. Here's a failed interaction I had which turned out to be an attempted scam:

I am leaped upon by a motorbike taxi driver (MBTD) outside a very touristy site. Mistake #1: vendors outside tourist sites are much better (harder) bargainers.

MBTD: (making engine-revving motions with his hands) "Moto-bike? Moto-bike? Where you go?"

Me: I show him the address of a travel agency I want to go to, across town. Mistake #2: I didn't think ahead of time how much he ride should cost, and was not the first to establish a possible price.

MBTD: "Ah, 35 thousand." [In retrospect, the ride should have cost five or ten thousand.]

Me: (attempting to bargain) "No, 20."

MBTD: "No no no (smiling and laughing that I would request so low a price). 35."

I shrugged and shook my head, turned, and started to walk away. This was the only good bargaining move I pulled during the interaction.

MBTD: (coming after me) "Wait wait wait, OK, 30."

Me: "OK"

He then led me to his friend (MBTD #2), handed me over, and said a few words to him. I thought this was because it was MBTD #2´s turn for a fare, but MBTD #1 was doing the negotiating, maybe because his English was better. After a particularly fast and fun ride through the city to my destination, I got off the motorbike and gave the guy 30,000 Bat. The guy showed surprise and consternation on his face at the amount of money I had given him. He said that the other guy had told him 35. We had a few back-and-forths arguing the point, and then I gave him the 30 and walked away as he yelled "FUCK YOU" after me.

Now here's an example of a successful negotiation:

I emerge from a tourist site, wanting to get a ride somewhere. I turn down the five offers I get for a ride and proceed to walk a few blocks away. I then approach a motorbike taxi and show him the address I'm going to.

Me: "Five" (holding up five fingers). Five thousand is half the amount that I actually want to pay for the ride.

MBTD: (smiles uncomfortably) "No no no. Ten."

Me: "OK."

I rode motorbike taxis all over the city that morning, filled with honking, dodging, and impossible left turns through solid walls of traffic. When I took a car taxi to the airport on my last day, the driver spent almost the entire thirty minute ride trying to pass people, honking, flashing his lights, and putting on his left turn blinker. I wondered whether he thought he was giving me a better, more professional service by getting me to the airport a little faster. Whatever skills I had before at not getting upset by things I can not control have only been solidified by taking taxis around Hanoi. Here's some video of riding a motorbike taxi:

My last motorbike taxi of my fourth day in Hanoi was to Laura's office, where she showed me around and took me out for nearby street vendor lunch. While slurping noodles, I told her of my plans to go on to the Ethnology Museum. She half-jokingly said I could take her motorbike, but I was hoping she would offer. From then until I picked her up from her Vietnamese lesson at 6:30pm, I had a thrilling time riding her motorbike around the streets of Hanoi, getting lost, visiting sites, and doing errands like booking us on a two-day trip to Halong Bay and buying my flight to Laos.

From the interesting and fairly well-done Ethnology Museum:

My fifth and last full day in Hanoi, a Saturday, I got up early to take a motorbike taxi to the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum complex to join the throngs (of mostly Vietnamese) in line to view Uncle Ho's embalmed corpse in a glass sarcophagus. There were tons of armed security, you had to check your bags, no food or cameras, no shorts or tank tops, and you had to remove your hat and be silent in Ho's room. The room was dimly lit and austere, the only ornamentation a huge hammer and sickle and a Vietnam flag painted high on the wall, looking down upon Ho's sarcophagus which was depressed a few feet below the viewing area and protected on its four corners by guards dressed in white uniforms wielding rifles with bayonets. This was my favorite tourist experience of Hanoi.

I then went on to the mediocre Ho Chi Minh museum, the best part of which was the outer communist architecture and statue of Uncle Ho inside. Ho Chi Minh seems to be loved by the Vietnamese (maybe more in the north where I was than in the south which was conquered by the North Vietnamese Army in 1975), as he led Vietnam out of French colonial control and also Japanese occupation during WWII. I confirmed with Laura that there are few signs in Vietnam that it has a single party Communist government, other than all the cool communist-looking Vietnam flags flown everywhere and the government-controlled media.

Later on Saturday, Laura and I rode her motorbike to the weekly Hanoi pickup ultimate game, played at the opulent International School. It was so great to get out and play. There was a fifty-fifty mix of Vietnamese and "expats", short for expatriates, meaning foreigners who live and maybe work there, as opposed to "tourists" who are just visiting. It was fun to hear the Vietnamese mixed with English yelled around the field during play. Overall, the play was just like a decent pickup game in the U.S. The main difference was the heavy smog, which made it harder to exert myself and made my lungs and chest hurt for a few hours after. Also similar to ultimate at home, a bunch of us went out for beer and food afterwards. And not just any beer -- "bia hoi," freshly brewed pilsner-style beer that you can find people drinking happily outside establishments for $.40 per glass.

My last two days, Laura and I had a trip to Halong Bay, an extremely touristy Unesco World Heritage Site, with thousands of craggy islands jutting up from the water and caves for exploring. Our trip consisted mostly of riding a tour boat through the maze of islands, stopping to explore a cave or go kayaking, and then dropping anchor for dinner and sleeping the night below deck in simple rooms. It was fairly cold and rainy at times, so we spent quite a bit of time inside the boat and talking with a friendly pair of Dutch guys and Australian girls. The morning of the second day was much clearer and not raining, which was a great contrast to the mysterious misty views from the previous day.

Dinner of classic Vietnamese beef "Pho" (pronounced "fuh") on my last evening in Hanoi:

Days 21-24: Vientiane, Laos

2008-02-22T05:12:00.001-05:00

Feb 19-22

As I expected, Laos was a sigh of relief compared to bustling and in-your-face Hanoi. The people's demeanor, culture, and even manner of speaking is relaxed and kind. Motorbike taxis have been replaced by tuk tuks, dong by kip (or US dollars or Thai bat, whichever you prefer), and things are generally smaller and less developed. Like Vietnam, there is little sense of poverty or hunger, and the younger locals are often eager to practice their English. Unfortunately, it can be difficult to distinguish between a friendly local who wants to practice their English and someone who just wants your money in exchange for a service or good. I really enjoy interactions of the former sort, and I wonder if I have more or fewer of them as a lone traveler.

So yeah, now that I've moved on from the super hosts I had in my previous stops, it's very different being by myself. This is the first time I've ever traveled alone, and it's a little weird. It's nice to be able to do whatever I want and to feel no pressures from anyone else, but there are also drawbacks like lack of companionship and support, and sometimes just feeling a little strange as a lone tourist. Tourists in pairs or groups are normal. But this is the the experience I wanted, and I'm just trying to take it for what it is. I'm becoming more comfortable with it each day.

On my third day in Vientiane, I would have preferred not to be alone at the beginning of what would become one of the best days of my trip so far. The previous day, I had visited a tour company and, somewhat on a whim and last-minute, I signed up for a day trip of kayaking and cycling. Outside my hotel at 7am, a tuk tuk driver shouted to me "caiakeeng" and made a strange motion with his arms. I was used to having my guard up for the tuk tuk drivers outside my hotel (yes, even though Laos is quite laid back, there are still somewhat aggressive tuk tuk drivers), so it took me a moment to realize that he was telling me he was picking me up to go on my kayaking trip. I showed him the receipt the tour company had given me, and we were on our way.

A few minutes later, we arrived at the Vientiane bus station, hectic with the morning commute. The tuk tuk driver took took my receipt, gave me another small receipt with scrawl on it, and motioned for me to follow him in a slow run through the outdoor bus area. I had no idea whether I was going to meet a group of people to go kayaking with or what, but it turned out he was looking for a bus to put me on that was going in the right direction. I learned from Laura that this is how the budget travel companies work: they outsource both the transportation and the activity, so you end up getting passed on to different guides throughout your trip. My tuk tuk driver found the right bus, gave the bus assistant a few bills, told him a few words while motioning to me, and then told me to get on the bus.

The bus turned out to be public transportation, on which there were a few other tourists but mostly locals, and the back of the bus filled with sacks of various things. It was a comfortable enough ride on the full bus, and about two hours later the bus driver pulled over and motioned to me to get off. He pointed to the side of the road. I was a little concerned as I realized I was being left off by a bridge on the edge of a very small village, but felt a little better when I saw a dilapidated kayaking and adventure tour sign. A woman came out of the nearby building, I showed her my slip of paper, she called someone on her cell phone, and then gave me the phone. The broken English I heard explained that, since it was just me and I had booked the trip late, there was no guide to meet me, but that I should just get in the kayak and start paddling down river, but not too fast, as a guide would meet me before the "big rapids". I was given a small dry bag for my stuff and was led to a kayak by the side of the river.

And then I was in the middle of this rather wide river, feeling like I was passing under the bridge on the river Kwai. I was a little more concerned now, and thought how it would be nice to have someone with me.

About an hour of slow paddling and some small rapids that might have been the rapids I was supposed to wait at, I saw "STOP HERE" painted in large letters on a rock just before some big-sounding rapids, and a Lao person waiting there who turned out to be my non-English-speaking guide. He pulled my kayak to the bank, and then motioned for me to follow him over the rocks to view the rapids. Once in sight of the rapids, he checked my face for signs of horror, and then quite clearly motioned with his hands that I was to paddle through the middle of the rapids, and not close to the rocks on either side. We returned to my kayak, and he made sure all my stuff was in the dry bag and that the dry bag was attached to the boat. I was comforted by the fact that the rapids weren't that long, so even if my kayak tipped, it would be a short ride, unlike the last time I went white water rafting the summer I worked at Microsoft and almost died when I fell out of the boat at the beginning of a really long, strong rapid.

It turned out to be a blast, as I got refreshingly soaked and filled most of my kayak with water, which my guide promptly emptied for me when I returned to shore. My guide went ahead in his long wooden motorized boat, and it was a peaceful hour and a half more of kayaking down river to the Nam Lik Eco-Village.

I tentatively tied my kayak up to the dock and walked up wooden steps to the building by the river, and was gracefully welcomed by a few Lao men, including my guide from before, and a Caucasian, hippy-looking jungle man. I felt like I had stepped into "The Heart of Darkness". They gave me the usual formal Lao greeting of "sebadee" while clasping hands and bowing slightly, like the monks in Taiwan.

Jungle Richard turned out to be a fantastic character, originally from France, but has lived for over a decade in various parts of SE Asia, studying plants and animals. I enjoyed by myself a simple but delicious meal that Richard prepared, had great conversation with a French family staying at Richard's bungalows for a few days (they later gave me their address and invited Jess and me to visit and stay with them), and then went for a bicycle ride into two very rural villages nearby. Before I left, Richard gave me a fascinating tour of his tanks of collected fish, spiders, frogs, snakes, and turtles. He explained that he works with the local villages to help them be environmentally sensitive with their land, and also has children from the village come to learn about the nature in their environment from him.

Then it was a slow hour truck ride past small villages and rice fields to the nearest major road, where my guide flagged down a passing "jumbo" (large tuk tuk) as my ride back to Vientiane.
The rest of my three and a half days in Vientiane were relatively quiet and uneventful, with visits to their Arch de Triumph replica and the large temple complex, wandering around the small city, and having a "Beerlao" at the local bowling alley and pool hall.

Next stop: a half hour flight to Louang Phrabang, a UNESCO Heritage Listed town that comes highly recommended by Dennis and Charlie.

Days 24-27: Luang Prabang, Laos

2008-02-21T08:08:00.001-05:00

February 22-25

Let me start by saying that internet of a reasonable speed is almost impossible to find in Luang Prabang, but what should I expect in a place like this? I've stumbled upon some, so I'm making the most of it (including uploaded a video of motorbike riding on my Hanoi post, so check it out!).

Luang Prabang is a beautiful UNESCO Heritage Listed town on a peninsula at the confluence of the huge Mekong and smaller Nam Khan rivers. It has pretty little lanes connecting the two larger roads than run along the town, and is filled with orange robe-wearing monks like the one sitting next to me in this internet cafe. A stop here came highly recommended by many people, including the New York Times Travel section which rated it number one travel destination in 2008. Its popularity shows in the somewhat appalling mobs of tourists, but I've fortunately still found it possible to have good experiences in unexpected places. Here's a photo after landing at the airport and another looking at the Mekong from town:

My first good experience in an unexpected place occurred when I checked into the Vilay Guest House, recommended to me by French Jungle Richard from my last entry. Vilay is run by a friendly Laos woman who, five years ago, met her husband-to-be when he stayed at her guest house while teaching English (I know, a Frenchie teaching English?) at a Luang Prabang school. Ben is quite friendly, and has included me in drinking various kinds of "lao lao", the local hard alcohol specialty, and even teaching me the way they drink it. One small glass and the bottle is procured by the host who pours himself a shot, shows it to everyone else, drinks it, and then shakes the remains on the floor as an offering to past family. He then proceeds to pour successive shots for the others at the table, filling and passing the single glass.

My first morning, I awoke before the sun to watch the town monk alms procession, a daily event where they collect their day's food from local lay people (non-monks). It was awesome to see, but lessened by the insensitive Japanese tourists just off their tour buses, rushing towards the slowly processing monks and taking flash photos in the weak morning light. This and other experiences in Luang Prabang have made me ashamed of tourism and even consider leaving so I stop contributing to it.

Not only is the town on a peninsula, but on its spine there is a substantial hill called Phu Si with some temples on top, overlooking the town and the rivers. Again, it was mobbed with tourists, but still beautiful at sunset:

On my second full day, I did a day mountain bike trip to the east of town, led by a friendly Laos guide named Sat. He was about 22 years old and had been a novice (monk in training) age 15 to 20, so he was able to explain something about life as a novice. Novices must follow ten precepts or rules which include no hunting or killing, no drinking alcohol, no having sex with (or even touching) women, and no singing or dancing.

The mountain bike trip was well-organized with beautiful scenery and a mixture of easy, technical (on rocky, potholed dirt roads), and then uphill bicycling. Stops included a temple, a silk and cotton textiles house, a bamboo basket-making village, delicious lunch, an elephant park, and a boat ride by water buffalo playing in the water to swimming in pools made by small waterfalls. No inexpensive ($28, including lunch) bike tour in a developing country would be complete without two flats and a broken rear wheel spoke. Fortunately, they were little inconvenience. I got along well with the two other guys on the trip, from San Francisco and London, and we got beers and dinner after the trip.

On another day, I was wandering the back way to the top of Phu Si when I passed a novice. We exchanged the usual "sebadee", and then he started a conversation with me in English. I had heard that the novices and monks like to practice their English with tourists, so I didn't think it strange. Mon's English wasn't great, but we still had a nice conversation, and then he gave me a tour around his temple and brought me to his living quarters where we hung out with his two roommates. Mon is 17 years old and became a novice at age 13 when his father died. Before leaving, Mon tied a pink bracelet he had made on my wrist.

Later that day, another monk (this one was a monk and not a novice, since he was older than 20) named Keo struck up conversation with me. Keo spoke fluent English, and could speak a number of other languages including Thai, Chinese, and Japanese. He was a world traveler, having been all over Europe and Asia. It turns out that some monks are a lot more like you and me than you might think. Keo had a cell phone with two sim cards, a TV and DVD player in his living quarters, and a nicer digital camera than mine. When I asked him where he got money for his travels and possessions, he explained that he earned money from translating text from Laos to various of the other languages he knows. He also sends money home to his family living in northern Laos. In a few weeks, he plans to stop being a monk, go to study medicine in Bangkok, and eventually open a pharmacy and become a doctor in his home town where he says there is little medical presence. It's common for Laos men to be novices for a period of time and then stop. In fact, there is a three week required minimum. Like traveling for a year before and / or after college, I think experiencing the life of a monk would be a great experience for most teenagers.

I haven't quite decided when I'm going to leave Laos for Chiang Mai (Thailand), or even how I'm going to get there (either by plane or by boat up the Mekong and then bus), but that'll be my next stop.

Days 28-32: Chiang Mai

2007-03-30T04:37:00.002-04:00

Feb 26 - Mar 1

I decided it was time to leave Luang Prabang, so I went to the Laos Airways building just outside town, bought a flight to Chiang Mai, and was on my way that afternoon. It's nice how you can do that kind of spur-of-the-moment travel here. There are travel agencies, both third party and for the travel companies themselves. There seems to be a standard price plus small arrangement fee which does not fluctuate depending on day of the week or how far in advance you purchase. So you can be quite spontaneous in your travel.

I had been told that Thailand has a great tourist infrastructure, and when I arrived in Chiang Mai I began to understand what this means. Prices are displayed, so you don't have to haggle and you don't feel like you're getting ripped off. A thirty day visa is free for many nationalities (including U.S.), and there is no need to apply in advance. It is legal for foreigners to drive motorbikes and cars, unlike some neighboring countries. More often restaurants will have English menus, staff that speak passable English, and food more appealing to a western palette. Things are almost as cheap as Laos and Vietnam, and the food is delicious. Here's a meal of sticky rice, Thai iced tea, and vegetable curry, and another of vegetable fried rice:

I had a quiet few days in Chiang Mai, slowly exploring the city filled with Buddhist temples and with a square old city surrounded by walls and a moat. I spent a lot of time relaxing at my comfortable guesthouse with friendly staff that spoke some English, and took many of my meals at the guesthouse restaurant. Many guesthouses have attached restaurants and will arrange outings for you, both of which strongly supplement their income. My guesthouse happened to have an excellent and friendly cook, so I enjoyed some Thai meals like cashew chicken and some American ones like french toast.

My first morning in Chiang Mai, I had breakfast at a nearby cafe. It was a nice husband-wife operation, and they made their own jam. The only other patrons were a 60-year-old white man and a 17-year-old, beautiful Thai girl eating together. Prostitution is legal in Thailand, and there was plenty of it going on in Chiang Mai. I bet it makes up a good part of the tourist industry income. I had seen this kind of open prostitution before in Amsterdam, but it's even worse when you have comparatively rich men making use of comparatively poor women / girls, and already a sense of servitude permeates the tourism industry.

I'm finding that, even though these cities have somewhat repulsively tourist-oriented areas, they have plenty of their own identity elsewhere. Even in tiny Luang Prabang, you could walk a little ways and find Lao people doing their own thing.

I had started to feel an urge for some adventure, so I began to research renting a motorbike for a multi-day trip from Chiang Mai on my own. I had read that the mountains of northwest Thailand were great for motorbiking and the roads well-paved and fairly safe. I found a few good maps of the area, one that had guesthouses and sites marked on it.

So on my fourth day in Chiang Mai, I rented a 125CC Honda Dream (four speeds and manual transmission, but no clutch) for 200 bat ($7) per day, which included comprehensive insurance. I chose the bike because it was very similar to Laura's that I had ridden in Hanoi, but with slightly more power to help with getting up the mountains I'd be riding in. I took it on a test ride to the nearby Phayap University, where I would play another game of pickup ultimate, like I did in Hanoi, the next day. Near the fields, there was a cluster of stores and restaurants catering to the University where I got a delicious strawberry shake at a comfy coffee shop and read my book for a while.

On my last day in Chiang Mai, I did a longer practice motorbike trip to the mountain temple Wat Phrathat Doi Suthep, about 45 minutes ride from my guesthouse and with lots of twists and turns. There was a long stairwell up to the temple (or a funicular tram if you preferred), which was beautiful and full of tourists, both Thai and foreign.

The ultimate was good fun and great exercise, and surprisingly similar to Hanoi though with fewer locals and no smog. I had another yummy dinner, this time of Panang curry, at a cooking school and restaurant around the corner from my guesthouse.

Another morning, I followed a Lonely Planet walking tour of wats (and the wat dogs) in the old, moated city. I had delicious lunch of pad thai and pineapple shake, and after my meal had a conversation in English with my waitress and her mother who ran the place together. I was reminded that an interesting thing to do would be to get to know a waiter or waitress, and then ask to hang out with them and their friends after work, as a way to see a slice of the local culture. The cook at my guesthouse made such an offer to me after I had stayed there for a few nights, though I didn't take him up on it because I had to pack for an early departure the next day for my motorbike adventure.

Days 33-39: Motorbike trip into the mountains of NW Thailand

2007-03-29T06:43:00.001-04:00

Mar 2-8

I set off into the mountains of northwest Thailand with a rough plan to do the Mae Hong Son loop, fabled to be full of incredible scenery and indigenous hill tribe villages. Though there were tons of switchbacks and very steep sections, the roads were in super condition and the traffic was light and considerate. I wasn't sure what I was going to find, but I was looking for an adventure.

(One of the first things I did was buy a more substantial helmet with a visor.)

The first leg of this journey is to Pai, and I enjoyed a beautiful sunset at a roadside "coffee house". This was my first example of a location catering to the higher-end tourists, which Pai is seeing more of these days. I heard that the tourists are not only foreign but increasingly rich Thai people.

Pai itself was a nice but somewhat strange town. Even though it's quite remote, there has been a substantial population of hippy expats living there for decades. Today, it is heavily trafficked by young backpackers. The experience was well summarized as I ate pad thai from a corner restaurant overlooking a 3-piece rock band on the street corner composed of Thai people who were playing 1960s-era covers including a few Eric Clapton ones (from his drug years), tons of tourists wandering around or sitting on the ground watching, and occasionally a crunchy white man or woman would step in and play the bass or sing for a song.

This was not what I came searching for on my motorbike adventure. After one night in Pai, I got a super traditional Thai massage, which included a lot of being stretched in various ways, and then I was back on the road. I wasn't sure where I would end up, but I had a good map with lots of guest houses marked on it. After a few hours of challenging but fun driving through mountainous switchbacks, I followed my nose to the Lisu Guest House on the edge of a hill tribe village off the main road. Within a few minutes of being there, I knew I had found what I was looking for.

The Lisu Guest House is so called because it is on the edge of a Lisu village and run by a Lisu woman and her German husband. Ami and Rudi were welcoming, and even spoke decent English, Rudi more so than Ami. The Lisu people are one of about five indigenous hill tribe ethnic groups that can be found in northwest Thailand. Each group has its own customs, religion, language, and distinctive (and often colorful) clothing. Here are the different groups, and a few photos of Ami in Lisu clothing (which she only wore one of the days I was there).

Not only were Ami and Rudi friendly and inclusive, I enjoyed the company of Michael, a 50-year-old guy from New Jersey who was selling the bookstore he started in Pai and was still trying to find his way, and Linda, a retired German woman.

I stayed in a bamboo bungalow, which was small but clean and very comfortable. It included an excellent mosquito net which kept my bed bug-free. I had a beautiful view from my door, and it only cost 80 bat (less than $3) per night! Ami and Rudi traded off cooking meals for their guests whenever they wanted them, and they had two locals who helped with cleaning and chores. There were two beautiful dogs, Mimi the kitten, and two monkeys that Rudi had been given by local children and which he had raised. There was a shared bath house for the bungalows which included a simple shower and my first squat toilet where you flush by pouring water after you go, and you put your used toilet paper in the trash can. It worked fine.

Every evening there was "Lisu dinner" at the guest house, a mixture of Thai foods eaten family-style around a single table. Rudy grew mulberries and made mulberry jam that went on bread or his thin German pancakes, and mulberry liquor which I had many evenings.

Before bed my first evening, I went to use the bathroom and was met by Mimi, mewing quite loudly. She was proudly displaying the rather large mouse she had caught, and then proceeded to eat him, bones and all, leaving only a bloody stain on the concrete floor.

Another day, early in the morning, the male monkey started screaming, there was a rustle of dog scramble, and it slowly became apparent that a dog from the neighboring Lisu village had snuck onto the property to eat some chickens. This turned out to be a bad move for the dog, as the two strong Lisu Guest House dogs cornered him, biting his neck and legs, and would have killed and eaten him had Rudi not shooed them away. He explained that if a dog ever tries to eat a chicken, the villagers will immediately kill him. But Rudi did not want to kill someone else's dog, so he led him into the village and tried unsuccessfully to find the owner.

My first morning, Ami drove Linda, Michael, and me in her pickup truck to town where the Tuesday market was going on. I enjoyed riding in the open-air back of the truck, taking in the scenery and not having to worry about driving. People from all the hill tribe villages, as well as from nearby Burma, come to the weekly market to buy and sell. Linda brought me to the place she always goes for breakfast (Linda is a regular visitor to the guest house, as well as Michael).

Later that day, I rode my motorbike farther along the main road towards Mae Hong Son, encountering more switchbacks and stunning mountain scenery. Cruising up a hill, I came across my first cyclist, slowly climbing, and loaded with panniers. I couldn't believe that someone would attempt to ride a loaded bicycle through these impossibly steep hills. I slowed to his pace and we talked for a while until we reached the top of the hill, and then he blazed down the other side. I later caught up with him and joined him for a meal. His name was Henrique Reñe from Barcelona, and ate ferociously as only a touring cyclist could.

In the evening, on recommendation from people at my guest house, I rode my motorbike and then hiked to Thom Lod, a cave with a river running through it. At sunset, thousands of bats fly out and hundreds of thousands of birds fly in, like a time share condo. The next day, I went on a strenuous hike with people from my guest house; much of it was bushwhacking through a bamboo forest. A few people had an idea of where we were going, but we never made our way to the destination, which was to be a large well-like cavern. But we did succeed in having a delicious lunch on the forest floor.

Another evening, Ami and others from my guest house brought me to a nearby Lahu village to witness (and take part in) their new year celebrations, which included sitting around in a bamboo house eating and drinking, and the traditional Lahu new year dance which is a slow procession of two concentric circles, women on the inside and men on the outside, holding hands and doing a sequence of sedate steps to a simple, repetitive melody played by one person processing around in the middle. Being a single young man, I drew the attention of the Lahu girls who brought me into the circle to dance with them. I was able to pick up most of the dance steps, which I think they appreciated.

On my last day at the Lisu Guest House, I went on a hike to the Mae U Mong waterfall. The first step was to ride my motorbike along some bumpy dirt roads to the Mae U Mong village, a village of the Karen people (known for wearing many rings around their necks to make their necks look longer). Ami had written me a note in Thai, explaining that I wanted to go on a hike to the waterfall. It took me a few tries to find someone who could read, but I eventually was paired with an experienced guide. His four dogs walked with us the entire way, flanking us in front and behind and periodically running off to explore some interesting movement or scent. At the waterfall, my guide used the trunk of a bamboo tree to make tubes for boiling water, and then we enjoyed noodles and sticky rice wrapped in a banana leaf.

My last day was a long one, leaving the Lisu Guest House at 7:30am for the long ride back to Chiang Mai -- I had a 4:15pm flight to catch. When returning my motorbike, I was able to get a discount for giving them the helmet I had bought.

Days 39-43: Siem Reap (Cambodia) and the Angkor temples

2007-03-28T20:53:00.001-04:00

Mar 8-12

When I walked out of the small and beautiful Siem Reap airport, I was astonished by how aggressively I was leaped upon by taxi drivers. I waded through a following mob of about twenty of them as I walked out of the airport to catch a less expensive and more enjoyable tuk tuk. This was my first taste of the fairly stark contrast between Thailand and Cambodia. I was now farther south and more into the dry / hot season, so it was quite uncomfortably hot and humid, even though it was evening. On the tuk tuk ride into Siem Reap, there were pockets of poverty and dirtiness more extreme than what I had seen in Thailand, interspersed with huge luxury hotels catering to rich tourists here to see the famous Angkor temples. Another contrast I would notice later was that tourists pay twice the price that locals do, either because the English menu had doubled prices, or there were no displayed prices and the vendor just told you the tourist price. I often felt ripped off, and that the Siem Reap tourism industry got a lot of money out of me.

Upon a number of strong recommendations, I had come quite a long way to Siem Reap to see the Angkor Temples, but I have to say that I was a little underwhelmed. Yes, they are 1000 years old and quite impressive, but it was my other experiences which were more memorable.

The first such experience began within minutes of arriving at my hotel, after walking around in the hot and humid evening to two other full guest houses. There was a group of locals sitting in a circle outside my hotel, drinking, laughing, and talking loudly. After I ate dinner at a nearby restaurant, I bought four cans of beer from a corner store, and went back to my hotel. As I presented the beer, the circle of locals enthusiastically invited me to join them, and we sat around and talked and drank for a while. It turned out they were all tuk tuk drivers that worked around my hotel. The most outgoing and friendly one, who also spoke the best English, became my companion for the rest of my time in Siem Reap. He introduced himself as ¨Tear, like when you cry you make the tear.¨

The next morning I ate overpriced breakfast at my hotel and then rented an overpriced bicycle from them to explore the small city with hectic traffic. I stopped at a bicycle shop and had an interesting discussion with the shop manager about bicycles in Cambodia and bicycle importing / exporting around Southeast Asia and China.

When I returned to my hotel, I hung out a little more with Tear and the other tuk tuk drivers, and they invited me out for late-afternoon food and drinks with them in a quite poor part of town. Five of us enjoyed pitchers of light Angkor beer with a can of dark ABC beer poured into them, as well as finger food and laughs. There was a team of three or four busy young waitresses who constantly refilled our glasses with ice or brought more food, and the tuk tuk guys bossed them around somewhat. One of the four drivers was a taxi driver, and we later all piled into his car/taxi to head to karaoke, stopping to piss against a wall by the side of the road on our way there.

We arrived at a mid-range karaoke establishment with private rooms that you rented to do karaoke with the group you came with. The entrance was flanked by a line of girls dressed in formal dresses that you could pay for to hang out with you during karaoke or whatever else you wanted. All of the guys I was with were in their thirties and married, some with children, so we didn't partake much of the women, to the chagrin of the club staff; only two of my friends had women sit next to them while they sang, and I don't even know if we were charged for that or if they were just temptation. There was another woman in our room who assisted with the karaoke machine, making sure our beer glasses remained full. We had a lot of fun drinking and singing for a few hours, and I even sang a few songs, including one ¨American¨ song I had never heard but that my friends insisted I would know. They sang along with me.

After that experience, it was on to karaoke spot number two, this one much lower budget, seeming to be just a dirty room in someone´s house. It was a more laid-back and friendly atmosphere, a regular spot for these guys, and we had more fun singing, dancing, and laughing.

Early the next morning, I hired Tear for the day for $45 to drive me all around the area to explore the temples. We started by eating breakfast together at his friend´s market food stall, and then departed for the three-hour ride to Beng Mealea, a very ruined temple, devoured by surrounding jungle, and much less touristy due to its distance from the main temples. I had fun climbing over the fallen stones and exploring, but was a little annoyed when teenage and younger boys insisted on leading me around when I didn't want a guide and wanted to explore on my own. But it turned out that they pointed out things that I wouldn't have noticed, and they didn't ask for money when we parted ways.

Maybe more interesting as the temples were the villages and communities we drove through. Most houses had large holes dug in the ground outside them, and I later learned these were to catch water during the rainy season which would be used throughout the dry season. They were mostly dry now, and cows grazed in them, often amongst trash.

Gas stations in and around Siem Reap were small roadside stands with soda or liquor bottles filled with gas. You paid for a bottle and the person dumped it in your tank.

While riding along a bumpy, unpaved road in the countryside, we came across the scene of a very recent accident between two motorbikes. One motorbike was lying in the road with a shoe next to it, and I saw one person sitting in the shade of the roadside bushes with blood on his head. We stopped to look around but there was nothing we could do and a police officer was on the scene sorting things out. I half-jokingly reminded Tear to drive carefully, but I had confidence he was a good driver.

Kbal Spean was the second temple on our tour. Beautifully preserved and ornate, and of a reddish color, unlike the grey of other temples, Kbal Spean was Tear´s favorite temple and the only of the entire day that he joined me to explore. At the other temples, Tear napped in his tuk tuk or chatted with his tuk tuk buddies.

After these first two more distant temples, we drove to the heart of the Angkor action, Angkor Thom (which is actually a large group of temples) and the centerpiece of Angkor Wat, the pride of Cambodia and the only building to appear on a country´s flag.

For my second day exploring the temples, I rented a bicycle from the bicycle shop manager that I had talked with before. I rented the standard Asian bike: a cheap, simple, but sturdy and very functional one-speed. I spent most of the day toodling around Angkor Wat and Angkor Thom, stopping here and there to explore. It got incredibly hot during the middle of the day, when all the temple restoration and staff people napped in shady places.

Filthy from a day of sweating and exploring, I returned to my hotel. Tear had recently returned from a tuk tuk job, and invited me to join him on a later job he had to take a French couple to the Western Baray for sunset. I had seen the Western Baray from the plane while coming into Siem Reap airport -- an enormous, rectangular reservoir, built by the French, that supplies Siem Reap. It´s a weekend destination for Siem Reap families, and there were a number of vendors and people enjoying the breeze and swimming in the water. Tear bought a bag of fried grasshoppers and two beers for us while the French couple sat elsewhere.

I had seen all I wanted of Siem Reap and Angkor, so I booked a bus for the next morning to Bangkok. Up until then, I had been enjoying easy, though expensive, air travel throughout Southeast Asia. I had heard that travel by bus was an experience, especially outside Thailand. Even though it might be unpleasant, it was an experience I wanted to have.

And I was not disappointed. My day began at 6:40am, waiting outside my hotel for the ¨bus¨. At about 7, a young guy on a motorbike rolled up and said he was taking me to the bus for Bangkok. Wary, I hoped on the back and was brought to a random street corner in the poor neighborhood where I had gotten food and beers with the tuk tuk drivers. But then a group of six tourist backpackers joined me, and it was clear I was in the right place. The bus arrived, looking a little rundown, not very clean inside and slightly sticky seats (from the humidity?). We proceded to drive around Siem Reap for the next hour, stopping to pick up groups of people, until every seat was filled, the entire back section of the bus was filled to the ceiling with backpacks, as well as the isle from the back of the bus almost to the front. As we were leaving Siem Reap, we pulled up to a repair shop and were notified that the bus had a flat; I enjoyed watching the young mechanic fix it, and wished I could explain to him that I used to be a bicycle mechanic.

The road from Siem Reap to Poipet at the Thai border was mostly dirt, incredibly dry and dusty. There was no air conditioning on the bus, so with the windows open, I had a layer of dirt all over my clothes and face by the end of the trip. There was tremendous construction going on while the road was still in use. Six hours, one more flat tire, and a lunch stop later, we arrived at Poipet where we got off the bus and spent almost two hours waiting in lines, getting passports stamped, and waiting for our Thai bus to Bangkok. The Thai bus was comfortable with good air conditioning, and the Thai roads were well paved as they were in the north.

The bus dropped us off in downtown Bangkok at about 8:30pm. Overall, the day's journey was fine, if a little uncomfortable at times. But I can see how this kind of travel would wear on you.

Days 43-48: Bangkok

2007-03-27T12:35:00.001-04:00

Mar 12-17

I stayed in a simple but clean and comfortable six-bed dormitory at the Hosteling International youth hostel in Thewet, a less touristy and more relaxed neighborhood of Bangkok recommended to me by Charlie. The Hosteling International organization is quite an interesting one, having been around for a hundred years and with locations in most of the tourist-visited countries of the world. The organization is centered around cultural exchange, meeting and learning from other people, environmental sustainability, and peace. They are often quite inexpensive, a wonderful place to meet fellow travelers, have friendly and helpful staff, have great common spaces and facilities, and you don't have to be a ¨youth¨ to stay there. My HI hostel in Thewet is forty years old, the oldest of about six in Bangkok.

My neighborhood was near the national library and a market filled with tailors and food stalls where I enjoyed my favorite Thai dish, pad si yu gai (wide noodles fried with collared greens, egg, and chicken, plus a twist of lime).

The only negative to my time in Bangkok was the hot and humid weather that sucked the energy from you, and the mosquitoes that did a number on me. I generally don't like to bother with bug spray and just get used to the bites, but these ones were extremely itchy for days after. I took at least two showers each day due to the heat.

One of the friendly travelers I met at my hostel was Alex from the Philippines. He is a youthful and eager 38-year-old manager of a train control center in Manila, and was in Bangkok for a three-day conference on Asian train systems. He invited me to join his scheduled tour at the Bangkok Skytrain control center. We rode the Skytrain to its end where the headquarters was, and learned about the inner workings of a large city's train system. The head manager spoke good English, so I could ask him non-trivial questions.

After the tour, we took the subway (different from the Skytrain) to its end, looked around the primary, suffocating Bangkok train station, and then wandered through tiny backstreets of Chinatown and a car and motorbike repair neighborhood where used parts were piled high on the sidewalks. We finally found a pier to catch the water taxi, used mostly by locals to commute, back to near our hostel. The taxi assistant at the back of the boat communicated with the driver at the front via a whistle, and he jumped off the boat to anchor it while riders disembarked and embarked, then untied the boat and jumped back on.

The staff at the hostel were also very friendly. Boa and Tak, two Thai 23-year-old women who had studied ¨business English¨ together at university, befriended me and took me and others out for dinner a few times. I had a really fun evening out with Alex and Tak, first at a hotel in Chinatown for her university annual reunion ¨red party¨ (most people wore red). We met a bunch of her friends, ate some good food, and watched hilarious singing and dancing performances put on by her classmates in competition for king and queen of the party. Afterwards, a bunch of us went out to a bar for drinks, dancing, and live music.

Continuing my tour through Bangkok transportation, I rode the bus (of which there are an incredible number in Bangkok) to a mega mall complex. I still find it amazing that large cities throughout the world all have huge malls. I found a small video game arcade where there was a mob of spectators watching one guy consistently beat a stream of challengers in Tekken 6 (a classic two-player fighting game). Also, this mall boasted a McDonald's with a culturally adapted Ronald McDonald statue outside.

My hostel had a decent wifi connection, so I was able to use my N800 to talk with my parents, Jess, and some other friends from home. The N800 has proven to be a great travel gadget for skyping, minor email, reading things online and offline, backing up my photos to extra memory cards, and uploading photos overnight to my server. It is quite slow for some things, but then there are almost always computers around for about a dollar an hour.

On my last day, I finally did my first normal tourist activity and visited a nearby temple. During my time in Bangkok, I just wasn't motivated to see the usual tourist sites, and I'm finding my other experiences are much more memorable. That evening, I joined another friendly guy from my hostel, French Canadian Bruno, for an evening of Muay Thai (kick boxing), the adored national sport of Thailand. I'm not particularly into watching people beat on each other, but it was quite exciting at times, and more than half the fun was the setting. In retrospect, we were glad we had chosen the cheap seats, as we could still see fine and that's where all the locals were. Betting was the central activity, with a lot of yelling, hand signals, and scurrying around. The almost entirely male crowd cheered and chanted for their boxer, and then large denomination bills changed hands after the match was over. There were ten matches in all, lasting about four hours over the evening, and we stayed for most of it.

Days 49-54: Kathmandu, Nepal

2007-03-26T03:12:00.001-04:00

Mar 18-23

I need to look up the statistics on this, but Nepal seems to be the poorest country I'll visit on my trip, and the people seem much more desperate to improve their lot, unlike Laos where people seemed content with the little they have.

On my four-hour flight from Bangkok to Kathmandu, I sat next to a white-robed Indonesian monk. When we were filling out our immigration forms, I peeked over and noted that her official full name printed in her passport was "Dina" (no middle or last names). As is often the case with monks, I was unsure of her gender until I heard her voice when answering my question of whether she was staying in Boudha, the very Buddhist area just outside the center of Kathmandu. I asked because I was going there on my friend Ben's recommendation, and I didn't know the best way to get there from the airport. She said she was not, but that she had a Nepali friend who was picking her up who could help me. After the longest visa application wait yet on my trip, Dina's gracious Nepali friend negotiated my way into the back seat of a taxi that already had a passenger going my way. He turned out to be a Nepali business man on his way home from a business trip, and after a nice conversation he gave me his business card and told me to call him if I needed any help during my stay in Nepal.

Boudhanath, or Boudha for short, is the site of the largest Buddhist stupa in the world, and also of a large number of Tibetan monks and monasteries. A stupa is a conical structure, usually painted with the eyes of the Buddha overlooking, and Buddhists come to "walk in the clockwise" around it while they pray, click through their beads (like Catholic rosary beads), or recite their mantras. My buddy Ben had recommended Boudha because it's much more laid-back than Thamel, Kathmandu's insane tourist center.

Nepal's pleasantly warm days and cool nights were a welcome change from Bangkok's stifling heat, and I even got to enjoy a thunderstorm my first evening in my simple hotel, run by the next door Tibetan Buddhist monastery. At first, I thought the proprietor was crazy because he wandered around slowly mumbling to himself, but I later figured out he was just reciting his mantras as Buddhist do.

My first full day in Boudha, I was walking clockwise around the stupa along with many others, taking in the atmosphere, when I was approached by a tout, "Raju. Raju from Rajasthan [India]!", asking if I would like my shoes shined. Not only was I not interested, but I was wearing Keen hiking sandals. After I said no, he proceeded to follow me around the stupa and, since his English was pretty good, we were able to have an interesting conversation. He asked again if he could shine my shoes, and this time I said yes because I wanted to continue talking.

"Shoe shining" turned out to be painting my shoes with various vaguely appropriate colors and then buffing them a little, when really what they needed was washing of the mud already accumulated from the filthy dirt streets. He even took the liberty of stitching up what he deemed falling apart sections of my quite new shoes, but I wasn't about to stop him. Part way into the shining, a bearded white guy sat next to us on the sidewalk. After he silently watched Raju at work for a few minutes, I learned that his name was Hammod, he was from Iran, and had become friendly with Raju during his travels there. After the shoe shining and our nice conversation, Raju invited the two of us to his house for chai, or Indian tea. I was enjoying their company and fairly confident that they weren't going to rob or hurt me, so I agreed.

We walked for a few blocks, and then turned down a dirt alley that led to a large open area hidden by the main streets. Raju lived in a very poor ghetto of bamboo shacks along with about thirty other Indian immigrant families. The ghetto had a central water source where the men bathed, and a peripheral bath house for toilets and female bathing. Raju paid about ten dollars a month for ten square feet of concrete, on which he had built a bamboo shack for his wife, baby, cousin, cousin's husband, and himself. Raju was very hospitable as his wife prepared chai for all of us.

After chai, Raju offered to take Hammod and me to Pashupatinath, a large and famous Hindu temple nearby. Raju aspires to be a guide and was eager to practice on us. As we walked along the dirt road to Pashupatinath, children threw water balloons and buckets of water from the tops of buildings as a part of the upcoming Festival of Colors, which involves a lot of water fighting. I taunted the water throwers to try to hit me, and they cheered with laughter when they did. I felt that we went from being poor local and rich tourist to equals when they soaked me, and I laughed back at them as I ran away.

Pashupatinath was closed in parts to non-Hindus, but there was much else to see, and Raju did an excellent job giving us a tour and explaining what was going on. The holy Bagmati River ran past the temple area, and there were seven cremation platforms which were all in various stages of use. We could see a dead woman lying on one of the pyres, circled in procession by her three relatives and then set aflame by one, to burn slowly to ashes and then be swept into the river. Further upstream, there was a group of people around a sick person half lying in the river. Raju explained that when a person was dying and nothing would cure them, they were taken to the river in hopes of healing them. As we watched, they decided the person had died and started carrying him away, presumably to be cremated.

After the tour of Pashupatinath, Raju invited us to his home for dinner. Raju's wife and cousin made us the usual chai and then began preparing food. First the vegetables: shelling peas, chopping cauliflower and green herbs, and carrots. Raju's wife put a battered pot over the fire and combined oil, whole spices, chopped spicy peppers with powdered spices, and the herbs. She used the handle of a small rolling pin to grind garlic and ginger together. A small child ran over to our hut to borrow the one knife.

After the main course had cooked for a while, intermittently being stirred and other ingredients being added, that pot was set aside and another was put on for boiling water for rice with peas. While that was going, Raju's wife mixed flour, salt, and water to make the dough for chapatti. When the rice was ready, they put a flat frying surface on the fire, used their hands and then the rolling pin to make disks of dough, fried them on either side, put them in the coals for a minute to char the bread, and then buttered one side. A final side dish was chopped onion and radish, plus lime for squeezing on. I ate with my (right) hand my most delicious meal in memory, constantly being offered more and reminded of my beer, chai, and water (which I was careful not to drink) next to me.

While she cooked, Raju's wife watched after their 18-month-old daughter, and even nursed her and put her to bed while she cooked. She procured silverware from under the thin mattresses on which we sat. While chopping, she squatted on the concrete floor and threw the trash bits on the floor, to be swept out of the hut later.

Towards the end of the meal, a German man appeared in the village with a sack of rice that he gave to a family. He then joined us in the hut, and explained that he had recently had a near-death experience in the hospital with liver problems, and was now filled with energy to help others. He is a doctor and his wife a violinist. He said that he had no interest in visiting temples or other sites, and wanted to see the real people of Nepal. He said that the people in Nepal are "fucking tough", relating a story of pulling a Nepali woman's tooth with almost no pain killer, something that would be unthinkable in Germany. He was obviously very moved by what he saw, and wanted to help. He wanted to give money or food, but recognized also that more self-sustaining aid was necessary. He agreed to return to the village on Saturday to help whatever people in the village needed medical attention, and then Raju would show him more of the "real" Nepal.

I slowly walked back to my guest house, via a circle around the stupa, with a glowing feeling, both from day's sunburn and the incredible chain of experiences I had had that day.

The rest of my time leading up to my trek was comparatively uneventful. Hammod and I went to another temple, Swayambhunath, this one joint Hindu and Buddhist, with monkeys climbing around everywhere. The actual day of the Festival of Colors I spent at my guest house, hiding from the water and paint fights going on in the streets, but I got to watch from the roof of my building. That evening, after the locals had showered and cleaned up from the day's mess, they turned out en mass to quietly walk around the stupa.

I spent two days before my trek preparing for it, getting a map, iodine for drinking water, hat and gloves, renting a sleeping bag, and figuring out how to get to the beginning of the trek. Most of the preparation I did in Thamel, the tourist and trekking preparation center of Kathmandu, which was insanely busy and oppressive with constant traffic and people trying to get money from you. It made me very glad to have based myself in Boudha.

The transportation between Thamel and Boudha is worth describing. Taxis were available but expensive and required hard bargaining or else you would get really ripped off, so I opted for the more authentic (and slower and less comfortable) local buses and minivans. You stand on the side of the road with traffic going in your direction and buses slow down with their assistants yelling a blur of destinations. You tell the assistant where you're going, and he either lets you on or shakes his head. The buses were like normal buses, but the minivans were a treat. They would wait at a minivan depot until enough passengers got on so they were packed like sardines. Then four more people would somehow squeeze on, as people already on board would reluctantly squish to make room. It's the driver's job to drive, and the assistant's job to collect passengers and money. They were usually able to keep the minivan packed for the whole journey, even as people got on and off. A half hour ride cost about 30 cents.

Days 55-66: Langtang trek, then leaving Nepal

2006-04-30T04:54:00.002-04:00

Mar 24 - Apr 4

I apologize for the epic nature of this blog entry, but it was an epic twelve days.

Before I could begin my trek, I had to get to the beginning, which turned out to be a grueling 10-hour bus ride into the foothills of the Himalayas, about half along steep, winding paved road and half along unpaved rocky dirt road. It was astounding that the vehicles were able to withstand the beating of such roads. There was a light, friendly atmosphere on the bus; we were all enduring this bus ride together. A Nepali woman named Rita sat next to me, and I learned that she is the radiographer at the only hospital in the region where I would be trekking. She spent much of the ride asleep on my shoulder, which was more comforting than uncomfortable. Indian music with a heavy beat pumped through the bus speakers as it wound up through the mountains, people and goods getting on and off at every hour's stop. A lot of people and goods also rode on top of the bus, and the bus attendant climbed up and down from the roof while the bus was going to collect money from the riders.

Just an hour from our destination, the bus broke down. So close! A few other tourists from the bus and I decided to walk in the fading light to the nearest guest house, and as we were discussing what to do next, another bus came along to pick us up. I learned later that I had a comparatively easy bus experience, as another trekker related his bus story of people vomiting on the floor early in the journey and not cleaning it up.

Trekking alone, without porter, guide, or companions, turned out to be the right choice for me. I wanted to carry my own things, as I don't think you should need more than you can carry and I don't like the idea of paying a poor person to act as your mule. Many of the guides I met along the way were more of a nuisance than help due to their poor English, and the well-beaten trail was impossible to lose. And having no companions meant I could go at my own pace and not get annoyed at people I might not otherwise spend time with. If I ever wanted company, there were always other trekkers on the trail and in the guesthouses with me, and I met a few interesting ones along the way. I was concerned that I might be robbed trekking by myself, but this turned out to be very unlikely with the number of other people trekking and the army presence.

Did you know that Nepal didn't open its borders to visitors until the 1960s? Since then, tourism has been Nepal's top industry. It's depressing to see from the number of guest houses and the number of tourists how Nepal's tourism industry declined a few years ago, presumably due to internal turmoil and danger for tourists. The guest house and tea house owners on the Langtang trail were desperate for business, and I tired quickly from their relentless requests for my patronage and recommendations of their relatives' guest house at my day's destination. But, as a crunchy Montanan said to me while we overlooked a stunning Himalayan view, "You can't blame them for trying – they're really fucking poor."

The days of trekking were much the same, with increasingly astounding scenery, lower temperatures, and higher winds as you went up. Wake soon after sunrise to cold morning, quickly get all your clothes on, eat breakfast of porridge or Tibetan bread, pack, and set off. Trek for 4-6 hours, taking small breaks at tea houses for a snack, soda, or tea. Stop midday for lunch of fried rice or daal bhat. Arrive at your destination, choose a guest house, maybe take a luxurious solar panel-heated shower, hang out and talk in the kitchen or dining room, eat dinner, and go to sleep. Here's the scene of a mid-day break, taken inside, sheltered from some cold winds and harsh sun:

Trekking by myself, I was able to change my schedule at any time, but here's how it turned out:

Day 1: Syabrubesi (1460 meters) to Lama Hotel (2470 m)
Day 2: Lama Hotel to Langtang (3430 m)
Day 3: Langtang to Kyanjin Gompa (3870 m)
Days 4-6: Back the way I came, but forking off at the end to Thulo Syabru (2210 m)
Day 7: Thulo Syabru to Dhunche (2030 m), one town towards Kathmandu along the main road

The trek followed the Langtang Khola (river) upstream into its mountain sources. The beginning of the trek went through lush green forest along the rushing river, with sounds of birds and sights of monkeys and bee hives attached to rock face.

As I got to higher altitude, beautiful snow-capped mountains appeared in the distance and slowly got closer.

The climax of the Langtang trek is arriving in Kyanjin Gompa, where you have spectacular views of glaciers and the Langtang mountains towering at 7000 meters along the Tibet border. The views were truly spectacular, the most amazing I've ever seen. I had lunch and then stayed at the Monastery Guest House, run by a friendly Tibetan (and therefore Buddhist) woman and her wonderful children.

One of the sisters, Dawa, was thirteen years old and was home on break from her Kathmandu boarding school. She had recently taken the same ten-hour bus ride I had from Kathmandu, and then walked in one day the same route I had hiked over the past three, though she did ride the family pony for the last section. She was wonderfully bright and friendly, and spoke great English due to her good education. She also worked hard around the guest house, doing dishes, laundry, and cleaning up.

The altitude of Kyanjin Gompa itself is 3870 meters, and my guidebook warned that people often get high altitude sickness above 3000 meters. I was hiking very slowly to allow my body time to acclimatize, but still felt a little woozy for the relatively short day of trekking from Langtang to Kyanjin Gompa. After I arrived at the Monastery Guest House and had lunch, I felt better and enjoyed my evening there, hanging out with the friendly family and the two other interesting guests: Stephen, a crunchy 38-year-old from Montana, and Daniel, a similar-aged Italian guy who was a Shiva devotee.

It was freezing cold in the high altitude, so I bundled up for bed in my -10 degree sleeping bag, two heavy blankets, and most of my clothes and warm hat. I awoke at about 4am to an increasingly splitting headache, and I struggled to sleep it off until about 7am when the headache started causing me to feel nauseous. The headache was so bad that I could barely walk, and I managed to stagger outside and drink some lemon tea. The pain was not dissipating, and I knew that the best thing for me would be to descend. I slowly packed my bag, took a piece of Tibetan bread wrapped in a sheet of newspaper for the road, and started walking carefully back to Langtang. Almost immediately I started to feel better. In retrospect, I should have spent another night acclimatizing in Langtang. I had been looking forward to spending another day or two in Kyanjin Gompa, but I was still satisfied that I had made it there and seen the views.

As I descended, I ran into Dawa's father. We sat for a while by the side of the trail discussing Dawa's education and how he was unsure if he could continue paying the $600 annual fee (which includes tuition, books, clothing, and housing). I told him I thought the best thing he could give his daughter was a good education. We exchanged contact information and I told him I might be able to sponsor her. Later on my trek, I would talk to another local who complained that Americans rarely sponsor Nepali people, especially compared to the Germans, Dutch, and other Europeans. I said I thought this was because Americans don't travel to poor countries nearly as much as Europeans do (as has been my experience from meeting other tourists while traveling in poor countries). If you don't come to Nepal, meet the wonderful people, and see their poverty first hand, you have no motivation to help them.

When I made it back to lower altitude at Eco Guest House in Langtang, the proprietor made me a bowl of garlic soup, the prescribed remedy for high altitude sickness, and soon after I was back to normal, only a few hours after leaving Kyanjin Gompa. I had a long conversation with the proprietor, and he complained that too many locals in the area didn't understand about environmental conservation and taking care of the area where they lived. He also said that people in the area weren't living as long as they used to, and he attributed it to chemicals in the foods they bought from Kathmandu, like rice (which can not grow at the altitude where he lives). Therefore, he said he tried to grow as much of his own food as possible.

As we talked, a man with a huge (40 kg) sack of orange curry powder walked up and asked if the proprietor wanted to buy any. They briefly bargained over the price, and then the man dished out five large cup fulls, enough for about ten days of daal bhat.

That evening there was substantial snow, and we woke in the morning to the beautiful scenery painted white with snow. Here are some shots from my hiking down after the snow:

It was the usual hiking trip schedule, more or less, but trekking in Nepal not only has unbelievable scenery but also an added cultural element that doesn't exist while hiking elsewhere. The trails you are walking on are what locals use to get around and transport goods to and from their villages. It’s highly tourist-driven, but there are still villages that you walk through where people are just living their lives, and you can hang out with them or even opt for a home stay instead of the cushy guest houses. I was really happy when a local I met suggested this for my last evening on the trail -- it was just the variety I was looking for after six days of the same.

After an hour steep ascent, I rested and had lunch with a young woman who ran a tea house and her recently-married 22-year-old cousin, Nyima. Nyima was on his way home from selling a 20-liter container of homemade roxi, the local liquor, for 500 rupees (less than $10) at a village a few hour's walk away. He lived in Thulo Syabru, my destination for the day, and so we walked together for the two hour duration. Thulo Syabru was a beautiful little town built on a mountain ridge. We walked to his house, five minutes outside town, and rested while we drank tea that he made over a fire. Here's a shot of our approach to the town and then one from Nyima's house looking back at the town on the ridge.

After our rest, Nyima gave me a tour of town, including the construction site of a new school that a Dutch woman had donated money for. Some town people were being paid for the labor, while others, like Nyima, who wanted a good school for his growing child, volunteered their time. Nyima would volunteer his next six days carrying stone to the school site.

After the tour, Nyima and I set to making dhal baat. I peeled and sliced potatoes, he made the curry and rice, and his mother made the lentil soup. It took a number of pots and a fair amount of time. As always, it hit the spot, and we went straight to bed, leaving the dishes for the morning. My small, thin bed was in the same room as the kitchen, and I fell asleep to the sounds of rats nibbling the scraps. Also, there was a can of corn at the foot of my bed which I noticed was filled with tiny flea-like organisms. My accommodations had been quite plush up until then, so I was happy to trade comfort for authenticity for one night.

Since I wasn't sleeping very well, I sat outside on the deck to watch the sun rise over the beautiful town and mountains in the background, bundled up in my sleeping bag. I listened to the birds greet the morning and the tiny town slowly awaken. For breakfast, Nyima made me champa, porridge made with water, flour, butter, sugar, and bits of very hard cheese. As I left, he gave me a white scarf for good luck, a Buddhist custom.

A brief interlude regarding daal bhat: it's the national dish, and my favorite by far. Daal means lentil, and refers to the small bowl of thin lentil soup that accompanies a huge plate of bhat, or white rice. Add vegetable curry, yellow from curry powder, on the side and you have the foundation of daal bhat. The curry usually contains cauliflower and potatoes. One great thing about daal bhat, besides its well-rounded nutritional profile, is how everyone makes it a little different, and the same place even makes it different from day to day. Usually another element is boiled collared greens, and the restaurants with more resources (read: close access to a paved road) will throw in curried pickles, somewhat like Korean kimchi, or other tasty spicy onions, and maybe even a piece of thin, crisp bread like you get when you await your food at an Indian restaurant.

But one of my favorite parts of the daal bhat institution is what happens after you food is served: immediate refills. Within moments of digging in, a person from the kitchen appears with a bowl or plate of one of the components and serves you more as you wish. The person disappears to the kitchen and returns with another component. This continues until you refuse one round of all components, and then you struggle to finish what's on your plate.

One of my favorite parts of trekking was hanging out in the kitchens of the guest houses. Most guests would go to the dining room and talk amongst themselves, but I was memorized by the kitchen action and enjoyed talking with the proprietor (who was usually also the cook) and the guides, all of whom hung out around the kitchen stove. If someone ordered a vegetable fried rice, someone would run outside into the garden patch and return with two carrots and some greens. There was a big sack of garlic cloves which would get peeled and then mashed with mortar and pestle. Oil was in a plastic bag hanging on a nail in the wall. Chapati and Tibetan bread were prepared on a wooden plank on the floor. The menu and prices were set by the Langtang National Park and consistent from guest house to guest house.

I was mostly amazed at the quality and quantity of food they could produce with such limited means. Most stoves were made of clay and fueled by wood fire, and smoke would escape through a hole in the roof (but would also unfortunately fill the kitchen). To turn the burner up, push in more wood, and visa versa. There were two holes in the stove surface for cooking, the larger one naturally being hotter than the smaller one. The cook usually had a kettle on one of the burners, as hot water was always useful for something, otherwise it was stored in thermoses for later use or drinking. Instead of using oven mitts, he (the cook was rarely a she) just moved things quickly with asbestos fingers.

This adorable twelve-year-old boy was the helper in one of the guest house kitchens, getting water from the spout outside, cleaning dishes (in the freezing cold outside), peeling potatoes, or serving food.

Here's what the cushy guest house rooms looked like, and the basic bathrooms:

Porters carried astounding loads, some over 60 kilograms (130 pounds). I saw one guy with two 30-kg sacks of rice strapped to his back. They anchored the load with their foreheads, and then bent over so the weight was on their backs. They walked slowly, wearing cheap plastic flip flops. They were paid about 500 rupees ($8) per day, and they got free Tibetan bread for breakfast and daal bhat for lunch and dinner, which they would always take after the tourists had finished eating. Guides were only paid a few hundred more rupees per day for their skilled labor. The first person below is carrying two large hiking packs strapped to each other. The second photo is of a forty-person Korean group trekking with about a hundred porters and guides. But there weren't many large groups and the trail wasn't too congested, as this was the end of the tourist season leading up to winter.

Here are a few more photos of adorable children I encountered along my trek. They loved having their picture taken and then looking at it on your camera.

My last day of trekking was quite enjoyable, with an easy, slight downhill on soft dirt and leaves shaded by rhododendrons in red bloom (did you know you can eat the flowers and they are sweet and delicious?) with beautiful views down huge valleys and of terraced hillside land. I had my usual vegetable fried rice with egg at my lunch stop when I arrived at the main road, my first sight of it in a week. I could see clearly the large town of Dhunche across the valley but it would take another three hours of walking until I would arrive. It was a nice change to walk on the road, since I ran into more locals doing their thing.

After I checked into my hotel room in Dhunche (here was the view from the balcony outside my room)

, I went exploring around town. I decided to find the Dhunche hospital and pay a visit to Rita, the radiographer who had sat next to me on the bus the week before. She was understandably surprised to see me, but still invited me to her living quarters on the grounds of the small 40-year-old hospital, offering me chai and some freshly made pan-fried bread. Then she gave me a short but interesting tour of the hospital.

Next to the hospital, I found soccer field with match in progress, overlooking the town and mountains in the distance. As I watched the play, a group of four eager twelve-year-old boys who attended the local boarding school began practicing their English on me, and then gave me a tour of town as they talked my ear off and asked me lots of questions.

Most tourists take the bus back to Kathmandu the first morning they are in Dhunche, since there isn't anything in particular for tourists to do there. But I had a day to kill and thought it would be a nice setting for my first rest day since my trek began. A second reason why tourist tend to leave quickly is that strikes and other disturbances happen not too infrequently, something I was about to learn about first-hand.

After my tour from the four school boys, I noticed that there was a tension in the air amongst the locals in the street, and then a brigade of Nepali army began patrolling. I learned that there had been a fight between two political groups, the Maoists and the Congress, and that someone had had their hand chopped off in the scuffle.

As I sat down for breakfast the next morning, ready to take the bus back to Kathmandu, the hotel proprietor told me that the bus was canceled since the road would be closed for the next five days due to a murder that happened the previous day in a nearby town and other fighting between the Maoists and the Congress. It was likely that smaller tourist buses would be allowed to pass, and maybe also chartered jeeps, but it was uncertain when. There were about ten other tourists in Dhunche in the same position as I, and I began walking back and forth between our hotels, collecting information and trying to figure out how to get out of there.

A couple of Congress men in their late-teens rolled a truck tire in the middle of the street in front my hotel, threw on some chunks of wood, doused it in kerosene and lit a substantial fire, blocking the road. Army patrolled the streets with bamboo sticks, rifles, and shields; there was no violence, but palpable tension.

Then two chartered jeeps arrived, heading towards Kathmandu, but had to stop due to the fire in the road. I approached the jeeps with low hopes that they would take another passenger. I had a significant advantage compared to the other tourists stranded in Dhunche, as I was only one person and had very little baggage. The second jeep was a group of four college girls from Colorado with a driver and a guide, and they cheerfully accepted when I asked if I could join them. As a went to get in the jeep, I apologized to the other tourists left stranded. After the driver and guide had negotiated with the Congress blocking the road, we were on our way.

For the next hour, spirits were high and we sang songs as the jeep violently bumped along the road until we ran into group of forty Maoists walking down the road in our direction but blocking our path due to their numbers. They were loudly and violently chanting something that must have been pro-Maoist and anti-Congrss. Then they moved some huge rocks to block the road and continued on, stranding us again. We learned they were heading to the town of Kalikstan to have a meeting with the Congress regarding yesterday's violence, and we had to wait there until the meeting was over.

After about an hour of waiting, a pickup truck full of about twenty army appeared to our rescue, and would escort our four jeeps (two others had since arrived) past the rocks and through Kalikstan. Soon before Kalikstan, we stopped as the army surveyed the scene, fired some tear gas, and arrested a number of people. Since they had no room in their pickup truck, they stashed a few handcuffed prisoners in the back of our jeep as we were escorted through Kalikstan, at which point the army took the prisoners out and we continued on to Kathmandu.

The rest of the long, slow, and bumpy drive back to Kathmandu was going fine until it started raining heavily with spectacular thunder and lightning. The road was very windy with steep dropoffs, and there was definitely potential for landslides due to the rain. Also, it was getting dark due to the numerous long delays during our journey. As icing on the cake, our windshield wipers stopped working.

But miraculously, we made it back in one piece to Kathmandu. I was dropped off on the edge of Thamel, and found my way to my hotel where I had left my bag the week before. I was happy to be alive and finished traveling, about twelve hours after leaving Dhunche.

Back in Kathmandu, I had some time to relax and also explore the crazy city a little more. In between scheduled power outages (four hours in the morning and evening, euphemistically called "load shedding"), I caught up on email and my blog.

I had a fun trip on an electric-powered three-wheeled mini bus to the recently-built U.S. embassy. It was a cool-looking building, so I took a picture of it, and immediately after an armed guard at the embassy blew his whistle at me and called me over. I then noticed the clearly posted no photography sign, and felt pretty stupid and a little concerned as I was passed on from one guard to another, and then led into an interrogation room in the embassy. I was apologetic, and the guard told me it was no big deal but that he had to fill out some paperwork to document the event. He took down all the information from my passport, and took digital photos of my camera and passport. Fortunately, he allowed me to delete the photograph instead of confiscating my memory card or my entire camera. After I deleted the photo in question, I scrolled around my photos to show that it was gone, and came across the photos I had taken of Nepali army from the previous day. The guard asked a few more questions to confirm that I wasn't some kind of spy, and then let me go.

My last day in Nepal, I wandered into a small barbershop to get a haircut. After almost an hour of patient waiting as Nepali men cut in front of me in queue (standard practice in many Asian countries), I got a good haircut followed by a thorough head, shoulder, and back massage by a thirty-something Nepali barber with either bad bed-head or a strange sense of hair style. It was a great local experience.

Days 67-70: Cappadocia, Turkey

2006-04-29T05:16:00.001-04:00

Apr 5-8

I had a long chain of travel ahead of me, flying from Kathmandu to Bahrain to Dubai to Istanbul to Ankara, and then five-hour bus ride into Cappadocia. Miraculously, the journey went smoothly, with a few perks along the way. On my last flight, I sat next to a friendly Turkish man in his forties, a mechanical engineer, and he took care of me for my first hours in Turkey, teaching me some things about the country and the culture. He bought my bus ticket from the airport to the bus station, accompanied me there, and helped me buy my ticket to Cappadocia. I had three hours to spare before the bus, so he bought me a subway ticket into Ankara, and accompanied me part way there. We exchanged email addresses and parted ways on the subway.

Ankara was quite a bustling city and a stark contrast to Kathmandu. Men are dashing and dress extremely well, usually in suits, and women mostly wear headscarves, it being a Muslim country. In the 1920s, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk brought Turkey into the modern era. He moved the capital from Istanbul to Ankara, then a nothing city, and made changes to secularize the country (separating religion and government), distinguishing it from the Arab countries and making it more a part of Europe. Ataturk is now the country's revered father figure, with images of him in every household and many business places. It's against the law to say anything bad about him, and people actually get thrown in jail for it.

I wandered around Ankara and came across a huge mosque. I sat for half on hour in the back, watching a service, in awe of the ceremony, singing, and architecture [note there is a video from this mosque in my next blog entry, titled "Istanbul"]. Men stand along the front wall which faces Mecca, while women are confined to small, screened areas in the back of the mosque. Women are often paid half of what men make at the same job, but the president has been a woman, and things seem to be changing.

After the last leg of my epic journey, I was the one person to get off the bus in Göreme, after 9pm. The town was dark, dead, and quite spooky, with a few huge dogs wandering around. I quickly found a place to stay and slept heavily.

My incredibly inhospitable hotel manager drove me to find a different place to stay for the duration of my time in Göreme, and after some wandering around the close to 100 hotels, pensions, and guest houses in town, I settled into the Phoenix hotel, with friendly, young proprietors, good prices, delicious Turkish breakfasts, and a comfortable terrace that overlooked town.

I loved my Turkish breakfasts, which consisted of a hard-boiled egg, a slice of bologna, sliced tomato and cucumber, a slice of special Turkish cheese, olives, packets of honey, chocolate spread, jam or butter, tea, and a huge basket of fresh white bread.

Surprisingly rested on my first full day, I wandered around town past some children jumping rope, taking in the alien landscape that makes Cappadocia famous. The area used to be actively volcanic, and the ash that covered the land has eroded in strange and beautiful ways over time by rain and wind.

For dinner on my first evening, I enjoyed a chicken döner sandwich, shaved from a familiar rotating vertical skewer of meat. After, I had my first of three evenings of incredible baklava at the town patisserie.

My second day, I went on a day-long guided tour of the region's sites. A luxury minivan shuttled a group of eight of us through flat lands surrounded by distant snow-capped mountains to explore an underground city, take in some beautiful vistas, look at frescoes later defaced by Muslims, Byzantine churches dug out of the rock, and go on a nice hike through a ravine opened up by an earthquake. I had dinner and then went to a bar with two Aussies my age from the tour. It was a nice change to have an evening out.

My last day, I went to the famous Göreme open air museum with its Byzantine churches and impressive, well-preserved frescoes. Later, in town, I had some quality internet time where there was an impromptu Anatolian jam session as the proprietor served us free tea.

Days 71-75: Istanbul

2006-04-28T07:17:00.001-04:00

This video should have been in my last entry on Cappadocia. It's from the mosque I visited in Ankara:

Apr 9-13

After a reasonably-comfortable twelve-hour overnight bus ride from Göreme to Istanbul and then a "service" (smaller bus) to Taksim, Chris met me and we walked to his comfortable but simple apartment with a beautiful view of the Bosphorus. He lives in a great neighborhood, hillier than San Francisco. Soon after arriving, I started feeling sick, and would be laid low for the next few days as I slowly recovered. This would be my only sickness of the entire trip!

Day 72 was the half-way point of my trip, day 144 being when I fly from Ireland to Philadelphia. It's hard to believe that I'm only half way done. But the second half of my trip will be a reviving change, touring with Chris, reuniting with Jess, and spending longer periods in more familiar places and cultures.

Istanbul is an incredible and historic city, with one foot in Asia and another in Europe, divided by the Bosphorus which is heavily trafficked by international shipping. It has a population of around 16 million, grown immensely by recent immigration, mostly from the rest of Turkey. The architecture is similar to other European cities I've visited, but filled with some very old structures including mosques, churches, falling down wooden Ottoman houses, and city walls. Cute cats fill the city, taken care of and sometimes taken in by residents.

Chris toured me around as I had strength, being revived by tea (either the standard black tea with sugar or the non-caffeinated apple tea) at a tea and hookah-smoking garden.

I spent Friday visiting two of the main sites: the Blue Mosque and the Aya Sofia. Friday is the Muslim holy day, so there were a lot of people out at the mosques. It also happened to be the time of the tulip festival. The Blue Mosque is distinguished by its blue tint and six minarets, very gaudy and rare (most mosques have one to four minarets). Inside was quite impressive, but not as much as the mosque I visited in Ankara. The Aya Sofia was much more impressive. It's about 1500 years old, 500 years older than the temples at Angkor, and yet has very advanced architecture providing for a huge open space under arched and domed ceilings. Originally constructed as a church, it was later converted to a mosque by the Ottomans like many others in the city. This made for a surreal effect, with large disks displaying names of Muslim prophets in ornate Arabic script next to frescoes of Mary and Jesus. When converting a church to a mosque, a minbar is added, which indicates the direction of mecca. This is almost always haltingly off from the overall orientation of the church. With all the symmetry of churches, the minbar is a startling and central addition. During Ataturk's time, he converted the Aya Sofia to a museum.

Blue Mosque:

Aya Sofia:

Another day, I took the ferry across the Bosphorus to Üsküdar on the Asian side of Istanbul. Üsküdar happens to be the title of the piece Chris is working on, inspired by an experience he had there. I walked along the water past fisherman and people enjoying the day, gazed across the water to the European side including the Blue Mosque and Aya Sofia, and then wandered through some neighborhoods and a bustling market. In the distance of the photo with the big ship, you can see the one bridge across the Bosphorus, connecting the European and Asian sides.

I got to hang out with some of Chris' friends, including a dinner out of mezes and kebaps of meat followed by a stop at their favorite local dive bar featuring metal music, goth ambiance, and edgy, black fanny-pack-wearing waiters. Another evening, a few of us went over to someone's house and made a variety of Turkish dishes and played Tavla (backgammon), the national game. Chris has a good group of friends, and loves living in Istanbul.

Days 76-87: Balkans whirlwind tour

2006-04-27T09:50:00.001-04:00

Apr 14-25

Chris planned an ambitious twelve-day itinerary, spending about two days in each of Macedonia, Albania, Montenegro, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Serbia. Click here for a map. Even though it was a lot to take in, it was very interesting to compare the significant differences between all the small, adjacent countries.

The trip started with a comic hitch. We had a twelve-hour overnight bus from Istanbul, through Bulgaria, to Macedonia. At 3am, we arrived at the Bulgaria-Macedonia border. Rubbing our eyes, we produced our passports, which were checked and stamped, and then the bus proceeded to its checkpoint. It turned out that the bus didn't have its paperwork in order to cross the border, so we all had to get off, put our stuff by the side of the road, and wait an indefinite amount of time for an unknown solution. Fortunately, there was a coffee shop, and we spent from 3am to 7am there until another bus came from the Macedonia side to pick us up. The sun just risen, we continued through beautiful scenery to Skopje, the capital, to Ohrid in the southwest.

Macedonia is mostly Orthodox, with a quarter of the western population Albanian (and therefore Muslim). The "jewel of Macedonia", Ohrid is on Lake Ohrid, the border with Albania. The lake was a beautiful blue-green, and we had a walk all around, visiting little Byzantine churches and walking the cobbled streets. Like Cappadocia, I enjoyed being in a touristy place in the off-season, at a time when the weather was still fine. We had the place to ourselves.

Day two, we took a bus to Sveti Naum, a monastery on the south side of Lake Ohrid, very near the Albanian border. The grounds were roamed by a startling number of peacocks who would occasionally scream loudly.

As we tried to get to the border, we walked through an eerie deserted camp ground dubbed by Chris a "communist summer camp". We eventually found our way to the border, had our passports checked on exit, walked through no man's land to the Albanian check point, paid a one-euro entry fee, and had our passports stamped on entry.

We got a taxi from the border to the nearest town, and then a scenic furgon, or shared taxi, ride to Tirana, Albania's capital. Tirana was a bustling city, but obviously very much developing, with sidewalks torn up, construction all over, and smog from the huge number of Mercedes Benzes, many stolen from neighboring countries. A recent mayor of Tirana, who was also an artist, started a program of painting bright colors on the dreary communist block apartment buildings. It wasn't until our next country, Montenegro, that I really appreciated how developing Albania was.

Our usual breakfast fix was burek, readily available throughout the Balkans, consisting of baked filo-type pastry filled with meat, cheese, spinach, or potato, usually accompanied with drinking yogurt. We loyally ate burek at least once every day.

On our one morning in Tirana, we were enjoying our morning burek in a small establishment on President George W. Bush street (there was a street sign) when we noticed one of the employees dutifully wet-mopping the floor, only to have customers tread on the floor and create muddy footprints. In fact, everywhere we saw compulsive Albanian moppers. When we noticed that the other Balkan countries followed the more customary approach of dry sweeping during business hours and then mopping after closing, we decided that mopping customs were a good measure of a country's development.

We had a fun, scenic ride on a fairly decrepit train from Tirana to Shkodra, near the Montanegran border. The train took three and a half hours and cost $2! Along the way, we noticed hundreds of igloo-shaped concrete bunkers dotting the countryside. During his heavy-handed communist rule from 1946 to 1992, Enver Hoxha had 700,000 of these bunkers installed throughout Albania as part of a paranoid self-reliance defense strategy in the late 1960s. They are incredibly durable, and most of them remain today. We also noticed a lot of rubbish in the cities and country, which I read is likely a reaction to harsh communist-era policies on littering. Albania has a Muslim majority, but most people don't practice any religion due to the severe 1967 Chinese-style Cultural Revolution when religion, among other things, was banned. Administrative workers were suddenly transferred to remote areas, younger cadres were placed in leading positions, churches and mosques were sacked and destroyed, and the collectivisation of agriculture was completed.

From the Shkodra train station into town, we caught a furgon that needed a push-start to get going. The city was gloomy and depressing, so we made a quick decision to catch another furgon to nearby Ulcinj, Montenegro. A friendly fellow passenger from Ulcinj helped us find good accommodation and after checking in, we walked downhill for our first view of the Adriatic Sea and back on the quaint town. Montenegro was a big contrast to Albania, with none of the litter, mountains instead of the northern Albanian flatlands, and much more developed and better off. Montenegro gained independence from Serbia two years ago, and I think is now the second youngest country in the world, after neighboring Kosovo. The population is mostly Orthodox.

In Ulcinj, we had our first of many encounters with the delicious grilled meatball sausage, served with bread, yogurt, and onions, and made of one or a mixture of pork, beef, and lamb. Another food we had a few times was the "fast food" sandwich containing yogurt, shaved meat, tomato, french fies, and smothered in ketchup and mustard. In Bosnia and Herzagovena, we had some yummy sausages with something like sauerkraut and thick mustard, showing the German / Austrian influence on the country. Usually a vegetarian, I admit to having some damn good meat in the Balkans.

We also enjoyed tea and coffee in a local tea house frequented by old white Muslim men who greeted each other with "A salam a Lakum".

There wasn't much to see in Ulcinj, so we pushed on the next day to Kotor, a beautiful little town with marble cobbled streets, narrow lanes, and cats everywhere. We used a travel agency to find a woman who rents a room in her house in the old town. When we arrived, she served us tea and coffee followed by the Montenegran specialty of cured, salty ham on seedy bread. She showed us the pig leg which was as big as hers. Renting private rooms in houses is a very common and inexpensive form of accommodation in the Balkans, and I'm sure you could get to know the family in the house if you weren't moving as quickly as we were.

The old city had a castle on the hill overlooking it, with city walls that we walked up for views of the city and ocean below.

Next stop was Dubrovnik, Croatia, the most picturesque city I've ever seen, showing little sign of being heavily bombed by the Yugoslav army in 1991. Since then, the local builders have done an amazing job restoring the city. Our day spent walking along the old city walls and then hiking past fourteen stages of the cross to a viewpoint was my favorite of the trip. This was our only day without some rain, and the best one for it. The photos tell the story.

From the city walls:

From our hike up the nearby hill:

Even though they are all adjacent to each other, Croatia is Catholic and "Western", compared to "Eastern" Bosnian and Serbian culture in their foods, music, customs, and religion. The country seemed more developed and wealthy, and was certainly more expensive.

After we had our fill of Dubrovnik, we moved on to Mostar in Bosnia and Herzagovena, where we had a rare opportunity to climb the minaret of a mosque, providing for great views of the Old Bridge and the rest of town. B+H was less developed and expensive than Croatia, and clearly had a more troubled recent history. As a result of Bosnian Croats and Muslims declaring independence from Yugoslavia in 1991, Serb forces started attacking many cities, including Mostar and Sarajevo, the two we visited. In Mostar, after the Serbs attacked, internal conflict began between the religious groups, the town became segregated on either side of the river, and the famous 427-year-old bridge was destroyed to seal the separation. Today, fifteen years later, the Old Bridge has been authentically rebuilt and the old city repaired, but there were shocking remnants of the conflict in the form of many bombed out buildings and walls covered in pockmark divots from bomb shrapnel.

Bosnia and Herzagovena was the divide in the Roman Empire between control by Rome (Catholic) and Constantinople (Orthodox), and continues to have varied religious representation with 40% Muslim, 31% Orthodox, and 15% Roman Catholic.

We had a picturesque train ride from Mostar to Sarajevo, a city that has been important over the centuries to the Austrio-Hungarian and Ottoman empires, and now is the capital of the country. Like Istanbul and Mostar, it was dotted with mosques, churches (Orthodox and Catholic), and temples, but it also had beautiful architecture and a very European feel in some parts, juxtaposed to other forms of architecture. Even though it was severely damaged in the 90s like Mostar, most of the city was already rebuilt and there were few remnants. One exception was the National Library which had been burned, and still stood boarded up, though with a glass and steel dome that Austria has since built to begin the building's reconstruction.

Our second day in Sarajevo, we explored by foot and walked up a hill to a serene Muslim graveyard overlooking the city. We also had a disappointing visit to the Sarajevo Brewery (no tours and the beer was nothing special), a stop at the Latin Bridge where Gavrilo Princip assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand to set off World War I, and other wandering around.

That evening, we took an overnight train to Belgrade, which would have been more comfortable with sleeper cars, but wasn't too bad. The Sarajevo train station had a great, open waiting area that had a haze of cigarette smoke:

At the Serbia border, the guard looked at every page of our passports and radioed our names in to someone to check if we were on a list. Probably, they were looking into whether we were Americans who had been in Kosavo providing support for its independence from Serbia. In Belgrade, we saw a tram that was covered in "Kosavo is Serbia" written in many different languages. Apparently, one reason Serbia cares so much about Kosavo is that there are a number of important Serbian Orthodox religious sites there, even though the current population is mostly Albanian Muslims.

Belgrade was a large, developed city with quite a European feel. It supposedly has great night life, which we observed from walking along wide streets with cafes and bars spilled out onto them, and a chic bar serving dozens of varieties of rakia, the local liquor (which is very similar in name and taste to the "local liquor" available from France to Nepal). We wandered around a park surrounding the city's old fortress, proudly displaying tanks and guns used to massacre the previous cities we had visited in neighboring countries, and checked out what will be the largest Orthodox church in the world if they ever finish constructing it (they've been working at it since before WWII). We were disappointed that the Nikola Tesla museum was closed due to holiday; the pride of Serbia, he seems like a really interesting and influential scientist that I'd like to learn more about.

Days 88-102: Provence, France

2005-05-30T15:50:00.001-04:00

Apr 26 - May 10

After flying from Belgrade to Paris, I had a scenic journey on the high-speed (150 mph) TGV train down to Avignon in Provence, a bus to the town centre, and met up with Jess after three months traveling apart! Hooray! She met me with smiles, hugs, and a backpack full of food, a theme that would play heavily into our time in France, so much so that I’ve devoted an entire section at the end of this entry to it.

Provence is a region in the southeast corner of France, with the Mediterranean to the south and the Italian Alps to the east. It’s a vacation spot for French and foreigners alike, with warm weather, (mostly pebble) beaches, fine cuisine, and great cycling.

After a snack, we took the train straight to nearby Cavaillon where we would spend our first four nights. Within moments of arriving, we encountered our first stereotypically French event: an anti-GMO demonstration in front of the town hall, with demonstrators having locked themselves (with bicycle locks!) to the town hall gate. This confirmed my first stereotype about France: they are always demonstrating or striking for something. The second is that French workers have it better off than almost any other country, with a minimum wage of $12 per hour (that’s take-home pay, after taxes), and at least five weeks of vacation per year, not to mention the large number of public holidays (13, two more than the U.S). On top of this, business hours are quite short with long lunch closings -- admirable that they can get away with it, sometimes frustrating, but mostly just quaint and amusing. Almost everything is closed all day Sunday, and hours otherwise are very sporadic.

During our time in Cavaillon, we began catching up on our trips, hiked up the hill next to the town for great views, and went to the town’s weekly market, my first of many.

Cycle touring is famous in Provence, so we rented bikes for four days, and started with a day trip to Carpentras to check a boulangerie (bakery) and confiserie (confectioner, as opposed to a pâtisserie, or pastry shop; don't get them confused!) off Jess’ list. Yum, check, yum, check. In town, we visited the tourist information centre, which are well done and helpful throughout France, where I admired a raised-relief map of the region. I love raised-relief maps. That first day of cycling kicked my ass, as I wasn’t in good shape and certainly hadn’t ridden a bicycle in a while. But I was feeling strong by the end of our four days.

Our last three days of cycling were to, around, and back from Apt, another quaint small town. It rained heavily and was quite cold for most of our ride to Apt, but we were rewarded with perfect weather the next two days. The route was well-marked with friendly bicycle signs at (almost) every intersection:

We cycled through hilly terrain, past vineyards, farms, and quaint towns, with mountains in the distance. We stopped at town markets to buy food, and at scenic spots to eat that food. In case you didn't know, eating is my favorite part of cycle touring. More on that later.

One stop of particular note was the ochre mining hills by Rousillon, and the town colored with varying shades of yellow, orange, red, and sometimes even purple.

After returning our rental bikes, we took the train through Marseille to Nice, where we would spend our next five days. We had a layover in Marseille where I enjoyed exploring the awesome train station and views from outside:

Nice (pronounced like "peace") is quite a large city with a significant north African population, a busy promenade along pebble beach, a tram system, cool public art, many nearby day-trip destinations, and an extremely busy coastal airport.

We settled into a hotel in an immigrant neighborhood near the train station, which was a little seedy but had great character. On Saturday, we were visiting the somewhat ordinary Matisse Museum when the fire alarm went off and the building was evacuated. Since it was an hour and a half until closing time, they just decided to close then instead of reopening after the alarm had been cleared -- a classic French move. One upshot of the outing was taking in a Saturday afternoon festival going on nearby, as well as reading and napping in a peaceful rose garden peppered with old people and families walking.

The other upshot was that we learned of a Franciscan chapel in nearby Vence that Matisse had designed just before his death. We took a day trip there and enjoyed the simple but breathtaking architecture, stained glass, and black line paintings of St. Francis, Mary and Jesus, and the fourteen Stations of the Cross. A Franciscan nun gave an informative talk in French and then English.

On our way back to Nice from Vence, we stopped at Eze to hang out and swim at a quiet pebble beach which Jess had visited in February.

For a second day trip from Nice, we took the bus to nearby Monaco, the second smallest country in the world after the Vatican, and a constitutional monarchy run by the Grimaldi family since 1292. Regarded as a tax haven, it's brimming with wealth and glamour. We checked out the tourist scene at the changing of the guard, walked along the Monaco Gran Prix race track (which is just twisty roads in the city) which would take place in two weeks, gawked at incredible cars parked outside the Montenegro Casino, and even enjoyed a beautiful Japanese garden.

As if our time in Provence wasn't idyllic enough, we ended with two days at the olive farm where Jess WWOOFed at the beginning of her travels. A friendly and well-to-do English couple ran the place, and generously let us stay there for two nights. Here are some photos of the grounds, our quarters, and the kitchen:

There were two incredibly cute and energetic beagle puppies, who were quite a handful to take care of, much like human babies

We walked to the weekly market in town (Valbonne), cooked delicious meals with the farm's amazing olive oil and fresh eggs, and had a scenic drive in the VW convertible to the hilltop town of Gourdon. We ate easily the most delicious strawberries I've ever tasted and drank good wine from glass goblets. We were rich for two days.

Speaking of good food, did I mention we ate a lot of it in Provence? We did. But first, a brief note about money. Even though I knew it was coming, paying for things with euros in France was quite a pocket shock. We managed by staying in simple hotels and going to supermarkets, having the occasional nice meal out or splurge on market bounty. We managed just fine.

We had some yummy meals in our hotel room, including most of our supermarket-bought breakfasts. We would supplement cereal, fruit, yogurt, and juice with a daily dose of pain au chocolat, which filled the Balkan burek void.

Daily visits to boulangerie and pâtisserie:

Mixing in some north African delights:

The French are mad about food, and their supermarkets reflect this madness. Here's a cheese isle, chock full of cheese. There is also an enormous fresh cheese department at this supermarket:

This is what Jess had ready for my arrival my first day. She took good care of me and my stomach, as always.

We had some amazing picnics, feeding our insatiable hungers from cycling:

Jess is the master of turning a mundane meal into something special:

And the occasional nice meal out:

So many strawberries...

Days 103-110: St. Austell, Cornwall, England

2005-05-29T07:52:00.001-04:00

May 11-18

Jess and I parted ways in Marseilles airport for a week. I arrived in Bournemouth, England, and had a surprise awaiting me at immigration. I was confronted with harsh interrogation from the immigration official, firing prodding questions like why I was traveling for so long, how much money I had in my bank account, how much I had saved for my trip, how much credit I had, who I was staying with in England and their nationality, etc. When I told him how much I had earned at my previous job and how long I had worked there, he said that didn't add up to how much I had for my trip. He was trying to see if I was lying, and I was getting pretty flustered, having never had an experience like this before – being made to feel like I had done something wrong. My voice stuttered in my nervousness, and I thought the officer was going to take me into an interrogation room for further questions and to search my belongings. In the end, he stamped my passport and let me go. I was shaken up for the next few hours.

During my six-hour bus ride from Bournemouth to St. Austell, I had conversations with seniors who sat next to me. Seniors ride for free on buses, and they sure take advantage of the service. One was an 85-year-old happy, good-natured man who was a local bricklayer from age fifteen until he retired at 70. Another told the story of her husband who had suddenly died on a July 29th of cancer: "You never know when life is going to take a sharp turn for the worse", she said. I was reminded how lucky I've been during my travels to have been safe and healthy.

For the next week, I stayed at my aunt Jean and uncle Geoff's house in St. Austell, Cornwall. Cornwall is the southwesternmost county of England, relatively less-developed and a vacations spot for English. It has a coal and tin mining history, and was the center of the china clay industry until a few years ago when it has lost out to cheaper sources, putting St. Austell into a depression. Here's a quotation from the 1965 St. Austell Bay Official (tourism) Guide:

"St. Austell with it picturesque villages and rugged cliffs -- reaching down to delightful beaches -- lies midway between Plymouth and Penzance.... It is an ideal holiday centre for those who want to get away from the conditioning of contemporary progress and production lines. Indeed, the whole of Cornwall is just perfect for those who want to rest and relax with natural folk who still live and work closely with nature in a different world from that of the holographs and hurly-burly of office and industrial mass-production."

It was a welcome change to have a home for a while. Dunelm (most British name their houses!) is familiar to me from my childhood when my family used to visit almost every summer when my grandparents were still alive. It's a beautiful, big house with lots of character and comfy spots. This was my first time visiting England on my own, without my parents and brother, and I was looking forward to interacting with my relatives on my own terms.

I enjoyed delicious dinners with Jean and Geoff, complete with cheese and yoghurt / fruit courses, and great conversation. I joined Geoff and Charlie (the dog) on their morning walks, explored the town and the town center construction zone, and watched cricket on TV. My cousin, Wendy, lives nearby, so I got to spend some time with her, her partner, and her adorable and talkative four-year-old, Alfie, who is crazy about bicycles (and motorcycles) and an accomplished rider. Geoff and I went on a tour of the St. Austell Brewery, and I went to Jean and Geoff's weekly band rehearsal, which reminded me of my days conducting the Harvard Flute Ensemble.

Jean and Geoff spent the weekend visiting their other daughter, Lucy, in Broughton Gifford, while I took care of Dunelm and Charlie and enjoyed dog walking and some quiet time to myself. One afternoon, I cycled to the local cricket club to watch some live cricket. I also spent quite a bit of time planning trains and buses for my upcoming week visiting other relatives. I learned that the privatized British train system is difficult to figure out, and that you can spend twice as much or more for a ticket if you buy it the wrong way.

Days 111-117: Visiting family in Devon and Somerset, England

2005-05-28T08:24:00.001-04:00

May 19-25

My second week in England, I visited three sets of relatives in Devon and Somerset. My first stop was Bristol, a vibrant university city, to visit my cousin, Caragh, from my Mum's side of the family. Caragh and her husband, James, both professors at Bristol University, had their hands full with their adorable, chubby six-month-old, Allód. We enjoyed conversation and a few meals, and I went out with James to a community lecture he gave on philosophy of physics, his field.

My second stop was three days in Broughton Gifford, near Bath, visiting cousin Lucy and her husband and two young children. Jess re-joined me after her visit to Washington DC for her sister's law school graduation. Lucy brought us to a nearby manor house to explore its gardens and tour the inside, and Jess and I had a great walk back through sheep fields and the small, quiet town with its large, grassy common, stopping for a pub lunch on the way.

Another day, Jess and I took the train into Bath for exploring and a historic walking tour. On our way back, we got off the train one stop early, had a pint at a little pub, and walked the rest of the way home.

Then we headed to Tedburn St. Mary, near Exeter, for the weekend with my Dad's other sister, Julie. We took the train from Westbury, but not until we visited the little town's Friday morning market in the church parish hall where old ladies sell their baked goods and jams. We picked up a few goodies and had tea and biscuits.

Tedburn St. Mary, like Broughton Gifford, is a sleepy village amongst beautiful surroundings. After our first of three daily walks, we headed to the town hall with Julie's friend, Ian, for a real Devon cultural experience: quiz night with Ian's drama group. Jess and I were at a loss with most of the quiz questions, as they covered categories like history of Tedburn St. Mary and anagrams of the names of people in the drama group, but we had a good time nonetheless.

Our second day, the four of us went on an outing in Ian's fun little Czech Skoda to Dartmoor, a national park known for its tors (exposed granite hilltops) and its craggy and mossy moorland. We had a super ten-mile walk and a midway picnic by a river.

Our third day, Ian took us to nearby Castle Drogo, the youngest castle in England. Ian volunteers as a guide at the castle, and gave us a personalized tour.

Otherwise, we enjoyed some delicious meals, homemade scones, great conversation, and petting of Julie's affectionate cat, Ren.

Days 118-124: St. Austell, part II

2004-06-30T09:16:00.001-04:00

May 26 - Jun 1

I returned to St. Austell, this time with Jess, for a full and delightful week. The itinerary included lots of walking in the beautiful countryside. In addition to a few more walks with eager, sniffing Charlie, Jess and I spent an afternoon walking along Carlyon Bay, where I have fond memories of playing golf with my Dad and jumping on the bouncy castle on the beach. We continued on to the picturesque oceanside village of Charlestown where we split fish and chips and a pint of St. Austell Tribute.

Another day, we joined Jean and Geoff for a fourteen-mile charity walk around the mouth of the river Fal, starting and ending near Falmouth and including five short ferry rides. We had perfect weather and enjoyed lunch at a National Trust manor property along the way. The reward at the end of the walk was an opulent cream tea, an English specialty consisting of tea, scones with clotted cream and jam, and various other biscuits and baked goods.

In addition to more delicious meals whipped up by Jean, Jess and I had cooked a few dinners that went over well, including asparagus risotto and bean chili with melted cheese. We enjoyed a rare opportunity on our trip to cook and fill our hosts' bellies with good food.

One day, we all (including Alfie) took the bus from town to the Eden Project, an educational environmental complex built in a reclaimed china clay pit. There was a green car exhibit accompanied by a bicycle-powered race car tent, which Alfie and I teamed up in and did quite well! Jess and I wandered around the vegetable gardens, the dinosaur made of appliances consumed by the average household in a lifetime, the educational center, and the Mediterranean Biome.

Another day, Geoff dropped Jess and me off at the beginning of the Camel Trail, a popular and scenic rail-to-trail, much like the Minute Man Trail, that follows the Camel River to Padstow on the north coast of Cornwall. We had a great day of cycling, with the requisite picnic overlooking the wide river. When we returned, we met up with Jean, Geoff, and Alfie, and did some cycling and walking with them.

Jean and Geoff took us out for a special dinner in a restaurant by Newquay, a popular and famous (so the locals say) surfing spot. We started with drinks overlooking the beautiful sea, town, and beaches, and followed with a delicious dinner during sunset over the Atlantic. A real treat.

Another day, Jess and I set to work in the garden, Jess weeding and me mowing the lawn. It was satisfying work, reminding me of when I used to mow the lawn at home.

On the Saturday night, Wendy joined Jess and me for a truly genuine local experience: an evening at the St. Austell bingo hall. I admit, I enjoy playing bingo once in a while. But people are serious about their bingo in the UK, and boy did we learn that first hand! The calling was fast and the ambiance intense, at least to us newbies. Unfortunately, this bingo was clearly an adrenalin addiction, and the hall was filled with addicts. But we sure enjoyed ourselves, both the game itself and experiencing the strange social phenomenon. Wendy even won five pounds! And Jess won as well, but she “check”ed too feebly for the caller to hear, teaching us the hard way that you have to make your call before the next number is announced. Brutal!

With Wendy's winnings, we stopped at the local McDonalds on the way home and celebrated with McFlurries, a fitting (and delicious) reward.

Days 125-128: Shrewsbury, England

2004-06-29T10:22:00.001-04:00

Jun 2-5

For our last three days in England, Jess and I journeyed by train through Plymouth, Bristol, and Newport (Wales) to Shrewsbury where my friend Paul is doing a year of teaching at the proper and posh boys boarding school. Paul is a great guy and was a generous host, involving us in the active (mostly thanks to him) teacher social scene, including movie and bowling outings, a trip to Ironbridge, and an evening watching The Apprentice.

The town:

Paul's house and around campus:

Our outings:

We even got to sit in on one of his eighth grade Spanish lessons, a treat. Like many small boarding schools, most of the teachers also coach a sport. Paul's was crew (or "rowing" as they call it). He even took us out sculling on the river!

Paul gave us a tour of the impressive (and obviously very rich) school, including a set of twelve "fives" courts, a handball sport that originated at Eton and which is only played by five English boarding schools. Here's a description from wikipedia. Incredible!

"The Eton Fives court is modeled on part of Eton College's Chapel and is enclosed on three sides and open at the back. A small step splits the court into upper and lower sections, and sloping ledges run horizontally across the walls, one of which forms the "line". There is a large obstruction, known as a buttress, which is known as a pepper or a pepper pot to fives players, on the left-hand side of the court in line with the step. This extends approximately 80cm into the court and is around 2m high. The first courts at Eton were built in 1840 and the rules for Eton Fives were first published in 1931."

Days 128-139: Ireland

2004-06-28T10:29:00.001-04:00

For Steve's account of our time in Ireland, click here.

Jun 5-16

Four years ago, when Jess and I toured Ireland, we stayed with my aunt Ena and her husband Jim in their quaint cottage on a remote peninsula in Donegal. After welcoming us with delicious quiche and chocolate cake and other forms of hospitality, Ena gave me the key to their old house in Larne, and said we should make use of it sometime. For this visit to Ireland, we took her up on it.

As Ena called it, we had "a pig of a journey" to get from Shrewsbury to her house outside Larne. We had a train from Shrewsbury to Crewe, Crewe to Carlisle on the Scotland border, a wonderfully scenic bus ride through Scotland to Stranraer, a taxi to the neighboring port of Cairnryan, the ferry across the Irish Sea to Larne at sunset, and then a final, short taxi ride to Ena's house on Ballypollard Road in Magheramorne, just south of Larne city. I've had incredible luck throughout my travels, transport included, and this chain of made connections was no exception. Welcoming us to the house were a nice note from Ena, delicious quiches, chocolate cake, and various other sweeties, not to mention bottles of wine and Southern Comfort. Jess and I explored the beautiful old house and made ourselves at home.

I titled this blog entry "Ireland" to keep it simple, but, in fact, we spent most of our time in Northern Ireland, a part of Great Britain, and comparatively less time in the Republic of Ireland, or "Southern Ireland" as many British call it. But this distinction is a big one, something we would learn much more about.

The day after we arrived in Magheramorne, we were having a nice talk with neighbor Jim, his daughter, and puppy when Steve showed up to join us for the next two weeks. It was great to see an old friend, and we spent the rest of the evening catching up, taking the train to Larne to get groceries, and cooking our first dinner.

Steve quickly cracked the whip and got us organized for our upcoming bicycle trip. Jess and I had started looking forward to the end of our trip, so we appreciated having a busy schedule for our remaining time. The day after Steve arrived, we took the train into Belfast, went to the Saturday St. George's market, picked up accommodation information and maps, and rented touring bicycles with panniers. After quiche lunch in the Botanic Gardens park, we cycled past the "peace lines" (high walls and fences to separate Catholic and Protestant neighborhoods) to Ardoyne, a low-income Catholic neighborhood with many moving murals.

We continued to northern Belfast and visited the houses where my Dad and Mum had grown up.

Finally, we cycled back to Larne, and Steve cooked up his first of two scrumptious Indian meals for our delight, followed by generous slices of Ena's chocolate cake. What a day!

The following day, we set off by bicycle to tour the Antrim coast the Inishowen peninsula. Our routine consisted of cycling in the morning, lunch at a town pub, cycling in the afternoon, sometimes interspersed with sight-seeing, checking into a hostel, and either cooking dinner or going out. The simple, cycle-tourist schedule.

Day 1: Magheramorne to Cushendall, 31 miles

After exploring by bicycle the rather dead town of Larne, we set off northward on the famous "Antrim Coast Road", which was quite busy with traffic, probably since it was a Sunday. We had two cars of drunken teenagers scream at us as they whizzed by, and we were passed by a few motorcyclists going about 70 mph on the small, winding road. Fortunately, that was the only unpleasant traffic we would experience.

Perfect weather accompanied breathtaking scenery as we wound along the coast, stopping for lunch at a bench overlooking the sea just before Ballygalley. A local man on bicycle stopped to chat with us, having just cycled to make a deposit at the bank.

At Glenarm (where my great uncle used to run the general store), we explored a forest path. At Glenariff, we took a detour into the glen, painted with yellow scruffy gorse.

At Cushendall, we checked into our nicest accommodation of the trip, a B&B next to a farm outside of town. Unladen, we cycled into town covered in beautiful, soft yellow sunlight, and had our first of many large pub meals with Guinness.

Day 2: Cushendall to Bushmills, 30 miles

We started the day with our first Antrim Fry breakfast: cereal and yogurt followed by egg, bacon, sausage, three kinds of toast, jam, and tea. Our stomachs were a bit bloated for the steep up and down hills to come, though with great scenery, past Torr Head and our first glimpse of Scotland. We stopped at Ballycastle for lunch and Steve and I had our first disc toss of the trip -- at long last! I hadn't thrown a disc since Chiang Mai.

As we turned left along the Antrim Coast, we faced incredible headwinds which would keep at us for the next few days. We stopped off at the Carrick-a-rede rope bridge to scramble across through a 28 mph crosswind.

Day 3: Bushmills to Portrush, 12 miles

After our standard hostel breakfast of muesli, milk / yogurt, and fruit, we cycled to the Giant's Causeway and barely beat the crowds, providing for a magical couple of minutes with the place almost to ourselves. After walking around the hexagonal pillars, we took the scenic walk overlooking the bay.

Next stop was the Old Bushmills Distillery, celebrating its 400th year. It was a well-done tour, lacking only because the distilling and bottling areas were closed that day. The tasting wasn't as easy to enjoy as a brewery's with our inexperienced palettes, but we managed to enjoy ourselves.

We picked up our stored panniers from the Bushmills hostel and headed on to Portrush, a vacation and amusement town where my Dad used to take his Mum to play bingo, or more specifically pongo, a variant on bingo. First stop was Barry's, the huge amusement park on the main street that was there from my parents' time. We stopped in for some good fun on the cheap slot machines and 2p coin games.

One of my primary objectives since planning this trip to cycle the Antrim Coast was to find the bingo hall where my dad and grandma used to play bingo. So we set off trying to find old Blundell's, off the main street. We stopped into a place called Phil's Amusements. Somehow, I had a feeling that this used to be Blundell's.

After making some inquiries with the staff at another amusement hall, I learned my hunch was right! As fate would have it, Phil's had bingo on that night, so we checked into a B&B and rushed back to catch the game, arriving a little late -- just like my Dad and granny might have. The bingo was much more relaxed and friendly than in St. Austell, the bingo caller entrancing us with his sing-song and rhyming calls, and even addressing the white-haired ladies by name when they won. Afterwards, I approached the caller and told him about my mission to play bingo where my Dad and Grandma had. He enjoyed my story so much that he produced an old pongo board that they didn't use anymore: "Give this to your father, he would appreciate it". I spent the rest of the evening walking around town with this pongo board, making a great conversation-starter with strangers.

Day 4: Portrush to Moville (Inishowen), 27 miles

After checking out a few others of my Dad's old haunts around Portrush, including the Ramore Head tennis courts and the Portstuart strand (beach), we headed on to Coleraine where we stopped at a bike shop to pump our tires, lube our chains, and chat with the mechanic. He spoke highly of cycling in Inishowen, our terrain to come.

We struggled through more headwinds and Kansas-like flatlands, stopping for lunch outside a closed restaurant, to Mugilligan Point where there is a ferry across to Inishowen. We passed a huge jail and army training center leading up to the ferry.

Soon after arriving in Inishowen, Steve's rear tube exploded dramatically, likely due to the pumping we had given it earlier that day. Back when we rented the bikes, I questioned why we were given a set of box wrenches when all the bolts on our bikes had Allen heads, and told them we didn't want the box wrenches. I was flabbergasted when I realized that Steve's blown rear wheel was the only of our six that required a box wrench to remove. Fortunately, we had just arrived in Ireland, land of the ever friendly and generous. Across the street, I noticed a man out in front of his house. When I explained what happened, he immediately invited in, lent us a wrench, and went on to feed us tea and biscuits and showed us his guidebook for Inishowen. After a great long talk with him and his daughter, we were on our way to the Moville Hostel which turned out to be a 19th-century stone building full of character, well-renovated and mostly clean. We had stumbled upon a gem of a hostel, complete with a friendly Iranian proprietor.

My stomach was hurting after dinner, so I stayed in while Steve and Jess tried their hand at a local pub quiz. The locals-oriented questions had them stumped.

Day 5: Moville to Malin Head, 25 miles

On our way out of the hostel, a woman drove down the driveway and struck up a conversation with us. She offered a tour of the nearby stone bridge, fabled to be built by St. Patrick himself. The bridge spanned a little river flowing in one direction, and steps later there was another river running antiparallel to the first. Due to this mystical occurrence, the woman explained, St. Patrick and other monks from the nearby monastery would spend time here.

After some chilly riding, stopping at the overgrown Cooley Cross, to a hotel pub lunch stop in Culdaff, we headed on to Malin Head, the most northerly point in Ireland. The landscape was classic Donegal: harsh, craggy, and peaty, much like what I had seen eight years ago cycling through Conemara.

That night, we spent the evening at the town pub. The Guinness we had been drinking along our trip was served much colder than my memory, not as good as the old days, so I struck up a conversation with the bartender and the locals about it. Many opinions were voiced, and the bartender even offered me a pint of the brown stuff at whatever temperature I wished, saying he could alter it by warming the glass in a tub of warm water. We learned there used to be undercover Guinness tasting officials, sent around by the brewery to test the quality and presentation of their beer, but this ritual had ended in the mid-90s. Cold beer foams less and thus is faster to pour on a busy night. The puzzle pieces were coming together.

Day 6: Malin Head to Buncrana, 31 miles

Easier riding and beautiful scenery today, stopping in Malin town for a snack and a toss on their pristine triangular town green.

After lunch, we noticed that our road seemed to climb incredibly into the mountain, and so we stopped to confirm we were on the right track. "You'll be pushin' for a while", the local said with a grin. We thought that "pushin'" was a quaint, colloquial way of saying "pedaling hard", but it turned out he meant literally pushing our bikes uphill. For quite a while. But experiences like that just confirm my opinion that cycling in hilly terrain is preferable to flat land – you get the contrast of challenging uphill and coasting downhill, landscapes from the top and intimate views of houses and animals on the way up. Unending flat land of farms and pastures gets old. Unfortunately, the downhill was equally steep and long, so we were white-knuckled on the brakes the whole way down.

Day 7: Buncrana to Derry, 17 miles

For our last day of cycling, we took the scenic route around Inch Island, getting off the beaten path (even though the "beaten path" was a small road on a remote peninsula). As in many other places, we saw signs of premature development resulting from Ireland's "Celtic Tiger" phase in the 1990s. It was depressing to see American-like suburbanization, along with years-old new houses that had never been sold or lived in.

We spent two days in Derry, smaller than but similar to Belfast in that it was a hot spot during the Troubles. We took a walking tour of "The Bogside", a poor, nationalist (Catholic) neighborhood outside the Derry city walls and the sight of Bloody Sunday. The tour was given by a nationalist woman who was a teen when the Troubles began, and it was interesting to hear her partisan and quietly passionate account. In her opinion, the conflict in Ireland finds its routes in the Derry city walls, which were built in the 17th century by The Honourable The Irish Society, who owns them to this day. The Irish Society, despite its name, is based in London. The walls represent England's control over the Irish, who were relegated to the marshy "bogside" of the river. [The third photo here is actually a Protestant mural from the Protestant side of the river.]

Derry was a real city, with small local pubs and their local drunks, a night scene, working-class people and poverty, palpable history, hoodlum youth, and Euro 2008 soccer madness.

Days 140-143: Ireland Postlude

2004-06-27T11:03:00.001-04:00

Jun 17-20

We took our bikes on the train from Derry to Belfast, returned our hired cycles, and returned to our home base outside Larne for another Indian feast cooked by Steve. Jess and I parted ways with Steve, and headed on to Belfast. We went to cook dinner at the hostel kitchen as it was closing, so we had a heroic, lightening-fast, Iron-Chef-like team cooking experience. Since the kitchen was closing, we put the extras into a plastic bag, and happily ate from it.

Before taking the train to nearby Bangor to visit my Dad’s cousin, Maxwell Ledlie, we had a long walk around Belfast. Our walk included Sandy Row, a strongly Unionist neighborhood that was repainting its colors in preparation for The Twelfth (of July), a Protestant celebration of the Battle of the Boyne. We also visited the Belfast Library.

Maxwell, a semi-retired accountant, picked us up from the Bangor West train station and gave us a tour of the area. We spent the evening talking about the Ledlie family, went out for a nice dinner, and then left the next morning for Dublin. It was great to meet a relative for the first time and hear about my family history, and he and his wife were warm and welcoming.

The main highlight of Dublin, other than wandering around the interesting and historic city in beautiful weather, was our visit to the Guinness Storehouse. It was a completely different ballpark than any other brewery tour. It was a multi-story museum and multimedia beer experience. My favorite section was the one on coopering, the trade of making barrels, which had an old film of coopers at the Guinness factory doing their extremely skilled and quite dangerous work. Unfortunately, today, technology has made them extinct. The end of the tour is your free pint of Guinness in the "Gravity Bar" high above and overlooking the factory and the city of Dublin.

Here are a few cool photos from my flight back home (via Chicago!):

Postscript

2004-06-26T11:14:00.005-04:00

Days traveled: 143 (almost 5 months)
Number of countries: 16 (6 in the Balkans)
Almost 13 gigabytes of photos and video (about 4,300 photos)
Number of flights: 17 (5 within SE Asia)
Number of trains: 28
Number of buses: 18
plus dozens of tuk-tuks, farongs, shared taxis, motorbike taxis, normal taxis, minivans, and a jeep

Finances:

Major flights: $3,000
Daily expenses: $6,550 ($46 per day average)
Other expenses (travel guides, immunizations, travel insurance): $640
Overall: $10,190

Longest journeys:

Boston to Taipei via San Francisco flights: 20 hours (over three days with a flight cancellation)
Kathmandu to Ankara via Bahrain, Dubai, and Istanbul flights: 11 hours
Dublin to Philadelphia via Chicago flights: 10 hours
Siem Reap to Bangkok buses: 14 hours (including two flat tires)
(near) Mae Hong Son to Chiang Mai on motorbike: 5 hours (130 miles)
Siem Reap to Beng Mealea temple tuk-tuk ride: 2.5 hours
Kathmandu to Langtang National Park bus / jeep: ~12 hours (~80 miles -- 7 mph avg speed!); I did this trip twice -- there and back
Göreme to Istanbul overnight bus: 12 hours
Istanbul to Ohrid (Macedonia) overnight bus: 16 hours? (plus 4 hours stuck at border)
Sarajevo to Belgrade overnight train: 9 hours
Shrewsbury to Ena's house: 9 hours

Here's the 15 lbs of stuff I ended up taking on my trip:

Keens (hiking sandals) + flip flops
two non-cotton t-shirts, one collared short sleeve
two long sleeve, one thick, one thin
bike shorts
black nylon pants
nylon zip-off pants /shorts
nylon shorts with mesh liner
quick-dry pack towel
3 pair boxers
4 pair socks
thin rain jacket
big back pack (with trash bag liner)
small day pack
two credit cards, debit card, student ID, drivers license, passport, yellow card
plane tickets
US cash ($250)
extra passport photos for visas
photocopies of documents / cards
money belt (not used)
3 smaller sacks for organizing
silk sleep sheet
head lamp
camera mini tripod (not used much)
sun glasses with different lens inserts
two reading books
Nokia N800 with folding keyboard, charger, plug converter, extra battery, extra memory, and earphones / microphone for skype
camera with extra battery and charger and USB cable
extra contact lenses and dental floss
doxycyclin for malaria (daily)
1 course of antibiotics (fortunately and surprisingly not needed)
toiletries, including soap and shampoo
laundry bag (durable, zippable plastic bag)
diary (with calendar)
ziplock bags of various sizes
started with Taiwan and SE Asia lonely planets

And a table with some more data!

country	# days	photos / day	$ spent / day
Taiwan	11	45	21
Vietnam	7	30	48
Laos	8	26	60
Thailand	17	33	41
Cambodia	4	58	63
Nepal	17	33	21
Turkey	9	33	59
Balkans	12	40	42
France	15	22	81
England	26	19	36
Ireland	15	28	69

Totals	141	30	46