A quote that reminds me why...

"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover."

Mark Twain

We survived traveling overland from Pakse, Laos to Siem Reap Cambodia (more on that later) without getting massively ripped off or having to bribe the border officials too much, and we got to travel with a professional musician and magician. We're now in Siem Reap having met up with a childhood friend of Becca's and a group from Oregon and Washington. As a result, much temple visiting is going on for the next few days so it'll be awhile before there are any major updates.

Check in next week for an update on our visit to the Angkor temples and the very heartwarming way we spent my dad's birthday (HAPPY BIRTHDAY POPS!).

Cheers-

Brian

Even monks need to do their laundry

Some more thoughts on Laos after almost a month of traveling here.

-- The Lao people are super friendly and helpful. Even when they're trying to sell you something, you still feel like there is goodwill involved. Plus, as I have been sick and had other incidents over the past few weeks, I've been overwhelmed by the caring and kindness shown to me by the guesthouse owners and others. It's nice. It makes you feel not quite so alone and on the other side of the world from your family.

-- One thing we can't figure out. Lao people are not big. By and large they are significantly shorter than westerners with short little legs. Yet the steps on their stair cases are HUGE. Whether it be in a modern guesthouse or up ancient steps to a Wat or down clay foot steps to the river we are struggling to stretch our legs enough to manage these steps that our Lao guides are just blithely running up and down. We can't quite figure it out..

-- The currency in Laos is the Kip, and it is pretty much worthless. Even banks in Laos won't necessarily let you change kip back into dollars, euros, baht, or other hard currency. Forget trying once you're outside the country. Because of this, the people here are happy (and eager) to get their hands onto hard currency and there is a healthy shadow (can you even call it shadow when it's so blatantly, officially, out in the open????) economy. Anything can be paid for not only in Kip, but also in Thai baht or US dollars. In fact, you often can get a better price if you DON'T pay in kip. (Laos Airlines, the NATIONAL airline, for example is requiring us to buy our plane tickets in dollars).

-- Surprisingly, given all the opportunities for shaving a cut off of these transactions, we've actually found the conversions at restaurants, hotels, markets, etc. to be extremely straight forward. They use the same exchange rate in both directions (unlike at a bank or money change place, for example) and are pretty flexible. But you do occasionally get a headache doing the math when you are paying a bill quoted in US dollars with Thai baht, and getting whatever change you are owed back in Lao kip.

-- Two other financial challenges in this part of the world. 1) The biggest bill that the kip comes in is equivalent to $2. So not only is it an unwanted currency, to pay for anything of any value, you would have to pack a wad worthy of a Rockefeller. 2) The other challenge for us is the fact that there are no ATMs in Laos and travelers checks are only accepted at banks in major cities. (Cambodia, while potentially having a few ATMs in their capital, is supposed to be about the same) That means that we had to move away from our previous monetary strategy of minimizing the amount of cash we carried and regularly refilling our pockets in local currency from ATM's. Instead, we loaded our moneybelts up with baht (75%) and dollars (10%) and dollar travelers checks (15%) and tried not to feel too conspicuous being walking piggy banks in countries where we were carrying the equivalent of a few people's annual wages. Luckily, we've been careful and have never felt at risk and things seem to be moving smoothly. But we're looking forward to getting back to more stable economies again with more easily accessible cash.
-- So far in Laos we've taken a 9 hour truck trip from Huay Xai to Luang Nam Tha (120 miles) , a 11.5 hour ordinary bus (i.e., aisles full of people and rice bags and people riding on top) trip from Luang Nam Tha to Luang Prabang (~200 miles), an 8 hour VIP air con bus from Luang Prabang to Vientiene (230 miles), and an 8 hour VIP air con NIGHT but from Vientiene to Pakse (400 miles, with the airconditioner's condenser periodically pouring water on me. fun). Amazing to think that growing up we thought going places more than 2 hours away was way too far.

-- Evidently Lao people don't believe in soft beds. The floors of the huts we slept on had more give than some of the guest house beds. And the bed at the last place we stayed was SOOO hard (how hard was it?) that a) Brian was easily able to do his push-ups on it instead of on the floor and b) you had to shift about every 20-30 minutes because your body parts would literally (no exaggerating) fall asleep from lack of blood flow and start to tingle. I can't tell you how much I miss my pillow-top mattress at home right now.

Back to catching up on email and getting organized for our trip down to the southern Laos islands tomorrow.

Becca

This made my day...

After a free ride of 30km in the back of a pickup truck full of rice back to the Pakse we hit the southern bus station. Like most bus stations in SE Asia, they're away from the actual town themselves so that the thriving tuk-tuk and sawngthaew industry can make a few bucks (Becca disagrees with me on this but this is my blog entry damnit).

Once you get off a vehicle, the tuk-tuk jump on you as per usual. Where are you going, mister? We mention Pakse and the person quotes us 25% higher than we're supposed to pay. We tell them the number we're supposed to pay and they just laugh at us. During our time here we've found that our best method of negotiation is to name a price and then just wait. Don't say anything. They keep coming back at us: "(high amount), you go now yes!" and we just keep shaking our head.

Just when we think this might actually turn into a proper stalemate, the negotiator of the bunch runs up to us says "(our price), you go now!" We agree and while we're throwing our stuff in, what do we hear?

The unforgettable sounds of a rival tuk-tuk sidling up to us and saying those words I'll have ingrained in my brain long after this trip:

"Tuk-tuk?"

Brian

Maybe you can be a Mahout!

Adults Only: Ok, this post is for the kids. You know, the one's we've been ignoring most of this blog? The ones who probably think the pics are cool but don't want to read our latest missive about Thai cuisine?

Most of our friends (especially in MN) have kids of ages newborn to 5ish and we promised most if not all of them a picture of us riding an elephant. To accomplish this goal, instead of doing the typical tourist elephant ride we signed up for an experimental two day mahout guide trek Tiger Trails in Luang Prabang was running where you get to work with the Mahouts (definition below), spend the night with them, learn a little more about caring for the elephants, etc. And kayaking back to town was a nice side benefit :-) So here it goes; don't have any idea how writing directed to kids will go, but hope it gives them something to enjoy... And for you adults wanting a little more interesting fare, Becca has included some adult worthy comments in the post below.

SYLLABICATION: ma·hout
PRONUNCIATION: m -hout
NOUN: The keeper and driver of an elephant.

Hi, Bonjour and Hej to our friends around the globe from Becca and Brian. If you have any questions about anything you read or see, ask Mom or Dad to help explain it to you. The picture you can see is Becca riding an Asian elephant from the country of Laos. Laos is located in SE Asia, next to Thailand and Camboida. Becca and I spent two days playing with the elephants and learning how to become a Mahout. A Mahout is the keeper and driver of an elephant. They drive the elephant when people ride on it, feed it, wash it, etc. They take care of the elephant just like mom and dad used to do for you when you were little.

We had to wait for the elephants at the Tat Sae waterfall. The other people were riding the elephants to the waterfall and then we and the mahouts had to take them back to their camp for a snack and a shower. Our two elephants were named Mae Son and Uae . Mae Son is female and Uae is male.

We climbed onto a tower that let us sit in the chairs in the back while the Mahouts drove. Elephants are very slow but it was fun to be so high up in the air. After a little while, the Mahouts let us ride on the neck of the elephants. It is very hard to balance because you are sitting on their shoulders, just like you do when Mom or Dad carry you around. Their ears are very big and protect your legs from trees that might hit you. Their skin is rough so it's like sitting on a carpet or a really old chair. When you're riding an elephant, you have to use a loud voice so the elephant knows you are the boss.

We then got to feed the elephants. They like bananas and rice and eat sugar cane as dessert. They use their trunk to take the food from your hand and put it into their mouth. So their trunk is just like your hand and they use it to eat. They also were very warm and threw dirt on themselves to keep themselves cool. This only works for elephants though so you shouldn't try it.

We rode the elephants to the river to clean the dirt off. The elephants use their trunk to suck up water and then pour it into their mouth. They also use the trunk to spray water all over themselves to clean up. Just like mom and dad use the bathroom to give you a bath or shower.

After dinner and a shower, it's time to go to bed. We and the Mahouts rode the elephants out to their bedroom. Their bedroom is a big piece of jungle where they can walk around, eat more or just sleep. The Mahout puts a chain on their leg so they don't run away or get lost. We put them to bed and then we went to our house and ate some food and went to bed. It is very tiring being a Mahout.

Morning for a Mahout and the elephant comes very early. We went to wake up the elephants at 7:00am. They wake up early so they can go have another bath and breakfast. Back to the river for a shower and then more rice and bananas for breakfast. After that, the Mahouts put the pads and the chair on the elephant so that people can ride them again. Only people who work with the Mahouts get to ride without the big chair.

After that, we had to go back to town so we said goodbye to the elephants. The Mahouts have a very good job. They are very nice people and do lots of good things for the elephants and keep them healthy. If you want to learn more about elephants, have mom or dad look at the websites below.

- Some Elephant facts
- Problems that Elephants have in Laos
- Elephant Diet and Habit

Becca and I hope you enjoyed seeing the elephants and hoped you learned about being a Mahout. Maybe you could be a Mahout some day if you work hard!

Brian

Now for the rest of the story...

While Brian nicely covered the basics of our Mahout experience for the kids, I thought I'd throw in a few more anecdotes. As we've mentioned before, we try to get a feel for the culture when we can and we have a horror of contrived or overly packaged tours. So we were cautiously optimistic when we saw this new "test" package. Basically, you go and hang out with the mahouts for a day, including all the elephant feeding, washing, handling and sleeping on the floor in a mahout hut, bookended by a visit to a pretty waterfall and kayaking back to town when it was all over. Though it could have been contrived, it sounded better to us than trekking to waterfall (on foot or on elephant) with all the other tourists and then heading home.

Things that didn't make Brian's story for the kids:

-- Riding an elephant is more difficult than I thought. I grew up on horse back and kept expecting that muscle memory to kick in. But it actually took me a pretty long time (much longer than Brian) to get comfortable on the elephant. I think part of it is that you are sitting on the elephant's neck up against its front shoulders so the entire motion is the side to side of the front legs. This made it easy to overcompensate and lose your balance. Whereas on a horse, you are on its back between its sets of legs, so while the motion is side to side, it is also back and forward and diagonal and is easier to adjust to.

-- Elephants are SLOW. (that is, except when they're being fast...which we had NO desire to experience.) The trip back from the falls which took 1.5 hours would only have taken 50 minutes if we had been walking. And when the mahouts would walk next to the elephants they had to walk pretty slowly, unlike walking with horses who are trail riding, for instance.

-- About 40 minutes into the walk back from the falls, we came to yet another fork in the path. These elephants respond to vocal "left" and "right" commands (like sled dogs) and the mahouts barked out a "left" ("sai"). Despite this, the elephants turned right and headed down the other path. Things like this had happened already, and the mahout would just bark it again/louder, tap the elephant with a stick and/or tug on its ear. However none of these actions had any effect this time and both elephants started speeding up down the trail. So picture this: Brian and I are sitting on the elephants' necks, hanging on not quite for dear life, but certainly with enthusiasm, the mahouts are stuck behind us between us and the seats, and they're yelling at the elephants, reaching around us trying to get the elephants' attention, and generally laughing with that sort of 'oh shit' nervousness. Eventually they were able to maneuver so that both Brian and I could climb past them back on to the seats so that they could get serious with the elephants. At which point the elephants said, oh right, the boss, and turned around. In the end, probably not much danger but it DID get the heart rate up and moving. (And made us hesitate just a bit when they wanted us to switch back onto the neck again. Let's just say I was pretty happy when we eventually pulled up into camp.)

-- Going in the water with the elephants was fun. The first time it was just to give them a drink of water before putting them to bed. While Uae mostly just drank, Mae Son seemed to alternate drinking with spraying down her sides and back (and therefore Pan and me). We got quite wet and given how hot it was, it was quite refreshing, as long as you didn't think about the fact that your shower just came out of an elephant's nose.

-- We also took the elephants in to the water to give them a bath on Friday morning. We had been warned that we would get wet, so we both zipped off our pants legs. Mae Son went in to drink for a while, then Pan urged her farther and farther into the middle of the (admittedly pretty shallow) river. She seemed to be turning the wrong way (against what he was telling her) then all of a sudden she sat down in the water, so that only her heat and neck were out. Pan was hollering, so I couldn't tell if she was supposed to be doing that are not. My first thought was "oh god, she's going to roll around in the water" followed by "oh well, it's easy enough to just push off of her in the water and float/swim away." Evidently though this is what Pan was telling her to do and they just like startling the tourists. So though sadly, sadly we have no pictures of this, you can imagine me hanging on to the top of her head and trying not to slide into the water while Pan used a long scrub brush/broom to clean her off. Then when he wanted to clean her head, he had me move back so that I was standing/crouching on her back while he stood on her head and scrubbed that. Once she was clean we got back to normal positions and headed back to camp.

-- Thursday night was really neat because we just sat out under the stars and had dinner with our guide and talked and talked. He is Hmong, and we were able to ask him all the questions that we had from our trek that we couldn't communicate to our guide on that trip whose command of English was a little shaky. We talked a lot about life in Laos and learned a lot from him.

-- As we made sure and tucked our mosquito nets under the mats that we had laid on the mahout hut floor, we had to laugh at the futility of it, as there were pretty big gaping holes between the bamboo floor slats themselves.

-- We discovered that we ended up not having the FULL mahout experience Friday morning when we headed out to pick up the elephants from their night-time tethering. Evidently the guys had been hitting the Lao Lao hard and heavy in the village the night before and Brian's mahout mentor had barely helped him up onto Uae when he disappeared into the brush for a noisy and extended bout of puking. Brian decided he'd pass on that part.

-- After we had helped bring the elephants in Friday morning and get them clean and fed and ready to carry tourists on a new day, we said goodbye and thanks to the elephants and their mahouts, then headed over to the lodge to get ready for kayaking. We spent the next 4 hours paddling down the Nam Khan past villages and villagers. It was relaxing and refreshing, especially when Brian and I discovered how bad we are at steering a kayak at the top of the only class 2 rapid (the rest were class 1 since it's the dry season) we faced. We toppled out after the first drop and experienced the rest of it from a slightly lower and wetter perspective, trying to remember to keep our feet forward and legs bent, to hang on to our paddles, and to avoid as many of the rocks as possible. Dong gathered us and our stuff up at the bottom and we continued on the rest of the way.

All in all the experience lived up to our hopes. While it's impossible to be completely untouristy, this was different and bare bones enough to make us feel like we had to work to earn it, and it was nice to just be one on one with the elephants and the mahouts.

Looking forward to our next outdoor adventures in southern Laos.

Cheers.

Becca

Prelude to a trip...

(NOTE: Parts 2 and 3, the pretty picture and national geographic sections of the show, aka the hiking and the villages are now up below. More exciting blog entries to come. About as soon as we stop saying "I am a Mahout" to each other...)

Brian

Our main reason for heading to Luang Nam Tha was to have the opportunity to visit some of the remote hill tribes located in Northern Laos. You see plenty of advertisements promoting visits to various minority hill tribes that populate the mountain ranges of SE Asia. Becca and I were both excited about the opportunity to visit some of these villages but wanted to go with a group that made us feel comfortable about imposing ourselves in someones home. Someone who partnered with the tribes themselves and did their best to minimize the impact the felang (that's us) have on the area. After not really finding anything that fit the bill in Thailand, we decided to try our luck in Laos having heard that they've learned from Thailand's mistakes (mainly exploiting the tribes, turning the areas into a 'disneyland' atmosphere and in one case even moving the village 70km to be closer to town).

Our experience in Luang Nam Tha and the protected area was amazing and one of the best we've had on the trip. It's very difficult to get all of it into one post without getting all "and then this happened..." on everyone and no one, especially us wants that. I mean if you're spending your company's dollar checking us out, we might as well make it worth your while, no?

As a result, we've split the trip into three parts; the hiking, the food and the experiences with the tribes. We're posting the food one now, and the other two should soon follow. Read one of them, read all three, read none of them but we figured it would be a different way to share our adventures from an amazing three days.

And for the kids (and parents who have kids) in the crowd, we'll be back in a few days with a much promised present.

Until then...

Brian

A short glimpse into a different life

This trek afforded us the opportunity to visit and interact with three different ethnic tribes: Hmong, Lantaen, and Khmu.

I'm having trouble thinking of an interesting or coherent way to write this as a continuous piece, so instead I will just leave you with some of our observations, experiences, and impressions. (We have far fewer pics of the people and their surrounding than we would have liked, as we were trying to be respectful and most of the time a photo seemed inappropriate. So you'll have to settle for descriptions)

HMONG Village

--Because the Hmong were in the middle of about 10 days of new year's festivities, we got to observe them wearing their ceremonial clothes (especially the women and girls) and participating in traditional new year's activities. One of these was a game where boys and girls use the excuse of tossing a ball back in forth in two single sex lines (which they only do for the month of January) while they talk and get to know a potential marriage prospect that they fancy. They let us join in on the fun, though Brian almost started an international incident when he unknowingly approached his partner too close.

-- One of the things we liked here was the fact that except for allowing us to participate in some of their games and smiling at us a lot, the people pretty much just went about their daily lives. You in no way got the feeling that they were on display for us or performing for us which is what we had been afraid of. (Our house was separated from town a bit too, which kept us out of the way while still providing us with good views on both halves of the town)

-- After dinner we had a Q&A session with two of the men from the village. It was really interesting and a nice and open give and take (especially after Brian had the brilliant insight to ask them what questions they had for us.). One of the parts that struck me the most was when the man said that until a year ago (which is when this organization started bringing treks through town), no one except for the elders in the village had ever seen a foreigner, they'd only heard stories from the grandparents, etc. Cool

-- We were also struck by how incredibly clean the village was (especially compared to the ones we saw later), especially considering how very many animals were running loose around the areas. We lost track of the numbers of pigs, chickens, dogs, horses, goats, and cows...but trust us. It was like Old MacDonald come to life.

-- On the morning before we left, we watched the villagers butcher and clean a pig for a wedding celebration that evening. One of the young men there asked Brian and me how many pigs we had killed for our wedding. Besides for the (unstated) obvious religious difficulties that might have created, we had to explain that we didn't own any pigs and so had to find other ways to feed our guests.

LANTAEN Village

-- The Lantaen were also celebrating their new year's (Lantaen belong to the same tribe grouping as Hmong), but unlike up on the mountain where things were relatively sedate, here it was clear that there had a been a party going on for since morning. Pretty much all of the men (and some of the woman) had been enjoying their Lao Lao (Lao whiskey), which was mostly just interesting/amusing, but made us a little nervous when we saw 4 young men with submachine guns walk through town. (Turns out they were soldiers from Luang Nam Tha who had hiked in to celebrate with their families for the day and were returning to town the next morning).

-- Sophie and Cat even got waylaid into a hut and forced (in a nice way) to down many Lao Lao shots while listening to incomprehensible New Years speeches before our guides came in and 'rescued' them. (Though even the guides were unable to extract themselves without 2 or 3 shots)

-- The kids here, like in the Hmong village were all playing and having a great time. Their laughter was fantastic to see and hear as was the way they looked after each other (older kids minding younger kids, even if it was a 5 year old hanging on to a 2 year old) and the way they used such simple toys. (Like these girls jump roping with a thin strand of bamboo). The camera was a great draw too. The above photo happened when I was practically mugged as soon as I brought the camera out and started showing them the pictures I was taking of them.)

-- The woman were beautiful here too, and wore the traditional blue robes and leg wrappings (like you see on the pictures of the girls). It appeared that they shaved their eyebrows and they did their hair up with a very high hairline, which disconcerted a few of the group.

-- As I mentioned in the food entry, we were made very at home in this village and enjoyed our brief stay there (despite the momentary terror).

KHMU Village

-- This appeared to be the biggest village we visited, and had more infrastructure (fenced gardens, generators, 5 or 6 hydroelectric generators), etc.

-- We didn't get to see as much of this village as the others because we came in just as it was getting dark, thanks to our detour to the Lantaen village and our relatively early departure the next morning.

-- There was some interaction though, as after dinner the chief and a bunch of the folks came up to offer us a drink of their traditional rice Lao Lao, drunk out of a clay jug through long bamboo straws and then we joined them in a dance with bamboo sticks accompanied by their singing and music. This was the only time during the three days where I felt like people were having to "perform" for us (or with us, as the case happened to be) and it did make me kind of uncomfortable. Later though as some of the adults left (and Brian and I, the old farts, went to an early bed), the singing and music and drinking continued a little more genuinely.

OVERALL

We really treasured this opportunity to get a look into life of a totally different sort than ours that (mostly) was continuing on unaffected by our progress. It's really hard to talk about it without romaticizing things inappropriately. (Our guide today in Luang Prabang observed that all the tourists talk about how beautiful the undeveloped forests and mountains are when what that meant to him growing up was a hard long hike down to the river to fetch the cold water to clean and feed themselves with. It's easy to enjoy it when you are just visiting and you go back to your guest house with electricity and hot water...)

That being said, and with full appreciation (or at least as much as one can have without doing it) of how hard these villagers lives were, we were struck over and over by how happy and content people seemed, especially the children. Coming from a place where we bemoan the loss of childhood innocence due to sex and violence on TV or video games, where childhood inactivity has led to a huge obesity threat and where there is constant peer pressure for more more more, it was both refreshing and depressing (in reflection of our culture) to see children being children and running and playing with rocks and sticks and pieces of bamboo and being happy. It'll make me think a bit when Brian and I start our family...

Enough philosophizing. Enjoy the three entries from this trek and get ready for some hot elephant action to come!

Becca