Rerekuka's Travel Journal

Paris ~ The catacombs

2008-10-30T16:20:00.000-07:00

We had a short time to walk around Paris and Eric had always wanted to see the catacombs, so here you go. The catacombs are passages below the streets of Paris, where bodies from graveyards were brought because of the health risks they created in their old neighborhoods. So you walk along about a kilometer of bones and skulls stacked various ways and can read about some of the folks you'll encounter. Tres interresant.

Paris, avec gasse

2008-10-30T15:46:00.000-07:00

It's all fun and games until they gas you in the metro.

Bound from the Latin Quarter to see fam in the suburbs of Paris, we board the last car at the far end of the metro station platform and wait for it to start. There's yelling outside the window across from me, and two men tackle another and throw him hard to the ground. One of the tacklers faces the train, puts up his hands and yells "Police!" At that moment, the car is filled with some sort of cloud and my eyes, face, and lungs feel like they are on fire. We are being gassed. I don't know if it's pepper spray from outside or some other gas, but all I do know is that I'm in an enclosed space, burning up, and choking. I'm afraid to breathe, take one last gulp of air (repeat performance from when my condo burned down), open the car door and hike it across the platform. I need to breathe again, so I do, pulling in more gas. Some of the people are still in the train, some on the platform, many with the same red, tearing eyes. Many are running out but some are standing still, watching the police action. I guess the gas was stronger down where we were, but need to get to air. I'm somewhat alarmed but not freaking out. Mostly I'm kind of fascinated, wondering if this is it, will I be finished in a subway gassing? Kind of fascinated by the whole thing really and also feeling the animal in me escaping for air. Eric catches up to me and says he thinks it was probably pepper spray and we hike it the rest of the way up the stairs and into fresh air. We sit down on the stairwell and just breathe. I kind of wish I had turned around on that platform and taken a picture of the police action, or at least turned the camera on myself and gotten one of my lava floe eyes. (Actually my French relatives later told me the police shot wasn't such a good idea in France.) Anyway, there you are.

Two days later we were headed home. Police action around abandoned luggage in Charles de Gaulle delayed our first flight and another police action in Frankfurt almost delayed the second. Strange energy in the air that weekend, bien sur.

Prague ~ Around Prague

2008-10-30T15:19:00.000-07:00

The Municipal House is one of the finest examples of Art Nouveau in Europe. One of the rooms was entirely done by Mucha.

Tristan's favorite thing about Prague was her shoe.

Prague ~ Me and Kafka, We're This Close

2008-10-30T14:37:00.000-07:00

Early cover for Metamorphosis

Old Town Square, through which the family cook used to drag young Franz to school.

Hallway in the Kafka Museum

Now this is what I'm talkin' about. Technical writing to pay the bills. This job was "Preventative Measures Against Accidents Caused by Mechanical Brushes," for the Insurance Institute (1909). Kafka lamented that the 6-9 hour days doing this was soul sucking, in part because he had no energy left for other pursuits. Note that he didn't mention working nights and weekends. More fodder for my manifesto.

These guys get paid to pee in front of the Kafka Museum. Actually, they're moving sculptures, and they are peeing words that I've forgotten but I'm sure Kafka would have loved. There's a great YouTube of the scene here, if you don't mind a bawdy bit of exposition: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=29-IbY85cZk

Prague ~ The Cubism Museum

2008-10-30T14:27:00.000-07:00

If only I had a larger backpack (and a U-Haul) ~

Prague ~ Drinkies VIII

2008-10-28T12:34:00.000-07:00

We celebrated Drinkies VIII on October 18 at Pivovarsky Dum and a few other establishments in Prague. We kind of scared some places, being such a big group, I think. 15 peeps and one very happy baby. We proved to be pretty tame, especially compared to some groups I guess. Some pubs actually have signs on the door that mandate no large groups of drunk Brits. We tried to be good.

Czech beer in the making

Eric sez Drinkies next year will be in Alaska, maybe for Solstice.

Prague ~ We arrive

2008-10-28T11:34:00.000-07:00

Prague Castle and Charles Bridge

Traveling in Prague is like walking through an enchanting, poignant poem, with its people and history reflected in its architectural styles, including Gothic, Baroque, Rococo, Art Nouveau, Cubist, Functionalist, and post-modern. Smiles seem reserved for personal rather than professional encounters, and it takes a little more for the vibrancy of the place to shine through, but it does.

Outside the opera house where Mozart's Don Giovanni first played

And there it is

2008-10-13T20:34:00.000-07:00

So ended our amazing year abroad. I'm sure I'll eek out thoughts big and small about it out in future posts. Mostly I feel grateful that we were able to do this, to be touched by so many lives, ideas, sounds, sights, smells, and tastes. We're so much deeper into ourselves and forever changed. Grateful for our families and for the close times we've gotten to have since we've been home.

And here are some of my favorite sights in the whole world.

I guess there's just one more word to add to all this ~ AGAIN!!!!!!

Spain

2008-10-13T20:07:00.000-07:00

Can Cullaretes, serving up Crema Catalan since the 1700's

Barcelona, what can I say? Architecture by Gaudi, some of the most delectable food in the world, art by Picasso, Goya, and company, jamon, tapas, music, did I mention the food? take me back now.

Ladies and Gentlemen, La Sagrada Familia by Gaudi

We gathered lunch at la Boqueria, then headed to Montserrat to enjoy the hillside and the monastery

More Gaudi

Tapas at Xampanet, yum

Italia

2008-10-13T18:19:00.000-07:00

We passed through Rome on our way from Greece to Spain. We visited the ruins and fountains, and had some fab meals.

Time Travel

2008-02-15T09:38:00.000-08:00

I can't believe it's been four months since my last post. Shortly after that, the universe combined for us to return from Barcelona a few weeks early. Eric's dad's cancer, which he had staved off for over a decade, had come back bigtime, and we really, really wanted to be there with him and Eric's mom. After such an amazing year, coming home a few weeks early was no big deal. So we did that, spending a few weeks in the gorgeous Gold Country fall with them. After that, a former co-worker invited me to come to his company for a short writing contract, so I went right into work, moving in, and the holidays, also returning every couple weekends to be with Eric's folks. Eric's dad passed in January.

So here we are, four months later, with much more to share about the trip. Between cameras disappearing and reappearing and the break since our trip, the rest of this blog will not have the immediacy of the ones written on the road, nor the chronological continuancy I would have liked, but such is life. Think Kurt Vonnegut. Think hiding/showing columns in an Excel spreadsheet. Think quantum leaps.

Greece

2007-10-04T10:02:00.000-07:00

Greece was a brief stop in Athens and then some lovely island hopping, with stops in Paros, Mykonos, Syros, and Santorini. Lots of hiking, eating, stomping ruins on Delos, and some hellish seasickness on the ferry from Santorini back to Athens for me. Eric, as ever, was a jolly sailor. Aaaaarrrr.

The meal above was a happy find when we kept climbing this hill one hot morning, famished, thinking we were out of luck for brekkies, and voila. Oh, and it came with some view.

On Santorini, we hiked from Fira to Oia (at the tip). Then, of course, we had lunch.

Ouzo in the making at Brettos in Athens.

Lausanne Switzerland and the Swiss Alps

2007-10-04T10:01:00.000-07:00

Trina joined us for Dippies! at Cafe de L'EvecheRue Louis-Curtat 4Lausanne, Switzerland. I include the address because this is the best fondue in the world: Fondue a la Mode de la Chateau de Gruyere. Repeat that until you've memorized it and then get thee to Lausanne, for the definitive Gruyere cheese piped with whipped creme, which you stir into it for the most velvety, musky, delish fondue ever. Paired with this Valais wine, ooh la la. Seriously, it is thebiggest reason we went back to Lausanne (Lausanne is actually quite lovely with a nice seaside and is a pretty walking town), and Trina traveled from London to meet us there.

Fondue goodness photos courtesy of Trina Roy.

Munich Germany and the Bavarian Alps

2007-10-04T09:57:00.000-07:00

Munich was one of the most beautiful cities we've visited, and has been voted the most liveable city in the world by Monocle:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/travel/2007/jul/07/saturday.travelwebsites

(Although some Bavarian peeps I've talked to in the US say "meh.')

But seriously, you can't go wrong with amazing Bavarian Alps, the legendary Mad King Ludwig and his castles (which were Disney's inspiration for castles and underground grottos and such), nekkid sunbathing in the park, and beergardens, like the one below. Note the oompah band in the bandstand.

In Which the World's Biggest Kid Finds a Luge in the Bavarian Alps

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum

2007-10-04T09:28:00.000-07:00

I . . . well, I . . . [hands clasped behind me, stubbing big toe into the ground] . . . I lost another camera. In my purse, along with my Treo 650 PDA/cell phone.

I left my purse (but not my eyeglasses nor wallet, thank goodness) at a bus station in Kamari on the island of Santorini in Greece. We took the bus to Fira, then took a taxi down to the port at Athenios, where we were to catch a ferry for Athens at 5 p.m (then catch a plane to Rome the afternoon of the next day).

At 3:50 p.m., I realized my purse was missing and we ran to the Port Authority police. There, a very dedicated young officer and his friend, through numerous very serious phone calls in Greek, miraculously found out that a couple had gone to the police in Kamari with my purse. These Samaritans then got onto the bus for Fira with the understanding that they would take my purse to the Fira police. The Fira police, once they had the purse, would call the Port Authority, and have it delivered to them. By 4:45 p.m. we had not heard back from the Fira police, and we agreed we had to get on the ferry to Athens. The officer and his friend consulted each other for a few minutes, made more serious phone calls, then said that if they get the purse that night, they could have it delivered to my hotel in Athens by 10 a.m. the next morning. The officer even gave me his personal cell phone number. Fabulous. Except that by the next morning, the Fira police still hadn't heard anything about the purse. So the officer promised if he got it he would have it shipped to our home in California. They were so helpful that I have no doubt that if he gets it he will send it to me. I'm just not holding my breath.

So that's why the following posts, up to Rome (where I am now and have bought yet another camera), contain no pictures from my camera. My angst over the hundreds of pictures from Europe knows no bounds. I couldn't make a turn on a trail in the Swiss Alps without taking another picture, and the pictures of my nephew Antoine are proof positive that he is the most adorable young man (of four years) in Paris. If by any chance the camera gets shipped home, I'll repost with pictures. Until then, you'll have to use your imagination.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Update!

A lovely couple (he a retired pastor) found my purse at the bus stop in Kamari. They took it to the bus company, thinking I might return for it, but the bus company would not take it. So they took it to Fira, but the bus company there wouldn't take it either and the police department was some distance away. The couple found my mother's contact info (under Mom and Mel) in my PDA address book, and seeing that my mom and stepdad live very close to them in Washington, they took my purse home and contacted Mom. All four had a lovely lunch together yesterday, and my mom now has my purse, which she is shipping to me. Happy ending. Yay for the kindness of strangers. And moms and stepdads.

Ssssssrrrriiiiifffttt!!!!!!!!!! (Copenhagen, Denmark)

2007-09-23T05:05:00.000-07:00

. . . That is the sound of the kroners being sucked out of your wallet in Denmark. Copenhagen is the most expensive place we've ever been. It's a pretty but unremarkable city. As we hadn't booked ahead, quality hostels were booked and we ended up paying around $200 USD /night for a hotel room comparable in quality and 1/2 the size of a Motel 6 room at home. This is fair for Scandinavia. Meals were also the highest we've seen in Europe. Our plan had been to head up to the fjords in Norway, but further investigation showed the same costs in all of where we wanted to go in Scandinavia. So we cut it short and headed back down to Germany.

While in Copenhagen, we visited the Danish Resistance Museum, which housed the pictures, stories, and war paraphernalia of World War II Danish resistance fighters. One of the most interesting bits from this was where someone had used a pin to inscribe their concentration memoirs into a long scroll of toilet paper. The resistance fighters often did not survive the war, dying in raids, from torture and execution, or from taking cyanide to avoid being caught and disclosing vital information.

Truck/Tank, Danish Resistance Museum

Underground Newsletter Press, Photos, Paraphernalia,
Danish Resistance Museum

The Famous, Serene Little Mermaid Sculpture
(what you don't see are the hordes of tourists jockeying for this same shot)

Lubeck, Germany

2007-09-23T03:50:00.000-07:00

Traveling by train from Amsterdam on our way to Copenhagen, we stopped shortly in Lubeck Germany. There we walked around the picturesque town, visited the rathaus and Nobel prize author Thomas Mann's "Buddenbrook's House," and sampled marzipan.

The Bells of St. Mary's, Still Down From Bombing During World War II

Astrological Clock in St. Mary's

I Always Told My Kids They Were The Spawn of Satan

Lubeck in Marzipan

Current Schedule

2007-09-10T10:48:00.000-07:00

9/10: We are currently in Grindelwald, Switzerland, hiking daily in the glory that is the Swiss Alps.

9/11: Eric's birthday! There will be more hiking, heady cheese, and sweet wine as the whole world celebrates.

9/12: Train to Milan

9/13: Flight to Athens

9/13 - 9/30ish: Greece, mostly islands

10/1ish - 10/9ish: To Rome, in Rome, leaving Rome, maybe Cinque Terra on the way to . . .

10/10ish - 11/10: Spain and Portugal

11/11: London

11/12: Flight home from London

Amsterdam, The Netherlands

2007-08-20T10:23:00.001-07:00

Amsterdam was much like Haarlem, only bigger and busier, with art museums, canals, wonderful pastries, lots of bikes (the Dutch ride bikes everywhere and are in great shape in general), rich history, and lax attitudes regarding some drugs and sex.

We walked through the famed Red Light District, where the sex workers, not unlike mannequins, appear in red-framed window displays. The womens' demeanor (men have tried unsuccessfully to get in on this gig) ranged from vacant and bored to sternly businesslike as they answered men's questions and conducted business. According to Lonely Planet, the average encounter lasts about 20 minutes and costs about $60 USD. Didn't look like much of a party to me. The Dutch aren't all that excited about it either, comprising only 2% of the business. Brits are number one, at 40%. Who keeps track of all this? Since prostitution is legal and taxes are paid, I guess someone is keeping records.

We also toured the Van Gogh museum, well done with sections of his art devoted to different phases of his lifetime. There was also an exhibit of Max Beckman's paintings done during his exile from Germany in Amsterdam during World War II.

We toured the Anne Frank House, where Anne Frank wrote her famous diary while hiding from the Nazis with her family in a secret annex above her father's shop. It was heartrending to stand in the rooms where the family had hid, and to see their possessions, pictures, and the notes and diary Anne kept. She wanted to be a journalist and for her experience and account to mean something, so she was true to her passion and wrote and wrote and wrote a book that has been published all over the world and translated into over a hundred languages. She is one of the most important journalists of our time, with a message as important today as when she wrote it.

The museum also contained an evocative interactive exhibit called Free2choose, which polls museum goers on morality conundrums such as what is right when freedom of speech conflicts with freedom to worship or rights of privacy. The audience votes on each situation and is given a breakdown on how the group and all participants voted. This was especially topical given the recent assasination of Theo Van Gogh (Vincent's grand nephew) by Islamic extremists over a movie he made about abuses of Muslim women, and the death threats against the cartoonists and paper who published the cartoon depicting the Prophet Mohammed.

For more info about Anne Frank and the museum, see
http://www.annefrank.org/content.asp?pid=1&lid=1&setlanguage=2

Amsterdam Scenes

Cannibas or Candy Bra, Anyone?

Okay, Then Howzabout a Friendly Game of Chess?

Haarlem and Leiden, The Netherlands

2007-08-19T08:22:00.000-07:00

Haarlem in the Netherlands was a wonderful surprise, with everything good about Amsterdam, but it was much more laid back and even more friendly. In fact, the Dutch even have a word for people who are fun, warm, and cozy: gezellig.

Haarlem also shares the Netherland's relaxed laws and attitudes about sex and some drugs. Right off the train, you walk past adult toy and other sex shops, as well as shops selling cannabis and mushrooms in many forms. Not surprisingly, there is a high percentage of frat boyage and other aged groups of men traveling together in this country.

We visited the Dutch Masters at the Frans Hals museum, which used to be an old men's home, then an orphanage. We toured the windmill shown above, and saw from the inside out how a windmill works.

We daytripped into Leiden to see tulips, but it was the wrong season for full blooms of local fields. I did learn, though, that the Dutch went into tulipmania in the 1600s, when the tulip was introduced to Holland by a botanist who found them in Turkey. Tulips became all the rage and were sold for outrageous amounts, making fortunes for some traders. Today "tulipmania" refers to an economic bubble.

St. Bavo Church in Haarlem was one of the most interesting churches we've visited, containing a gorgeous organ that was once played by Amadeus Mozart. The reformed gothic-basilica church, dating back to the 1200's, also houses contemporary religious paintings and sculptures. The "floorboards" are actually the stone crypts of the town's former rich and famous. Story has it that there was some high odor in the church for some time, with all those folks laying head to toe and mano a mano. But they were all gezellig about it, the dust has settled, and that time has long past. Today it is an interesting mix of old and new, and a serene energy permeates the place.

St. Bavo Church

Organ Played by Mozart

Someone's Resting Place

Spanish Cannonball Still in Wall

Sculpture

Canal Life Totally Doesn't Suck

Our Nightly Quest -- Gelato

My Little Pony

Holland, Where the Appeltaart is Warm and the People are Gezellig

Current Schedule

2007-08-17T12:24:00.000-07:00

... or, as our friend Robb (Robb Kane, a nice man) says, we make plans and God laughs...

July 24 to now: England, Lubeck Germany, the Netherlands, Copenhagen, Munich and Fussen Germany.

Fussen, Rothenburg, and Wurtzburg Germany: 8/17-28
Paris, France: 8/28-9/1
Lausanne Switzerland: 9/1-3
Interlaken Switzerland 9/3-?
Italy
Greece
Spain 10/12-11/10ish

Merrie Olde England

2007-08-17T09:57:00.000-07:00

Leaving our family and friends in the US to move into Europe was made sweeter by meeting up with our loverly friends in England.

In London, Trina met us for coffee and din din at Bar Italia in Soho. The following day, we met to see the Monty Python musical Spamalot, which was indeed "funnier than the black death." Thinking she should dress for the event, Tough Trina wedged her arm into the door in the Tube and arrived smartly tattooed. (BTW, you can thank Trina for the technology behind the prophecy room scene at the end of the latest Harry Potter movie. How cool is that?!)

We were later joined by Emily and Mark. Emily took us to a couple of great pubs and a luscious (-ly naughty! :)) coffee house for yummy desserts. At one pub we met her friend who performed comic folk music that night, and is actually from San Francisco. He too was funnier than the black death. Fortuitously, Emily and Mark happened to sit below a love poem about "Em."

We went on to Northwich to visit our friend Richard, an old roller coaster buddy of Eric's. We went to see Richard's sister and her husband at their magical cottage in the English countryside, and his sister (after a workday of being a police sergeant over organized crime!) treated us to the most delicious ever homemade lemon shortbread and cream and fruit-filled cake. Traditionally, first-time guests are to blow the horn hanging on their ceiling. We're not sure why, but we did anyway.

Of course if Richard and Eric get together, there must be roller coasters. So we took another gorgeous drive through the countryside to Alton Towers, an amusement park built around the grounds of old castle.

Eric and Richard at Alton Towers

As we had more important people to see, we had to cancel on the Queen. But we did a drive-by on her house.

Obligatory Pics of Buckingham Palace and Implacable Guard

Tower Bridge

Rosetta Stone in British Museum

Pasties

Fish 'n Chips

Artist in Front of Northwich Cafe

Woman in Front of Parliament Building

Westminster Abbey

Olde and New London

Home Sweet Home, or, Two Weddings and a Funeral for a Friend

2007-07-17T05:14:00.001-07:00

(Note: More on Bali and our trip to northern Thailand, as well as pics from our trip home, will be posted later, maybe when I catch up with those pics again at home in November. This post takes up with us in Pai, in northern Thailand. Since then, we have been to England and I am writing this from Amsterdam the night before we leave for Lubeck, Germany.)

We planned to return home from northern Thailand for a two-week family visit on July 8. As it turned out, my old friend and former brother-in-law Gary passed away a couple weeks before, so we decided to return home early. (See also my Sad News post.) This was a terribly tough decision, as my heart was home with Gary and our extended family, as well as in Asia with Eric and our friends Holly and Jacob, where we were to finish our Asia adventure with more treks and ruins to visit in Sukhothai. I guess the biggest conundrum was whether my return at this time would really make a difference to anyone at home. In the end, whether they really needed me there or not, I needed to be there with our family. Of course Eric fully supported my decision and was ready to come home with me. In arranging travel that morning, the choices for the 20+ hours transit home were either to leave in two days (the day of the memorial) and arrive at the memorial late, jetlagged, and bedraggled, or to take a bus now from Pai to Chiang Mai and then fly to Bangkok, then on to San Francisco. So our leavetaking from Asia was abrupt. We had a quick lunch with Holly and Jacob, then stepped into a tuk-tuk, the driver sealing us in with a plastic sheet against the pelting rain, through which we waved good-bye to Holly and Jacob as we pulled around the corner, verklempt and in disbelief. How could we possibly be leaving Asia? All of the memories of the last seven amazing months bloomed inside me, to remain memories (and stories!) until I pass this way again.

I never regretted the decision to leave when we did. It felt very right to say good-bye to Gary in person, and especially to be close to his daughters and our family. I also reconnected with some old friends I hadn't seen in quite a while. And I was able to spend some special time with a few family members, talking with them and giving them Reiki, which seemed to help them create some peace.

At home, we went to the wedding of two of our friends, and got to see a number of friends we haven't seen since we left for Asia, in addition to Sheila, who was with us in Vietnam. The next morning, we met up with Holly T and Rob in San Francisco, with whom we were in Cambodia, Malaysia, and Bali. We also visited with Josh and Matt at Josh's cool new company in San Francisco.

We also visited with another friend who filled us in on her magical April wedding, which we were sad to have missed. And we joined my old work team for a retirement lunch for our friend June, and managed to see some other dear friends as well as missing some other dear friends.

And we got to see a lot of our family. We visited Eric's folks at their home in California's Gold Country, where we went creek walking and panned for gold. The one food I had been hankering for in Asia, peaches, were in abundance there, in all their juicy goodness, and we ate lots of them. In Mt. View, we visited with my dad, saw the Harry Potter movie twice (once with Todd and once with Hayley), and went on hikes at Deer Hollow and along the bluffs above the Pacific north of Santa Cruz. At home, I cradled the lovely cedar box that holds our kitty Spike, and felt very close to him. Timmy finally remembered who we are and came out from under the couch. Zoette deigned to have us pet her once or twice. My mom and stepdad, along with my brother Mark and wife Teresa, came to see us, and we celebrated everyone's 2007 birthday with one cake and many candles.

People keep asking if we have culture shock coming back, and I have to say no we didn't. What I did experience was kind of like coming back into the world after meditating for eight hours or so. The energy of all that is home was crisply defined. Situations that were blurry came into sharper focus. All that is sweet and loving felt all the more so. My relationships with family and friends became more clear and the love that is really there was all the more immediate. The air felt pristine, the sunlight soft, and the smell and energy of the redwoods, like our little house bordered by morning glories, felt like home.

Bali-licious

2007-06-22T21:14:00.000-07:00

One Being's Offering is Another's Lunch

We met an Australian tourist who said that the food in Ubud is terrible -- the portions are small and the noodles are ramen. After almost a cumulative month of amazing gastronomy in Ubud, we all looked at each other in disbelief. We have no idea where this guy was taking his meals.

Ubud is the heart of Balinese art, music, and food. Smooth, sweet, homemade white brem (unfiltered sake-like rice wine) served on ice with lime, bubur injin (black rice pudding with coconut cream), bubur ayam or soto ayam (chicken rice porridge or chicken noodle soup), crepes filled with palm sugar and fresh coconut, lamek, and babi guling (roast suckling pig) kept us all ecstatically satiated.

Many of the restaurants offer cooking classes. We took a class at Casa Luna, owned and operated by Janet de Neefe, an Australian immigrant who married a Balinese and is raising their four children Balinese style. The couple owns a guesthouse and two restaurants. Janet has also authored a couple of books. I read Fragrant Rice, her biography, which also includes recipes.

Morning Market

Our cooking class included a trip to the market. The slimy, gelatinous green drink below, high in antioxidants and not unlike primordial soup, is popular with locals, especially as a morning pick-me-up.

Mangosteens, Yum!

Palm Sugar Out of Coconut Shell Mold

In Which Eric Is the Only Volunteer to Peel Eels

Eric Woks It Up With Janet de Neefe

Balinese Cremation Ceremony

2007-06-18T22:21:00.000-07:00

Death in Bali involves one of the biggest and most important of Balinese rituals - cremation. This way the body/soul is returned to the four elements of earth, fire, air, and water, and the soul is free to move on to its next life.

Cremation ceremonies are quite expensive. The body may be buried until it can be cremated along with richer deceased, until relatives have saved up for cremation, or until an auspicious day. Sometimes this means weeks, sometimes years. But when it happens, it is an epic, joyful event.

When someone dies, the family lights lanterns around the house to notify the community. Then they prepare food as usual and offer it to the deceased, to keep up their connection with the deceased. The soul remains with the body for three days. The body is then buried if not to be cremated right away, or taken to the temple and prepared for cremation.

For cremation of the buried, the bones are exhumed and sprinkled with holy water. All of the bones may be wrapped up for cremation, or just some of them and a wood carving symbolic of the deceased's soul. The body is brought to the temple and prepared as above, then placed along with offerings into the procession tower. The processional moves from the temple to the cremation grounds, where the body and offerings are moved from the tower to large papier mache-type bulls that will carry the souls to heaven. The bulls are burned along with the procession tower. After the deceased's bones have cooled, the family takes the bones (which may be ground by a priest) in coconut shells to be thrown into the sea, the final step in releasing the soul to its next life.

The whole community is invited to the cremation, including tourists. The intention is the more the merrier in order to send the soul off to heaven and its new life. All attendees wear sarongs to show respect for the occasion.

Waiting for the Procession to Begin

Selling Sarongs to Tourists in Front of the Temple

Blessing Offerings

Placing Bodies Into the Procession Tower

Family Emerging From Temple

Carrying the Tower

Bulls Will Carry the Souls to Heaven

Processions Were A Lot Easier Before Electricity Came Along

More Procession Pics

Offerings and Bodies Placed in Bull

Soul on Its Way to Heaven

Quintessential Bali (May and June)

2007-06-18T02:11:00.001-07:00

Big Bali

Little Bali

Where do you begin to talk of Bali? With the epic mountains and volcanoes, the tinkling charm of the gamelan orchestra, the mesmerizing dances, the full canvas of foliage, the laughing children, the seaweed plots and rice terraces, the fragrant flowers popping with color, the succulent food, the ubiquitous, sensual art, the crystalline water and coral reefs, the air potent with chi?

What permeates all of this is spirituality. In their own unique blend of Hinduism, Buddhism, and animalism, the Balinese bring together the spiritual with the profane (or at least the practical) in every aspect of life. This is evident in the offerings they make and set out daily, everywhere, from homes to businesses to cars to boats to rice fields; one up high for the good spirits' protection and one set low to appease the bad spirits and maybe encourage them to be good. The offerings are almost always a small, handmade banana-leaf basket containing just rice or any combination of rice, flowers, incense, small foods such as nuts or small Ritz crackers, cigarettes, alcohol, and bottles of water. It is not unusual to accidentally trip over the offerings in doorways or on sidewalks, or for dogs or monkeys to sniff through them and eat the food. Not to worry! The energy of the offering is effective upon the intention and placement of the offering; what happens after that is of little consequence. The balance of good/bad yin/yang is also depicted in the black and white cloth Balinese wear and tie around sacred statues. Additionally, Balinese rituals can involve various forms of animal sacrifice, from baby chicks to water buffalo, and amulets, charms, and potions for everything from protection from volcanoes, to abundant harvests, to winning love.

Dark Bali

Light Bali

Happy Anniversary and Drinkies 7.5 (May)

2007-05-13T04:10:00.000-07:00

May 7 was the six-month anniversary of our travels. We can hardly believe it. India, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, Singapore, and Bali, and that's only the first half of this amazing year. Even more, we get to meet up and travel with friends old and new. We aren't sure what we did to deserve this, but we know we are truly blessed and are grateful.

With Holly K, Rob and Holly T, and our new friend Jacob along, how could we not call Drinkies 7.5?!

Drinkies 7.5 ~ Tropis Club, Kalibukbuk, Bali

Clockwise starting lower left: Holly T and Rob, Jacob, me, Holly K, and Eric

Todd says he thinks we are lying about the names of places we've been. He thinks we're actually calling from a pay phone across the street from our house in Mt. View: "Hi, how's it going, we're in er, um, Kalibukbuk . . . ."

Sad News and Requests

2007-05-05T20:38:00.000-07:00

While I was visiting home in April, my dear old friend Gary Gaines received a diagnosis of cancer located in various places in his body. Gary is the brother of my (still beloved) former husband Randy (hi Ran!). While we were in high school, Gary would drive us to dances (and dance like a madman). He drove us over the hill to Santa Cruz, many times, in his amazing sky blue convertible Thunderbird. Gary was also the husband of my best friend of 13 years, Kathy. We raised our kids together with a lot of life, love, and joy. (Kathy died of cancer in 1989, when our youngest kids were eight years old.) Gary is such a vibrant life force that it seems against nature for him to be so ill.

Gary is getting care in Fresno, CA. His grown children and other family members are caring for him too.

Please take a moment to send Gary and his family your prayers, affirmations, and healing energy for health, strength, and peace.

If you too are an old friend of Gary's and would like to track his progress, send me email and I'll forward you the blog his daughter is keeping.

My heart is heavy. I think of Gary and family every day, and send them prayers and healing.

Additionally, I recently heard from Todd telling me he had to make the heartrending decision and have our cat Spike put to sleep. Spike passed away in Todd's arms. Please raise a glass to Spike (milk being his favorite bev), help us give him a great send-off to his next life, and send Todd your prayers of love and support.

Spike and My Dad

It seems almost odd for me to be in paradise (Bali at the moment) while all of this is happening. Past experience also tells me, though, that living our best lives, in love, awareness, and vibrancy, is the best we can do.

Current Schedule

2007-04-14T20:10:00.000-07:00

4/15: Fly from Singapore to Bali
4/15-5/11: Bali!
4/15-5/3ish: Ubud
5/3ish: on to Lovina, Sanur
5/11-5/15: Visa run in Singapore
5/15: Return to Bali. Wouldn't you?!!!!
6/12: Singapore, then on to Malaysia, northern Thailand, maybe Laos

Sapa and Trek Back to Hanoi (March)

2007-03-21T22:08:00.000-07:00

Sapa is a hill town located in northwestern Vietnam, and it is all about the amazing hill tribes, their villages, and terraced rice paddy landscape. To visit the tribal villages, you must have a licensed tour guide with you. We hiked through the hill towns and then left on a five-day, 4WD trek, through more hills and villages, with one home stay, back to Hanoi.

The women below are from the Black Zhao hill tribe, where blackened teeth are considered beautiful.

One of our hiking guides, April (not her real name), age 19, is from one of the hill tribes. She told us a bit about her family and arranged marriages in Vietnam. Her sister, at age 14, was betrothed by her parents to a man she didn't know. She committed suicide "by eating poison leaf." When April turned 14, her parents yet again arranged a marriage for her with a man she didn't know. She told her parents she was too young to marry, she didn't know the man, and she wanted to go to university to study music. Her parents declared that if she didn't go through with the marriage, she would no longer be their daughter. So she passed on the marriage, finished school, studied music, and now works as a tour guide. While she gets settled, she is living with her other married sister's family. Her parents passed away while April was in school. I told April that I thought she was very smart and courageous, and that it takes women standing up and saying no for sexist practices to change and women to control their own lives. When I told her about bride burnings in India, where brides are not only often betrothed, but must provide an ample dowry or the groom's family might douse her in gasoline and light her on fire, April was surprised to find that arranged marriage and other such practices occur in other countries as well. (Bride burnings are currently illegal in India but they still happen. One such incidence was reported in the newspaper while we were there.)

Women have come a long way in Vietnam (and most of Asia), but sexism and misogyny are still alive. When I mentioned to one 20-something man that women own most businesses in Vietnam, he agreed, but said that was because shop-owning is often considered too "simple" a vocation for men. When we arranged our 5-day trek with the tour agency owner, who had assigned April to us earlier in the week, he assured us that our new guide was "very good-- a man--not just a girl." Gar. We assured him that April had done a fabulous, knowledgeable job, and we would ask for her again.

So we had one paid tour date with April. Then she invited us for a hike the next day, her day off, "just for fun"! We hiked on and off trail, up and down rice paddies and through villages. At some more vertical points I felt like handicapped Clara trying to keep up with mountain goat Heidi on Grandfather's mountain. (But I was vindicated during my visit home, when I hiked sweat- and huffing/puffing-free through previously challenging trails.)

Here's a picture of the kitchen area in one of the village homes.

On our trek back to Hanoi, we visited villages Lao Cai, Lai Chau, Son La, and Dien Bien Phu, site of the 1954 57-day siege between the French and Vietnamese that ended French occupation in Vietnam and paved the way for Vietnam's division into North and South. The Vietnamese, with paltry arms compared to the French, won Dien Bien Phu, with the French general committing suicide. Subsequently, before the American/Vietnamese war, the French warned the Americans that interfering in Vietnam would be ill advised. [cough]

French Bunker and Trenches in Dien Bien Phu

French Prison Hoa La

La Toilette: Where Prisoners Wrote Their Manifestos and Escape Plans

Eric and Our Guide Manh on French Tank

Vietnamese Artillery ~ They had no tanks

Vietnamese Hero Who Through Himself In Front of a Cannon Blast
to Save the Rest of His Company

Execution Wall

Vietnamese Hero's Grave ~ or, War, What is It Good For

Traditional Vietnamese Thai Village Family House

Duong (left of me) started talking to us as we walked through one of the villages.

We Are Family

Duong invited us into her home for tea, where we met the rest of her family. Duong has had a couple years of English and showed us her textbooks. As we have found for ourselves with foreign languages, Duong could understand some of what we said but hesitated in speaking herself. Manh, our guide, was our interpreter. As we were leaving, Duong's mother invited us for lunch too.

Inside Duong's Home

Duong's home was much like the home where we spent the night on our homestay. The family lives on the second floor, with rooms divided by sheets strung between the walls and support columns. Often, livestock live on the ground floor.

More pics from Sapa hikes ~

Scorpions and snakes in liquor are popular drinks, especially to sell to tourists. When Eric had a glass of wine that had been stewing in goat testicles, I made him brush his teeth before coming near me.

Mah-jong, anyone?

Sapa, Vietnam (Early to mid March)

2007-03-16T00:04:00.000-07:00

Sapa is a hill town located in northwestern Vietnam, and it is all about the amazing hill tribes, their villages, and terraced landscape. To visit the tribal villages, you must have a licensed tour guide with you. We've gone on two day tours and tomorrow we leave for a five-day, 4WD trek, through more hills and villages, with two home stays, back to Hanoi.

I'm getting a bit journaled out--will continue sometime soon.

I have some pics in a disposable camera, destined for CD then uploading later if they turn out. Meanwhile, here's Sapa:
http://www.terragalleria.com/vietnam/vietnam.sapa.all.html

Sad, Sad Camera Karma (Early March, 2007)

2007-03-13T01:36:00.000-07:00

Well, I left our little HP PhotoSmart camera in my purse at a restaurant (I use the term loosely) near the Cao Lai bus terminal. So I'm back to a disposable film camera until I reach Hanoi or Singapore. Also in said purse was my USB hub (my Valentine's prizie from Eric), so I have to postpone posting pics I do have left on the one SDRAM I still have. Gar.

Hue and the Demilitarized Zone, Vietnam (February)

2007-03-08T23:43:00.000-08:00

Up the coast we went by bus, from Hoi An to Hue. Hue was once the imperial capital of Vietnam and suffered huge losses in the form of mass executions and property damage during the Tet Offensive, the Massacre at Hue, and other Vietnam/American war events. Like the Killing Fields in Cambodia, mass graves were evidence of genocidal atrocities that brought the realities of the war into closer focus worldwide. Today Hue is a pretty town with lots of shade and the remaining citadel (ancient city). We also visited the Ho Chi Minh museum and took a day trip to the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ).

The Citadel

The intersection below is typical of Vietnam traffic. Once in a while there is a traffic light, but not so often, and you can't count on vehicles stopping, traffic light or not. The strategy for crossing the street is to walk slowly across until you get to the other side. If traffic is lighter or going in pulses, you can try to move across without being mere feet away from looming large metal objects. In general, though, you just walk. Speeding up or stopping because something is coming right at you is often ill advised. Instead, it's kind of a zen thing. You just step off the curb and walk, and the traffic parts around you. It's actually not quite as scary as I had thought; kinda like getting on a plane and knowing your fate is out of your hands. You can sweat it or just go with it. After crossing, you step up on the curb and there's this feeling of accomplishment derived from making it through once again, with your whole life ahead of you!

Billboards

Auspicious Little Piggies (during the Year of the Golden Pig)

Saint Frances Xavier Church

Something for Kids of All Sizes, or, Guess Who Took This Picture

The Ho Chi Minh Museum in Hue

Ho Chi Minh was the leader of the communist revolution in Vietnam, and became Vietnam's Prime Minister and then President. Especially in the north, "Uncle Ho" is revered as the People's revolutionary. Southern Vietnamese still refer to Ho Chi Minh City (as it was named after Saigon fell) as Saigon and say it is only Ho Chi Minh City to the government, the north, and on maps. Many towns in Vietnam have Ho Chi Minh museums. Like southern Vietnamese and other Asian Buddhist businesses with their altars to Buddha, many businesses in northern Vietnam display portraits of Uncle Ho along with their ancestors. Like Abe Lincoln in the USA, stories abound about the integrity of Ho Chi Minh, who spoke much about the morality of the revolutionary and being a good example. Uncle Ho refused to live in the palace in Hanoi, preferring a simple wooden house on stilts on the same property as the palace. He saved the palace for entertaining dignitaries from other countries. When his followers surprised him with air conditioning in his modest home, he said that it would be wrong for him to live above the common man and had it removed. (We visited that home in Hanoi.)

It's interesting to hear history from the point of the "other side's" view. In northern Vietnam, the war museums refer to the US as "American imperialists" or "American dictatorship"; pictures of US soldiers are often those of the Americans "panicking" on the battlefield, surrendering, or being taken prisoners of war.

Uncle Ho Chi Minh

Leaders of the World Proletarian Class

Unifying Congress to Establish the Communist Party, 1930

Uncle Ho's Clothing

Hue Buddhist Monks and Students on Hunger Strike "Against America and Diem (the leader in the south)"

We took a day trip out to the demilitarized zone, which didn't stay demilitarized for long. We went to the Ben Hai River, which was the physical boundary between the communist north and pro-western south, and part of the Ho Chi Minh Trail. We also went to a war museum at former US base camp and battleground Khe Sanh, as well as walking through one set of the tunnels and trenches where North Vietnamese civilians hid for years. I lost my camera containing pics of this. This site has a lot of the pics I took and more: http://www.globalgayz.com/VietNamDMZincludingKheSanh/

Ha Long Bay and Cat Ba Island, Vietnam (Late February to early March 2007)

2007-03-08T23:41:00.000-08:00

My dad often comments how, for Eric and me on this trip, every day is unique; we are always doing something new. This is true. One morning you can be finessing the fine art of the squat toilet on a grimy, jolting, clanky train; that afternoon in your favorite Bangkok salon, three angelic Thai aunties literally wait on you hand and foot (and hair), massaging your shoulders to boot. One day you are exploring ancient ruins; another your partner is digging a tick out of your side. One morning you awaken on ship, amidst the mist and islands of an amazing bay; that afternoon you wonder if the gent hosting tea is former Viet Cong. . . .

[Queue Gilligan's Island theme]

Along with nine other intrepid adventurers, we set sail aboard the junk Santa Maria for a three-day tour (a three-day-ay tour...). Along the way, on foot and in kayaks, we explored some amazing caves and a village complete with school floating in the bay beneath monolithic karsts. On the second day, as we were on a longer tour than others, Eric and I transferred boats and were taken to a small, empty cove, where, just for us, the crew set up a beautiful wooden table and chairs, linens, lovely crockery, and a delicious multi-course Vietnamese meal. That afternoon, we pulled up close and waded ashore to the northwestern side of Cat Ba Island. This part of the island is shaped like a crown, with high walls all around a central valley, all of it dense forest. So from the water, the guide, Eric, and I stepped up to a vertical trail of wet rocks and mud, held on where we could to vines, trees, and boulders, climbed, and climbed, and climbed, then descended into the valley. Along the valley path, dogs barked as we approached a small farm. The farm wife ran out to greet us, mostly in enthusiastic Vietnamese, and we were led to a small open shack containing a long table and chairs, and a platform containing a bed mattress. Across the path sat the other building of the home: a small shack containing pots, pans, a counter, food, and a washbasin. Between the shacks was a fire pit. The farm wife spread grains of corn and chickens and chicks came running. We sat at the table, across from the wife and her husband, who served us green tea from a large, ancient thermos. As we chatted he graciously kept refilling our cups. The couple was in their seventies (he told us he was 73). His right eye was permanently closed shut, and he wore an old, green, hand-sewn Army-type shirt that said "Viet (Thung? Hung? I can't remember now. Might have been his name, actually...)" The couple has lived on this farm for thirty years. While we were there, they had a visitor, who had walked through the jungle the eight kilometers from the nearest village. Walking to that village is also how the couple shops for what they need and visits others on the island.

After our tour, we had the boat let us off on the other side of Cat Ba Island, where there is a small town and a few hotels and beaches. We had one morning on the beach and then the weather got cold, so we had some time for walks, reading, and recuperating from our earlier jungle trek.

(Note: My pictures have taken a detour; see this site for pics of Ha Long Bay, junks, caves, and the floating village)

http://www.terragalleria.com/vietnam/vietnam.halong.html

Drinkies! New Years! ~ Hoi An, Vietnam (Early through mid February)

2007-02-16T03:51:00.000-08:00

We settled into Hoi An, Vietnam for Drinkies and Tet (Vietnamese Lunar New Year).

An ancient, international shipping port, quaint and picturesque to boot, Hoi An is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The architecture and food here are a fusion of Vietnamese, Chinese, Japanese, and French. Hoi An cuisine claims a few hometown specialties: cau lau (rice noodles, broth, meat or tofu, lettuce, and mint), and white rose (rice noodle rounds with different savory stuffings and chili dipping sauces). The noodles for the cau lau are said to be made by only one family in Hoi An, with the water for them coming from one special well.

White Rose

Cau Lau

Drinkies!

Friends old and new, from left to right: Sheila, Heather, Delice, Bob, Diane, Steve, Eric, and Rene

Drinkies was held in the Sa Long Lounge Bar in Hoi An. We enjoyed some lovely drinkies, then moved on to a restaurant by the canal for din din and bia hoi. Bia hoi is fresh beer, yummy in a Pilsner sort of way, and must be drunk within 24 hours of creation. Sheila can sniff out bia hoi from a kilometer away!

Eric Likes Bia Hoi Too

Ask anyone in Hoi An about Tet (February 18 this year) and you get a huge grin and enthusiastic talk of the festival and time with family. Preparations start a week ahead of time, with shops starting to close, housecleaning, shopping, and cooking, and kumquat trees delivered to homes and businesses on the backs of motorcycles or en masse on trucks.

Kumquat Tree at Tam Tam Restaurant

On New Years and up to a week after, it is considered unlucky to clean house or sew, among other things, such as having an unmarried, middle-aged woman come to your house. Imagine the tailor's horror when I walked up and asked her to size down a bunch of my clothing. She said to wait about ten days. I'm still walking around in oversized clothes! (Yay! actually; Eric and I are doing well on our Southeast Asia diet; still have more to go but we're not quite the Pooh Bears who waddled out our front gate in November.)

The Year of the Golden Pig

The festival reminded me of small-town festivals I'd been to in the past, with a stage featuring local entertainment in drama, traditional singing and dancing, and some pop music. At a game arcade along the canal, you could win prizies for performing various feats. At one stall, a boy of nine years or so succeeded in throwing a plastic basket over a bottle of vodka and happily ran off with his high-proof prizie. At another stall, revelers threw balls to knock down stacks of condensed milk cans. And then there was. . .

...The Dart Board Challenge...

...In Which Sheila Leary Witholds Juicy Strawberry-Creme Cookies From Hungry Vietnamese Children

In a cruel twist of cookie karma, Sheila would later discover there was in fact no juicy strawberry creme filling whatsoever between the biscuits.

The fireworks over the canal and river were magnificent. After that, Eric and I toddled home. On the way we passed a pagoda where Buddhist monks were performing a ceremony. We didn't really understand it but it was cool.

Lanterns at the Pagoda Ceremony

We went with Bob and Sheila to My Son, another UNESCO World Heritage Site and the most important example of Champa civilization ruins in Vietnam. It was interesting, but a good deal of it had been blown away during the Vietnam War. (President Nixon was requested to stop bombing ancient ruins; he complied with orders to leave the ruins alone but hit the targets, duh.)

Field Trip! or, You Kids Keep it Down, Don't Make Me Come Back There...

Champa Ruins at My Son

We were in Hoi An for over two weeks, because it's a cool place and to avoid pre- and post-Tet traffic mania. The fabulous food, people, art, and ambiance made it easy to make Hoi An home. We were really sad to leave.

Here are some photos from various events and handicraft shops in Hoi An.

Sculptures at Chinese Assembly Halls

Dance Performances

Handicrafts

Because Eric Thinks It's Funny

Too Cute Not to Post

Saigon, Vietnam (Early February)

2007-02-16T03:23:00.000-08:00

We entered Saigon by bus from Phnom Penh. With me still ill from Cambodia, we didn't see much of Saigon other than the alley across from the hotel when I was able to go down for meals. That alley was really something, though. It was about 30 feet across, lined on both sides with motorcycles parked nose in, cafe tables, and all kinds of vendors pushing carts or carrying poles with baskets filled high with produce. Between all of this ran motorcycles, cyclos, booksellers old and young carrying plastic-wrapped stacks about as tall as they were, monks, and Vietnam vets~alone, with their Vietnamese wives, or with young Vietnamese women. My favorite character from that street was a female Buddhist monk who looked to be somewhere between 55 and 80, short, bald, saffron-robed, snaggle-toothed, beaming blissfully about her as she held her metal alms bowl in front of her, and gracefully walking kirtan (slow walking meditation) barefoot on the hot black asphalt.

Eric had his adventures in Saigon too. When he would go down to eat or bring me something, he was offered different services based on what he wore. T-shirt, grass. Collared shirt, "massage."

We had originally planned to take the 18-hour train to Danang Vietnam, then taxi to Hoi An, but switched to a two-hour Danang flight so I'd be more comfortable (sick, delicate flower that I was). We awoke at 3 a.m. and were down in the lobby by 4:15. Much of Saigon was already awake or hadn't slept, with kids playing soccer in the busy street and the cafe table across the alley full of young women and Vietnam vets discussing politics old and new, with drunken fervor.

On to Hoi An!

Phnom Penh and the Killing Fields, Cambodia (late January 2007)

2007-02-04T22:10:00.000-08:00

The Fertile Mekong Delta

We traveled the six-hour journey from Siem Reap to Phnom Penh by bus, taking rest stops along the way for food from stall shops and lovely squat toilet-age. At one rest stop, a woman was selling fried spiders. Try some! ~

It's never easy for me to say no to beggars and it's harder still, in Cambodia, having some idea about why they often have no education or limbs missing. (Add national guilt knowing it all started with US bombing along their eastern border towns....) The general wisdom with beggars is not to encourage begging by giving them money; finding a reliable non-profit is advised. Also, especially with children, they often have to hand money over to someone else. So it's better to give food. But the dilemma there is you give to one and the rest come running. And then sometimes you just have to do it anyway. That day, at one rest stop, after I had said no, sorry, to a number of people, a bedraggled woman carrying a dirty, naked baby, and with two other moppets in tow, approached me and Eric with her hand out. Initially we said no, but she didn't walk away. She and the moppets stood close together with us, as a group, and I had the sensation/remembrance that this was my family. What I do mostly with my family is feed them. I couldn't not do this. So I went to a nearby stall and purchased two peeled pineapples and four hard-boiled eggs (using up my remaining riel; the merchant wouldn't take USD), and handed them to the mother. She looked deep into my eyes, thanking me profusely, and we bowed back and forth. As I walked away, a man on crutches, missing one leg, smiled big and motioned in appreciation for what I'd done for the previous family, and then pointed gently toward his young son. I was out of riels, the bus was getting ready to leave, and I again had to say no, sorry. My heart broke. When we left, I saw the woman sharing what she had with the man and his son.

Our entry into Phnom Penh was made delightful by meeting friends for dinner at the venerable Foreign Correspondents' Club. Eric's work buddy, Rob, and his fiance Holly, are living in Phnom Penh for a few months. As with us, they are taking time away from work; their approach is to pick a few places and live there for some months. Holly is even volunteering for a non-profit--cool way to get involved and understand the life there.

Phnom Penh From the Foreign Correspondents' Club Terrace

Phnom Penh is Cambodia's capital. Along with Saigon, it was a US headquarters during the American/Cambodian/Vietnamese wars. As other cities and villages were being demolished, Phnom Penh became a (pathetically ill-equipped) refugee center. Shortly after the US pulled out of Phnom Penh, the Khmer Rouge overtook the city, eventually evacuating all of its inhabitants to be tortured, executed, or work in the fields. Because of this, Phnom Penh was virtually empty for a number of years. (I am currently reading Sideshow: Nixon, Kissinger, and the Destruction of Cambodia by William Shawcross. It is well documented and offers good historical and background information into these events. Some of the inane quotes from our (US) leaders during that time and other events sound similar to that of some of our current leaders, or like they were written for Saturday Night Live. And some of the parallels with the war in Iraq, such as Nixon's cowboy stance after watching Patton three times, and his determination to make a big last-ditch troop surge to save face and show that a third-world country can't beat the US, is tragically ironic.) More horrible still, Phnom Penh is the site of the Killing Fields and Toul Sleng Museum (Security Prison, S-21), the largest torture and extermination camps during the Khmer Rouge regime.

Victims were first interrogated and tortured at S-21, then brought by truck to the Killing Fields. Words can't convey my experience when we went to the Killing Fields and S-21, but I'll try. We traveled first by tuk tuk 15 dust-filled kilometers out of the city into pretty farmland of rice paddies, pastures, longan and palm trees, to the Killing Fields. The first stop is the Charnel House, a monument to those who died there. It is a tall, glass building, filled to the top with shelves containing torture implements, the skulls of beheaded victims, and their clothing. Visitors are asked to offer a stick of incense and a prayer for the victims and their families before entering. Eric and I did so. I also sent Reiki to them, for peace. While Reiki practice always feels worthwhile, in this case I felt like I was lighting a match against a glacier.

The Charnal House

The fields contained a bunch of holes where hundreds of people where thrown after they were killed.

The Killing Fields

People were sometimes shot; they were also bludgeoned to death with bamboo poles, sharpened sticks and walking canes, hoes, whatever, to save bullets. Once in the pit, they were covered with DDT to quell the stench and hasten death if it hadn't occurred already. There was also the Magic Tree, where a loudspeaker hung to play music to cover the victims' screams, as well as the Happy Tree, against which infants and small children were thrashed until they died. Children were also sometimes torn apart limb from limb. All around the fields, snatches of old clothing still lay. My hands burned from the energy of the area, which was horribly oppressive and depressing.

S-21 was originally a high school, where the classrooms were partitioned with brick or wooden walls to form cells where prisoners lay chained. The irony of this place is in its initially apparent normalcy; from outside it looks like any high school, white, with a few wings, three stories each, flowering trees, grass, and benches. The interior is painted a cheery mustard yellow, with mustard yellow and white checkered floors. That is where the cheer ends. The rooms that don't contain cells are filled with rows and rows of pictures of the thousands of Cambodians from infancy through adulthood who were imprisoned and tortured here before being sent to the Killing Fields. (Out of ~9000 victims, only 7 from S-21 survived.) Rooms without cells displayed victim and Khmer Rouge portraits and actual torture devices.

S-21 Torture Camp and Genocide Museum

Prisoner Cells

The horrible, sickly, cloying feeling that had been swirling around me felt like it was seeping into by bones when I stepped into one of the smaller cells. I imagined myself and my family going through what these people went through. I also felt strange feeling so bad, like I had no right, since it wasn't us. I was just bumbling my way through someone else's history. Still, it felt like their was no air and I could only remain in there a few moments, then all energy left me, and I started feeling very fatigued. I felt worse and worse the rest of the day, then got feverish and body aches. This all turned into an intestinal flu within a day and I was down for a few more. For days after, I kept imagining people I saw on buses and in the streets being imprisoned like this, or carrying out this horrid mandate.

Victims

This picture held extra poignancy for me as the teenagers in these photos and the high school girls are about the same age, as was I around the time this happened. I remember hearing about the news about Vietnam and being sad and angry, but the extent of my involvement had only been to wear a Vietnam vet's MIA bracelet until he was found two years later. I really had no clue.

This woman holds her baby as their picture is taken. Standing close to the actual picture, you can see tears welling up in the mother's eyes. Prisoners were not allowed to cry, on pain of being beaten or electrocuted.

The last room I visited held current and earlier pictures and statements from some Khmer Rouge who worked at S-21. Their current pictures showed them happy and smiling, with family, working their farms or in their shops, or fishing. Some statements sounded sad but not terribly regretful for what they did. They made claims such as that the Khmer Rouge was better than the existing government, that once they joined they could not leave or they and their families would be killed, and that the people who should be punished are the leaders, not the soldiers who carried out the orders.

Seeing this was the nightmare you want to end, to make it have not happened to these people, to awaken by just opening your eyes wide, only you do and see that it isn't a nightmare, and nothing can change what happened.

To carry out such sickness, and as a society we seem to never learn, one has to create an Other and then dehumanize him or her. We do that on so many levels, carrying out violence large and small over territory, politics, business, and our relationships with ourselves, and those around us. We use war symbology in business and play that makes the extension of such seem less evil. For example, I was once in a meeting where a PowerPoint presentation was being presented to the group before being put on the intranet for internal salespeople's use. The presentation featured a video of real bomber planes letting loose their payload, complete with sound as the bombs hit. This was what we wanted to do to our competition. The presenter thought it was so cool he replayed the video. I did what I often do when affronted by the ludicrous--I laughed maniacally, then objected and was made fun of by a couple of the men in the room. Later, to see if it was just me or if that was really dysfunctional, I ran it by a few other people, including two who I knew had grown up with bombings during their childhoods in Lebanon. They all thought it was sick and were thoroughly disgusted.

There is a poster in the Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City), Vietnam airport, a woman under a white parasol by a palm-lined stream, that says "Look at us now."

What can we do now? Violence is anything that diminishes oneself, another being, or the environment. Our little acts of violence, the ones we call No Big Deal, can breed the insensitivity that causes other acts of violence, large and small. Going through S-21 and the Killing Fields was a reminder that the Other is also me and those I hold dearest, and to be mindful when my actions or words could cause or contribute to unnecessary harm. Few people can be perfect at this, but if everyone made it their practice, I think it would be a better world.

All beings tremble before violence.
All fear death.
All love life.

See yourself in others.
Then whom can you hurt?
What harm can you do?

... Do not make light of your failings,
Saying, "What are they to me?"
A jug fills drop by drop.
So the fool becomes brimful of folly.

Do not belittle your virtues,
Saying, "They are nothing."
A jug fills drop by drop.
So the wise man becomes brimful of virtue.

~ Buddha, as translated by Thomas Byrom in The Dhammapada: Sayings of the Buddha

"You must be the change you wish to see in the world."

~ Mahatma Gandhi

Siem Reap and the Ruins of Angkor, Cambodia (Sometime January 2007)

2007-02-04T20:26:00.000-08:00

The border crossing from Aranya Prathet, Thailand into Poipet, Cambodia, and then on to your hotel in Siem Reap, is a hoot. From the moment you leave your taxi in Aranya Prathet, you are swarmed with people wanting to help you with your luggage, find the border (duh), or answer any question, for $. You extricate yourself from that, find the visa processing line, get your documentation and $20 US in order, and a man standing right in front of the front of the line, working along with the actual official behind the desk, staples your documentation and asks you for $5 more for "special processing." (Apparently this is an improvement, since tourists in times past have been conned out of greater sums. In any case, Eric was very firm about saying that the fee is $20 and handing the official just $20 for each of us.) You cross the border and are loaded onto a government truck that takes you directly to the bus/taxi station. (This is a nice service, because you bypass the rest of your walk through Poipet, truly one of those armpit border towns, and according to Lonely Planet, full of thugs and not to be confused with the rest of lovely Cambodia.) We organized one of the taxis to drive us the six hours over dusty, pocked (by meteors, I think) roads into Siem Reap, and reminded the driver that we want to go to Shadow of Angkor guesthouse. No problem. Except that he pulls into a different hotel, at which three people come running out, start pulling luggage out of the car, welcoming us, telling us that the driver didn't know where Shadow of Angkor (which has been operating for decades) was, and wouldn't we like to look at their fine hotel? To which Eric said certainly not, pulled out the trusty Lonely Planet map, and we hoofed it to Shadow of Angkor. (This is one of the ruses used to get commissions from hotels. Another, called the "scam bus," is where on the Thailand side a guesthouse arranges travel for a busload of people crossing into Cambodia to Siem Reap. The bus drives really slow, gets there in the middle of the night, and drops its hapless passengers at the Thai guesthouse's partner-in-crime guesthouse in Siem Reap.)

Our favorite food in Cambodia is Amok. Amok is like a cross between pork, chicken, beef, or fish curry and stroganoff. Creamy, spicy yum!

Siem Reap reminded me a bit of Alleppy in India, with a canal running through the center of the town, which bustles with tourists, tuk tuks, guesthouses, shops, and restaurants. (BTW, if you have to have been colonized or a protectorate, make it be by the French. Cambodia and Vietnam have fabulous coffee, baguettes, croissants, and other pastries, as well as French-influenced architecture.) It's a nice place to hang out and it's the springboard for one's venture into the ancient town of Angkor.

(Real-time broadcast interruption alert: I'm writing this from an internet cafe in Hoi An, Vietnam. The ten-year old Vietnamese boy sitting beside me just lit up a cigarette. His inhalations and exhalations are weak, sending wafts of smoke over my way, and he flicks his ashes on the floor. I hand him an ashtray and show him, mostly through sign language, how to blow his smoke up at the ceiling. What else are you going to do?)

Sadly, but as one might suppose, there are still a lot of landmine victims in Cambodia. The disabled but talented troupe of musicians below play traditional music using traditional instruments along the road in Angkor. I bought a CD of their music.

We took about four days going through the ruins of Angkor. On our last day, our tuk tuk driver was a man named Chea Chengg. Mr. Chea was a farmer who had to hide in a pagoda and eventually joined a monastery during the war. Because he was fluent in French, the government decided he was an intellectual, only in the monastery to hide from them. That's all we got of this story! Shortly after that the tuk tuk blew a sparkplug, Mr. Chea called his son for help, his son arrived on motorbike with his little son in tow, they fixed the tuk tuk, and we got back underway. Mr. Chea is also a poet and a songwriter; some poems he showed us are about his love of his country. As Eric and I walked along a path back to the road, Mr. Chea stood under one of the ancient city gates, operatically belting out one of his songs in Khmer. That's how I'll remember him, along with his beautiful, one-toothed grin.

Here's a picture of Mr. Chea with the gas station attendant. There are some Western-type stations in Southeast Asia, but more typically you find a tiny stand on the sidewalk, holding litre bottles refilled with gasoline. Our litre of the day came from a Johnny Walker bottle.

I looked up Chea Chengg on Google and found that he and some of his stories were incorporated in a book called Vanna’s Dance, written by Maria Almudeva– van Santen . It's a children's book about a little girl named Vanna, who lost a leg in a landmine explosion, and the wisdom she gets from her godfather Chea Chengg's stories. Proceeds from the book go to Adopt-A-Minefield (http://www.landmines.org/). For more info or if you want to buy the book, see http://www.unspecial.org/UNS655/t55.html

"Excerpt
Vanna was sitting on the front step of her house. She was happy. The sun was shining over Cambodia and Chea Chheng, her very good friend was coming to see her. The older man was a wonderful storyteller. When Vanna saw him coming she jumped up, her two shiny black ponytails bouncing as she did so. «Chea Chheng!» she called excitedly. «You are here!» Chea Chheng’s face broke into a big smile. He patted her head, playfully pulling on one of her ponytails. «Your face is like the sun. It matches your pretty yellow blouse,» Chea Chheng said affectionately to the eight-year old girl.«Tell me a story,» Vanna begged.«Don’t tell me you are not tired of my stories yet,» he teased her laughing, his eyes dancing with the happiness he saw on her face.«Oh! Never!» exclaimed Vanna.«Then come sit with me,» Chea Chheng said. They sat down together on the front step. Chea Chheng began his story.The Banyan tree has heart-shaped leaves. Many roots grow down from its branches. If a root is cut, another will grow and dig into the ground. It may be a different root, but it will be just as strong. You cannot destroy the soul of something so determined to live. The Banyan tree, like a person is made of many parts that give a strong foundation. Its heart-shaped leaves look alike but each is different, like the many emotions inside a person’s heart. There was a little boy who wanted to cut down a big Banyan tree growing near his house. He knew it was very strong. He wanted to show that he was stronger. «I will destroy that tree,» the little boy said. «Then I will be the stronger one!»Every day he cut down a root. And every day a new one began growing in its place. Finally, he realized the tree was too strong to destroy, just like a person’s soul.The little boy learned from the tree to be stronger. When one part of him felt weak, he used other parts to stay strong. This is what people must do. Part of you may feel weak sometimes, but other parts will not. You must then look to these other parts. They will help you to stay strong. Just like the Banyan tree.Vanna listened attentively to Chea Chheng’s voice. It was wonderful to enter the world of his stories. They were stories of her people and of their land. To the little girl, they were full of a special magic."

Ayutthaya, Thailand (Mid January 2007)

2007-02-04T20:11:00.000-08:00

Ayutthaya is the Place We Saw the Yellow Dog

(Eric's Favorite Ayutthaya Picture)

In Ayutthaya, we met up with Herve, a friend of a friend who was doing our tour in reverse: Vietnam > Cambodia > Laos > Thailand.

Herve and Friend

We spent a few days exploring the ruins. One day, we went to the elephant stalls, fed elephants, and watch the mahuts bathe their charges.

This little guy kept rolling the cane stalk around on the ground, trying to roll it up in his trunk like the grownups. He finally succeeded.

Ruins and Statues in Ayutthaya

Restaurant Owner's Son ~ I showed him his picture in the viewfinder and he smiled big, looked meaningfully into my eyes, and bowed deeply.

And if that's not enough Ayutthaya for you, you can see more pics from our visit two years ago, at

http://eegah.org/thailand_2005/index.html

To the bat cave, Robin! (1/2007, Khao Yai National Park, near Pak Chang, Thailand)

2007-01-16T23:14:00.000-08:00

Around Pak Chang, we took a couple of day tours into Khao Yai National Park, then to a Buddhist meditation cave and a bat cave. The whole area reminded me a bit of home in autumn, with golden dry-grass hills and green deciduous trees. The days were hot and the sky clear blue.
As much as we prefer hiking on our own, it was a good thing we took the park tour (~7 people), as the trails were sometimes amorphous and not always well marked, and there were lotsa wild animals to find and find us. One such animal was a wild dog, who came careening down the hillside about twenty feet from me and another hiker, stopped and barked at us, then went tearing down the hill past the rest of the group. We also spotted gibbons, deer, and exotic birds such as the Great Hornbill (the fellow below), who is on the endangered species list.

We hunted for but did not find a king cobra (much to the relief of one of the tourists). Although it wasn't leech season, the tour guide gave us leech socks ~ canvas-type socks that tie just under the knee. I was happy to have this on as I stepped into a "dry" creek bed and my left foot, ankle, and half of my shin sunk into the muck, and stuck there as I tried to pull myself out. There was a tree root or something just over my foot and I couldn't pull out without leaving my shoe. So I finally did that, and thinking "Í don't believe in spooks, I don't believe in spooks" and chanting "there are no leeches, there are no leeches," I stuck my hand up to my forearm into the feral goo and finally drew out my shoe with a big sucking sound. No leeches to be found, but Eric did pull a tick out of his ear and something tick/flea-ish out of mine later on.

At the end of the hike, we were rewarded with a stop at a rushing waterfall (famous for its part in the movie The Beach). As we clambered along the top, I thought of the top of Vernal Falls in Yosemite. In Thailand, though, there are few guard rails and warning signs. You can get as close to/over the edge of any precipice you want.

The next day, we toured a Buddhist-Hindu meditation cave, exploring shrines, stalactites, and stalagmites, and finding bats, huge spiders, and a green viper snake.

The stalagmite below was a fortuitous find for Shiva lingam (phallus) worshippers.

That night, we went to a field to watch the entrance to a bat cave high on a hill; at sundown a bizillion bats came pouring out, like, well, bats out of hell, soaring and spiraling together in a long ribbon toward din din at the national park.

Bobo, Eric's Loverly (and I do mean loverly) Friend

Hey Hey We're the Monkeys (1/15/2007 Lopburi)

2007-01-14T22:11:00.000-08:00

Lopburi is famous for three things ~ it was once the capital of Thailand, it has some ruins to that effect, and its citizens share their turf with a tribe of monkeys.

As the story goes, once upon a time, a faction from a large family of monkeys inhabiting a nearby country temple decided to head for the city, found Lopburi, and begat and begat and begat. They hang out and down from telephone wires and street signage, stroll the sidewalks, make off with tourists' cameras and bags, and inhabit some of the ruins.

They were particularly prolific at one ruin site and on the shop-lined street in front of it. In one coffee shop, an air rifle sat on a counter and another on a Nestle's ice cream freezer on either side of the front door; the same shop owner went out front to hand out pineapple cores and attracted even more monkeys and their antics. In the ruins, the monkeys made their rounds, slept, played, and cleaned themselves and each other, with little monkey dramas going on here and there. They approached us as tentatively as we approached them. As I was setting up a photograph, one little guy made his way to me on a brick ledge and swiped at my neck. I jumped and scared him as much as he had startled me. They were all so cute and fascinating; I could have spent all afternoon hanging out with them. But as the sign says: No touch monkey!

In the historical museum, I saw a Buddha statue I might have seen from up front but hadn't seen from behind: Buddha seated on the curled tail of a naga (protective snake) , with the snake's body climbing up Buddha's spine and its hooded head hanging protectively over Buddha's. I wondered if there was a connection between Kundalini imagery and Buddhism, and a quick Google search found this:

"Psychologically, Naga energy can be associated with libido, Kundalini or life force. The whole process of enlightenment is determined by how wisely one handles his or her own Naga energy. The practice of Tantric Kriya Yoga is devoted to the safe awakening and use of Kundalini for higher consciousness. In Tantric Buddhism quite beyond any folkloristic beliefs, there are privileged esoteric levels for the advanced Tantrician. It is stated that the historical Buddha Shakyamuni took rebirth in the Naga realm just before his last incarnation on earth, and while sitting under the Bodhi Tree in India was magically protected by a Naga." (http://www.jeweledlotus.com/tantra_nagaraj.htm)

Leaving Lopburi, Eric and I took a seat on the outbound third-class train, the same as we had ridden in, with big open windows that let in the fresh countryside. As we waited to depart, a team of a few Thai folks relayed between the station and train with around 20 plastic bags filled with fresh-cut meat and chicken, which were set on the floor and steps just inside the train door. En route, the owner of the meat struck up a conversation with me, with the ritual "Where you from?" We chatted for a while, going back over what we said and gesturing a lot, from which I gathered that he owned a store where he sold the meat. I asked him if he did this every day (taking the train 30 minutes into Lopburi, picking up meat, hauling it back to his town) and he got this far-away look in his eyes and said, "yes, every day, for a long, long time." When we pulled up at his town for the one-minute stop, he scrambled, pulling bags of meat and chickens out of the train and handing them to the other small team who had met the train.

We just got to Ayutthaya from Khao Yai National Park; will report more when there's time. There's also a bunch more pics to post ~ these machines are sloooow!

1/11/2007 Ranong, Thailand and Kawthuang, Myanmar

2007-01-10T23:39:00.000-08:00

Wistfully, we left our happy little enclave on Koh Lanta, heading north by ferry through Phuket, by bus to Champhon, and on to the border town of Ranong, on the Thailand side of the Myanmar/Burma border. In Ranong, we found Pon's Place, a homespun hub of travel activity including a restaurant, travel agency, bike and motorcycle rentals, taxi service, and visa assistance. We were there for the food and a visa run.

After brekkies, we showed up at Pon's and waited an hour past our appointed time for the boat to come in, then left for the dock in a minivan with Pon and a young German family. At the busy dock, we boarded one of many large, motorized longtail (canoe-like) boats: Eric on the back slat, me and the German mom in front of him, and the dad and two young kids in front of us. A captain steered us from behind, with a pre-adolescent Thai boy and another mate on board helping. The crossing to the Burmese city of Kawthuang reminded me of the movie Mists of Avalon, as we glided through the airy mist that clung to the metallic water and small dark islands. I was impressed with how the crew walked barefoot along the six-inch-thick sides of the boat. At one point, the mate and the boy sat on the sides of the boat on either side of Eric, and I was happy to hear a lot of chatter and laughing. Come to find out, the mate offered to help Eric procure some treats while in Myanmar: cigarettes (to which Eric said no), whiskey (to which Eric said no), and finally "boom-boom" (a prostitute, to which Eric said no, and has lived happily to tell about it).

The crossing, including a couple mid-channel stops at customs and immigration checkpoints, took about an hour, and our paperwork went off without a hitch. We had agreed with Pon and the family that we would take just a few minutes to check out the border town before coming back. We wanted to visit one big temple we had spied on the way in. Upon approaching it, though, it turned out to be Moby Dick Restaurant. That plus a swarm of hawkers hanging on to us from the border gate on was enough like India that we were happy to just call it a tour and return to Thailand.

More India Pics - 2

2007-01-09T04:44:00.000-08:00

Canal in Alleppy, Kerala

Kerala Backwaters

Goa Fishermen

More India Pics - 1

2007-01-06T22:49:00.000-08:00

Thalis

Mysore Clock Tower

Mysore Street Life

Highest Point in Ooty

Ooty Modes of Transportation

Ooty Park Life

More Pics of the Ooty Tea Factory

This One's for Eric

This One's for Antoine

1/3/2007 Bangkok and Koh Lanta, Krabi, Thailand

2006-12-30T21:23:00.000-08:00

Note: I wrote most of the following before the New Year's Eve bombings in Bangkok. We were out of Bangkok well before 12/31/06 and while there, we were not in the areas that were bombed.

In happier news ~

After weeks of budget hotels and bamboo huts, (and especially given the travel prizie from my mama and stepdad, thanks Mom and Mel!) we decided to splash out a bit in Bangkok. So we stayed at our favorite Bangkok hotel, InterContinental Bangkok. This was a good idea especially since I had caught a cold and loved having someplace comfy to recuperate. They also have a fab-o breakfast buffet ~ comfort food including jook (rice/chicken porridge), char siu bao (steamed pork buns), miso soup, tamago, stir-fried veggies, all kinds of fruit and juices, and a perfect little chocolate croissant or donut, all in one meal. I'm sure I got better faster because of it.

As I was ill and we have been to Bangkok a couple times before, we didn't tour much there; we mostly took care of errands. Imagine our joy when, for the first time in a month, we bought a SIM card and our phones just worked, with no photo IDs or letters from police commissioners required! We saw Happy Feet at the IMAX theater; it was very funny and sweet, a well-done mix of Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer, Madagascar, and Over the Hedge. Bangkok had its Christmas decor up and music playing. I missed my family, so much, and was glad that before the trip I got to spend time in WA with Mom and Mel and I had a faux Thanksgiving dinner with SF Bay Area family. I'm also making extensive use of my cell phone.

Surprisingly, there was good food to be found in the Bangkok mall food court ~ a more hygienic and comprehensive version of the street stall foods (not that they should be missed either). You are given a card upon entering, and can eat from any number of cuisines, all cooked up fresh and delish as you order, and pay just one bill on the way out. We also dined at our favorite Bangkok restaurant, Le Lys, which is owned by a French/Thai couple, major yum.

We flew from Bangkok to Krabi province on the west coast, then took a taxi/ferry to the island of Koh Lanta in the Andaman Sea. Ban Saladan is the major "town," on Lanta, consisting of a few streets; we had the taxi drop us at the major intersection and went in search of Eric's German friends' dive shop, Lanta Fun Divers, which turned out to be about two doors down from the intersection. Ulli and Louise were both there, Ulli gave us a ride to his friend's resort on the beach, and Ulli and Louise joined us for drinks the first couple nights. Then Ja-el (my transliteration), owner of Where Else! resort picked us up in her vintage cream-colored Mercedes, and we have parked ourselves in sanctuary there for the duration of the holidays.

In Thailand, most businesses are owned by women, and women usually control the finances. There is also a law stating that a woman's underwear must hang on the line below her husband's. I think I could live with this, as long as I got to pick my own underwear. Who regulates these things?!

Where Else! has got da funk:
http://www.thai-tour.com/thai-tour/South/Krabi/hotel/where-else/index.html

and the folks who run it are laid back and friendly. Our simple, happy bamboo hut is our home, and comes complete with my favorite type of bathroom: outdoor (private), surrounded by a bamboo fence. Festooned with shells and coral, it is the first bathroom I've had with a palm tree growing in the middle of it. Showering in the sunshine or under the stars is bliss. Too, resident hermit crabs, geckos, frogs, and lizards make for great company.

We spend our days on Lanta getting up late (heat + humidity + activity + music playing somewhere on the beach/noisy neighbors/bleating goat herd invading restaurant in the middle of the night = us conked out early a.m.), reading/sleeping in hammocks, hiking/rock scrambling/wading to other beaches, and snorkeling, and Eric goes scuba diving.

Yesterday we took a tour to a waterfall and cave, riding on the back of an elephant. Usually I don't like attractions that exploit animals, but the story on this is that due to anti-deforestation laws invoked a couple years ago, a large number of domesticated elephants were without work/upkeep, so it was decided to use them for tourist rides. The elephants seemed well cared for. I fed mine a pineapple, which she took with her trunk and chewed whole. It was fun and I got to see part of the island I hadn't seen before. Still, the trail was tough and it seemed pretty laborious for the elephant; next time I think I'll hike it.

The gorgeous tourist beaches here are surprisingly quiet, considering that this is the busiest time of the year. Louise said that business is still slow post-tsunami/SARs/Avian flu scares. Additionally, most of the resorts here are small with around 20 or so rooms, so they don't fill up beach blanket-to- beach blanket like some tourist beaches. Also, we have found that if you go past the tourist beach, there are often undeveloped beaches and coves with fewer or no people. The undeveloped areas also still have some artifacts of the tsunami, mostly felled coconut and other trees, rusty cans, bottles, Styrofoam, and shoes--mostly flip/flops. The shoes bother me the most; I hope the owners dropped them to run better to high ground.

The hotel has nightly music; usually a DJ, with live bands on Fridays. One big party "for remembering and forgetting the tsunami" (two years ago)
featured a reggae band we enjoyed, called JOB2DO. The party was a benefit for Lanta elementary school; they raised ~13k baht, which Ja-el said was good. Locals and tourists filled the outdoor restaurant, bar, and other gathering areas. A fire spinner named Wen, friendly and lit up from the inside as well as with her spinning poi, entertained the crowd before the show.

We also had a probable, (what we call) LoveYouLongtime couple sighting at the party: a (usually) older western guy with a young Thai woman, she presumably a paid escort, although you can't always tell. She was quite bubbly, obviously intimate with him, and giggled and whispered to her Thai girlfriend while rolling her eyes in his direction. (Statistically, 90-something percent of all johns in Thailand are Thai; most prostitution is centered in only a couple of tourist areas in Thailand.)

The Thai actually have a word for middle-aged farang (foreign) women who are bitter because middle-aged western men are only interested in Thai girlfriends (have to look up that word). There's also a word for middle-aged western boyfriends who dye their hair bright red to cover up their gray while visiting their Thai GF's relatives in the provinces: Ronald McBoyfriend.

One day we went snorkeling at Koh Ha (translation: five islands) with Ulli and Louise's crew, other snorkelers, and a few scuba divers. The first dive was close to a beach, where we saw coral, sea cucumber, barracuda, parrot fish (so colorful and pretty!), rabbit fish, purple star fish, and jellyfish, among others. Also cool was swimming over the scuba divers, watching them walk like moon men on the ocean floor, and me swimming through their air bubbles, which floated up like mushroom-shaped jellyfish.

On the second dive, we parked the boat on the other side of the island, with no beach. One of the dive masters told me and Eric that there was a lot to see at the far point of the island, so Eric and I made our way there, enjoying the view as the current carried us to the point. After a while, the current got stronger and choppier, and visibility became poor. We decided to make our way back toward the boat, turned onto our backs, and started kicking our flippered feet against the now quite forceful current. I kicked and kicked, but didn't feel like I was getting anywhere; using a big indentation in the rockface as a marker confirmed this as I kept swimming as hard as I could, checking the marker every few minutes. After some time, I became fatigued and discouraged as I realized I had been moving farther out away from the island and Eric, but no closer to the boat. Eric was farther along than I and said that I was making some progress, it was just slow. So I kept kicking and stroking, hard as I could. I started feeling like I couldn't keep it up, but if I stopped the current would take me farther out or swallow me altogether. I could see how people could panic, or lose all strength and drown. I wondered if there was some point where they just gave up or if the waves made that decision for them. I knew I couldn't make it all the way to the boat. I called to Eric (who has taken dive master emergency lessons and has helped save one person) to wait for me and asked him if he could help tow me. I finally made my way to him and we linked arms, kicking together. Still it seemed we weren't getting anywhere. Finally the boat started up, picking us up and then rounding the bend to pick up other divers.

In the last year, a National Parks tax was instituted for all divers, to be collected by the dive shops and turned over to roaming tax collectors. The tax started at 20 baht and is now 400 baht. The dive shops have not liked having to handle this because it made them less competitive than some who were not collecting; additionally, no receipts are given for taxes collected. Many dive shops have chosen not to participate. So today, we heard that the government is sending armed boats out to dive sites, to collect the tax before anyone dives, at gunpoint if necessary. Just one reason our little fantasy of opening our own island resort remains a fantasy.

One day we walked, rock scrambled, and waded along several beaches to find Otto, proprietor of Otto's Bar and restaurant. Otto's Bar had been demolished in the tsunami, and Otto rebuilt a few beaches down. Otto and his bar have both been upgraded; his bar/restaurant is now much larger (funk retained) and Otto is married with child. Sad note: Eric remembers when Otto used to sew coffee filters by hand; now Otto has switched to Nescafe! Happy note: the tamarind prawns still rock.

On New Year's Eve, we took a nap from 8:30 p.m. to 11:30 p.m., then sat on the beach as people shot off fireworks. Up and down the coast, people lit and let fly Chinese lanterns. These are papery rectangles with a fire lit underneath; as with hot air balloons, the heat from the fire makes the lantern fly. They ascended like graceful ghosts from along the expanse of the beach, and caught an air current that brought them all together at one point in the sky.

Here's our (subject to inevitable change) schedule for January and February:

Thailand:
Jan 4: Leave Lanta, arrive on Phuket
Jan 5: Leave Phuket, arrive in Ranong
Jan 6: Visa run (to extend our Thai visas) from Ranong Thailand to Myanmar and back
Jan 7: Leave Ranong, arrive Champhon
Jan 8: Leave Champhon, arrive Phetchuburi
Jan 9-11: Phetchuburi -- cool temples and stuff
Jan 12: Leave Phatchuburi, arrive Ayuttaya
Jan 13-24 Ayuttaya --ruins, _____?___ National Park
Jan 25: Leave Ayuttaya, arrive Aranya
Jan 26: Leave Aranya

Cambodia
Jan 26: Arrive Siem Reap
Jan 27-Feb 1: Explore Ankor (temples/ruins)
Feb 2: Leave Siem Reap, arrive Phnom Penh
Feb 3: Leave Phnom Penh (Or stay a day or so more; Eric's friend has an apartment there)

Vietnam
Feb 3: Leave Phnom Penh, arrive Ho Chi Min City/Saigon (HCMC)
Feb 4: Visit HCMC
Feb 5: Leave HCMC
Feb 7: Arrive Hoi An
Feb 8-20: Explore Hoi An, daytrips, FEB 10 DRINKIES!!!
Feb 21 Leave Hoi An for other Vietnam destinations, TBD

12/9/2006 Alleppy, Kerala and Paloem Beach, Goa, India

2006-12-12T00:29:00.000-08:00

As we sat getting our bearings in the Alleppy train station, a woman wearing a burka sat down nearby, watching us. All I could see of her were two big, dark eyes behind a small oval mesh screen. I tried to imagine being her, based on what I've heard and read. I thought of the sticky heat of wearing a black sheet in such hot weather, having to turn my head to see peripherally (it's said this is so one's husband knows where one is looking), breathing in the lunch smells of my own own breath, feeling invisible, perhaps having known a freer time, having been encultured or perhaps beaten into believing that this was for my own dignity and protection. The California Girl in me wanted to throw off this woman's shroud, take her hand, and drag her laughing and dancing to the Lilith Faire. Then hand her a few books. I know a few wimmenz who would help.

Alleppy is a busy little town with two major canals running through it. Ferries, tour boats, and houseboats run the town canals and into the Keralan backwater canals and a large lake. The last street along the canal in town winds into a shady lane full of friendly people, their homes dilapidated, modest, or middle-class, tiny shops, guesthouses, cows, dogs, goats, and chickens. After 2.5 km, the lane intersects the road leading to our guesthouse, Palm Grove Lake Resort. On one trek into town, a crew of 10 boys, ages six to ten, dragged Eric into a game of football (soccer). People of all ages came running out of houses, yards, and even a churchyard to talk to us. One woman, standing in front of a small, dark home, said that her husband is working in Boston. What different worlds he lives between.

Palm Grove consists of five lovely bamboo cottages along a canal on three acres of family land owned by Mr. Abraham Philips and his wife Maria. Mr. Abraham seems the quintessential gentle-man, kind and soft spoken. He took us on an impromptu tour of his property: coconut palms, banana and mango trees, green peppercorn vines, a fish pond. While I've cooked with my share of cinnamon sticks (from the bark of the tree), I'd never seen a cinnamon tree before. The leaves were bright green, shaped like bay leaves, and tasted of sweet, vibrant cinnamon. Mr. Abraham also turned me on to my first betel nut. Betel nut is a mild stimulant, good for digestion, turns red in the mouth, and over time causes tooth decay. It is shaped like a kiwi and is similar in texture to raw coconut. After our tour, the chef surprised me with betel nut as the locals partake of it: small chunks of betel nut wrapped in a betel nut leaf with a spritz of lime, and folded into a neat little package. The idea is to pop the whole affair into your mouth, chew away, then spit it out when you're done with it. As I was still having residual tummy troubles, and wasn't used to having so much raw leafage in my mouth, I took a few bites and handed the rest to Eric. Once you have it all chewed down, the taste is bright and tart but not to the point of bitterness. And I have to say, afterwards my stomach was better and I felt downright perky.

We spent two days in gliding meditation on a houseboat slipping through the Keralan backwaters. The boat was constructed mostly of wood, thatched palm leaves, and bamboo, with a comfy bedroom and bath, Aneesh's kitchen domain, an upper deck, and a lower deck with two throne-like chairs (ours!) right behind Suresh, our captain. The shores of the canals were stuffed with palm and other trees.

On the small strips of land between canals or between canals and rice paddies, small houses made of cement, thatched palm, or both contained the human life of the backwaters. In front of each house, a few steps led down into the canal. At all hours, in front of most houses, women performed laundry: standing ankle or knee-deep in their saris on the steps, scrubbing clothing or bedding with soap, dunking it in the olive green canal water, swish swish swish, grabbing both ends, twirling, twisting, then THWACKing it on the granite steps, over and over, in a circular motion. You could hear the thwacking, like gunshots, from far down the canal. Then more dunking, swirling, twisting, until finally the woman stepped out of the water, snapped the article open and flat, and hung it on the line.

The canal also serves every other washing purpose for the family, from teeth brushing, hairwashing, and bathing to washing up after the family meal. Women wore their saris or salwar kameezes to fully immerse themselves while bathing and while washing pots and dishes. Men bathed in shorts. Small children were bathed in shorts or nude.

At night we pulled up along the bank, tied the anchoring ropes around coconut trees, and Aneesh fixed us a wonderful dinner of thalis. Before dinner the first night, as it was starting to get dark, Eric and I took a walk along the canal path, between the canal and a rice paddy. People living along the bank came out of their houses and yards to greet us. Many had set out and lit white candles in front of their part of the canal bank in preparation for one of their festivals of lights.

In the early morning, groups of children dressed in English-style school uniforms and backpacks marched along the banks or were ferried to school.

The usual Indian wildlife of goats, pigs, cows, and chickens ran along the bank. We also saw some huge flocks of ducks, like a thousand or more at a time. At one point, a couple of men in canoes attempted to herd the ducks. We wished them good luck.

Canoes seemed to be the main mode of transportation here; they carried families to and fro and once in a while men in canoes loaded with prawns pulled up to us for a sale.

We stopped to see a couple sights. One was a Catholic church built in 1590. The mix of traditional European Catholic and Hindu art featured a colorful serpent's head coming out of the wall, its tongue lashing up for 10 feet to create the pulpit. The neatly kept graveyard in back housed about fifty fresh-looking, marked mounds. The dead are kept here for five years then exhumed, their bones added to a mass grave in back, making room for new occupants up front. We also stopped to see a snake boat that had won the Nehru Snake Boat Race. The snake boat is a long canoe, seating 100 rowers plus an orchestra.

I am typing this into my Treo via my fabric keyboard, as I sit cross-legged on a pillow at a cafe on Paloem beach in Goa. Directly before me lays the white sand beach; about 200 feet from me gentle waves break with about as much effort as anyone else is making here. The sky is clear, the air warm and breezy. Someone just handed me a lemon soda. Slow life good.

This is definitely a tourist beach, with some locals enjoying the sand and water (these would be the boys and men), and selling wares. It is not the famous Goa rave beaches, though. Most folks here are friendly and mellow. Especially happy was having Jess run up and surprise us on the beach; we had left her and Joel in Varkala and originally met them in Ooty...Okay, I just remembered one annoying tourist group. Five good looking Europeans, svelte, bronze, 30s-ish, who lay claim to five of the twelve or so umbrella-ed beach chairs in front of our cafe, laying their sarongs down then going off to play or eat, then re-claiming the chairs, all day long. One of them had a stand-off with another fellow who took the first guy's empty chair, standing in front of him until the guy moved. It's okay, though. Perhaps in their next lives, they will the ones trying to sell jewelry on the beach to feed their five children in Rajasthan. Or maybe they will be the small fat flies in the bamboo shack bathroom, carefully placing their tiny sarongs somewhere dank and horrid. Not that I would wish this on anyone ~ I'm just sayin'.

And what's up with the dogs?! In Varkala and here, by day they are happy playful puppies. By night, they form a herd, harass the cows (and bulls!), and howl like banshees. Mayhem, I tell you.

Tomorrow we are flying to Bangkok. We'll be there are couple days to run errands (like either get a new digital camera or find a USB cable and charger, and get the pics I've taken with travel cameras digitized). After that, Ko Lanta for more beachy holiday goodness, until around 1/6.

November 30, Varkala, Kerala, India

2006-11-30T03:23:00.000-08:00

Just as Eric and I had been getting smug about spending three weeks in India without getting sick, we got sick. On the same night ~ it wasn't pretty. Eric rallied in a couple days; it took me a couple more. We are planning to leave by train for Appelly tomorrow a.m.

Oh Mandee...

2006-11-30T03:03:00.000-08:00

"... you came and you gave without taking, then you sent me away...OOH Mandee...." Eric sings this as he splashes gleefully about in the bathroom.

For the uninitiated: the bathing method of choice of most of South and Southeast Asia is the mandee (pronounced mon-deeee). The mandee consists of a big bucket, a large scoop, a faucet, and sometimes a stool. Sometimes there is a shower head as well, which may or may not work. Hot water will come for a specific few hours in the morning, or may be promised and not come, or isn't promised at all. Most hotel bathrooms have a western toilet; some also include the ever popular squat toilet. So the bathroom usually consists of some toilet(s), some bathing method(s), a sink, and a drain; the bathing area is the same as the rest of the room with no curtain.

While I find a cool shower refreshing in the afternoon, I'm still all about the warm water pulsing down one's neck and shoulders thing. Eric, he loves the mandee. Which might explain the condition sometimes of our bathroom back home. I complain that a duck has been bathing in our sink. Eric just quacks.

Pics

2006-11-24T03:20:00.000-08:00

I've added pics to previous blogs. Some pics are still missing and will be saved for another day. (Uploading pics takes a lot of time on the machines here!!)

11/25/2006 Varkala, Kerala, India

2006-11-23T23:10:00.000-08:00

We took the midnight train (a few days ago, not sure exactly which day ~ time is seeming inconsequential) from Coimbinatore, Tamil Nadu, to Varkala, Kerala. I awoke at daylight and peeked out the window to see marshy tropical countryside whizzing by, dotted by occasional thatched houses with women doing wash at wells, coconut palms, huge jackfruit and bananas hanging from trees, monkeys sitting on fences, and cows napping on the opposite tracks.

We arrived in Varkala at 8 a.m., and walked about three kilometers up the hill from town to the strip of backpacker hotels along a bluff overlooking the Arabian Sea. The temperature was about 90 degrees Fahrenheit and humid, especially steamy as we were carrying 40-pound backpacks. Our hotel is Clafouti House and we passed its restaurant along the way, along with hawkers for hotels and shop stalls, but Eric thought the sign was only directional and that we needed to go further. At a certain point along the bluff we dropped our packs and he scouted along the strip while I sat on a concrete fence overlooking the sea. About 10 feet away from me a Tibetan man with a short, thin goatee squatted on the fence, perched like a bird, facing Kunga Tibetan shop. He was the only shop owner not hawking his wares; he only jumped off the fence when someone went into his shop, then came back to his perch. Eric returned without finding the hotel; I insisted it was back the other direction and volunteered to go look. First I asked the Tibetan man but he didn't know where it was; another shop owner overheard and confirmed it was back the way we had come. So I went off, confirmed the location, and came back. We started putting on our backpacks; Eric usually helps me up with mine but before he could, the Tibetan man said, "here, let me help you," and helped me on with the pack.

We've been enjoying the clean sea air, the cool ocean, long walks, and generally just chilling out. The town is a typical Indian town with some tourists; this bluff is dedicated to backpacker-type travelers, with thatch-roofed restaurants with ocean views and pillow seating.

Our favorite restaurant is called The Funky Art Cafe, where the yellow dogs have just as much right as anyone to the underside of your table and the steps down to the pillowed chill space; where the music is always upbeat trance, the food is good, they make ice (to begin with) and the ice is made of bottled water. And they have a liquor license. Some of the restaurants here don't, but if asked they will surreptitiously hand you an index-card-sized drink menu and some time after you order, bring you a glass with a shot of warm gin, a bottle of warm tonic water, and some limes. So Funky Art Cafe is our restaurant of choice. Kerala Coffee (with tree house seating) is a favorite too.

So far I've had an ayurvedic massage complete with panchakarma and one yoga class. The massage was all about long strokes and lots of herbed? spiced? oil. Panchakarma involved warm oil streaming on my forehead for about 45 minutes; very relaxing. All that concluded with having the woman massage therapist soap me up and bathe me, with a lot of vigor and splashing. And I'm planning to take at least one more yoga class while we are here. The days have been super relaxing and surprisingly short.

There are no beggars here, but you can't get from one place to another without the hawkers practically pleading with you, asking you to promise to come back if you don't go into their shop. I've had a few things I've wanted to buy so got to know a couple of the shop owners. One is a small Indian woman named Sara, who used to be one of the girls selling sarongs on the beach. She hasn't been to school and is self-taught in English. Business hasn't been good and she is stressed because she (along with a lot of others) is paying on a business loan and the creditors can get pretty nasty. From her I bought a bag, sewn by her father (who was busy sewing bags as I shopped). I also went back to see the Tibetan guy. His name is Kunga (hence the shop name). He and his brothers came from Tibet in the early nineties. He too is self-taught and struggles a bit in English; in school in Tibet they were taught Tibetan and Chinese. He says that he would like to take his shop back to Tibet, especially now that his home town has lots of tourists. He doesn't hawk and when I told him how I hate to haggle prices, he immediately dropped the prices on what I bought since he marks it up for the usual hagglers. Interestingly, he is the one shop owner I talked to who said that business was good. From him I bought a silver bracelet with the Om Mane Padme Hum mantra inscribed in Tibetan script and a Tibetan protection symbol pendant.

I just finished reading a great book called The Bookseller of Kabul by Asne Seierstad. Seems like it was made into a movie some time back. The author lived with an Afghan family for a month and then wrote the story as narrative; everything in it is true. The book does a good job paralleling the power shifts and struggles of the bookseller's Afghan/Muslim family with post Taliban-era Afghanistan government and warlords. Meanwhile Eric read Holy Cow by Sarah Macdonald, a love/hate story about one young woman's experiences with India and its multifaceted culture. Both books are compelling and had us up reading hours after we could have fallen asleep.

Another lovely surprise ~ As often happens when we travel, we met again in Varkala a couple we had met at our guest house in Ooty. They have just finished teaching English in Japan for two years, are vacationing in India, then heading home to Sydney, Australia. We are enjoying hanging out and swapping stories, and have exchanged info in case we are ever in each other's hometowns. (Hi Joel and Jess!)

Our travel plans have changed almost daily. For a while we were thinking of going up to McLeod Ganj for December, to be there for Losar (Tibetan New Year) and to hear the Dalai Lama speak. However, both the book Holy Cow and talking to Kunga have put us off of that. It turns out that some time ago there was an attempted attack on the Dalai Lama at such a gathering; so most travelers who come to hear him speak get shunted to another area to hear his talks over a tinny loudspeaker. Additionally, Eric had been having an increasingly bad feeling about going north of Mumbai; he had a knot in his stomach over it. In his words, it felt like we would be "going up that road" (in Ooty) ~ nothing wrong with the place itself but that it could be bad for us personally. Eric being sensitive to different energies and the last person to ever get wiggy about traveling, I wondered if perhaps we were drawing some energy to us that we would experience whether we went north or not, so I suggested we just plan on leaving from Mumbai to Bangkok, and see how that felt for him. A few hours later, he reported that the bad feeling, along with the knot in his stomach, had disappeared. So our plan now is to head for Alleppey in a few days and rent a houseboat to tour the Kerala backwaters for a couple of days, then head north to Goa, Ajanta, Elora, then Mumbai to Bangkok.

11/19/2006 Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu, India

2006-11-18T22:28:00.000-08:00

Walking along the thronging marketplace in Ooty, I saw a man whacking a young girl with a stick. She broke free of his grasp and ran into a shop stall, and he went in after her. There were many others in close proximity and no one took notice other than two young men who stood close by, watching. One looked at me and his gaze registered that he saw the sadness and disgust on my face. What could I do? I walked on. I felt at best powerless and at worst complicit.

Where in the world do people get the idea they can whack little girls around?

About a year ago, in a used bookshop, I found a copy of Bhagavad-Gita As It Is, Bhagavad-Gita being one of the utmost spiritual guides in India. I added it to my tower of books to read. As I prepared for this trip, this seemed the most timely time to read it, so I added the 800+ page, hard-back tome to my backpack. This version was writtent/annotated by A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, (a Vedic scholar and head of the Krshna Consciousness society and movement.) The author criticizes other versions of Bhagavad-Gita, mostly for un-deifying Lord Krshna as the literal Supreme Personality of Godhead, to which all living entities (that would be us) must be servant. The book is written with the literal translation of each verse followed by the author's interpretation and comment. What made me put the book down was the following ~

"Text 40

Translation
When irreligion is prominent in the family, O Krsna, the women of the family become polluted, and from the degradation of woman-hood, O descendant of Vrsni, comes unwanted progeny.

Purport (author's annotation)
Good population in human society is the basic principle for peace, prosperity and spiritual progress in life. The varnasrama religion's principles were so designed that the good population would prevail in society for the general spiritual progress of state and community. Such population depends on the chastity and faithfulness of its womanhood. As children are very prone to be misled, women are similarly very prone to degradation. Therefore, both children and women require protection by the elder members of the family. By being engaged in various religious practices, women will not be misled into adultery. According to Canakya Pandita, women are generally not very intelligent and therefore not trustworthy. So the different family traditions of religious activities should always engage them, and thus their chastity and devotion will give birth to a good population eligible for participating in the varnasrama system. On the failure of such varnasrama-dharma, naturally the women become free to act and mix with men, and thus adultery is indulged in at the risk of unwanted population. Irresponsible men also provoke adultery in society, and thus unwanted children flood the human race at the risk of war and pestilence."

Maybe this explains why the waiter at our hotel restaurant keeps giving Eric a menu and not me ~ to save me from myself, obviously. (The first time I went and got one myself; the second I asked the waiter to bring me one too. Maybe it would have built some confidence (or horror) for me to tell him about the meals I've treated people to, personally and professionally.) And maybe this explains why the form I filled out for my phone SIM card asked for my father's/husband's name. (I left that field blank.)

Why does it seem fundamentalist everybodies have to demonize, marginalize, and control women? What are they afraid of?

In recent years, under the Bush administration, I've often been out and out embarrassed to say that I am an American. One place I show my patriotism, though, is my gratitude and pride for the intelligent, fearless women and strong, evolved men who have worked to create respect and equal rights for individuals, regardless of sex, ethnicity, or sexual orientation. And I'm grateful that we have enough free press that the works of people such as Alice Walker and Zora Neale Hurston are available to teach and inspire others. There is still more to do and existing rights have to be vigilantly protected, but I am glad we have come this far.

Anyway, I am tossing this version of Bhagavad-Gita, and will find another.

Our last day in Ooty, Eric and I spent the morning at the tea plantation/factory and the afternoon walking around the lushness of Lake Ooty.

Along the same road is an attraction we thought about going to but we ran out of time: the Thread Garden. Turns out this guy spent 12 years making a huge garden containing many species of flowers, all out of thread. Get that man to Burning Man!

Heading for Coimbatore via the Ooty train station reminded me that I wanted to write about queues in India. At the first train station of our trip, we stood in line for a very long time. (The lines take a long time in general and this time the computer network was down.) We were both wearing our big backpacks and at one point, as I turned to talk to Eric, I felt something behind me. I turned around and there were two young women standing close behind us. I asked if I had hit one and she said yes, but it was okay. I stepped out of line and stood a few feet away. Now Eric's bag was dangerously close to the woman, but she didn't back up. And when Eric stepped forward, she did too, with her nose about six inches away from his pack. I couldn't figure it out. More experience in lines revealed this woman's reasoning: if you let more than a foot get between you and the person in front of you, someone will surely cut in between you, and no one says anything about it. At the front of a lot of lines, people gather and try to cut in before the next person in line gets to the counter. At the maharaja's palace in Mysore, you had to check your camera + pay five rupees for the pleasure, at a station away from the ticket office. The "queue" was about 20 people thronging the window, stepping in front of each other, elbowing in, whatever worked, with their cameras and rupees thrust into the window. It looked more like they were placing bets than simply checking in a camera. And the only way to get in to do what you need to do is to step in and do the same. Leaving Ooty, we waited on the platform, along with a bunch of other folks, for the bus to Coimbatore. The bus pulled up, and this previously sociable group of folks stormed the bus, to where there was only some crowded standing room left. I wasn't going to stand in that crush with my backpack for the four hours to Coimbatore, so we left the station and took a taxi.

We are here in Coimbatore as a break on our way to the coast, and we are spending the day doing errands and writing. We are leaving tonight at midnight for Trivandum, then on to Varkala on the Kerala coast, where we plan to stay for maybe a week.

11/16/2006 Ooty, Tamil Nadu, India

2006-11-16T03:53:00.000-08:00

The Artful Dodger is alive, well, and living in Mysore. And vacationing in Ooty.

The streets are full of folks relentlessly vying for your attention and wallet. In Mysore, flautists walk with you for blocks, punctuating their campaign for your rupees with the sweet songs of their wares. Children run up to you, ask your name, where you are from, and then, "...ten rupees?" Auto-rickshaw drivers cruise along beside you offering rides. Few accept your initial “no thank you” nor “no, sorry.”

And beware the bright, dapper young man who wants to help you with anything.

As we walked up the block to the maharajah’s palace in Mysore, one such friendly fellow approached us with the usual name/where you from/how long in India/ where you going repartee, then tried to divert us to some shops down the road, saying that the palace had closed for the day. This being a ploy we had read about, we said we would continue around back to the ticket office and check it out. He left us for a spell, then returned with the same story, come with me, the palace is closed, etc. Of course, when we got there, the palace was open and we went in. (And it was epic!)

At the top of Chamundi Hill in Mysore sits a popular temple honoring, natch, Chamundi, a deity favorite of the maharajah’s. This temple is frequented mostly by Indians and the occasional tourist (that would be us). As we walked up to the temple and began stuffing our shoes into our daypack, two young men intercepted us and instructed us to leave our shoes at the shoe check--inside the bag wouldn't do. (We prefer the backpack approach to avoid line hassles--another story.) So being good non-citizens, we went to the shoe check along with everyone else. Unlike for everyone else, along with our claim check we were handed a sandalwood statue, a packet of saffron? red paint?, and a small bouquet of freesias. I tried to hand the goods back to the attendant, but he was insistent. "No, offering, you must take this to the temple." Since it seemed everyone but us had brought their own offering or bought one from the myriad of vendors down the road, I took the offering and we went into the temple. My d'oh! moment came some time later, as it hit me that I should have asked him how much it would cost. Of course then when we went to claim our shoes he wanted 100 rupees, and when we complained that no one had told us there would be a charge, he pointed across the road to a "clearly posted" sign in Dravidian script. We argued our case for a short time, with him and the other two "temple workers," then forked over the 100 rupees. If we had to be fleeced, at least it was only for ~$2 US.

As we made our way down the 1000 steps to the valley, sadhus at their shrines also demanded money. One pulled me over, "blessed" me with a thumbprint of red powder on my forehead, then held out his plate.

[Mom, close your eyes here. You too, Mel.]

After walking up and down the main drag one night in Ooty, searching for The Sidewalk Cafe, Eric pulled out our trusty Lonely Planet India book, and yet another incarnation of the dapper Dodger popped over, chatted amiably for a bit, then was excited to help us find our restaurant. He pointed out that the landmark we thought we had found, Charing Cross, was actually a few blocks down, so we followed him to the correct Charing Cross intersection. On the other side of the roundabout the road forked, and he led us up the left side of the fork, up a hill. After a couple hundred feet, exuding great confidence that we were on our way, he waved us on, turned around, and walked away. The few businesses on the road petered out a short way ahead, and--did I mention it was dark?--the rest of the road wound about the hill. We passed a body in the fetal position, hopefully sleeping, in the dirt on the other side of the road. "This could be bad," I said, Eric agreed, and we hiked it back down the road, onto the main drag, up the right side of the fork, and into the restaurant. Was this guy confused? Was he playing with us? Were there thugs waiting in the wings?

[Okay you can open your eyes now.]

Part of what keeps us from becoming jaded is that for each Artful (and Not So Artful) Dodger, we also encounter young men who really do help strangers, people who want a picture with you, students and teachers who want to practice their English with you, and schoolgirls who shyly smile, say hello, ask your name and tell you theirs, and shake your hand. To close our hearts and refuse all but the sanitized version of tourism would make us two more ugly Americans, besides being the antithesis of why we are here, which is to experience a lot and participate in our hosting countries. So we try to learn whatever we are supposed to learn from each episode, and enjoy the story as we go on.

The bus ride from Mysore to Ooty was 5.5 dusty, bumpy hours in the back of an old government-run bus. While a Charles Bronson-type Bollywood movie played at the front of the bus and in our ears, the stories outside our windows were plenty to interest us for the duration of the trip.

Inside a fenced churchyard, a robed priest and a man in plain clothes sat together on the steps in front of the church, the priest’s right hand pressed against the man’s forehead, perhaps in ablution of the man’s sins, perhaps in blessing.

Rows and rows of shops ran along the road, with all kinds of wares, including bins of grains, chilies, fruits, and vegetables, herbal remedies, pharmaceuticals, clothing, and fresh fruit drinks, and people (mostly men) doing business and socializing.

Cows are given free reign on the road; all honking stops and people and vehicles move around them. We also saw pigs, dogs, goats, and monkeys along the way.

The verdant countryside was refreshing after so much city life, and included rice and cane fields along with more tropical foliage and eucalyptus trees. The ride continued up into the hills and through a national park and animal refuge, then through sporadic towns and up the hill into Ooty.

Yesterday we walked to the Ooty Botanical Garden. Like the countryside, it was a refreshing break from the town, with large lawns, winding walkways, lots of flowers, families on strolls, and teenagers seeking out the outer reaches of the garden. We sat on a bench overlooking most of the garden, and became an attraction in ourselves. First off, one man handed his camera to his wife and asked to take a picture with Eric, the Big White Guy. The man sat very erect and stately for the picture, then we had a shot with his wife, baby (named Fida), and me. Then a teacher from the college of agriculture and commerce walked up with some of his students so they all could practice speaking English with us.

Then a bunch of middle-school-age boys and girls came by, and we took pictures with both our cameras with the boys. The girls shyly shook our hands, exchanged names, and giggled.

We plan to stay in Ooty another day, to visit the tea plantation. Then we are heading south into Kerala~ we’re still working on the details on that.

11/13/06 Mysore, Karnataka, India

2006-11-11T22:04:00.000-08:00

This adventure begins as many do, at a time ripe for change and growth, and Eric and I agreed that a year of travel in Southeast Asia and Europe would be just the thing.

Our home is now rented to my grown kids, who are keeping up the love with our three cats, and at midnight on 11/7 we took off for Bangalore, India.

From the Mandate *This* department ~
The week we left the US, the Democrats took over both the House of Representatives and the Senate, Secretary of State Donald Rumsfeld resigned/was sacked, and India renamed "Bangalore" "Bengaluru." We have yet to actually see signs that say Bengaluru, but I'm sure they will happen at some point; our taxi driver was very happy and proud about the change. Way to take it back! in the US and India.

In recent years, Eric and I have joked about putting maple leaves on our backpacks; standing in front of us on our flight from Singapore to India was one couple who did just that. Brand spanking new ones square on the back pockets; the guy also had a red bag with maple leaves around his neck. I had seen him earlier on the 14-hour flight to Singapore, leaning against a wall in the walkway with an unlit cigarette hanging out of his mouth, looking about ready to crawl out of his skin. To me he seemed more like Sawyer from the TV show Lost, only a little older and more grizzled, with even more attitude than the few Canadians I know, certainly not like the stereotype Michael Moore talks about. In any event, I don't think they were fooling anyone and in line Eric saw they had American passports. Kind of funny, kind of sad; hopefully changes in our government will in time curtail the need for such.

During our 7-hour stopover in Singapore, we tramped through pouring rain through their colorful Chinatown and into Maxwell Food Court, a covered bevy of 100+ food stalls, and quenched Eric’s jonesing for chicken rice. On the way back to the airport we stopped for a few minutes to watch Chinese opera.

In Bangalore/Bengaluru, we stayed at the Jayamahal Palace Hotel, a colonial mansion across the street from the palace. http://www.jayamahalpalacehotel.com

Upon arrival at the reception desk, we were brought glasses of mango nectar, and the gracious manager visited with us as we sat for a spell and enjoyed what tasted like the nectar of the gods after about 28 hours of travel.

At breakfast, we had our first cuppa chai in India, which I dedicated to Serafine, who just loves a good cuppa chai. My lunch dessert of galub jamoon, filled with cheese and pistachios and flambed with brandy, I dedicated to Steve K., who loves galub jamoon.

We took a taxi to FabIndia sari boutique, where I bought a salwar (roomy pants) and four kurtas (long tunic-type shirts in cotton or silk) in gorgeous colors and prints,
well-made, for 25 US dollars. This clothing is lovely and comfortable, just like wearing jammies. I think the women here are so beautiful in their saris; even the teenage girls in the mall seem elegant and assured.

We then walked over to The Forum mall, in search of sandals and local SIM cards for our phones. Note to selves, which we've heard before: everything takes longer in India. As we are foreigners, Airtel wouldn't sell us SIM card until we went to the police station and came back with a letter of permission from the police commissioner. At another store, to get Spice SIM cards, we had to provide our passports and separate photos. So we had to go to the Kodak store and get our pictures taken, wait 45 minutes for them to develop, and go back to get the cards. Eric's quote of the day: "So like we came, like, to India, and like we went to the mall and sat in this booth and like got our pictures taken and stuff?"

The same type of challenges were true buying bus tickets to Mysore and in getting an appointment for a travel agent to book a train for Darjeeling. It's all been good practice in equanimity. It’s also a lot easier knowing you’ve got all the time in the world.

The street in India is as we've heard it would be ~ noisy, polluted, full of a fireworks display of color, and exuding exuberance and pathos.

Any marked lanes are filled with three or more vehicles abreast (cars, taxis, auto rickshaws, motorcycles, bikes, not to mention cows, dogs, donkeys, horse-drawn carriages, and vegetable carts), all honking away, driving within feet or inches of each other, weaving in and out, daring oncoming traffic, and honking constantly. Even in cases of narrow misses, though, there may be shouting but no one seems angry. The rules are real and unspoken. As a passenger, I've pretty much passed on controlling the situation, so sitting back and enjoying the flow of the ride is fun, kind of like bumper cars.

Begging is more evident here in Mysore than it was in Bangalore/Bengaluru: grannies, children, mothers holding babes, all walking alongside you, some trying to hold your arm. Eric had one mother and baby step in front of him again and again as he kept stepping to the side, in a sad dance. It felt heartrending stepping out of the street and into a shop to fill our bellies with talis, but that's how it goes here.

Our talis were served on banana leaves: banana leaf first, then rice, then ghee on the rice, then dal (lentils), korma, and another dish alongside the rice, then little pots of raita, yogurt, and other dipping sauces are placed on the side. Using your right hand, you form a rice ball, then dip it in one of the sauces and pop it into your mouth. Afterwards we were served a small tray that looked like a Zen garden, full of candied fennel and toothpicks.

Most of the people here have been very kind and gracious. At the sari boutique, the security guard who checked my daypack then gave it back to me came running over when I placed it on the ground to fill it with the package of clothing I had just bought. He picked the bag up off the ground and held it open while I inserted the clothing, then zipped it up and handed it back to me. At lunch, in search of the washroom, I walked into a dining room lined with mirrors and couldn’t figure out which mirrored door was the way to the washroom. I opened one to find the kitchen, another to find a broom closet. I felt like Alice in Wonderland. Then across the room, a frosted glass door opened, and the doorman and maitre’d, smiling and gentle, shooed me in and directed me to the washroom. Later that day, as we were trying to direct our taxi driver to us, we had problems understanding him on the phone and a man sitting next to us kindly took the phone and directed the taxi driver.