Day 1- March 18 – ARRIVAL IN BHUTAN – Amy

Ah, Bhutan. You both exceeded my expectations and totally underwhelmed me. While not the radically unwesternized Shangri-la we were dreaming of, you were fairly rad nonetheless.

We arrived at the airport in Bangkok at 5 am to get our hand-printed tickets to Bhutan. Although our return flight was 1 week away, it was only at this moment that we were able to get the (supposed) time of departure. The flight was lovely, with some of the best airplane food we’ve had. (This would later prove to be misleading. The food in Bhutan was, to my taste, some of the least interesting in Asia. More on this later.) Shortly before our arrival, the pilot came on the pa system and warned us that some passengers considered the landing style of the plane to be rather alarming, but assured us there was nothing to worry about. We flew past some incredibly steep peaks – well, the steepest – we got a great look at Everest poking through the clouds – and then we plunged rather sharply downwards and came to a stop.

We deplaned, and found ourselves in a beautiful valley next to a very small and beautiful airport. The airport building is covered in paintings of religious symbols. (We found out later that most public buildings are required to be.) We were very excited to be on the ground, passed quickly through customs and waited at the front entrance for our guide and driver. And waited. And waited a few more. All the other passengers had left with their smiling guides. After another 10 minutes or so, we saw a new pair arrive. They were, as were all the other guides, dressed in the traditional Go – a sort of knee-length kimono for men, worn with tall dress socks and dress shoes.

Our fellows, I noted had bright, candy-apple red mouths, smeared a little beyond the perimeter of their lips. This turned out to be the product of betel nut, the slightly narcotic, highly addictive chewing substance of most adult Bhutanese. It is actually a nut, smeared with a paste of lyme (which looks like ash) and wrapped in a leaf. You place the whole package in your mouth and chew it to the degree you want to get high. Later that day, they shared some with us, but warned us not to swallow, as we would get pretty woozy and probably have terrific diarrhea. We took their advice, but as a result we didn’t really feel much, though I still got the terrific diarrhea. (surprise!) We spat out a ton of red juice – the ground in Bhutan is covered with huge, bright red blotches from where people spit! Anyway. After meeting Kinzang, our guide, and Pima, our driver, we went back to our hotel in Paro. The room was *beautiful*. Although it was two single beds – a repeat problem on our honeymoon! – it is perhaps my favorite of all the rooms we’ve stayed in anywhere. Outside our window, there was an incredible view of a snow-capped mountain, over which the moon rose, and the surrounding Paro valley.

Inside, the room was covered floor to ceiling with religious paintings – dragons, swirls, brilliant patterns of interlocking squares.

We started our tour that day by visiting the ruins of a Dzong (fortress) out in the countryside and a visit to the local monastery. We entered the monastery by walking around it clockwise first, as Bhutanese Buddhist custom proscribes. All along the exterior wall were prayer wheels – little spinning tops, upon which are written prayers, permanently affixed to niches in the wall . They, too, were to be spun clockwise as you go by. (Apparently, this increases exponentially the number of prayers an individual can say. Each spin of a prayer wheel is considered a complete prayer, and you spin it clockwise so the prayer goes in the right order. Saves time! Maximizes blessings!)

The interior of the monastery was dark, with very old, wide-board wooden floors, walls covered floor to ceiling with religious paintings – this time with very huge, detailed portraits of mythical figures, and an altar filled with ornately sculpted, bright pastel pillars made out of butter! This would prove to be a very typical Bhutanese monastery – very ancient and very beautiful.

We returned to our hotel for the night, and I felt we were truly in a different world.

Day 2 – March 19 – PARO TSECHU & NATIONAL HISTORY MUSEUM – Amy

The following morning we went to what I can only describe as the most medieval experience of my life. On the grounds of a 15th century fortress, in a natural amphitheatre with hay strewn around my feet, the people all in traditional dress, we watched day 3 of the five day religious ceremony known as the Paro Tsechu. We saw only 2 and a half dances that day, as each dance lasts between two and three hours. The musical accompaniment is comprised of 6 foot long telescoping bugles, played by monks standing on the rooftops in flowing orange robes. Other monks sit below and play rhythmic bells and drums. A monk/dancer wearing a many-layered colorful skirt and a large deer mask with a full rack, streamers dangling from each horn, twirls continuously in a slow dervish motion.

Another monk/dancer wearing a giant man’s head mask represents the hunter. They slowly act/dance out a 3 hour morality tale about Bhuddist conversion. Meanwhile, a clown dressed all in red, wearing a commedia dellárte-type red wooden mask with a huge nose, carries an 18 inch wooden penis and makes his way through the crowd, cracking jokes, hugging people, and soliciting donations for the monks. (Did I mention the presence of the ‘male organ’ – as our guide and we agreed to refer to it – in the catalog of religious symbols of Bhutan? It is revered, painted on houses, and all of our hotels, even in Thimpu – the ‘big’ city – had a mobile of a penis and a sword dangling from all four corners of the roof. It is considered a warning to evil spirits to stay away, as in: “There’s a weenie here! Look out!”)

After lunch we went just up the hill to visit the strangely conch-shaped National Museum of Bhutan, which was moderately interesting, for an arduous two hours. I was itching to get back to the Tsechu the whole time. The dances of the Paro Tsechu were some of the most amazing things I have ever seen. They were incredibly long and repetitive, but I was riveted. I could have watched it all day long for the whole five days. Unfortunately, our pre-arranged itinerary did not permit this. Plus Kinzang seemed a little bit over the mystique of the Tsechu, being more interested in impressive ring tones, and we ended up getting a total of about 2 full days in, but MAN. Were they incredible. For me, the highlight of the trip.

Day 3 – March 20 – Ramon

TAKSTANG MONASTERY! This morning we´re trekking up to the Tiger´s Nest (AKA Takstang Monastery) which is perched on the end of a steep cliff above the Paro Valley. This is the day I´ve been waiting for since we decided to come to Bhutan and the Tiger´s Nest doesn´t disappoint even a little bit.

We get to the bottom of the mountain at 8 AM ready to hike up before it gets too hot. The trek is steep and difficult, and many people choose to ride donkeys to the top but we prefer to walk it. Of course, the Bhutanese who are used to this terrain take even steeper shortcuts up the mountain at inclines twice as steep as ours, and what takes them only an hour and a half takes us 4 hours.

Most of the way up is beautiful and great smelling pine forest. Every now and again we get to a clearing where we can see the monastery getting a little bit closer and a little bit bigger.

It´s getting harder to breathe and even harder to believe that people carried materials up by hand to build this thing. On the trek we learn that the path we´re hiking on is only a few years old, and that the materials were carried up what we were calling the shortcut. Wow!

After 3 hours, we make it up to the height of Takstang, only it´s on the other side of a gorge from us.

From here, we have to hike down into the gorge and back up to reach the Tiger´s Nest. We stop several times. The air is thin and we´re real short of breath but finally we make it up. It´s incredible that this exists here. It is built directly into the rock face on the side of a mountain. The drop from the cliff is over 6000 feet. Inside, there are several prayer rooms, living quarters for the monks, and incredible vistas down into the valley.

It´s called the Tiger´s Nest because it was founded by the Guru Rimpoche (known in Bhutan as the second Buddha) who arrived at this spot by riding a flying tigress (who was actually his wife who had taken the form of a tigress) to meditate. The reason it is so difficult to access is because the Bhutanese believe that one must suffer in order to gain merits, and walking up here is suffering. It is because of this that so many of the monasterys and nunneries in Bhutan are built high up in the Himalayan foothills.

On the way down the mountain, we´re trying to hustle because we´re afraid we´ll miss out on the Paro festival which we wanted to see some more of today. We´re debating skipping lunch to go straight there but there´s no way. This has been challenging and we need to eat something before continuing. Unfortunately, by the time we arrive at the festival we only get to see about 20 minutes of the last dance before it´s all done for the day.

Disappointed by this, we decide to try and make the best of it by visiting the Rimpong Dzong (fortress). Kinzang, our guide, doesn´t want to go because it´s now raining and he says, “Once you´ve seen one Dzong, you´ve pretty much seen them all.”

We don´t cave, however, and are rewarded for our obstinance as we witness a crazy procession of performers from the festival, monks, and some high ranking lamas as they enter the Dzong. The musicians are blasting away on their reedy horns and banging cymbals and it´s chaotic and awesome. It only lasts a minute or so but it´s really cool. If you´re a lama, everywhere you go you are followed by a procession like this. Intense.

This evening we´ve scheduled some traditional Bhutanese fare, so when we leave the Dzong we head to Kinzang´s uncle and aunt´s house for some afternoon butter tea. Yes, butter tea. It´s a traditional drink here and it consists of black tea, hot water, butter, and salt. You can also put some popped rice in it. I don´t know what to say about this drink. I think you have to really like butter to enjoy it. It´s very heavy and doesn´t sit too well with either of us though Amy´s reaction (she´s lactose intolerant) is less violent than feared.

A really nice part of this is that we get to spend some time with Kinzang´s aunt, uncle, grandmother, and cousins, whom he refers to as brother or sister. (We later a devise a system where he calls his relatives brother brother or cousin brother so that we understand). Also, we get to see a traditional farmhouse. The Bhutanese government has some rules concerning the construction of houses and one of them is that each one has a prayer room. This contains very colorful and beautiful paintings on the wall of the buddha, and Guru Rimpoche in many of his 8 incarnations, and of the 8 talisman´s of good tidings. Bhutan is a magical place in this way. The worshipped all have many different physical incarnations with different powers and there are many icons of good fortune. Throughout the country, there are paintings of these everywhere, on the outside of buildings particularly, which is also mandated by the government.

After butter tea, we head back to the hotel and rest for a bit before going back to Kinzang´s family´s for a traditional dinner. There is a reason that Bhutan is not known for it´s cuisine. Because of the country´s isolationist policies, there is little in the way of imported food, and because of the landscape, there is little in the way of fertile farmland. This is not a good combination. The dinner consists of red rice, which is eaten with every meal, very hot red chilis, and fried slabs of pig fat. Neither of us like it so much but we smile and we eat it. The family has decided that they won´t eat their dinner until later so they just hang out with us and watch while we feign delight. The truth is that it´s actually pretty great to be here. We feel really welcomed, and that far outweighs the funky pork.

Day 4 – March 21 – Ramon

Today is the final day of the festival. Our plan is to get to the Paro Dzong by 2:30 AM to see the ritual of the monks processing down the mountain carrying the giant thongdrol (hand painted scroll) of Guru Rimpoche and then unfurling it. Kinzang insists that as long as we get there between 4 and 5 we´ll see it. We ask him several times about this, our itinerary says it´s at 2:30, but he´s lived here his whole life, and he promises us that 4:00 is fine.

We get there a little after 4 and the scroll is hanging unfurled from the building on the square. This is a huge blow as we both really wanted to witness the procession and unfurling. We talk to some folks and it turns out that to see it, we should have been here at 2:30. Imagine that.

Now that we´re here, we´re watching the monks chanting, and a huge line of people trying to get to the scroll to touch it and give it money…this is to provide good luck for the next year. There are a few police officers with their arms linked, trying to contain the masses who want to get through, and allowing only a few through at a time.

Even though people keep trying to sneak by, and break the chain, the police are actually very jovial and laughing and joking with the crowd. At a certain point the chain is broken and chaos ensues. The mass of people surge forward and there is such a crowd at the scroll that many people can´t reach it so they just start hurling money at it. It´s hilarious, and helps us to forget about how cold we are for a moment.

The monks blessings continue and a new one starts to lead who has this incredibly low gurgly (frog-like actually) voice which he chants in, seemingly without taking a breath, for an hour or so. This sound coming out of him is ceaselessly entertaining, and the sun is rising over the Himalayas as well, warming us, and continuing to lift our spirits.

When the monks are finished saying their blessings, food is made available to everybody, mostly butter tea, popped rice, and loaves of bread are on the menu. Boys are running around filling up their go´s (traditional male Bhutanese dress, basically a bathrobe but fancier) with loaves of bread and taking them to their families. One boy next to us keeps reaching into his go and pulling out one more loaf, I think he had about 7 in there. People also come by with huge sacks of popped rice and just pour it into the go´s. All the men are carrying so much food they look 20 pounds heavier.

Once the food is distributed, the square is cleared and the last day of dancing begins. We´re glad for this since we saw so little yesterday. The best of these is the DANCE OF THE GING AND TSHOLING. The Ging are a collection of heroes made up of deities and fairies, and the Tsholing are the protectors of buddhism. This is a purification dance to discourage external demons before the arrival of Guru Rimpoche. The Ging dance around and beat everybody on the head with drumsticks to chase impurity out of the body. They then chase even the Tsholing away and perform a victory dance by beating their drums.

After purification, our time at the Tsechu is over, and we are off to Thimpu, the capital of Bhutan. We leave Paro behind and arrive in Thimpu at dusk, just in time to have a quick bite and walk around town, which at first glance seems like a conglomeration of crafts stores, before passing out, exhausted.

Day 5 – March 22 – Ramon

Today is our first full day in Thimpu and the beginning of the second half of our stay in Bhutan. we´re doing what amounts to a sightseeing tour and there´s a bunch on the agenda. Thimpu is quite small so it shouldn´t be too difficult to get everything in.

We start out by heading to the King´s memorial chorten. A chorten is a monument that begins with a round concrete mound and has a column growing out of it. This one was built in memory of the 3rd King of Bhutan and it´s a yawner. From there, we head to the Changgangkha monastery. It´s quite nice, but after seeing Tiger´s Nest and Kyichu Lhakang (Bhutan´s oldest monastery) earlier on the trip, it doesn´t impress much.

Next on the list is a nunnery. This is nice just because we´ve seen so many monastery´s and no nunneries so far. Of course, this particular nunnery had been a monastery when it was built, so architecturally it´s more of the same, though it does have a particularly lovely prayer room and a great view into the Thimpu valley. It´s also right next to the takin reserve which is just a big fenced in area that has several takin, Bhutan´s national animal. A takin is pretty similar to a yak, it´s as big as a cow and wooly. We feed them some bushes through the fence and then we´re off.

Next we´re supposed to go to the Royal School of Arts and Crafts, where Bhutan´s 12 sacred arts are taught. When we arrive at the school though, we see that it´s closed. This is the beginning of a very frustrating trend that continues until the end of the trip. In a few days it is Bhutan´s very first ever National Assembly elections. The King has recently abdicated the throne and declared that Bhutan will become a democracy. People are both excited and scared by this, and it´s certainly an interesting time to be here, as people are asking us a lot of questions about democracy. But because the election is just a few days away, the entire weekend (today is Saturday) has been declared a national holiday. Our tour operators didn´t make any plans or adjustments for this, so it looks like a lot of things may be closed, and we may have a lot of free time on our hands until we leave.

With the trip to the school cancelled, we go to the weekend market. It´s particularly slow because of the election (people must vote in the town they were born, so many vendors have left to travel home…one woman in her 60´s walked over 600 kilometers!) and as mentioned, there aren´t a ton of natural resources here so there´s nothing to interesting to try except for the dried cheese. It´s eaten as a snack here, but for the life of us we can´t figure out why. It´s incredibly hard, like hard candy actually, but it doesn´t melt in your mouth, and it doesn´t have much flavor. Seemingly, it´s purpose is to create saliva in your mouth, because not much else is happening. I can´t hack it and after a moment or two I spit it out.

To finish up today´s sightseeing tour, we head to the Taschidzong. This is the biggest fortress in the kingdom. It´s quite beautiful actually, and fancy. This is, after all, where the king comes for prayer. The buddha inside the prayer room is enormous, and is surrounded by all sorts of other statues of icons and incarnations of Bhutanese buddhism. We´re just getting a decent sense of what it must be like to worship here, when we have to leave. The dzong is only open to the public for 30 minutes a day, and ours is up.

Day 6 – March 23 – PHAJODING MONASTERY – Amy

Today, we went on a difficult and rewarding mini-trek. We began at 8:30am by driving off the road up into the woods on what appeared to be just a path, until it became too rock- and root-ridden to permit us to continue. There we met our ‘team’ – I had no idea you needed so many people for an overnight hike – and began our ascent. The path up to Phajoding Monastery was very, very steep. I am not much of an athlete to begin with, and my adult-onset mild asthma hinders me even further, so along the 5 hour hike from an elevation of 7000 feet to one of 11,100 ft, I had to stop every ten minutes or so to catch my breath. We hiked all morning, pouring sweat, and stopped to have lunch on the path at around 11:30. Our cook/guide assured us that this was an easy trek. Him and his huge calf muscles. All around us was incredible, old-growth pine forest. The air was very, very fresh. The king of Bhutan had decreed at some point that something like 70% of the country must remain covered with trees. Go him!

After lunch we started up again, up, up, up. The higher we got, the colder it got. By the time we emerged into the clearing before the monastery at 2:00pm, it had begun to snow.

It had been about 70 degress in the valley where we’d started. Our team proceeded to set up camp, finding a spot for the kitchen and for our tent. We were served hot tea and cookies as we sat huddling against the blowing snow. A goat came by and knocked over the milk on the tea-tray, snarfing the cookies in the process.

After napping in the tent in all of our clothes and inside our sleeping bags and still being unable to get warm, we had a look around the grounds of the monastery. It was ancient, as they all are, and crumbling with neglect. But the setting was serene – the high mountain air, the flapping prayer flags, the quiet. Prayer flags in Bhutan are placed on the advice of astrologers, who are consulted for everything from babies’ names to the recitation of prayers to the placement of bones. The location of prayer flags is usually influenced by the amount of merit to be gained in the act- in other words, they are put in incredibly difficult to reach places. The more work you do getting there, the idea goes, the more merit you earn. So from every cliff and mountain top, there are usually prayer flags to be seen. It’s quite impressive.

Because of the snow and the cold, we were not able to make the hike up to our actual destination, the mountain pass another hour and a half or so beyond the monastery. Instead, we contented ourselves with wandering the steep goat paths in the area and catching glimpses of the next monastery up the mountain.

We came back down for a lovely dinner in the head monk´s room, next to a toasty heater, and played ´Pick 2´´ – the Bhutan version of Uno – for a couple of hours with our guides. Although it was strictly forbidden, the monks took pity on us and let us sleep in an unused room inside the monastery. I guess they figured it was better to break the rules than to let us die. This was pretty cool. We woke up to the ringing of the gong and the chanting of the monks the next morning.

Day 7 – March 24 – THE ELECTIONS – Amy

We had hoped that we might get a chance to hike up to the pass this morning, as the weather was fine and clear, but the first ever Bhutan national elections were to be held today, and most of our team had to hit the trail back down in the early morning. Everyone who wanted to vote had to do so in the town of their birth, so some people had to drive (or walk) many hours to get to their voting place. While this election business sounds very exciting, it was perhaps more so for the Bhutanese than for the visiting tourist. Because of the elections, everything was still closed, so for us it meant taking our time on the way down the mountain (a much faster trip than the way up!), stopping and meditating along the way (which was lovely and incredibly peaceful), and then accompanying Kinzang to his polling place so he could vote. This was also more exciting for him than for us, though still interesting to see. It was all very peaceable, though each person was searched before going into the voting booth. Their fingers were dipped in ink, a la Iraq. After he voted, we went to visit his sister to have some more Bhutanese-style tea: this time black tea with salt. A lot of it! Weird. We stayed for a nice 45 minute chat with his very lovely sister, and afterwards, since everything was still closed, we were dropped off at our hotel around 4:30 and informed that we probably would like to take a rest. Fortunately for us, the shops opened back up after 5pm (when the elections were done) and we were thus permitted a rare unchaperoned walk around town. We even took in a movie – “Lengo II”, a love story about a deaf and mute Bhutanese guy who meets a deaf and mute Bhutanese girl. It was filled with some most offensive portrayals of deaf and mute people. Because of our pre-arranged dinner hour, we had to leave before the ending was revealed, but I’m sure it was heart-warming.

Day 8 – March 25 – Ramon

Today is our last day in Bhutan. Well, actually, all we´re doing is going to the airport so it´s not much of a day, but even so there´s a bit of drama. Bhutan´s airline, Druk Air, is the only airline allowed to fly into Bhutan (it has an impressive fleet of 2 planes!) and, for some reason, they change their flight schedule every 2 weeks or so.

The booking agent for the travel company told us that our plane would be leaving at 11 AM, but our ticket says it´s at 8:50 AM. we asked Kinzang to call the airline to get this sorted out and he returned saying that our flight leaves at 8;30. That means we have to leave the hotel at at 5 AM. That sucks but no big deal, we´re seasoned travelers now, and are used to leaving at odd times in order to get the least expensive mode of transport possible.

Well, we arrive at the airport at about 6:30, and we notice that there are very few people there. In fact, the airport´s not even open yet. Kinzang makes sure to drop us off and leave before we discover this so we´re just stranded for a while, waiting for the airport to open. It turns out that our flight is at 11, and that Kinzang, instead of calling the airline, called his boss to ask what time he should take us to the airport.

This is a frustrating way to end a trip that, amazing as it was, has had many frustrating moments in the last couple of days. There is some comfort, though not a ton, in that there are other travelers here early as well, as wrong about the time as we are. The worst part of this is that it has added 3 hours on to what was already scheduled as a 40 hour travel route to Uganda.

But consolation does come and here it´s in the form of the flight itself. Our plane is stopping in Kathmandu on the way to Calcutta, which means we´ll be flying by Mt. Everest. We´re on the right side of the plane when we see the peak. Actually, it´s only about 200 yards away and we fly past 3 of the 4 highest peaks in the world, towering over the clouds. It seems we´re at eye level with Everest. People are climbing all over the seats to try to get good photos, and I´m buoyed by the knowledge that beauty can strike when you least expect it.

In my continuing quest to actually do a blog, I greet you again from Morocco.  We rented a car in Marrakesh and are now in the village of Tamgroute, having spent the last few days driving south down the old ‘great oasis route,’ the pre-Sahara region where there is a kasbah (Berber castle) or a ksour (fortified village) every 10km or so.  The region is very dry, and all of the old buildings are made out of pise, a mixture of mud and hay.  They are decorated extensively with carvings, but they don’t survive very long without constant maintenance.   Some of the ruins that we saw were less than 100 years old!  But they almost all date from before Moroccan independence. Even the ones that seem completely abandoned from the outside are very often occupied.  We were able to stay in one that is currently under renovation, Kasbah Assilam, which has been occupied by the same family for seven generations. 

You’ve probably seen this region many times without actually realizing it.  About a million movies have been filmed here, though I don’t know how many of them are actually set here.  Babel, Gladiator, Kundun, Lawrence of Arabia, Sodom & Gomorrah, Jesus of Nazareth, to name a few.  I’ve not seen many of these movies, but I’m eager to do so now, even if they’re crap.    See how enlightened travel has made me?

We’ve been in Morocco now for just over a couple of weeks, and I feel like I’m just about getting my bearings.  The tourist dealings seem to get, if anything, even a bit pushier here than the other places we’ve been.  We’ve decided that the way to survive is to be aggressively self-interested, just as the folks we’re dealing with are.  Not rude, just EXTREMELY insistent about what you want.  If you don’t want something, you must decline and decline and decline and not cave when someone pulls a sad face, as though you’ve wounded them.  Do not cave even when normal human behavior might dictate compassion.  For instance, on the drive down here, we came upon a man standing on the side of the road, next to a car with its hood up.  A breakdown, yes?  How sad.  Perhaps we should stop?  See, yes he wants us to stop.  See how he’s waving at us?  See how he’s walking into the road in front of us, even though we are driving towards him at about 90k/hr (55mph)?  See how he refuses to move even though we are clearly not slowing down?  See how he moves further into the road and forces us to swerve off the road at high speed to avoid killing him!  Yes? Finally, see how, as soon as we pass, before we even get out of sight, he drops the hood of his car, turns on the ignition, and drives away? 

Unbelievable.

As a last note, I am covered with tiny bites that started in Uganda and unfortunately do not seem to be getting any better.  I am afraid I contracted some unsightly sub-Saharan parasite and will have to remain covered in rash cream for the duration of my sister’s wedding in July.  Yick.

Hope you’re all well.  More updates soon.

Hello loved ones. So sorry for such a long delay. The internet is a tool not so widely available to us. We roundly agree that not bringing a laptop was the biggest mistake of the trip. We are now in Morocco and while there is more infrastructure here than in Bhutan or Uganda, uploading fancy photos and catching up on our extensive backlog of those two countries will have to wait. For now, we will make do with some brief notes and photos when we can….

So where are we now? At the moment we sit in an internet cafe in the High Atlas mountains in central Morocco, in a little village called Imlil. It is pretty touristy here, but quite beautiful. The Djebel Toubkal, the highest mountain in North Africa, sits snow-capped just above the village. Tomorrow we will go on a day-long guided hike. We’ve been in Maroc about a week now and have eaten some delicious tagines (which we like to pronounce tagina), seen lots of severed goats heads, been ridiculously overcharged, and been invited into strangers homes and given gifts of walnuts, bread, fruit, watermelon…it’s kind of schizophrenic here, the split between people wanting to rip you off and people wanting to make you so welcome you genuinely feel a part of their family.

We started in Casablanca, which is cosmopolitan and friendly. There is a giant mosque there, one of a handful in the country that is visitable by non-muslims. We missed the guided tour but both got sneaked in by the cleaning staff. In the first two days we had tea with two strangers, the first set of whom were local men being friendly. They called us off the street and into their sidewalk cafe, bought us mint tea and welcomed us to Morocco. The second was a (homeless?) man who told us he had been a math professor and invited us to coffee. In flawless English he talked to us about the places he’d studied and how he’d love for us to come to his house and have dinner. He just lived 30 minutes outside of Casa and we’d be welcome there any time. He spent an hour and a half with us before he moved in for the kill. He needed 50 dirham for gas money to get out to his house; I will say that Ramon was on to him long before I was. Buoyed by the previously mentioned mint tea experience, I overlooked the man’s missing teeth and weird dirty jokes up to the bitter end. Ah well. Live and learn.

We moved on to Marakkesh, which, for a white person, is like being on the tackiest, most aggresive ocean boardwalk you can imagine. People constantly and I mean CONSTANTLY ask you to buy this buy that and then charge you quadruple what they charge a Moroccan. I think, were you Moroccan, Marakkesh would be a great place for a trip. As it is, I am dreading going back even to pass through.

We left Marrakesh and took off for the mountains, where most people are Berber, not Arab. (Actually, this is tru of most Moroccans – apparently only 10% are ‘pure’ Arab). So up here, mountain Berber is the first language, Arabic the second, French a distant third. But most everywhere we have been able to get along quite easily language wise. Warmth-wise, it would be hard to beat the people up here. Despite the hustlers, and there are many, Morocco has really won me over.

Our next plan is to go to the desert to see the ‘great oasis route’ – also quite a tourist trap i’m sure, Ben Hur was filmed at one of the kasbahs there – and then on to Fes.

Hopefully with less ambitious posts, we will be able to post more often. The keyboard here is totally different than in the states, however, so even typing is a little bit of a brain-melter. Furthermore, after an hour of typing this, the connection has gone down, so I will have to start over again…sometime.

Our last stop in SE Asia began in Chiang Mai, Thailand. On arrival, we went to the Sunday Night Market which takes place inside the old quarter section of the city. The old quarter is about 1 mile square and is housed inside a big old crumbling wall. It’s surrounded by a moat. crazy! Since it was dry season, there wasn’t much water in it but it’s still pretty neat to have a moat in your city. The night market was extremely crowded, and at this point I think Amy and I have had quite enough of markets, so we only stayed a short while. The one highlight of this was that there was a strange old guy playing his strange old homemade instruments for change in the street.

I think he was using some kind of non western tuning, because to my ears he sounded very out of tune, but it was pretty awesome nonetheless. Unfortunately, our days in Chiang Mai were marred by the fact that Amy was bedridden with the flu I had in Laos, and since we had a really comfortable guest house, we spent a lot of time watching Thai cable and taking it easy. Still, we managed to make it out once or twice. One incredible place we went to was the Museum of World Insects and Natural Wonders. It’s as kooky as the name suggests, run by a man who collected and studied mosquitoes (as did his wife) for something like 50 years. He then started doing nature paintings in his 70’s. Actually, it was pretty incredible the amount of insects, nests, bark, and other crap he had collected. A very bizarre place but a good way to spend an afternoon. That same day we had just about the best Khao Soi (Chiang Mai style curry noodles) ever. We’re thinking of going back to Chiang Mai just to have them again. The next day we made it out to the hill tribes museum, a good idea since we were thinking of going to stay with a hill tribe later in the trip. There are lots of ethnic minorities, commonly known as hill tribes, in Northern Thailand. Mostly they’re known for their colorful dress, old dialects, and a propensity to grow and smoke opium (though this has been curtailed heavily by police in the last 15 years). It was a lot of old clothes, instruments, tools, and looms, and, as everything in Thailand, an entire floor dedicated to how amazing the King is (actually, in this case it appears that the King did step in and provide some aid to struggling hill tribes in the 80’s). Chiang Mai seems like a pretty cool city. It’s laid back, there’s a good bit of art, and a great set of interconnected alleyways. But now it was time to set of for Pai, a small city in the mountains. Lots of travelers talk about how great Pai is. Well, it is very beautiful, and very calm, but it’s essentially not all that different from a place like New Hope, PA. All it has is lots of guest houses, Bob Marley bars, hip, and not so hip, shops for foreigners, and, well, foreigners. Forgive me for being a bit cynical here but what’s the point of traveling half way around the world to be somewhere that’s just like home? Well, it was quiet, and that was good, and we had a nice meal at an organic restaurant on the river.

One day in Pai was enough though, so we made plans to do another homestay, this time in the Lisu village of Nong Thong.

This was a very cool experience. Even though we were only there for a day and a half, we were very lucky to arrive on the night when the Lisu were having a New Year celebration. Actually their New Year was a month before but they hold a party to commemorate the one month anniversary. The party consists of the entire village gathering around the tree of life (in this case it was the tree stump of life), holding hands, and dancing around in a circle. The dance is led by a man who plays a traditional Lisu instrument which is a flute of sorts made out of a gourd. The songs, and dances are very repetitive, and boring, from the observers perspective, but when you join in and dance, there is a very different feel as it is extremely hypnotic, though no opium was smoked. The women all dress in their finest clothes, as do some of the young boys and men. Actually, the clothes the women wear are the same as they wear every day, only they wear very heavy and elaborate necklaces and bracelets to the celebration.

Our hosts in the village were Susannon, a Lisu woman, and Albert, her American husband.

The day after the party, Susannon took us into the hills for an edible plants walk where she showed us all sorts of food that grew naturally in the area, as well as herbs that are used for medicinal purposes.

We picked a few bags worth of food, and Susannon cooked a lot of it up that night and for breakfast the next morning. Albert is a Vipassana meditation teacher and he led a couple of meditation sessions with us. Not exactly a traditional Lisu activity, but we both enjoyed it, and have been meditating semi-regularly since then. We had to leave the next morning, back to Bangkok to catch a plane, but just as we were about to go, a friend of Albert’s came over and since he was heading back to Pai, gave us a ride to the bus there. The thing is, he came to Albert’s from an hour away, and only stayed for 15 minutes before going home.  Right before leaving, Albert discreetly handed the man a small bag. Now I’m not saying for sure but you know what I think? I think we stayed at a drug dealer’s house. Oh well, I guess we’ll never know for sure. Anyhow, back to Bangkok now to hop on that plane…we’re going to Bhutan!!!

Feb 29 – March 2: Vientiane (pronounced Ven-chang)

Perhaps because we are square, we really liked Vientiane. It is the very sleepy capitol of a very sleepy country. We rented bicycles and toured the whole city in a couple of days. The highlight for me was what we dubbed “the dancing fountain.” A gift from China (a fellow communist country), this little guy (actually there are two, straddling Laos’ own version of the Arc de Triomphe) puts on a nightly display of dancing jets of water, spot-lit with colored lights and coordinated with a soundtrack. Families stood round and watched for hours. It was really very sweet. Our first night there we walked through the park, watched the fountain, made it down to a riverside restaurant (on the side of the Mekong! Where doesn’t this river go?) and got very tipsy with a Filipino brother-sister pair, Susan & Richie.

We met them when our favorite John Denver song, Country Roads, came over the sound system and we all sang along. We good beer – beer Lao – and fantastic Laab – minced pork that was HEAVILY spiced with fresh herbs – served to us on a table made of an old tire.

On the way home, our tuk-tuk driver had us wait a moment while he made a quick pot deal. Very casually. “Sorry,” he said. “Guys need their pot.” Indeed. Drugs seemed pretty widely available in Vientiane, as almost every driver we passed said, “Tuk-tuk? No? You like…(smile)…something?” As I said though, we are square, and we didn’t take anyone up on their offer.

The next day we did a wat tour – there are many beautiful ones in Vientiane to choose from, including those with a truly psychedelic flair. One had a brilliantly-colored, comic-book-style ceiling, while another blared pumping psychedelic electro-sitar with a backbeat throughout its otherwise extremely peaceful compound. They actually put speakers on the stoop in front of the temple and pumped the music – at top volume – outside. Inside, behind the altar, was an electronic mandela, just like you’d see in a sixties rock video – or a spoof of one. It glowed. It twirled. It was triangular, with an eye in the center, brilliant tie-dye colors swirling all around. Laos-style Buddhism is interesting.

We went to the Vientiane food market, which is much like the many amazing food markets we saw throughout Southeast Asia. Incredible variety of fresh produce and meats, as well as the biggest bugs I have ever seen anyone attempt to eat.

For our own lunch, we stopped at a really inspiring place called Makphet. It’s a non-profit restaurant that provides vocational training to street children. The students work, earning money and learning the service industry. Once they pass a certain level, they become teachers. The food was really good, the setting excellent, and the organization was very successful. It’s part of a network, Friends International, that operates a similar restaurant in Phnom Penh. It was one of the most successful (from the outside, anyway) non-profit job training programs I’ve seen. I was so impressed, I began to wonder about starting a similar operation in Philadelphia. There are some that operate successfully in Philly – Manna is a great example, but others exist solely on the charity/cooperation of other non-profits who use their services. The outfits in SE Asia specifically target tourists – people who are already out, planning to spend money – and there are certainly plenty of those in Philly.

Anyhoo – sorry. I often find myself dreaming about what I’m going to do when we get back to Philly…

From Vientiane we went to Vang Vieng . We had the good foresight to not stay in V-V proper, as we had heard it was rather like a large frat party, and in fact it far exceeded our worst imaginings. We went instead to the Organic Mulberry Farm just outside of Vang Vieng. It was wonderful. We fed the baby goats, slopped the baby pigs, I worked in the vegetable garden, Ramon helped build a mud house, and we had fresh, organic, amazing food. Granted, each time you ordered, it took about an hour to get your food, and as often as not it was not at all what you had ordered. Overall, though, a great experience. I got to hang out in the local community center and learn Laos dance from the village teenagers. A hoot!

After several days there, we caved to the main draw for Vang Vieng – the tubing. In one (seriously outdated) guidebook, the tubing was described as peaceful trip down the river, set at the base of incredibly beautiful limestone karsts.

The likely sights, the book said, would be local women washing and gathering river water. Perhaps there would be an older man with a bucket, selling you a beer. Ha! What we found was a nightmare. It was like Delaware Avenue on Saturday at 2 am, except in the most beautiful setting you can imagine and all the action is outdoors. We got on the tube (why? why??? we are still wondering too) and set off down the river. Six hours later we had gone about 1 1/2 km through mostly knee-deep water, past an uninterrupted stream of bars teeming with drunk white 20 year olds. The music was BLARING and from the middle of the river you could often hear 3 or 4 stereos at the same time. This nightmare was compounded by the fact that it was freezing and that my butt was sore from the constant kicking myself for even thinking of doing this. What is even weirder is that the guidebook in which we read about the trip was from 2005. Not that old to be that out of date. It’s pretty shocking how little time it takes to destroy a place. Go whitey. Go.

After we recovered from this trip, we decided to take a beautiful bike ride in the countryside and explore the local caves. This was well worth it. The ride & the scenery were amazing, and the cave we explored went 3 km into the side of the mountain. Once we reached the back, there was a cold, clear pool to swim in. It was incredibly dark and humid. You literally couldn’t see your hand in front of your face! Our flashlights burned out about 50 feet from the entrance on the way back, so we felt very fortunate to make it out alive.

From here, we moved on to the historic town of Luang Prabang (pronounced Loo-ong Prah -bong, not Loo-ang Pruh-bang, as we said it many times before we were corrected). This is a truly beautiful town, recently declared a World Historic Site by UNESCO. It is, however, a *very* touristic town. Unfortunately, Ramon got very sick on the morning we left Vang Vieng so the first day or two I explored mostly by myself. There were tons of handicrafts markets and a really impressive new museum about the local hilltribes, where I bought a cool CD of Laos folk music that I look forward to hearing when we get back. Again, we had incredible food – especially an in-table charcoal fired barbecue of buffalo, vegetables, chicken and pork and some incredible jujubee-coconut drink with a side of toasted riverweed at a wonderful little restaurant called Tamarind.

The riverweed is their version of Nori. It’s exactly what it sounds like, weed from the river, dried and toasted with slivers of garlic, sun-dried tomatoes and sesame seeds. It was fantastic. Our guest house was an old, wooden-style Lao home, the Thaelinh Guest House, up above one of the main wats.

There were many beautiful, very old wats in Luang Prabang, and one of the most impressive parts of the stay there was what has become known to tourists as the “Saffron Circuit.” At dawn every morning, monks from aroundthe town gather for a procession in which they receive alms, in the form of food, from the the townsfolk. The alms are mostly small handfuls of sticky rice colected in the monks alms bowl. The monks is Laos are allowed only 7 (or 8?) possessions, so their lives are fairly spartan, and this procession is one of the main ways they are able to eat! It is a beautiful sight, the long line of orange robes in the early morning light. It is also quite a tourist spectacle, people stepping up and snapping photos rather disrespectfully. We tried to stay a bit at a distance, but of course, we really wanted to see, too.

In all, I loved Laos. I really want to take a month, go back and explore all that beautiful, rugged, remote countryside. I’m sorry that i cannot post more of the beautiful pictures that we have, but I’m writing this from Kampala right now, where it is dusty, polluted and the internet connection is TERRIBLE.  I almost tore my own head off today.  I will try to update with more photos later on.  A month in Laos might be quite refreshing about now….Ramon? Shall we?

Tomorrow, March 18th, Amy and I leave for Bhutan, the real honeymoon part of our trip. Because of the amount of time it takes to write these posts, as well as our limited access to computers (we’re not travelling with one), we’ve gotten a bit behind where we’d like to be in keeping you updated. In an attempt to remedy that, here’s a quick overview of how we spent our time in Vietnam (hopefully with another post on Laos and Northern Thailand to come).

Feb. 17 – 20; The Mekong Delta

We started out in Vietnam by taking a boat from just outside of Phnom Phen, Cambodia to the Vietnam border at Chau Doc. There we saw a fish farm (quite sad actually) and had a good time walking through the town at night and drank shots of rice wine with green mango, offered to us by a group of very sweet, and very drunk, locals.

The next day we embarked on a 3 day Mekong Delta trip, mostly by boat. We stayed in Cantho, where we ate snake, had amazing Vietnamese coffee, saw an incredible floating market, and met a nice teenager who helped us buy water and practiced his English with us before ditching us to play online games (which are huge here!).

Then we were off to Mytho which was quite nice.

We ate durian which we had been wanting to try but were afraid. It’s a fruit that’s both sweet an incredibly pungent. The smell reminds one a bit of raw sewage, but the taste is, well, sorta good.

I have to admit it’s a bit hard to get past the smell. On bus trips, they don’t allow you to bring durian into the passenger area with you. Because of the incredibly strong smell, you must stow it with the luggage.

In Mytho we met this guy who took us on a fantastic nighttime boat trip through these small canals in the delta to a restaurant where we ate a super tasty and beautiful mudfish.

It was incredible to go through here at night, and reminded us of a thousand Vietnam war (there they call it the American war) movies.

It was during this time we met Gunna and Ann.

We became friends and spent a bunch of the next few days in Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) together. The first thing you notice in HCMC is the 1 zillion motorcycles zipping around. The streets are chaotic, and it’s pretty scary to cross them even, because traffic rules are really treated more as suggestions here and not actual rules, so a moto can come at you from anywhere when you’re not expecting it. We stayed in a guest house on this fantastic little alley that was really alive. The city is full of alleyways and people just spill out on to them, hanging out, cooking and selling food and other products, and just generally being very vibrant. It reminded me of some bits of Europe actually, except the architecture’s not as old.

HCMC is really beautiful and alive. While there, we went to the park (of course) hoping to see people getting down with the public exercise, but instead found this.

We then checked out the American War Museum which is, well, a war museum, so it’s full with propaganda, as well as being genuinely moving and painful. We also took a day trip to see a Cao Dai temple.

Cao Dai is this strange religion that is kind of a halfway mix between Christianity and Buddhism. One of their patron saints is french poet Victor Hugo,

and their decor is very colorful. It only exists in the south of Vietnam, where there about 3 million practicing Cao Dai, and they allow non-practitioners to come to the service and hang out and take pictures.

Later that day, we went to the Cu Chi tunnels which is a system of underground tunnels built by the Viet Cong to hide from the South Vietnamese Army and American forces. Overall they built over 200 miles worth of tunnels, and had meeting rooms, kitchens, and hospitals underground. The tunnels were so small that American GI’s could not fit in them, and so they provided a safe hiding place for the VC. They have doubled the size of a 100 meter stretch of the tunnel so that Westerners can fit in and go through them. Even this is incredibly hard to get through and makes one very claustrophobic. These tunnels were clearly the work of a very determined group of people.

The pictures are of Amy and I getting into one of the original tunnel entrances, this one hasn’t been made bigger.

The next day we headed north towards Dalat. It’s very mountainous there and again, quite European. There’s cafes everywhere, and the smell of pine trees reminded me of home in a way that hadn’t happened before on the trip. We visited a crazy hotel called, the crazy house, and I played a muddy soccer game with a bunch of Vietnamese guys who didn’t speak much English but did manage to get out something to the effect of “you are white like American, but short like Vietnamese” That was good fun, but the real reason we went to Dalat was for the Easy Riders.

The Easy Riders have been getting quite a fine reputation around Vietnam as motorcycle tour guides and they’re based in Dalat. We hooked up with a couple of guys, Lee and An, who turned out to be fake Easy Riders.

They took us on a 2 day tour of the central highlands, these are some pics from the bike.

On this trip is where we visited a silk factory and ate those silkworms (you may remember Amy’s post…), and visited some coffee farms, the happy Buddha temples, a beautiful waterfall called Elephant waterfall and an incredible rock called Elephant Stone.

We rode through the pouring rain, saw the effects of Agent Orange on a hillside, stayed in a stilt house, had a good time with a lady who made sesame ricepaper, and met a 2 day old buffalo.

Unfortunately, on the 2nd day of the trip, we got accosted at 11 AM in the morning by a local plainclothes cop who was incredibly drunk and who tried to kiss Amy. Amy and I both pushed him at that moment (not knowing he was a cop) and things nearly got uglier. Our guides were fairly afraid to step in and do something, but luckily he was so drunk that we were able to just get on the motorcycles and ride away. It turns out that in a lot of villages, people are assigned to positions of authority solely on family history and not merit. The likely reason this person was even a cop was that his parents and grandparents fought for Ho Chi Minh and the North Vietnamese Army. He is very important in his town, and wanted to throw his weight around with the foreigners. We were lucky though, in that there is no real structured hierarchy beyond the village police officer, so we were in no further danger after running away.

Well, after this experience, and a combined 12 hours each on the back of the motorcycle in 2 days (and a case of serious monkey butt), we were ready to relax a bit and went to the beach at Doc Let. This was to be our last stay in Vietnam before heading into Laos but unfortunately, our 2 days there where filled with rain, wind, and cold. We had a nice time meeting some other travelers while we were there, but didn’t get any of the quality beach time we had hoped for.

Overall, Vietnam was fantastic, and we both really wish we could have stayed a bit longer. The people were very warm and inviting. We had been led to believe by other travelers that this wouldn’t be the case, that folks in Vietnam would be out to hustle us but that wasn’t our experience at all. We never made it to the north and Hanoi, where we would have really liked to spend some time. Apparently it is a more laid back, and arty place than HCMC, but it wasn’t to be. I guess we’ll just have to put it on the agenda for next time.

Oh yes, and a parting gift from the Vietnamese to us, this donation jar at the airport. Thanks Vietnam!

So we spent nearly 2 weeks in Cambodia. Amy wrote already a bit about how difficult of a place it is. The poverty really is overwhelming, and any westerner with a pulse is constantly reminded of their privilege, and your heart is always breaking a little bit. It sounds selfish to say that the hardship of others is directly responsible for your own inability to enjoy yourself “Why don’t those starving street children just leave me alone so I can have a good time?…” But the truth is it does have a weighty impact.

That being said, we had some amazing times in Cambodia. Our first stop was Siem Reap. Siem Reap is a small town about 5 miles from Angkor Wat and the rest of the ancient Khmer ruins, and it’s where everybody stays who goes to the temples. Our first day there we rented bicycles and set out to see them. Just before arriving at the moat surrounding Angkor Wat, we bumped into some more monkeys.

This is the 3rd or 4th time on the trip that this has happened and I swear I don’t get tired of it. As we learned in the ensuing days, these particular monkeys do a good business preying on the curiosity of tourists and as a result remain well fed and unbothered by our proximity to them. We stayed with them for a few minutes and then pedalled the final 1/2 mile to the grandaddy of all temples, the largest religious monument in the world, the Khmer temple of Angkor Wat.

Mostly built in the 12th and 13th centuries, this thing is incredibly impressive. There is a ton of detail in every structure, with particular attention paid to the Apsaras and their boobs and crazy hair.  One unfortunate thing is that the sculptures were extensively looted by the French in the 19th and early 20th centuries, the result being rows and rows of headless sandstone buddhas.

Shortly after entering the grounds, we heard some very hypnotic music being played, so we followed our ears to the source and encountered a really excellent band of orphans who live on the grounds under the care of monks.

After checking them out for a few minutes, we headed back in towards the main temple. We got in to see the libraries, old pools, and interior surrounding walls which all have thousands of years of Khmer history carved into them in the form of pictures, but unfortunately we were denied access to the main towers.

After several hours touring the area, we left Angkor Wat, hopped back on the bikes, and headed to Ta Prohm. Apparently you’ll recognize it if you’ve seen Tomb Raider (though I haven’t) but it seems like a great place to film some action scenes. Ta Prohm is a vast set of ruins that has been completely overrun by the jungle. In particular huge spung trees which are able to grow on and between the rocks. It is gorgeous, and thrilling to walk through, and we are really loving being here.

The next day, we’re back on the bikes and head past Angkor Wat to the ancient city of Angkor Thom. Angkor Thom was a walled city that was designed with a special entrance to allow important figures to enter on elephant. Inside the walls, the city was inhabited by 100,000 people and at the center is the most beautiful of all the temples. Bayon has 160 huge serene faces carved into it, and I can’t find a way to articulate how incredibly fucking cool it is. It just is. Look at the pictures and you’ll see.

In the process of constructing other lavish buildings on the grounds of Angkor Thom, King Jayavarman VIII essentially wiped out all of the resources available to the Khmer people, and instigated the downfall of the civilization. It wasn’t until early in the 20th century that sandstone could be used again as a construction material, it had all been used up!

The big downfall of being in Siem Reap is that it is just impossible to get off of the tourist track while you are there. The city exists exclusively because of the tourist industry so there’s no way around it if you want to see the temples. In an attempt to strike out on our own a bit, we decided to take a boat trip to Battambang. BAD IDEA! Only tourists are dumb enough to make this trip during the dry season. The river was so low, that what was advertised as a 4 hour trip actually took upwards of 9 hours on an extremely loud (and extremely crowded) boat full of people who were mostly seeking to get away from each other.

Well, Battambang is a pretty beat up city. In what was still a Khmer Rouge stronghold up until the late 90’s, Battambang is, like most of Cambodia, pretty bombed out and pretty poor. After checking in to an overpriced and lousy hotel, we were determined to have a good time. We started out by going to a fantastic bakery recommended to us by this guy

and then wandered around the tiny downtown area. As it began to get dark, we met a local moto driver named Chandra. We became fast friends and all decided to go to Bopha Tip, the local nightclub.

Bopha Tip was an amazing cultural experience. We were the only westerners there and I’m not sure we could have coped if not for Chandra. Immediately after sitting down, a waitress came up to me and offered me an Angkor beer. I said, “No thanks, we’ll have Tiger beer.” Again, she offered me Angkor Beer and again I tried to tell her we wanted Tiger. I turned to Chandra for help and he explained to her that it was Tiger beer we were after. This sent her into a cursing tirade and she really let the table have it (or so it seemed, I’m not so up on my Khmer swears) before storming off. Wondering what the hell just happened, Chandra explained to us that each drink company has a representative at the bar (AKA a ‘beergirl’), and they all try to sell you their brand. Recognizing us ‘farang’ as an easy mark, the Angkor beer lady was quite upset at being thwarted. Shortly thereafter, the Tiger rep came over and set us straight.

The drink situation settled, we turn our attention to the club. For the moment there’s not a whole lot going on. There’s plenty of neon lights though, and live music karaoke. There’s a houseband playing Cambodian pop favorites and during the early part of the evening, people climb on stage and sing along with them. As it gets later, the rehearsed singers come out and it’s a whole revue. There’s a male and female lead singer and a whole host of backups all doing very simple choreographed dance moves. We got up to join in on the circle dances, which are these strange dances that accompany specific traditional songs. The dance consists of everybody walking around in a circle, very slowly, and making slight gestures with their hands as they do so. I asked around if there were specific gestures with attached meanings but the general answer was no, you just wave your hands around gently and that’s that.

After a couple of circle dances the freeform dance party began and we got down to boogeying. We were a real hit, and person after person came up to dance with us, copy our moves (we have moves?), shake our hands, or, depending on how drunk they were, just stare slackjawed. Good times!

It felt really wonderful to experience local culture as a local would. You get stuck on the backpacker or tourist circuit and it can be really difficult to get off, because there’s an infrastructure in place to make money off of you, and to keep you on it. If the language barrier weren’t so great, it wouldn’t be quite so hard but it is. So this nightclub experience, one i’m sure I’d have little interest in at home, ended up being a really special night for us.

The next day we took off for a small village outside of Kompong Cham called Srey Siam, to do a homestay we learned about online. This was a valuable experience, but a bit of a mixed bag. We were there for a day and a half, had a great walking tour of the farms in the village which Amy wrote about, and had some great food and tried palm sugar wine which was kind of like 7-Up but with a little bit of rotten egg smell. The first night there we played a couple of songs for the family which was especially nice for their kids who had never seen music performed live before.

They had a pretty sizable fruit and vegetable garden, and lots of chickens, and it was quite beautiful. On the other hand, there was no electricity, and the pump for the well was on the fritz, with the likelihood of repairing it in the near future seeming slim. It was, in a word, simple.

Our homestay mom, Kheung, is a terrific woman, and we had a great time meeting her. We were also able to meet and talk with her sister (a schoolteacher in the neighboring village), and her mother (a farmer still in her 70’s).  We also had quite a bit of fun trying to keep up with the kids, Ra and Na.

The sad part about the homestay, because everything else was quite nice, was that the homestay dad was unwilling or unable to refrain from criticizing and cursing at his wife and children. It was constant, and he was menacing, and while he never directed any of his venom towards Amy or myself, the discomfort felt by his family, and us, was everpresent.

Relieved to leave Srey Siam, Amy and I headed for our last stop in Cambodia, the capitol Phnom Phen. We’re excited to be back in a major metropolis, and see our friends Jon and Anna who are in town working on a story about the tribunals for the few Khmer Rouge officers who are still living, and get back to eating good (non-insect) street food.

We got settled into Phnom Phen around lunchtime, and head to Friends, an NGO restaurant which is run by, and is a training ground for, street children in Phnom Phen. The food was quite good and, while more expensive than the pennies we’ve gotten used to paying for meals, we’re happy to pay the extra as by all accounts, the restaurant, the program, and the children seem to be thriving.  From here we head across the street to the National History Museum to help us get a little context on everything we saw in Angkor Wat.

The pieces are beautiful, but the exhibits themselves are poorly organized and information on what we’re seeing, even with a guided tour, is often incomplete or non-existent. The museum is open air and much of what we’re looking at is exposed to the elements and it shows. This is a country that is still trying to get back on it’s feet after all of the violence it’s been through, and the museum is just another in a string of endless signs that it hasn’t happened yet.

We spend the next few days going to the Killing Fields memorial & S-21, the high school which was converted into a Khmer Rouge prison and large scale torture chamber, and wandering around the city and it’s markets trying to soak up as much vibe as we can. A funny thing about Cambodia is that you can get pirated copies of anything here. There are music stores where you can go in and download any 10 new release cd’s for 10,000 riel (about $2.50). My apologies to the publishers of the lonely planet guide book series but we couldn’t pass up photocopied versions of the Cambodia and Laos Lonely Planets at a cost of $4 a piece. One night, back in our hotel room, we watched Sweeney Todd (terrible movie by the way) on national Cambodian television, while it was still out in the theatres in the US. Every 5 minutes or so , a notice would appear at the bottom of the screen saying something to the effect of “Intended for use by Oscar awards committee. Unauthorized showing of this video is prohibited” Hilarious! How they get away with it I have no idea.

We also took in an Apsara dance show while we were there. Apsara is a traditional classical style of Cambodian dance.

We even made some friends at the show.

During the reign of the Khmer Rouge, an attempt was made to wipe out all of the arts in Cambodia. A big way of doing this was by killing all of the artists, dancers, musicians, etc. So while there was still an interest in Apsara after the Khmer Rouge was defeated, there were very few people left who could perform or teach it. Only now, nearly 30 years later, as a new generation of dancers are learning the traditional pieces, is Apsara becoming a regular part of the fabric of the culture again.

An incredible thing about Phnom Phen is the number of people living in the street. As soon as it gets dark in the city, cots with mosquito nets start appearing all over the sidewalks, in gas stations that are closed for the evening, in front of embassies, everywhere. And it doesn’t seem to change whether you’re walking through the slums or the ritzier parts. It’s so common that it’s seen as normal, and people will nod to you and say hello as they’re climbing into their hammocks to retire for the evening.

So this all sounds quite bleak, but the truth is there’s quite an energy in Phnom Phen, and while times are very hard, they are no where near as bad as they once were. The people here are tough and resilient, and have somehow managed to stay warm, outgoing, enthusiastic, and friendly. There are old buildings being fixed, new ones being built, and a real sense of togetherness in the neighborhoods. It feels like things can get better and that it can start here. To that I say I certainly hope so.

I had seen them in the market in Thailand, glistening salty piles, separated by species. On the left, cricket; in the middle, beetle. On the end, the one that provoked the most horror in my imagination – the worm. The larvae. Ivory white, they were bumpy, fleshy, big as the pinky of the Michelin Man.

Okay, maybe not that big.

But they were easily an inch long. I imagined putting one of these giant maggots in my mouth, its soft flesh wiggling gently between my teeth. Eegads.

The first time we saw them, visiting the Watermelon Festival (much like a county fair) with our homestay family and a group of NGO volunteers, we whities all pointed and giggled in amazement and revulsion. But I was piqued by the idea of trying them. I didn’t know if I could stomach it. Were they for real? Did people really eat them? If they could do it – if they liked doing it – there must be something to it. Part of what’s interesting about traveling is seeing past the limits of how you’re socialized. I wanted to get to that point where you see that what you know is really only what you think you know, and try to step outside of that. And I think I know that eating bugs is gross.

But at the Festival, our homestay host, Tik, turned up her nose at the fresh-fried insects, and I was freed from the challenge of trying to prove myself a non-narrow-minded Westerner. For the moment.

Weeks later we were at the bus station in Battambong, Cambodia. Our bus was very late and I decided to while the time away by trying out my phrasebook-Cambodian on the friendly looking lady sitting next to me.

We found we both spoke a tee-ninsy bit of Thai, which served us better than my non-existent Cambodian or her limited English. But she appreciated my efforts and rewarded me with a treat she had just bought from the vendor – a tiny raw minced pork ball topped with a very hot chili and wrapped in a banana leaf. She and her friend watched with amusement and approval as I ate the spicy ball. I smiled and fanned my open mouth at the intense heat.

She then disappeared for a moment and came back with a funny, slightly mischievious smile on her face and a bag full of fried bugs. And not just any bugs. These critters looked suspiciously like cockroaches. Zow.

Man. What to do? She very sweetly offered me one, and both women laughed when I balked. Really? I asked. Delicious? Oh yes, they said, peeling off the outer wings and popping them into their mouths. Delicious.

Ummmmmm….okay? I said, taking one tentatively. God. Was it going to be juicy? Were bug guts – COCKROACH guts- going to squirt out into my mouth?!?!?!?!?

I waited a few moments for the appropriate photos to be taken – I had to have this on record – put the roach to my lips, opened my mouth, and bit it in half….

And man! It was, believe it or not, kind of yummy. Not in a – hey guys! bug fries at my house! – kind of way, but way WAY less nasty than I had imagined. For starters, they were totally dry. No guts. No juice, no paste, no nothing inside. It really was just a crunchy shell.

I was so proud of myself I beamed and made Ramon take my picture again. He took the other half of the bug, chewed and swallowed.

And he agreed! Not so bad! Not really knowing how to say – hey wow! It’s not so bad! We said only, Delicious! Thank you!

Which prompted our nice lady friend to go and get a bag of crickets.

Still later, in Vietnam, after a visit to a silkworm factory, the monster of bugs appeared before me again in fried form. The worm.

They had not been available at the bus station in Cambodia, so I had not had to tackle this particular demon. This time, our cocky, 19-year-old motorcycle tour guide thought to impress us with his bug-eating bravado. He was really getting on my nerves, and sometimes there’s nothing like a little machismo to goad me along. Hah! I thought. Watch this! Heartened by my experience with the light and crunchy crickets and cockroaches, I went for the worm after only a moment’s hesitation.

Okay. This time there was a little paste. Not so much squirting out as smearing around. I chewed quickly and swallowed, feeling queasy but proud. In all, it really didn’t taste any worse than a dry little Cheeto. Given a choice in the future, I might have to opt for the worm.

Not.

Cambodia…what to say about it? As we drove out of Phnom Penh to catch the boat to Vietnam, we once again found ourselves on an incredibly bad stretch of road. This highway – a major road in the country – is completely in ruins. Long stretches with no pavement, just red dirt road. The dust coats everything. The giant plants by the roadside are mere emerald suggestions under their thick cake of red dust.

But this road is nowhere near as bad as the road on which we arrived. We crossed the border from Thailand at Poipet. The highway there takes you to Siem Reap, the premier destination in Cambodia and one of the largest tourist attractions in Southeast Asia. Forgive the hellfire and brimstone talk, but that road there is an abomination. It can scarcely be called a road. It’s mostly gravel – large gravel – and EXTREMELY bumpy, with a detour about every five minutes. The detours dip riotously down to the right, over huge dirt humps, before you come back on the “road.”  I was wearing only a regular bra, not a sports bra, and my boobs bounced so uncontrollably I had to hold them still the whole way. There were no lights – no street lights, no traffic lights. No signs. No gas stations, only roadside stands selling 1 liter bottles of petrol and diesel in old Johnnie Walker Red or Pepsi bottles.

There is a persistent rumor afoot in Cambodia that an airline in Thailand pays the Cambodian government to keep this road in such horrible condition. That way, many travelers will choose to pay the outrageous flight prices from Bangkok to Siem Reap. Hooray for corruption.

We undertook the four 1/2 hour, 90 mile journey at dusk, sharing a taxi with a very nice traveler we’d met along the way. We’d had to give a dirty old Austrian man the boot from our group for making the jack-off motion to me and suggesting that my “skills” were why Ramon wouldn’t need to go to a prostitute. Thanks, mate! Another in a string of dirty old white men in Southeast Asia.

Even though it was almost dusk when we arrived in Cambodia, we could tell right away, within minutes, that Cambodia was poor. POOR poor. Poor in an overarching, all-inclusive kind of way that I’d never seen before. The state is poor. The big cities are poor.  We stayed in Battambong, the third largest city in Cambodia for a couple of days.  This is what it looked like outside of our downtown window:

Phnom Penh, the capital city, though much wealthier than the rest of the country, is poor. We stayed in a very nice neighborhood in Phnom Penh, and at night people set up cots with mosquito nets everywhere, all over the sidewalks, at the gas station even, on the cement right in front of the pumps.

In Thailand, we had seen many many people living in shacks. In my naivete about shacks, I thought these people were poor. And they were – I don’t want to understate their suffering in any way. But I didn’t realize that corrugated metal and old Coca-Cola tarps were a step up in the shack world. A coveted step up. Outside Siem Reap and all along the riverbank to Battambong, we saw people living in much, much poorer shacks than these.

Mostly made of leaves and sticks, with thin sheets of clear plastic billowing out around them. Certainly no electricity or plumbing. Many surrounded by heaps of garabge and naked children. And in the midst of it all, Cambodian people – the smiling-est, friendliest, warmest people we’d met.

This is particularly amazing given their history. I, in my limited education, had little understanding of Cambodian history. I didn’t realize the degree to which the Khmer Rouge regime devastated the country. I didn’t know about the US role in the war leading up to the KR regime. While here, I read that right before the KR came to power, as part of the ongoing war in Vietnam, unauthorized US carpet bombings killed 250,000 Cambodians. Then, the US pulled out and the KR came to power. They killed another 2,000,000 more – a quarter of the country’s population. Those who survived were brutalized, starved, beaten, raped.  We visited Choeung Ek, aka the Killing Fields, shere mass exectuions and burial were held.  Some 20,000 people were killed here and about 8,000 have been exhumed.  Bits of their clothing are still scattered the grounds.

We visited a Khmer Rouge prison, Tuol Sleng, that housed and tortured Cambodians before they were killed.  The museum showed pretty graphic depictions of the torture.  Among them?  Water boarding.

 The KR especially killed those with prior political experience and the educated. As a result, the literacy rate in Cambodia is about 38%. On the streets in Phnom Penh, there are printing stalls – places where you can go and pay someone write a letter or card for you if you are not able to write yourself.

We stayed with a family in Kampong Cham, the mother of which was 6 years old during ‘Pol Pot time,’ as she called it.

She was recruited at 6 years old to build a dam in the region, a difficult task even if all of the engineers in the country hadn’t been executed. One day she took us for a walk and showed us what she ate during that time. How they first ate the young leaves of plants beacuse, although they were bitter, they were easy to chew and nutritious. As time went on they had to eat to eat the older, tougher leaves that were to hard to chew. They had to rub them in their hands to break them down first. 

Then they would catch bugs, snap off their heads and eat them raw. I cannot imagine.

Because of the poverty, there are many many beggars in Camobodia, each population different depending on which city you’re in. In Siem Reap, it was almost exclusively children. Not begging, though – selling postcards or bracelets or what have you. Usually pretty dirty, barefoot, desperate, but incredibly sweet. And AMAZINGLY good at English. These children all self-taught English in order to be able to sell more. It really was quite incredible. I think they must be geniuses, at age 9 or 10 to have taught themselves enough English to have a perfectly composed, if selectively sales-oriented, conversation with a native English speaking adult.

The situation is so dire that the child sex industry has become a huge issue.  There are ads everywhere directed at Westerners:  Please Don’t Have Sex With Our Children.   Our hotel in Siem Reap had this anti-child prostution policy posted in our room:

In Phnom Penh, it is a combination. Lots of straight-up begging from people of all ages.
The National Museum there houses the premier collection of Khmer artifacts from Angor Wat and other sites in the area, but the museum is open-air, allowing birds to fly in and shit on the walls. Outside this museum I saw a family of about 15 living on the sidewalk. The grandma was out front, passively panhandling while in the back a boy of about 6 scrabbled in the dirt for bugs. By the riverside, there are many children, women with babies, sleeping right on the street. Filthy, no shoes, no mats, no nothing.

I had another grandma in Battambong come begging by standing next to me and pinching me gently, repeatedly, wiping her eyes and belly in a pantomime ‘I’m sad & hungry’ way. This same woman had come and pressed her face to the window right where Ramon and I had been eating lunch just a few moments earlier. She stayed that way, her hands and face mashed against the glass, looking at us, for about 5 minutes. It was pretty disturbing…

There are a bunch more stories to tell about Cambodia – we had an amazing time there and we found the people to be incredibly generous and open and warm. We will post more soon about our venture into bug-eating in Battambong, monkeys, Angkor Wat and my journey with the Asian toilet. For now, I just needed to process a bit the overwhelming poverty & suffering we saw there. It was intense.

We arrived in Bangkok at 4AM on the overnight bus from Kuraburi after some emotional goodbyes. As per usual, the ride was bizarre. We got on to a full bus at 7 PM and all of the lights were off and 2/3 of the passengers were asleep. Once we get settled in and rolling we start hearing this real spooky soundtrack of ambient noise and wolves howling and the like while we drive down dark windy country roads. A moment later and the TV starts flickering between static and a black screen (remember Poltergeist?) . This goes on for a couple of minutes and finally we are tuned in to some Japanese slasher/mind fuck type of horror flick with full on gore happening. Neither of us know how to react to this, and it’s pretty inescapable, but fortunately it’s only half an hour before the end of it, and then all lights are off.

Fortunately, upon arrival, we had a place to go. You see, when I sent out an email letting people know that we were doing this blog, I got a message back from a close friend from college who I hadn’t spoken to in some time. Jon said “You know I live in Bangkok, right?” Well, I didn’t know that, but it was great to find out.

Jon and his fiancee, Anna, are journalists who are currently on a bit of a world tour, writing and selling stories and video pieces. They spent 6 months in Uganda, after which they went to India for 4 months, and then arrived in Bangkok at the beginning of January. They run an international freelance journalism website together called Backpack Journalist (http://backpackjournalist.org/) They’re doing really important work in a very interesting and inspiring way.

So, after arriving in Bangkok, we taxi it over to Jon and Anna’s who have offered to put us up during our stay. What had initially been planned as only a quick stop over to pick up our Vietnam visas changed and now we’re going to hang for a couple of days before heading to Angkor Wat. They have a nice apartment in Sukhumvit which is more or less the ex-pat and upper-middle class Thai neighborhood. It’s incredibly conveniently located and everything you need is in walking distance. It’s not extremely overcrowded and hectic the way 3/4 of Bangkok is. Also, everyone speaks English here.

Most of the next few days are spent hanging out and running errands (Note: If you buy a Sony camera and it breaks overseas, just forget about getting it fixed…even by Sony themselves!) and Jon and Anna are getting ready to leave to work on a couple of stories in Phnom Phen. We do go out for a great dinner on Saturday night and get fairly drunk on the Thai traditional drink of 100 Pipers Whiskey, club soda, and a splash of Coke. It’s a little sweet for my tastes but not too bad, and it’s how they do it here so what can I say? This the first real partying moment of the trip and it couldn’t have come at a better time. It’s pretty crazy to meet up with friends halfway around the world from your own home and it absolutely makes you feel like celebrating.

On Sunday we head over to Lumpini Park at 6PM when everybody’s out and it’s pretty great. Group public exercise is the norm here and we walk by about 400 people aerobicizing together. Past this we stumble upon a full classical orchestra. It’s dusk and the music is peaceful and lovely. We watch for a couple of minutes until a moment where the music is crescendoing and in comes a full drum kit, immediately plodding along mercilessly to Vivaldi. It’s good for a laugh all around and we watch for another minute or two and , as we start walking away…yep, you guessed it, the wailing electric guitar solo. It was at this moment that I fell in love with Bangkok, I only wish I had an audio clip to post here.

Still further along in the park, it’s more public exercise with a complete outdoor weight gym and a curving path with a series of more weights and related exercises. It makes you wonder why there’s no public health and fitness program in Philly. Though truth be told the population is likely too cynical to embrace it.

This time through Bangkok has been much less overwhelming than the last, but there’s still no getting around that this place is chaotic and overstimulating in a way that you don’t see in any US city, and that I’m not so sure I could get used to. Still, a good time was had and soon we’re off to Cambodia!