A haphazard chronicle of my inevitable misadventures during a year in Vietnam and points east.

p.s. I'll be pitifully grateful if you send me email during my exile: TravelerKaty@hotmail.com

October 2002 November 2002 December 2002 January 2003 February 2003 March 2003 April 2003 May 2003 June 2003 July 2003 August 2003 September 2003 October 2003 November 2003 February 2006 March 2006 May 2006

 
OK, I have lost my mind and today accepted a job teaching 8 hours a week at a public middle school, with a minimum of 50 squirrelly students in each class. Reportedly, some of these classes have 70 students. I am clearly a glutton for punishment.

My first day is Thursday -- I'll let you know how things went, if in fact I survive.
posted by Katy at 8:12 PM

 
You may think I've just been a slacker these last few days, but really I'm looking for a job. Oh, and having lunch and dinner and drinks and coffee (depending on the time of day) with friends I lost touch with during my 6 months of wandering. Anyway, busy busy busy. Plus what I wrote about Bagan, the great ruined temple city in Myanmar, which was my next stop after Inle Lake, was really weak so I can't decide whether to bother putting anything on the website about it at all.

Oh well. When I get settled here (hopefully in a couple of days -- I'm doing a "demonstration class" for a potential employer on Monday) I'll do some more posting.


posted by Katy at 8:09 PM

 
Inle Lake, Myanmar continued

The Intha are Buddhist like most of the rest of Myanmar, so our next stop was at the Phaung Daw temple, the holiest religious site in the region. The temple houses five important statues, three Buddhas and two Buddha disciples, four of which are ferried around the lake on an ornate golden swanlike barge during the annual festival. Frankly, this place was weird. the temple itself was newish and hideously designed, and those important religious statues were just bizarre lumps of gold leaf to the naked eye, a bit like melting snowmen. It was a popular place to congregate, however,. Around the holy golden snowmen groups of men and women (usually separately, and many more men than women as naturally the women have to work) sat on the floor chatting, drinking tea or eating lunch. It's one of the things I really like about Burmese temples -- they serve as a combination of worship site, community center, and tea shop, in which families and friends can get together out of the heat and enjoy a quiet meal.

Much of our afternoon was spent going to combination factory/shops of various kinds in the various stilt villages. We saw umbrellas (and paper) being made, sink longyi woven, knives blacksmithed, silver jewelry fashioned, cheroots rolled, and boats being made. I bartered for one of the giant $1500 teak longboats, but the price just didn't drop low enough to convince me to purchase. I enjoy thse "factory" expiditions, actually. It's fun to see how they make these things, and it certainly makes you better appreciate the criminally low prices for everything.

After further meandering around the villages waving at excited children (don't they see tourists every day? How can they possibly maintain this level of enthusiasm?) and smiling adults as well, we went to relax and drink tea at the Nga Phe Kyuang monestary, a wooden structure on stilts with rusty metal crenellated roof built in the 1850's. Nga Phe Kyuang has two claims to fame -- a collection of excellent Buddha images in Shan, Tibetan, Bagan and Inwa styles each housed in ornately carved and gilded cases; and cats who jump through a hoop held by a crimson-robed monk. Naturally the cats are the big draw, hence the monestary's common name in English: Jumping Cat Monestary.

We spent an hour or so there, mostly sitting on the floor with the cats and chatting with the monk and with other tourists. For me, Jumping Cat Monestary was also the site of one of those "small world" experiences that we've all had at one time or another.

While walking out to see the view an older Frenchman spoke to me. He thought I was Spanish -- I'm sure he never would have talked to me otherwise. The French rarely talk to English speakers. But that's beside the point.

Anyway, we got to talking about where we were from, and when I said I was from Seattle he said HE knew someone from seattle, a woman who was married to an
American and then divorced and moved to Seattle.

Ah, I said. A hairdresser? Named Annie?

Yes indeed, he replied. He is good friends with her parents in Lyon. This strange Frenchman at a Burmese monestary knew my longtime neighborhood hairdresser. Now that's a small world.

That was about it for our delightful day on the lake. It was back to the pancakes and italian food of Nyaungshwe after watching the sun set over the mountains.


Copyright 2003 Katy Warren


posted by Katy at 7:02 PM

 
Inle Lake, Myanmar

The bus from Kalaw to the Inle Lake area was uneventful, though it gave me a waking taste of the quality of the roads between Inle and Bagan. Once you get off the main "highway" from Yangon to Mandalay the quality dorps precipitously -- narrow and bumpy. Basically Myanmar roads (the ones that are paved at all) have been patched so many times that the original pavement is often invisible to the amateur eye. The drive was lovely, however, through villages and pine forests, mountains and vast cultivated valleys.

I took the easy way out upon arrival at the junction 7 miles f rom Nyaungshwe, the town at the top of the lake -- I hired a taxi. No matter how adventurous I am when it comes to modes of transportation, it's still a pain in the rear to cart your bags on one of these pickups bursting with humanity and livestock.

Nyaungshwe was a nice little tourist town -- really one of the only towns in Myanmar that could fit that description. It boasted such rare amenities as email service (no web or web-based email though -- not allowed by the government), trekking guides, souvenir shops, art galleries, and not one but five restaurants advertising authentic Italian food. You can get Indian food too, but really it's all about the pasta in Inle Lake. Oh, and pancakes. Apparently the Thais or someone told them that tourists are wild for pancakes, so they're ubiquitous. My residence, for example, was called "The Teakwood Guesthouse and Pancake". And the pancakes were pretty good, actually, far better than the godawful egg and white toast breakfast featured at every other guesthouse in Myanmar.

The thing that one does in the Inle area is take a boat trip, so on my second day (I'm sparing you a description of my day 1 bike ride) for a shockingly low sum I did so -- $6 for the whole day, 8 a.m. to 6:30, split between five of us. I felt compelled to give our bouncy, smiley driver a $1 tip. I mean honestly, I spent as much on lunch as for the entire tour.

We started our day winding through the canals that separate Nyaungshwe from the lake itself, grassy islands nad floating cornfields rife with birds and grass and wood shacks on stilts. In the Inle Lake area, the market is on a five day rotation, so that every fifth day there will be a market near your village. One of them, Ywama, is in fact a floating market in which vendors ply their vegetables, household equipment, grain, textiles and tourist goods from boats in the canals that serve as the town's "roads". It was perhaps fortunate that we missed that one -- it has apparently degenerated into a primarily tourist market, which is expensive (for me, as I have little self-control) and not too interesting in terms of photo opportunities. Our market was in Kaungdaing, reached in our case by docking at a wooden monestary nearby and walking past a Buddhist temple, several souvenir stands, and some crumbling brick and stucco Shan religious ruins. The market was great, I took loads of pictures that maybe I'll post someday since it's difficult to describe the general business and variety of these markets.

It would be well at this point to describe the lake itself, which is unusual in some respects. The whole thing is about 21 km by 11 km, and is located 900 meters above sea level. It's surrounded by green, largely treeless mid-sized mountains, about the size and shape of the Blue Ridge or the foothills of the Cascades. None of that is unusual, of course -- what's amazing is how they use the lake.

Although the lake is quite deep and cleer, it is blooming with underwater and surface plants. Often the lake is many meters deep but you can only see to the tops of the swaying plants just inches below (or indeed above) the surface. Rather than just approaching this festival of weeds and flowers as a boating nuisance, centures of Intha tribe members have transformed the lake into a thriving agriculture and population center. And I don't just mean by using the fertile shore along the lake. Inle Lake itself literally supports 17 villages on stilts, and fully half the lake surface is devoted to "floating gardens".

When the phrase "floating garden" is uttered, my mind turns to Monet's Giverny paintings and the like. Nothing could be farther than the practical reality of Inle's version. Using the strong, viney hyacinths that float atop the lake, bamboo for structure, and other weeds to tie things together, the villagers pile and mix mud and marshy lake weeds to create actual floating rows of soil in which a wide variety of crops are planted. To keep the rows from just drifting away in the wind they are staked to the bottom with long bamboo poles, and the farmers plant, tend and harvest their crops all while kneeling or standing in long narrow boats that they often row using one leg. They row standing from the rear of the boat in kind of a figure eight -- this technique looks every bit as bizarre as it sounds. As I was there during the rainy season (which isn't too rainy there), tomatoes were the primary product, with hundreds of boxes of them being harvested each day. During other seasons the same floating dirt rows are used to grow garlic, cauliflower, cabbage, eggplant, onions, and even melons and papaya.

It's all incredibly impressive. Years ago I visited some "floating islands" upon which a minority tribe lived in Lake Titicaca in Peru. That experience was seriously grim - loads of begging children with rotten teeth, no visible industry or agriculture whatsoever. The contrast with these floating villages could not be greater. Despite the challenges inherent in living in a country like Myanmar, thse people were hardworking, healthy, clean (they bathe using the lake water a couple times a day), and though I suppose it is distantly possible that they were faking, were friendly and happy too.

Well, that's enough for now - I've got to go catch a bus to Saigon -- back to work this week!

Copyright 2003 Katy Warren

posted by Katy at 7:27 PM

 
Kalaw, Myanmar continued

I'll cut this account of the trek short and just relate the two most interesting things that happened during the remainder.

First, I learned one of the dangers of being a solo woman traveller. Dinner in the village was a deux with Sein (my guide) by candlelight (no electricity) and I think the setting may have given him some unwarranted ideas. After dinner, lying on our respective pallets in the main room, we engaged in a 30 minute "conversation" in which his part was to try to get me to sleep with him, and my part was to alternatively scoff, explain the idea's total impossibility, discuss issues of personal morality, laugh at him while trying not to hurt his feelings, and endlessly roll my eyes in the darkness at each new gambit. If he hadn't been such a teddy bear I'd have been alarmed -- it did teach me that there are potential perils to a woman trekking alone with a guide. One must choose one's guide wisely, or recruit other tourists to come along.

The second interesting thing that occurred was that during our day 2 hike back to Kalaw (in which incidentally I once again selected the lamer option without steep muddy trails) we happened upon a newly formed militia troop practicing ineptly near a village school. It seems that as a result of recent events (bloody massacre of democracy demonstrators, arrest of Aung San Suu Kyi, US embargo, UN pressure, Thai government interference) the generals went to villages and towns around the country and requested young male "volunteers" (read: forced labor) to join the militia and protect Myanmar from Thailand and the United States, the two most hated opponents. They didn't give them guns, of course. In fact, I have heard that for many months during actual military training the soldiers practice with wooden guns as it is all too likely that they will point the real variety in the direction of the government in one way or another. This crew of militia looked decidedly unenthusiastic about their assignment, for obvious reasons. Even rice farming looks better than an unpaid position under the boot of the Burmese military.

Copyright 2003 Katy Warren




posted by Katy at 1:29 AM

 
Don Det, Laos to Hoi An, Vietnam

I swore to myself that I would never again write an essay about a horrible bus ride, but holy mother of mercy was my journey from Laos to Vietnam an unmitigated horror.

It didn't help that I'd already been travelling all day when I boarded Satan's Overnight Express to Hell. I had left my lovely Don Det bungalow at 6:30 that morning and after 11 1/2 hours of boat, truck, tuk tuk, and local bus I arrived in Savannakhet hoping for a good night's sleep and an early cross-border bus in the morning. According to my guidebook this plan should have worked perfectly. According to the bus station officials, all of whom oddly possessed a "lazy eye", there was only one bus a day and it left at 8:00 pm.

So I had a choice of catching another bus in two hours or spending an additional 26 hours in Laos. I like Savannakhet, but according to the only other westerner in the bus station it had been steadily raining for three days there, which didn't sound like an enticing way to spend a day. I dug into my bag for my night bus essentials (inflatable pillow, sarong to be used as blanket in aircon buses, earplugs to protect from hideous Lao music, and melatonin tablets) and sat back to wait.

I have had good luck with night buses during my travels through Asia. I've often managed to get two seats to myself (by spreading myself and belongings out and emitting a hostile, antisocial vibe to all boarding passengers) and even in Laos and Myanmar I've usually had reclining seats. Sadly, this was a Vietnamese bus.

It may sound odd after my many months in the country, but I've never actually been on a Vietnamese public bus. Clever entrepreneurs years ago realized that Vietnamese buses are superlatively uncomfortable and slow, with overcrowding and farm animals and breakdowns and seats sized for the comfort of 12 year old children (or Vietnamese people). These farsighted businessmen bought some tolerable buses (not good, mind you, but clean, less than 20 years old and with a smidge more leg room) and started running them between all the major tourist destinations and most of the minor ones. As a result it's extremely rare to see a foreigner on a local bus. This is good in some ways -- at least you have a marginally comfortable ride -- but it does tend to isolate travellers from average Vietnamese people. A tourist here for just 2 weeks or a month may never meet a local person not involved in the tourist industry in some way, whether it is a guide or hotel worker or a kid selling tiger balm and lighters on the street.

The upshot of all this is that you have to be one unlucky slob to find yourself on a Vietnamese non-tourist bus, and I am that slob. When I first took a gander at the vehicle which was to be my home for 20 hours, I very nearly asked for my $10.50 back. No wonder the fare was so cheap. When we were finally allowed to board 2 1/2 hours later than advertised, we found not so much a bus as a large windowed cargo hold. Sure it had seats, but they were the narrowest immovable plastic-covered bench seats I've ever seen on long-distance transportation, maybe 3 1/2 feet wide for two people. The reason for this was the enlarged aisle, which presumably was designed to provide easier loading and unloading, but which effectively served to double the amount of storage space. The back quarter of the bus was piled with the personal possessions of the passengers (many of whom were Vietnamese store owners stocking up on cheap Lao merchandise) along with the paid cargo. The overhead shelf along the length of the bus contained hundreds of cans of baby formula, and goods were stowed under every seat, on the roof, in the hold beneath the bus, and in the crevices around the engine in back.

You're not to assume that because we had so much cargo they would correspondingly reduce the number of passengers. In fact they oversold the available seats, so after they escorted me and a 6'3" German to our seat at the back, a typically Vietnamese rock-concert-general-admission style melee ensued while each ticket holder fought to secure an actual seat. Clearly the bus conductor was aware that foreigners would inevitably come out the losers in this sort of competition. We're too polite, are unwilling to use our elbows, and the Vietnamese are quick and crafty and very, very determined.

As it happens, we may have been better off without a seat. While the German and I attempted to wedge our sizable selves into 3 1/2 feet of colossal discomfort, the losers in the Great Seat Race were busily rearranging the cargo to find the soft stuff -- bags of towels, toilet paper rolls, blankets, and foreigner backpacks -- to make the aisle into one long mattress upon which they could stretch out full length.

Meanwhile, the German and I struggled to get two minutes sleep at one time, sitting upright, practically on top of eachother, and violently jarred each time the bus (which unsurprisingly had very poor shock absorption) went over a rut. Did I mention that the Lao road was under construction, and therefore wasn't paved or even graded for mile after interminably painful mile?

These weren't the only annoyances along the way, of course. One odd practice of the aisle dwellers was that during each of our breaks, they would move undesirable cargo into the space that our feet and legs were supposed to occupy. Sometimes the item moved into our territory would just be a pointy cornered box (not comfortable to lie upon) but on one memorable occasion I picked up a bag containing a 3-foot long live lizard. Alarming, to say the least. Thank God I didn't find out until morning that those four plastic garbage cans lashed directly behind our seat were filled with water snakes, only one of which (to my knowledge) escaped.

The final annoyance of this journey was the sheer unneccessary length of it all. The distance covered was about 375 miles, which we accomplished in 20 hours for an average speed of 19 miles an hour. You may wonder how it is even possible to go that slow in a motorized vehicle. The answer is that we weren't in motion often enough -- when you spend seven full hours at the border it tends to affect your ETA. It seems that because we were carrying so much potentially dutiable cargo, we needed to get to the border early enough to secure a good place in line. Hence the 10:30 p.m. departure. We arrived at the Lao/Vietnam border at 3:30 a.m. despite a lengthy stop to watch David Beckham and Real Madrid eke out a tie in the final minutes with Villareal. The border opened at 7:00 am and though the passengers made it through in an hour, the bus itself enjoyed three hours worth of customs investigation and paperwork.

The rest of the trip was smooth sailing, or as smooth as the sailing can be on a bad Vietnamese mountain road in the back of an ancient torture chamber of a bus. I eventually made it to Hoi An, my final destination, at 7:30 pm, 37 hours after leaving my lovely bungalow with such high hopes of a comfortable journey. I will never learn.

Copyright 2003 Katy Warren


posted by Katy at 1:53 AM

 
Kalaw, Myanmar

It poured down rain that night. Normally this wouldn't have been a problem. It is to be expected during the rainy season, after all. However, my position at that point was a bit more precarious than usual, sitting in a village house on a mountain 8 miles from the gloriously paved streets of Kalaw. In other words, 8 miles of slippery, muddy track before reaching a hot shower. My performance thus far that morning did not bode well for a pratfall-free day -- I slipped on the mud steps to the outhouse during my first foray out of the house. Aaurgh. I really hoped for good weather during that trek.

The first day of the 2-day trek was quite nice, as a matter of fact. We set off at 8:15, wandering up and down the mountains on an excellent (read: dry) trail with great views. Of course, being from the Pacific Northwest I'm aware that great trail views often come at a price. In the northwest it's clearcutting that gives you wide open vistas, in Myanmar the view-concealing foliage has been replaced with agriculture. The fields and farms are scenic as well, of course, certainly moreso than your average clearcut. The Kalaw region being cooler and considerably more mountainous than the Ayerayewaddy Delta lowlands to the south, rice is comparatively rare there, and only grows in the dry variety. Steep fields of tea and corn abound along with vegetables and fruit trees.

One thing they don't have much of up there is handy logging roads. I watched a succession of Palao villagers walk by on a narrow trail carrying bundles of teak boards and wide planks on their heads (women) or shoulders (men). We did follow a rutted, muddy dirt road for a time and saw just one vehicle -- an ox-driven cart carrying heavy bags of rice.

We visited four villages in total, three Palaung and one, the one we stayed in, Danu. All were very Buddhist, a departure from the animist practices of most of the hill tribes I'd seen in Asia, though "Nat" or spirit worship is practiced alongside more traditional Buddhist activities in virtually every home in Myanmar. Each village boasted a monestary, rather sizable considering the populations of the villages themselves. All looked fairly prosperous by Burmese standards -- houses made of wood, UN-supplied fresh water, and plentiful food, though the life was impossibly difficult and simple to western eyes with no transportation, little if any electricity, the most basic toilet facilities, and hours of backbreaking manual labor each day. Primary schools were of the one-room variety, with middle school children walking miles to nearby villages daily.

After lunch at the most improbably placed restaurant you can imagine (3 hours walk from town, 45 minutes uphill from the nearest village) I was given a choice of route. The more scenic route took you through virgin forest and past the British-made reservoir, up and down muddy hills. I might have been tempted to take this route despite the high probability of a mud-caked backside, were it not for the ultimate trekking deal-killer for me: leeches. And not the ordinary kind of leeches either, the ones that adhere to you in the water if your skin is showing. These were land leeches, a species of which I was heretofore blissfully unaware, and they specialized in jumping on you. Plus they could bite through your clothes. Eeewww. When the reply to my question about how many leeches Imight be expected to frantically pick off my body was "Oh, many many", the decision was made. No scenic forest route for me. Instead we continued around the mountain with the lovely panoramic valley views and another picturesque Paluang village perched on its steep side. I felt I made the correct decision.

Myin Daik, the Danu village in which we spent the night, was a collection of ironwood and bamboo mat stilt houses near the top of a mountain. Our residence normally housed six people, two parents and 4 kids, and consisted of four rooms -- one large room for eating, sleeping, storing crops, making baskets, and daily worshipping at the family altar; two very small rooms that served as storage and hallway; and the kitchen, with a wood fire on a square hearth set into the floor.

I didn't see many adults during my wander around the village -- they typically work the fields until 6 or 7 at night -- but I was a big hit with the kids, who were quite willing to drag me around by the hand and play whatever pointless games I suggested in mime. Their favorite was a hybrid of Ring Around the Rosy and tag, and we had a great time running around and gorging ourselves on mangoes straight from the tree.

I'm getting really bored with this account of my trek (it's probably even worse for you), so I'm going to quit now and hopefully come up with something more entertaining for Part 2. Stay tuned.

Copyright 2003 Katy Warren







posted by Katy at 12:57 AM

 
Myanmar

You may believe that I am an observant person since you're busy reading all my observations, but my family knows better. If I have my mind on other things (if polled the family would describe this situation as "frequently" or "almost always") or am engrossed in a good book (also a huge chunk of my time) I could sit through an earthquake and later wonder where all the bricks came from. Basically I have to want to observe things. That's one of the reasons I love to travel -- everything is so different and interesting that I constantly want to drink it all in.

All this is to give you an idea how I was in Myanmar for five days before realizing that they have a different time zone there.

I have no excuse for this oversight. It's not as though the clues weren't there for a crack mystery reader like myself to decipher. For example, my buses always seemed to leave a half hour late. Had I just arrived from the states this might have tipped me off, but I had been in Asia almost 10 months. I expected buses to leave late.

My second clue was that everyone's clocks were wrong, and by "wrong" I naturally mean "different from my watch". You'd think that after the third or fourth time spotting a clock running that late some remote forgotten corner of my brain would have jerked awake, but I didn't really think about it at all. I mean, isn't it possiblethat the Burmese are just bad timekeepers? And the electricity is terrible there. I had power outages each of my first 4 days in Myanmar. That could really throw things off in the clock department.

Now if you think that anyone with a dozen brain cells to juggle could have cottoned to this time zone thing with these rather obvious indications, you're really going to question my ability to tie my own shoes when I tell you my third clue. Actually, it might more accurately be described as the first, since it was offered during the plane ride from Chiang Mai to Yangon. And to be fair, it might not be considered so much a "clue" as a "screamingly overt statement of fact." It went like this. The captain gave a little speech, in which he mentioned the time in Yangon. I looked at my watch in confusion, inspiring my seatmate, an expat teacher living in Myanmar, to state the following: "There is a half hour time difference between Thailand and Myanmar." "Ah, how strange," I commented.

Did I take this opportunity to change my watch? No. Did I store this valuable information away so I would remember to turn the clock back upon arrival? No. I dismissed the whole issue from my feeble mind like an old phone number. It was not until I was sitting at a tea shop waiting for my bus and facing two clocks, both of which informed me that I was 40 minutes early, that the dense clouds of obtuseness began to dissipate. After five days, I changed my watch.

You know the most remarkable thing about this whole situation? Not my stunning idiocy in practical matters -- that was known already. No, it was the fact that the buses in Myanmar had been leaving on time! Who would have thought it possible?

Copyright 2003 Katy Warren







posted by Katy at 3:48 AM

 
I have much more to write about my trip to Myanmar, but I keep getting interrupted at this internet place by roving bands of Vietnamese boys pounding on very loud drums and dancing around in those Chinese New Year 2-man dragon costumes. This one is the 3rd one in an hour and there's another dragon waiting to come in. I can't take the drumming for one more minute, so I'll try to post tomorrow.
posted by Katy at 5:30 AM

 
Don Det, Laos

I have a brother-in-law who is insane enough to do competitive mountain biking, and my bike ride on Don Det and the adjacent island would have been right up his alley. I decided that since I had opted to spend another day on the island, I'd at least try to attempt something more strenuous than lifting a glass and rubbing on mosquito repellent.

I rented one of the typical Lao one-speed bicycles, shiny purple with a passenger seat in back and a nice white basket up front. It was, as usual, complete crap, with no brakes to speak of and a seat that continually dropped down in back. This problem makes a bicycle quite difficult to ride -- you're basically clutching the handles not for steering or balance but to physically prevent your backside from sliding onto the rear wheel. Periodically I'd stop and pound down the front, after the bike repair geezer refused to try to tighten it a second time. By the end of my ride the bike was at least eight inches shorter tahn when I started.

That's not the part that would have pleased Geoff, of course, though I'm sure he would not have been caught without a handy socket wrench of the correct size. What he would have enjoyed was the trail itself, narrow and rutted, alternating rocky and muddy along eroding river banks, through dense forest and across bridges made of rotting and/or cracking planks. He would have been in his element. I, on the other hand, was a complete spaz, careening into the underbrush, falling over with tires mired in mud, and coming to a sandal-skidding halt (no brakes, remember) at the sight of any bridge, hill, or threatening livestock.

Apart from the mud the livestock was the biggest challenge -- chickens, turkeys, ducks, dogs and pigs running across the path unexpectedly (or strolling, as some ducks seemed to prefer), and cows and water buffalos planting their massive grass munching selves in mid-path. The cows I was okay with, blithely pedalijng buy (at an odd angle), but the water buffalos with their long sharp pointy horns and disapproving glares demanded more respect. For them I dismounted and slowly walked by, using the bike as a shield and avoiding eye contact. I learned after a while that they were more terrified by my presence than I of theirs, sometimes scampering backwards into the trees and rice fields to escape the threat of my bike/shield. I maintained my cautious approach, however. You never know when you'll meet a rogue buffalo with a grudge against tourists.

After all that effort I had the waterfall all to myself, and was able to sit and write and watch the mighty Mekong surge into Cambodia for two hours without a soul to interrupt me. It was worth the trip. In fact, the trip itself was worth the sweat, mud, and subsequent laundry time. The trail wound past bungalows, fishing villages, banana orchards, across a former French railway bridge, through a monestary and dense forest. The return journey meandered through the rice paddies past villagers in conical hats working the fields by hand and by buffalo, and at the end of it all a pineapple shake and several hours of restorative hammock time on my balcony gazing at life on the Mekong.

A great day.

Copyright 2003 Katy Warren
posted by Katy at 5:27 AM

 
Don Det, Laos

I liked southern Laos far more than I expected. Over the months I've grown somewhat jaded on the whole massive Asian river thing. Two days on the Ayerayewaddy in Myanmar was stultifying, and I've done boat trips on the Mekong in three different countries. I've seen more than my share of tropical agricultural basins and slow-moving brown water.

The Mekong in southern Laos is a whole different bag of rice, however, and forced me to see the river not as a meandering source of bathing facilities and irrigation, but as an unbelievably powerful force complicating as well as aiding trade in the region. The Mekong here is vast and yet moves dangerously quickly. The area surrounding Si Phan Don, or The 4000 Islands, is perhaps the most treacherous part of the river system. During the dry season when the river is low, this 50 km section between the Lao and Cambodian border sprouts hundreds of islands, thousands if you count every sand bar. Larger islands remain above water year around and contain self-sufficient Lao villages making a living by fishing the Mekong and growing their own rice, vegetables and farm animals in the interior.

But it is not the islands that make the Mekong virtually unnavigable along this border, it's the 15km of rapids and waterfalls as the river makes its most significant drop in elevation. These are not your serene waterfalls with lovely reflective pools to frolic in below. These are the sorts of waterfalls from which you keep a healthy distance for fear you will topple down a steep bank and be crushed to powder in the overwhelming rocky churning violence of the silt-filled water. The combined power of the Mekong itself, its tributaries and a good monsoon season makes for incredible viewing.

By contrast, everything on these islands is in slow motion apart from the river. On Don Det, the most rural and undeveloped of the islands that serve tourists, getting the drink you ordered is easily a half hour to 45 minute process, and the wise traveller orders her dinner at least an hour before she expects to be hungry. The delay is not generally due to a great demand or strain on the restaurant, either. The island was practically deserted, with no more than 25 tourists in total. After 3 days I pretty much knew them all at least by sight, and had had meals with over half of them.

After 12 months in Asia that kind of thing no longer bothers me, however. Speedy (or indeed accurate) service is not a familiar concept in Asia, particularly in Laos where they're fine with the fact that tourists have shown up unexpectedly but don't see any particular reason to alter their normal routines. My blood pressure would be through the roof if I let these things annoy me. Besides, when it takes 45 minutes to get the correct drink it means you drink less and chat more. Three hour meals are the norm rather than the exception among travellers who have found their way to this remote area.

Don Det is not the ideal destination for every tourist, I must admit, though it was perfect for me. It is reachable only by boat (duh, it's an island) and has no motorized land transportation. Indeed it possesses no roads whatsoever, just windy dirt paths that develop rather daunting mud puddles after the rain, which is frequent. Consequently, you must carry your luggage from the boat landing (a generous name for it, since it consists of a slippery bank with a couple of poles to tie the boats to) to the guesthouse of your choice, which could be anywhere from 20 yards to a mile and a half away. Fortunately there are many choices, all $1 a night regardless of their state of decrepitude and virtually identical in design -- stilted bamboo huts with bed, balcony, hammock, mosquito net and small oil lamp. Shared shower and toilet facilities (usually of the Chinese squat variety) are down the path, and it's wise to bathe before dark as the bathroom light is mysteriously located on the outside rather than the inside. I found out my 3rd day that the water we used was pumped straight from the Mekong. My hair could definitely be cleaner, but since mirrors and even sinks were obviously considered unneccessary luxuries, I didn't give it too much thought. I didn't see a mirror in 4 days and all the male tourists on the island were starting to grow beards.

It's a bit primitive for the average non-backpacking western tourist, but the benefits far outweigh the drawbacks. My bungalow was right on the river; I spit my toothpaste into the Mekong each morning. After a grueling day of lying in the hammock, taking a walk/bike ride/boat trip, and sharing a three hour lunch, I could sit in the restaurant of my guesthouse and watch the sun set opulently over the Mekong and the tropical mountains beyond while sipping iced lime juice (sometimes laced with Lao rice whisky --whew, is that strong!) and talking travel with people from all over the world. Don Det isn't paradise, but with indoor plumbing it could come pretty darned close.

Copyright 2003 Katy Warren
posted by Katy at 7:52 PM

 
Myanmar

Myanmar is the only place on earth (that I've visited -- I realize that's a huge proviso) in which Coke and Pepsi lack a stranglehold on the fizzy drink market. I imagine it's like Vietnam before 1995, when the mighty gods of international investment and marketing crushed the hundreds of little heathen local drink makers under their giant corporate sandals. Locals still talk about the incredible show that was put on when Coca Cola came to Saigon -- parades, hot air balloons, fireworks, etc. In Vietnam today nearly all the soft drinks are Coke and Pepsi products, and they do a booming business in bottled water as well.

In Myanmar you can get Coke, Sunkist and other western brands, but only in cans, and at prices 3-5 times higher than the local bottled versions. Interestingly, the names of all these local sodas are in English and generally not translated into Burmese at all. As a Burmese-deficient tourist, I could consequently go into a restaurant, bar or tea shop and order up a Fantasy Orange, Max, Star Cola, Quench or Crusher without fear of being misunderstood. I enjoyed my Fantasy Orange and Lemon Sparkling while I could -- in a few years they will both disappear in the wake of the inevitable Coke/Pepsi marketing and distribution juggernaut.

Copyright 2003 Katy Warren


posted by Katy at 1:07 AM

 
Kalaw, Myanmar

I arrived in Kalaw at 3:15 a.m. Have you ever arrived in a small town at 3:15 in the morning? It's perhaps the worst possible hour, though it's a fine time of day to enjoy silence and look at stars. Frankly, I had lost hope that I would ever see stars in rainy season Myanmar.

Fortunately, Sein, a local unlicensed trekking guide, was just crayzy or ambitious enough to regularly meet the 3:00am bus on the off chance that a tourist might be on it. It was a good thing -- I was decidedly dazed. The bus conductor forgot I was getting off there and neglected to wake me up, so I woke to the sound of KALAW KALAW KALAW, the Burmese bus call that signals a very brief stop. I was hardly ready. My stuff was half in the seat pocket, half in my spilling daypack; I couldn't find my shoes; I was sitting on my glasses (newly bent); and the first time I got off the bus I actually forgot my big backpack. It was not as swift an offloading as the bus driver would have wished, and I managed to wake all the other passengers in the process.

Sein helped me knock on hotel doors to find a room. Who'd have thought motels would actually be full at this time of year? I ended up at an expensive one (eight dollars!!!) but I'd have taken just about anything at that hour. And it was a great room -- big bathroom with hot water (though I couldn't get it to work in my frazzled state. Not surprising, really), beds with sheets, and carpet. Carpet!! You could sure tell I made it to the mountains. I hadn't seen carpet for months.

I spent my first day in Kalaw just shopping (I spent a fortune at the local market) and wandering. It's a picturesque and friendly valley, and I got hopelessly lost. The map in the Lonely Planet bears only the vaguest relation to the actuality of the Kalaw road system, and its makers were very parsimonious about street names. Through blind luck, or perhaps my infallible sense of direction, I made it back to town in 2 1/2 hours. It was a nice walk, through a monestary on a hill (no visible monks), and various homes, shacks, farms, minimarts (Burmese style, with fried snacks and packets of shampoo hanging from the ceiling), schools, cows, dogs and even a golf course, presumably to serve the military folks at the officer training academy located nearby.

Kalaw was used as a "hill station" during the British Raj (this usually means the British or whoever the colonizers were would come on weekends or vacations to escape the heat of the lowland capital cities). Having travelled extensively in former French Indochina, I can report with the authority of strong opinion and no design background that the architectural legacy left by the British in Burma is weak, at best. There are some buildings left, but frankly they're just not all that interesting. Decaying French colonial buildings emanate a rather decadent, romantic air, with their fine proportions and intricate details. Decaying British colonial buildings by contrast emanate a feeling of, well, decay. They look sturdy enough, but so boring that you hardly see the point of an expensive renovation.

More on Kalaw later - I took a solo trek! Well, solo apart from my personal guide, I mean.

Copyright 2003 Katy Warren
posted by Katy at 12:34 AM