There and Back Again

It seems to be the trend that once travelers with blogs go home or otherwise end their adventures that they abandon their blogs. I find myself having inadvertently fallen victim to this trend. It's as if the mere fact of being home has made my blog void--that it has rendered me incapable of continuing it because I no longer see it as necessary or feel like I have anything to say. I've been home since the end of August and it has taken me until now, more than three months later, to wrap up this blog. So, while I do have lots of stories left unsaid and unwritten, I'm not sure they'll be shared here.

The truth is that I can't see myself keeping up with this blog in the coming year that I plan to remain at home. While this next year will certainly be another chapter in my life, home doesn't feel like an adventure to me and I doubt I'll have any desire to document it here. I'm home to hopefully get into grad school and prepare myself for that next fall, but I imagine I'll blog again in the future. My restless feet and endless wanderlust will see me abroad again soon, I think. Who knows, I could end up in Ireland for grad school, which I'm desperately trying to figure out and would be amazing. But, for now, I thought I'd wrap up my year in Asia with one last post dedicated to the highlights.

My Asian adventure was filled with supreme highs and unbearable lows, some of which I've written about here and some I've kept close to my heart. It was, above all, a brilliant year. Even in my darkest moments I knew I was gaining perspective, learning more about myself and growing exponentially. When you spend an extended period of time abroad the one thing you can't escape from is self-reflection. There is more time and space, somehow, to be truly introspective. I discovered a lot about myself this past year. I wouldn't say I'm a different person or that I've figured everything out, but I've been slowly easing into my own skin, becoming more aware of myself, all the good, the bad and the ugly.

The bad and the ugly aren't what I want this post to be about. While they may be a part of me and this past year, what I really want to focus on is the good. So, here's a game I often play with one of my grandmas at the end of each year: the highlights of the year, in no particular order.

-The temples of Angkor Wat, Ta Prohm and Bayon in Siem Reap, Cambodia. Twice.

-Adding eight new countries to my list of places visited: Cambodia, Vietnam, Singapore, Malaysia, South Korea, Laos, Thailand and Taiwan.

-My students: Kevin, Sebastian, Christine, Tram Anh, Tyler, Dean, John, Nick, Colin, Tommy (Bill), Andy, Mike, Ryan, Holly, Sammy and Kitty. As well as the one hundred plus students in my classes at the English center.

-The week we learned new adjectives and all my students told me I was pretty.

-My grandma visiting.

-Emily moving to Vietnam and the whole month of July that we spent traveling.

-Getting to know and building a wonderful friendship with an acquaintance from college who was also teaching English but in South Korea and being able to visit her there for two weeks.

-Staying with family friends in Taiwan for a week.

-Dinner at the Banana Leaf Apollo in Little India in Singapore with a German woman I met in my hostel. Hands down the best meal of the entire year. It was so mouth-watering and delectable that the two of us didn't talk for the first 15 minutes after we got our food because we were too busy stuffing our faces.

 -The vegan restaurant I ate lunch at nearly every day. I will miss the fish cakes and green beans forever.

-Let's just go ahead and say all the food I ate--I loved every bite. The best things, other than the two mentioned above, were the fruit salads, my favorite restaurant in Saigon, The Black Cat, the delicious coffee, artichoke tea, street food, and coconut candy.

-My Hip, Hip Hooray class always excited to see me on Sunday morning. They were so much fun and also funny.

-The day Sebastian read his first book and the fact that he could read all the books I made for him without any assistance at the end of the year.

-Rappelling down waterfalls in Da Lat, Vietnam.

-Island hopping with the Language Corps. group in Sihanoukville, Cambodia.

-The beautiful peacoat I had tailor-made for myself.

-All the genuine friendliness and warmth I encountered in Vietnam.

-My first paycheck worth millions.

-Doing absolutely nothing in my own private villa on an island in Thailand.

-Kevin raising his hand just to tell me knock knock jokes.

-Colin raising his hand to say "Bless you" when I sneezed as if he knew an English secret that none of his classmates did. (There is no equivalent to the phrase in Vietnamese. They don't say anything when you sneeze.)

-Tyler's dance moves when we played my altered version of Simon Says.

-The boys from the upper classes at the elementary school dancing to "Low" by Flo Rida. They choreographed it themselves and it was hilarious.

-One of my favorite students at the English center, Ngoc, giving me a little package full of tiny origami stars and cranes for my birthday.

-The ego-boost that was my demo for the English center, where, for the first time, I realized that I could be a teacher and be good at it.

-My lovely and amazing housemate that I lived with throughout my stay in Vietnam. I am so lucky to know her.

-Realizing, somewhere around March, that I wanted to pursue film studies in graduate school.

-Surprising my family when I returned home. (I've honestly never been so happy to make others cry.)

-All the amazing adventures I had, the discoveries I made, and the traveling I did.

I could probably keep adding to this list but I'll stop here before it gets out of hand. Suffice it to say there was a lot of good and happy in my life for the year I spent in Asia. While some of the decisions I made are not ones I would willingly repeat in the future, I still wouldn't change the year I had.

The future of this blog remains to be seen. I've enjoyed writing it and I can definitely see myself continuing it at some point. As mentioned above, I am full of stories to tell and they might find an outlet here, (I have started two essays on tourism in Vietnam and names, respectively, that I sort of abandoned when I realized that people probably didn't want to read essays here, but they may yet find themselves here just because I feel like it), but for now, I think this is goodbye for a while.

In closing, I would like to thank everyone for reading and for all the support and love shown me. I hope everyone is having a nice, relaxing winter and very merry holiday season!

Taroko Gorge the Hard Way

(This post was written a week ago and left unfinished until now. I hope you forgive the fact I didn't edit it to account for time.)

Sore doesn't even begin to describe how I'm feeling. A more apt description would be a bit of an idiot. Poor Choices, thy name is Clara.

In the past year I have made countless decisions. Sadly, a lot of them have had unexpectedly unpleasant results, even if they were carefully considered. Laos is a shining example of this. ("Oh, hey, what did you and Emily do in Laos?" Answer: pretty much nothing.) Or the fact that I worked a horrible job for eight months that I hated. Those are the two worst examples but there have been many other--too many other--smaller, less troublesome decisions that haven't turned out as I would've liked, to say the least. For instance, leaving Singapore on Chinese New Year's Eve only to wind up doing absolutely nothing exciting in Kuala Lumpur. That was a major bummer. Or taking the bus from Hanoi to Vientiane. While it makes a good story now, it was a terrible decision that I will never repeat. I'm shuddering at the very mention of that trip.

Don't get me wrong--I've made a lot of decisions that have ended up for the better and had all-around amazing results. (Hello, South Korea. It was a pleasure.) And, despite all this poor decision making, I can't find myself regretting any of it. However, Wednesday's unthinking choice was pretty awful.

I've been in Taiwan for a week visiting family friends in TienMou and catching up with fellow English teachers in Taipei. On Tuesday I decided to head out to the quiet eastern coastal town of Hualien. I had no plans for the town other than to use it as a gateway to Taroko Gorge, which came highly recommended as one of the most magnificent and beautiful places in Taiwan. So, Wednesday, I got up early with the intention of doing a little hiking, some picture-taking and spending some time enjoying a natural wonder. All went to plan for the first few hours.

And then it didn't.

One of the lovely staff members at my hostel had recommended walking a small section of the gorge. He said it was a popular way to see the national park, gave me a map, outlining the path and quoting the appropriate bus times. As I've done little exercise in my year abroad, I thought walking sounded wonderful. The weather in Taiwan had been beautiful and the path the hostel worker had indicated was only about 6 kilometers (3.75 miles) which is an easy distance.

After an hour and a half on a bus, I arrived in the middle of the national park all set to start walking. I had a map, a sandwich, some crackers, three small bottles of water and my tunes. The sun was scorching but a strong wind kept the heat from becoming overpowering and the gorge was just as stunning as my friends had said. It was looking to be a great day.

Both the guy at my hostel and my guidebook had mentioned that a lot of people choose to walk the gorge, so I was under the impression that there was a nice, winding path to follow back down to the park entrance. I was wrong. While there are a few paths that diverge from the road, snaking around the outside of long tunnels, all of them were closed due to falling rocks. I was left to hazard the narrow mountain roads, no sidewalk or shoulder to safely distance myself from the multitude of cars, tour buses and motorbikes and only short guardrails to prevent me from plunging into the rocky gorge. Luckily, there were frequent pagodas atop steep outcroppings to wander up to and one open, woodsy path that meandered along above the road for a few kilometers. I happily availed myself of these diversions, taking a few pictures here and there, for the next few hours.

Taroko Gorge is the kind of place that makes you wonder why fantasy and science fiction authors pull from their minds new, fantastical places when the Earth is full of incredible, often unbelievable, natural beauty. It's the kind of place where your jaw drops of its own accord and you can hardly believe it's real. Looking down you see a brisk, running river and enormous, impossibly smooth rocks all swathed in swirling slate blues, warm grays and shocking whites. Tilt your head up and the view jumps to looming mountains, covered in dense, dark green forests that disappear into low-hanging, wispy clouds. And the whole places sings with life--the low hum and buzz of the countless crickets, the high twitters and shrieks of the various birds, the steady rush of the the water, and the whoosh and whistles of the wind. It all comes together in a constant, rhythmic song that soothes the harried souls of wayward travelers (or, at least, it did for this wayward traveler).

After peacefully making my way down the park for a few hours I came to the place where I was told I could catch a bus back to Hualien. Only I couldn't find the bus stop. I'd passed a few on my journey and knew what to look for but still I couldn't find one. It was early yet, so I decided to keep walking, hoping to stumble upon the next stop.

There wasn't one at the next tourist pull out. As I said, they day was bright and beautiful and it was still early afternoon, so I kept on walking. Eventually, after several more kilometers, I came to a bus stop. When I asked a park worker when the next bus going to Hualien was she told me not for another two hours. Again, I kept on walking. And walking. And walking.

The gung-ho attitude and sunny energy that I'd started with soon fled me with each added kilometer traversed. My stride slowed and my interest in the park waned. I quickly grew weary of all the cars speeding along within inches of me and the long, dark tunnels where the wind and vehicles sounded as if airplanes were zooming toward me from all sides.


Both the guy at my hostel and my guidebook claimed that this walk from the center of the park all the way back to the entrance, which was around 19 kilometers (roughly 12 miles), was a popular way to see the gorge. All lies, I tell you. There was no one walking except for me. I began to notice people giving me looks of disbelief and then, strangely, lots of grins and thumbs up. Somewhere along the way I had lost track of where I was and how far I had walked.

The day grew longer and then I began to see signs for the park entrance. I hadn't set out to walk 19 kilometers (or anywhere near that distance) so those signs, clear evidence that I had no choice but to continue the journey as I had to be almost done with it (right?), shocked me a little. All I could think about was why was I still walking? Where were the bus stops?

About six hours after I'd started walking, I stumbled out of the park, feeling stupid, ridiculous and not a little exhausted and dehydrated. How do these things happen to me? Really, somebody please tell me. I set out to walk maybe four miles and end up walking more than 12? Not cool. My legs ached and the rubber soles of my shoes had started coming off. To make it worse the park headquarters were on top of a steep hill, so I slowly made my way up, hoping to catch the next bus out only to be told that the bus stop was in the little town at the bottom of the hill.


I still feel silly and I'm not sure I'd do it over, but the first half of the day was exceptionally pleasant, so, again, I can't really regret the day. Plus, I now get to say I survived the trip and experienced Taroko Gorge from a perspective most people don't even consider.

Paradise (or The mind is its own place)

I keep thinking about the word "paradise." What does that word mean, anyway? I looked up the definition and the first three given are religious. But is "heaven" the same thing as "paradise?" I'm sure that heaven is paradise for some people, but is the opposite true? Maybe it is for the people who don't subscribe to the former sentiment. I don't know.

For me, paradise makes me think of John Milton and Joni Mitchell (or The Counting Crows if you don't know what I'm talking about). Is that odd?

The word also makes me think of money--big, flashy, excessive splashes of money. The kind I'll never have. So, another word attaches itself behind it, bright like neon lights, glaring and ushering "paradise" out of my mouth without so much as a lingering taste, heavenly or otherwise. That word is "unaffordable." This gives rise to another word, one I think most people associate with paradise and that is "vacation," which, in turn, is loaded with a mind-map of words and images.

It's "green" or low season in Thailand though because of the monsoons and I've found myself on vacation and able to afford a little slice of somebody's so-called paradise.

I am on an island off the coast of Thailand. I'm staying in a resort. I have a comfortable room with air-con, a king-sized bed, a hammock and an enclosed outdoor bathroom all to myself. The weather is gorgeous. It's monsoon season and I haven't seen a drop of rain since I got here on Saturday. My door is seconds from the beach. The wind and the heat are strong, but it feels really nice down by the water. Today I had a free, hour-long massage compliments of booking during green season. For dinner I had a fruit plate, french fries and a coconut shake (this last also free as part of my resort package) just because I could. Tomorrow, I'm getting a scalp massage and hot oil hair treatment (this I'm paying for, but I'm pretty sure it's going to be worth it).

Is this paradise? I don't think so. And not just because I've always been more of a fall and winter person than a hot, sticky, sweaty heat person. (You're probably thinking, "Why did you choose Vietnam then?" I have no answer to this question despite the fact that everyone I know and everyone I've met since arriving has asked it of me.)

One look at the beach and you'd understand why. There's more plastic than you could possibly imagine: cups, shoes, bags, toothbrushes, bottles, yogurt containers, ropes, food wrappers and random bits of things I can't identify. It makes me cringe.

Having grown up in Western Washington, which has a reputation for being ultra-green and recycling is promoted everywhere even in commercials ostensibly advertising the state, I inherently rebel against littering. I once snapped at a group of teenagers tossing rocks at a can on the beach because I thought they'd thrown the can there. I was horribly embarrassed at my outburst, particularly because I was only a few years older than them and they were innocent of the crime. That didn't stop me from picking up the can and recycling it on my walk home. 

To say the pollution in Vietnam eats away at me would be an understatement. There's more waste on the ground than there is ground and people regularly burn piles of plastic in an attempt to "clean up." On my last bus ride from Cambodia to Vietnam a water bottle, one of the big, 1.5 liter ones, was rolling around between the seats. An old woman in the aisle across from me picked it up and promptly dropped it out her window. It was two-thirds of the way full and it wasn't hers. Occurrences like this happen all the time in Vietnam. I'm reasonably sure that the old woman thought she was keeping the bus clean. Though, I suppose she might have just been annoyed with it as it kept knocking into her feet.

In order to live in Vietnam I have to ignore these occurrences. I am not proud of this but it is something I absolutely have to do in order to retain my sanity. The most insane, utterly unbelievable part of Vietnam's ignorance about saving the planet is that recycling is actually a business there. People push carts up and down all the alleys, side streets and main thoroughfares paying people for their recycling only to then turn it over to a recycling center for a profit. In a country where the divide between rich and poor is staggering, why don't more people sell their recycling? This makes absolutely no sense to me.

I've only been in Thailand for a week and I don't know how recycling works here, but there were recycling bins everywhere in Bangkok which is awesome. Also, for two days I watched the resort staff rake the beach of garbage. At first, the sight comforted me, filled me with hope. At least these people cared, right? What brings me up short, however, is that why doesn't everybody care? Resorts, restaurants and bars line the beach. The only spot with no trash is the one in front of the the resort I'm staying at. So, maybe, I unknowingly chose the best place to stay here, but there's nothing right about it. It horrifies me.

On my first walk along the beach I was giddy about trailing my bare feet through the sand but the incredible, ridiculous amounts of garbage made me reevaluate the intelligence of removing my sandals. Then the sight of syringes stopped me dead in my tracks. I'm in a country that has a serious reputation concerning illegal drugs. (I swear to God The Beach and Brokedown Palace scarred me for life.) Those syringes freaked me out. I didn't get close enough to see if there were needles. I turned around and headed back to my hotel, all thoughts of swimming and curling my toes in the sand abandoned along with all the trash littering the beach.
  
This island has all the makings of a tourism brochure to be paradise but I can't get past the heaps of refuse on the otherwise soft, sparkling stretch of sand. It overwhelms me with sadness, which is the exact opposite of paradise according to the other two definitions: a place (or state) of extreme beauty or happiness; bliss. 

So, I keep thinking about the word "paradise." While it always seems to evoke images of a blinding sun, dazzling white beaches, deep blue water, palm trees and pina coladas, none of those things appear in any definition of the word. Advertisers and marketing teams have cleverly cultivated the word to become synonymous with their vacation destinations. But if paradise is really bliss, then it must be subjective. It also doesn't have to be a place; it can be a feeling.

Now I keep thinking about the words "extreme" and "happiness" and I think I'm still working on "paradise." But all is not lost. I know that I get to decide what paradise is for me and the coolest, most comforting part is that I have the ability to create it, too.

Cambodia Revisited

Am I allowed to claim nostalgia for a place I visited less than a year ago? Somehow it feels more like a lifetime despite remembering it so well. I love Cambodia. I'm not even sure why. Perhaps it's because it's the place I started my Asian adventure and I was so happy to be there. I always remember places I was truly happy with deep fondness. It was only two weeks, filled mostly with class and homework, but I loved every minute of my time in Cambodia. On my second trip there, I didn't love every minute but I loved most of them.

Cambodia is a warm, welcoming country where everybody has a smile to share and time flows easily, almost gently. Even in Phnom Penh, the capital and busiest, loudest part of the country, I felt lazy and relaxed. Siem Reap, however, was where I felt the most mellow and comfortable, as if the city wrapped around me like a cozy blanket and encouraged me to let life be without trying to control it for a bit. While I can be lazy, often to shameful extents, I also tend to carry my stress around, heavy and tight in my shoulders, and I am forever dwelling in the cave of my mind, thoughts lining the walls and compressing the air. Siem Reap, the gateway to Angkor Wat and a host of other ancient temples, is a tourist town. Shops full of trinkets and t-shirts cross the city like a patchwork quilt, interwoven with countless western-oriented restaurants, cafes, massage parlors and travel agencies. You can book tours virtually everywhere and tuk tuk drivers line the streets, ready to take you anywhere you want to go. In the midst of this rampant tourism and consumerism, I found myself full of laziness, goodwill and joy. There is no explanation for this; I can't explain it at all. But I loved it, brimming with happiness and calm, smiling as easily and effortlessly as the Khmer people around me.

It helped, of course, that I visited the famous temples in the area again. I'd seen them on my last stay but Emily hadn't and I believe that no trip to Southeast Asia is complete without seeing at least Angkor Wat, Bayon and Ta Prohm. If you've been to this corner of the world and missed these temples, I'm sorry to tell you that your trip was a failure and you need to do it again. End of discussion.

The temples in this region are magnificent, majestic wonders. I can't begin to describe their magnitude and their beauty. Stepping into them is like being transported to the most serene, peaceful, inspiring place in time. The time might be a moment in your life but it feels like so much more, as if you've traveled through it, your feet standing in the past, present and future all at once.

Some people buy week-long passes and visit the temples every day. Emily and I did eight hours one day, and while I'm sure we missed a lot, it felt like a good amount of time for us. We spent the day riding around in a lavender tuk tuk with an English-speaking guide and walking through the mystical, almost supernatural temples. As I've already said, words aren't very useful or helpful in describing the temples; they are breathtaking and words, which I love deeply and dearly, fail me. Here, instead, are some of the pictures I took. They don't capture the feelings or the magical air of the temples, but some of them are pretty. My advice is to go see them for yourselves; you won't regret it. I know they will remain one of the highlights of my life.

Angkor Wat at sunrise.

One of thousands of detailed, preserved carvings in the stone at Angkor Wat.

Another reflecting pool picture. This one of Bayon.

Happy and serious Buddhas rise up over all of Bayon. They make me smile just to look at them.

Ta Prohm (or the Tomb Raider temple).

Ta Prohm again.

In Siem Reap, we succumbed to consumerism and bought many wonderful, pretty things at the markets. Then we jostled along to Phnom Penh where we didn't do much of anything other than visit the Killing Fields, the tragic site where the Khmer Rouge killed thousands of Cambodian people from 1975-79. It is now a monument to those who suffered and died during the genocidal reign of Pol-Pot. In the center is a temple that was built to house all the skulls and bones excavated from the mass graves and there is a museum that details the atrocities that occurred there and elsewhere in the country during the time. It is a horrible, bone-chilling place, but an important part of Khmer history and something I felt was important to see.

After the capital we still had a few days left so we boarded another packed bus and bounced along to Kampot, a small town near the southern border of Vietnam. There we booked a countryside tour that consisted of being driven around in a tuk tuk by a driver who spoke no English and stopping occasionally to look at things we had no information on. The first stop was probably the most hilarious. We got out at a long, wooden building surrounded by fields of water. Inside were enormous piles of salt. That was it. Our driver scooped some up in his hands to make sure we understood what it was, I took a picture, and then we left.

Salt.

The next stop was a little better. Two kids who spoke excellent English attached themselves to us and took us on a tour through a cave. Bo and Lin, about nine and seven respectively (though Lin told me she was 24 after she asked me how hold I was and gleefully declared herself older than me), were delightful, energetic kids, full of information and questions. It was downpouring but they led us up the cliff-side to the cave, soaking wet, and then through the darkness, Lin winding her flashlight so we could see and Bo pointing out all the shapes in the rocks. They even convinced us to crawl, climb, stumble and splash down the dark alternate exit. We were muddy but laughing, a little shocked to be uninjured when we squeezed through the opening at the end.

The rest of the tour wasn't nearly as fun as that bit. We also went to a pepper farm and ate lunch along the sidewalk at a beach in nearby Kep. It rained the whole time and I still don't know anything about Kampot.

Pepper.

Crabs actually scuttled across the streets miles away from the beach. It was kind of surreal.

Our whirlwind adventure ended at 2:45 Sunday morning after a hellacious 17 hour bus ride from Kampot to Saigon. We went from a shuttle bus that took us across the border to a local bus that picked up Vietnamese people every 15 minutes, packing them into the aisles with their babies and their bags, to a bus station where we were left without information for two and a half hours only to get on another bus that eventually got us into Saigon in the wee hours of the morning after crossing a river on a ferry and picking up even more Vietnamese people that there were no seats for. To say we were swindled by the guy who sold us the bus tickets is going too easy on him. Accompanying us on this journey were three Austrian guys who were even more out of their depth than we were. At least Emily and I were privy to how Vietnamese buses work when they're not clearly for tourists, which is what we thought we'd bought, especially because they were so expensive. We were not pleased.

I'm even less pleased now though because Emily leaves for home tomorrow. I will miss her when she's gone. We had an amazing month of travel and adventure that I will never forget. I will always be thankful for her deciding to come to Saigon to teach as well. Having her here has made my life a lot more pleasant and fun. It's good to have friends. Thanks Emily.

Be sure to check out her blog to get the other side of this story: http://neitherthere.wordpress.com/

Up next: I'm off to Thailand where I'll be visiting friends and hopefully hitting up a resort and lazing on the beach, so stick around. My adventure isn't over yet.

I Survived the Bus Ride from Hanoi to Vientiane and All I Got Was This Lousy T-Shirt

Sadly, the most eventful thing Emily and I did in Laos was the bus ride there and it wasn't the good, fun kind of eventful. Though, I will concede it was adventurous.

("Adventure" is my word of choice these days. I'm trying to live up to it but my innate introverted tendencies sometimes keep me from succeeding in this endeavor. I'm okay with that, however, as I'm also working on giving myself the benefit of the doubt and I'm having a blast, so I can't be doing too horribly.)

Anyway, as for the trip from Hanoi to Vientiane, it actually didn't start on a bus. Oh no, it started in a travel agency as many travel stories do--(just ask my grandma how she ended up in Vietnam for three weeks this past winter.) We'd booked bus tickets through a company we'd used and trusted throughout our Vietnam journey. All the stories about getting from Vietnam to Laos are plagued with horror, people vomiting and run-times exceeding 40 hours, and we wanted to make sure the long ride was done in a comfortable bus even if the roads were treacherous, twisting through narrow, rocky mountain roads. What we got was a hot walk trailing behind a guy on a motorbike from one travel agency to another. And then another shortly after that. To say we were skeptical would be a lie. We were downright suspicious. It didn't help that MotoGuy was a real jerk, demanding we follow him while zooming down the back alleys of the Old Town and giving us no explanation whatsoever.

We picked up a few stragglers along the way and were eventually left with a group of travelers heading to Laos outside of a hostel. After another wait, we were crammed into a shuttle van, all of our bags tipping the front of the bus as we made stops to pick up more backpackers where they then had to stand in the aisle and doorway. The lot of us nervously cracked jokes about riding in the packed van all the way to Laos, laughing about having our own horror stories to add to the travel forums.

At 6 o'clock, the given time of departure on our receipt, we were shuffled off the bus at a Ford dealership in the middle of nowhere, no buses in sight, only a group of security guards sitting on stools, drinking and watching us like we were deposited there for their entertainment. Jerky MotoGuy proceeded to split the travelers into three groups, handing off money and two of the groups to other men. Emily and I, five other women and one guy were left there to rot as The Jerk (new epithet that would be a lot more colorful if this wasn't the World Wide Web) sped away to who-knows-where, claiming a bus would be coming for us in a half hour.

An hour passed. Witnesses to money exchanging hands, Emily and I made jokes in poor taste about getting shanghaied in Hanoi, being sold into slavery never to be heard from again. There might have been half-serious cracks about texting our housemate to notify the police if she didn't hear from us within the next 48 hours. The Jerk did eventually come back only to herd us back into the van, dump us on the side of the highway five minutes later and leave again.

Seven women with all their possessions on their backs stranded on the side of the highway at night in a foreign country. (Somewhere in that hour we lost the man who'd been with us. I did see him in Vientiane two days later though, riding a bicycle and looking merry, so he probably wasn't sold into slavery. I'm guessing.) We might've started to freak out. We definitely got angry. I called the travel agency we'd booked our tickets with and was told to wait while they contacted The Jerk. Then I was told to wait again as The Jerk had said the bus was coming and would pick us up there.

We were there for more than an hour. A small contingent of Vietnamese men had convened together behind us. They attempted to talk to us but mostly talked to each other very obviously about us. Two separate women stopped to ask us what we were doing there and then declared, confused and concerned, that the bus station was in the direction we'd just come from and we shouldn't be huddled on the shoulder of the road there.

I like to believe that I'm a calm traveler. In all other areas of my life I carry around too much worry and stress, but I've long held the belief that it's useless to worry when you're traveling. All it does is hinder your ability to think calmly and clearly, which is necessary for getting yourself in and out of situations. This mess, I must confess, had me panicking. It didn't help that when The Jerk came back (and oh my God so much relief that he hadn't actually abandoned us there!) he spent his time standing 50 feet away from us and making angry phone calls. Emily suspected that he'd royally screwed up his job and hadn't got us on the bus we were supposed to be on, so he was worried, trying to figure out how to get us on a different bus and save his job. When a bus finally showed up three hours after we were supposed to have been on one and crammed so full of guys from Laos and their piles of stuff, I had to agree with her assessment.

The bus driver and usher madly rearranged all the luggage, crates of yogurt and milk, giant stuffed animals, musical instruments, laptop cases and mattresses in order to clear seven seats for us on the sleeper bus. Emily and I found ourselves squeezed into the very back of the bus on the lower level. We had to scramble over the junk piles in the aisle, some so high they trapped whoever was on the lower level into their seats, and then crawl through a gap at the end of it to get to our seats. Every time we got on and off the bus we had to take off our shoes, so we were further hampered by our shoes clutched in our hands. Three guys twice my size were on one side of me, Emily on the other, and I couldn't sit up without hitting my head. I spent the next 20 hours suffocating in the heat and the sweat of myself and two other people. The guy next to me was too large for the narrow length of his seat so he always had an arm and a leg in mine, sometimes resting atop me. There was no bathroom on the bus and we made infrequent stops. I thought I was being slow-roasted in an oven on wheels--no need to turn me over as the constant dips and bumps in the road rattled me around enough to make sure I was evenly cooked.

The guys on the bus, who, I decided after a brief talk with the man next to me, were all students in Vietnam, were very good friends with each other, had made this trip a million times together, and were all very nice. None of them spoke very good English and our usher didn't speak any as far as I could tell. The seven of us (we'd decided to band together in our plight in order to survive in tact), who were the only women on the bus, were left to fend for ourselves every time we stopped. Nobody ever told us where we were along the journey. When we got to the border we all thought it was a rest stop until one of us got off and told the others where we were.

I can't even begin to describe how miserable this trip was. Good humor is a traveler's best asset/weapon. This trip sucked all mine out through a straw along with my soul. When we finally made it to Vientiane, we all stumbled off the bus stinking of sweat, cranky and disoriented only to see that we were not actually in Vientiane or even anything resembling a bus station. One of the nice, young men from the bus called us a tuk tuk (a cart pulled behind a motorbike) to take us to the center of the city. For anyone who has ever traveled in Southeast Asia you already know that you can't really book hotels and hostels in advance if you're traveling on a budget, except for in Thailand, I believe, so none of us had a place to stay. We decided to stick together, pick a place to stay in Lonely Planet that had an address in the city center and go there. After the longest bus ride of my life (and I'm pretty sure that I've spent half my life on a bus between school, soccer and travel) as well as the absolute worst, we made it into Vientiane and found a place to stay without any of us dying and/or suffering too much trauma.

A shower and some food later, I felt a lot better. And now, of course, I've decided that The Bus Ride from Hell makes an excellent story. All good travelogues include bad happenings along with the good. If they didn't, they wouldn't be very interesting.

As for the rest of our stay in Laos, there's not much to say. If we had known more about the country or what there was to do/see there, we'd probably have made better decisions. I'd originally wanted to go to Luang Prabang which is North of Vientiane and looks closer to Hanoi on a map, but the trip supposedly forces you to either go through perilous mountains or sidetrack to Vientiane and go from there. Strapped for time with Emily's flight home already booked for August 2, we decided heading North wouldn't be a wise move. Vientiane turned out to be a calm, relaxing city. There wasn't too much to do but we hit up some temples, including the one made famous as the symbol of Laos, and the night market along the Mekong River.

We ended up rooming with one of the other women from the bus ride and she was headed to the 4,000 Islands in the south. The travel guide had nothing but good things to say and I'd heard it was beautiful there, so we hitched along for the ride. Turns out the 4,000 Islands are beautiful, covered in square rice paddies, tall, thin trees and the kind of lush green that can only be found in places that are perpetually wet (hello Western Washington), but there's also nothing to do there.

The 4,000 Islands are possibly the most peaceful place I've ever been and I'd recommend them to those seeking peace and quiet on their travels, but two days was enough for me. I didn't think I was so attached to the trappings of modern life, but I have to confess to going a little stir-crazy. I'm a bit ashamed of this, but I am what I am. We spent two days lazing about in a bungalow along a river on one of the islands, reading and bemoaning the fact that we like modernity too much. I'm all for the romanticism and tranquility of a place without the distractions of the Internet and TV, but the utter lack of anything worth doing--no museums, no activities, no sights to see--doesn't exactly make for a fun-filled couple of days. Also, I've discovered, I like those distractions a little too much to find their lack novel or romantic. Sad, but true. I'm a big fan of indoor plumbing as well, so to be without it in a place that's always hot and sticky isn't ideal. We did manage to stumble across one of the advertised waterfalls, but that's about it.

After we realized just how far south we were (right on the border of Cambodia), we decided we might as well head into Cambodia instead of wasting time backtracking. I'm sad about this as I don't think what we did in Laos counts as really visiting or seeing the country. If we'd had more time, I'm sure we could have discovered something amazing about the place. Oh well. Now, almost a year later, I find myself back in Cambodia and I still love it here. It might be my favorite country in Southeast Asia. I haven't been to Thailand yet, but I'm fairly sure it won't compete with the easy, happy feeling Cambodia gives me.

To read more about our Laos trip and/or see two pretty pictures head over to Emily's blog.

Natural Wonders: Castles of Sea and Sky

Our last week in Vietnam before getting shanghaied into Laos (details to come in the next post), Emily and I made it all the way up to Hanoi, where we declared it more European than Saigon in an atmospheric, sprawling kind of way, but still just a big, ugly, grungy city. The sleeper bus took roughly 15 hours, so we crashed in Hanoi, but the next day we were off again. Our next destination was Ha Long Bay, the place I'd been most looking forward to visiting in Vietnam.

You know all those beautiful pictures of junks with wings for sails protected by enormous, majestic rocks in a bay of cool, emerald water that always seem to represent the natural beauty of Vietnam on guidebooks and travel sites? Here's one to refresh your memory or in case you have no clue what I'm talking about:

This photo is not mine. I took it from talk.onevietnam.org.

That's Ha Long Bay, and it is just as breathtaking in person as it is in professional photos.

We booked a two day, one night trip that included touring the bay and sleeping aboard a junk, kayaking through a cave into an enclosure in the middle of looming cliffs, visiting the "Surprising" cave, climbing one of the rocks for an aerial view of the bay and all of our food for the two days. It was brilliant. Our junk was a hip, wooden vessel, sadly without wings, that glided smoothly through the water, which was eerily calm and a murky green. The weather didn't hold for our stay, raining all the way there and sporadically throughout the rest of the trip, but the hazy mist that hung over the bay made the rocks look like they were rising out of thin air, castles in the sky, floating not on water but on drifting gray clouds. It was spooky and very, very cool.

Unfortunately, the haunted look didn't make for great picture taking but I tried my best. You be the judge.

Eating meals surrounded by views like these was surreal. It's moments like those that remind me I'm living one of my dreams.

I wasn't able to get any good photos, but within this valley of water, in the curves and spaces of the limestone, reside little floating villages that seem to be playing a grand, never-ending game of hide and seek with the junks drifting in and out of the thousands of rocks.

Being engulfed in beauty of this magnitude is more than a little overwhelming. Sometimes I had to hold my breath and let it out slowly to regain my equilibrium.

The whole trip was permeated by a calm that seemed to hang in the air, clinging to my skin. I felt like I'd been transported to the most peaceful place on Earth. Remarkably, this feeling wasn't broken by the abundance of booze cruises full of happy drunks laughing loudly and unselfconsciously as they swam at night, jumping from the roof of their junks.

The cave was made up of three different chambers that started small and increased in size. Lit up from below and above by eerie blue, green, red and yellow lights, neat pictures were easier to come by in the cave.

Our guide, Vu, who spoke excellent English, was fond of starting and ending sentences with, "This one," as well as describing things as "nice" or "very nice." He encouraged us to use our imaginations to see things in the walls of the caves. His enthusiasm for this game reminded me of cloud-gazing when I was a kid and being convinced I could see dinosaurs and pop idols in the sky.

In the third chamber, we discovered why the cave was called "Surprising." As we rounded a corner into the chamber the first thing to greet us was this:

Here's a close up for those of you who couldn't make out what was so surprising from the first picture. Vu tried to tell us that many visitors said this rock looked like a cannon and he pointed to a corresponding hole in the ceiling that's placement seemed to corroborate this claim, but we all knew it to be a load of crap. (If I now receive lots of jokes about how your penis is like a cannon, I will never forgive you.) I mean, come on, they had it lit up from beneath with red light.

 

And, lastly, to continue the hilarity of the "Surprising" cave, I came across this shop window on a street in Hanoi:

It was too awesome not to take a picture of it. Apparently, COCK stands for "Creative Oriental Crafts Kingdom," but I like the juxtaposition of this picture with the rock from the cave. It makes me giggle like a schoolgirl.

Summertime and the livin' is easy

Day 10 

Already Emily and I have hit four different stops along our journey North. Today, we're headed for Hanoi only to, hopefully, mosey along to Ha Long Bay once we get there. We've been at turns active and lazy, alternating our days for optimum adventure and chill time. This operation works well for us and we're having a blast. 

Some of the highlights of the past several days include snorkeling in Nha Trang, strolling along the serene streets of Hoi An, eating cao lau, a traditional soup full of rice noodles, croutons and pork, at a little wooden table lit with a single lantern along the river in Hoi An, and the brief, unexpected stop our bus from Hoi An to Hue made at the Marble Caves just outside of Da Nang.

The snorkeling was good fun. I hadn't been swimming since I first arrived in Southeast Asia and the day was bright and the water was clear. We saw lots of little fish, some showy, some pointy, some hardly noticeable, none of which I know the name of, and were also fed a tasty meal on the ride back to land. The caves were a spot of fortune shining on us. At our first rest stop on our way to Hue there was a dark gap in the cliff face I thought looked interesting. For roughly 75 cents, Emily and I ventured into a cave full of grotesque carvings of people being eaten by frogs and humanoid creatures with the heads of monsters. It was morbid, creepy and very cool. The disembodied hands reaching out of the pool of water at the entrance to the cave should have tipped us off, but, well, without any literature we had no idea what we were going to see. The bats fluttering around the highest reaches of the cave added a nice haunted factor as well. I only wish I knew something about the history and purpose of the caves.

The best part of our trip, however, has been Hoi An. It is a peaceful, idyllic little town in the middle of Vietnam. Hoi An radiates the calm of easy living, so different from the chaos that is Saigon. I loved it there. The Old Town is a UNESCO World Heritage site full of French colonial buildings, which, despite time and wear, are a cheerful yellow and the silk lanterns dangling from every eave, tree limb and lamppost offer warm, colorful spots of light in the breezy evenings. At night, parts of the Old Town are closed to motorbikes, so there's no worries of crossing the street or lingering at shops. It is a town famous for it's tailor shops, lanterns and silks, so the shopping is dangerous. Emily and I each spent a nice chunk of money on pretty things. 

As for Hue, where we are now, there's not much to say. It doesn't help that we've been stuck here a day longer than we wanted to be, but I don't think it would have mattered if our plans had run smoothly or not. Hue is, frankly, boring. Though I must confess that Emily and I haven't given it much of a chance. But, oh well, we're off to prettier, more exciting parts of Vietnam this evening and I'm too happy about life to feel bad about our lame stay in Hue.

P.S.--Here's the link to Emily's blog if anyone is interested in the other side of the same story-- http://neitherthere.wordpress.com/