Where in the world?

And on to Cambodia

2008-07-05T11:12:00.010-05:00

I took enough time to update my trip up until this point, let's see what we can do for my last 10 days in Asia. Here goes nothin'.
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I was a bit sad that I didn't have more time in Laos because I really enjoyed it, but I figured that no trip to southeast Asia was complete without a visit to Angkor Wat. I've seen lots of Mayan ruins, plus the Aztec pyramids of Teotihuacan, the Incan Machu Picchu and a few other Incan sites. Some people I'd met in Latin America who had seen a similar amount of ruins were duly impressed by the ruins they saw there, but over and over, I heard that the ruins at Angkor Wat were the most impressive they'd seen.

So off I went. Since my time was starting to run short, and I wanted to allow myself enough time to truly see Angkor Wat, I hopped on a plane from Pakse to Siem Reap, Cambodia.

I'd gotten the idea from Dan & Julie, who I'd been more or less following/playing leapfrog with for my entire time in Laos. They were also taking the same flight on the same day. We arrived to the tiny airport and checked in, then we headed to the waiting room, which probably had about 20 people in it. They eventually announced our flight after our pretty Angkor Wat plane arrived, and it turned out that there were only FIVE of us flying! The plane probably had capacity for about 100-150 passengers, but only we five were on the flight that day. It was a relatively uneventful flight, other than the flight attendants giving my vegetarian meal to one of the other 5, even asking me at the beginning of the flight if I was the vegetarian or not. Oh well.

Upon arrival to the airport, we filled out the necessary paperwork for our Cambodia visas and picked up our bags and set off for our first Cambodian tuk tuk experience.
Dan, Julie and I squeezed first our bags, then ourselves into the back of the tuk tuk with me perched on top of a bag and facing backwards for the 20 minute ride into town. We'd picked out a random Lonely Planet hotel to check out first, and the driver sounded more or less suitably aware of where it was. We reached town, but then my directional alarm bells starting going off, as the driver didn't seem to be following the best way to get to the hotel, according to my map. He'd crossed a river, and we were supposed to stay on the other side of the river. Well, it seems that he had other ideas for our accommodations. When we realized what he was doing, we ordered him to turn around immediately, but he didn't. Eventually, he pulled up to a couple of places with us refusing to get out and look at them, and he ended up in front of yet another hotel. Then a Westerner came out and asked us what the problem was. He was sympathetic and just happened to have a hotel if we wanted to take a look. We refused and ordered our tuk tuk driver to take us to our originally requested hotel or we were going to get out and not pay him.

He finally obliged and lo and behold, he did indeed know exactly where the hotel we requested was located. We'd actually requested a separate hotel from where we wanted to go - we were going to be dropped off and one and hoof it next door to a nicer hotel. Well, after we arrived, the driver started to try to carry our bags into the hotel we'd requested, and we refused and said goodbye. But he waited. We started to talk, and he followed. We stopped at a shop, and he was still outside when we came back. We think he wanted a commission from wherever we ended up. We eventually lost the guy and started out hotel search.

Both of us were nearing the end of our stays in Asia and willing to splurge a little bit. They were sharing costs on a room, and I was willing to pay a bit more for a nicer room. (By this poing in time, I had agreed to fly to Toronto, Canada for my job... and my start date was about 10 days out.) Julie and I deposited Dan and the bags at an ice cream store, and we set off. Eventually, we found beautiful rooms at the Red Piano. In this town, where the most budget of travellers can find rooms for $3 a night, our splurge was $15 on air-conditioned rooms with TV, mini-fridges and a beautiful included breakfast. We settled in and set off for lunch to come up with our Angkor Wat plan.

Southern Laos, part 2

2008-06-09T20:46:00.007-05:00

We got to downtown Pakse and found some rooms - we settled into separate hotels but agreed to meet up a bit later. At about 3, we set off to find an ATM for the boys, which turned out to be a task that was easier said than done. We found a couple, but both were out of money (it was a Sunday), then we finally found the last one, which miraculously had money. One of the first things in our favor that way after the delayed bus, the lack of English speakers to point the way to Pakse, and the lack of functioning (and nearby) ATMs.

What else is there to do in a boring town at 3pm other than sit down and have some beers? We couldn't come up with anything else, either, so that's what we did as we completed Operation: Feed the Boys. We had a couple of beers, then it was naptime, so I went to my room for a couple of hours. Later on, as I headed to the internet, I ran into them again. It turns out that they hadn't been napping - when they got to the hotel, there were some Laotians there sitting around drinking beer and whiskey, so they joined them, as any good traveller would. I promised them I would stop by when I finished up my internet time.

Thankfully, when I got there, the booze was nearly out, and when it was, the party broke up and I went out for dinner with the two guys I'd been travelling with.

The next day, we arranged to be picked up at 8am so that we could get to Champasak early enough for the two boys to mosey on down to the Four Thousand Islands at the southern tip of Laos. Our van dropped us off on one side of the river, and we hired a guy with a dugout canoe to take us across to the other side. The guy started out paddling, then switched to a motor when we were in deep enough water. About halfway across the river, the Argentine started fidgeting, which caused the boat to start rocking and nearly provoked a heart attack when I started to think about the murky water claiming my camera and ipod. But we made it safe and sound.

After haggling a bit, we got a tuk tuk ride to a hotel which had not only a restaurant with beautiful views of the river, but it also rented us bicycles. We chowed down and then set off on our bikes to head to the ruins.

I loved our bike ride! I hadn't done much exercise besides tote my backpack from bus to hotel, and seeing the countryside by bike was very refreshing. It was about a half an hour through some rural areas until we finally reached the ruins. We propped up our bikes against a sign (we weren't given a lock), and we headed towards the ruins.

Had I already seen Angkor Wat, I wouldn't have made the effort to see these ruins, but since they were described as Laos' best ruins by my trusty Lonely Planet, I decided to check them out to get a taste of what was to come in Cambodia. It was well worth it. There were some bigger buildings down below, but then we tackled a big staircase up the hill. The views from above were spectacular! The ruins weren't too bad, and there were a couple of cool carvings in these massive boulders up top that we were climbing around. It was pretty hot, so after about an hour or so, we climbed back down and onto our bikes, which were still propped up next to the sign down below.

The ride back was equally amazing, and school had just gotten out, so we passed a lot of uniformed kids for about 10-15 minutes of our ride. The rest of the time, it was rice paddies, oxen, and wooden houses. We nearly grabbed some lunch on the way back, but in addition to the lack of English spoken, we also were able to deduce that there was a lack of items on the menu, and our lunch would have been ramen noodles.

So we peddled on and arrived back to the hotel a bit sweaty but in good spirits and happy that we'd taken the time to make our way to the ruins.

We retraced our steps across the river and back to the main road where my last view of my two travelling buddies was them climbing into a mini-van with a random Laotian family they decided to hitchhike with. As my luck had it, I had to wait about 20 minutes for the first bus to pass by going north back to Pakse, but the bus was super-luxury and even included (broken) massage functions on the nearly horizontally-reclining seats. Too bad my ride was only about 30 minutes. I still dozed.

The bus dropped me off at the fancy first class bus station which was much cleaner than the previous day's market/bus station, but I found myself only about 2 blocks away from a massive market. I walked through it, snapped a few shots (like this one), then got a ride back into town in a motorcycle sidecar-type thing.

Pakse remained uneventful when I got back in town, but I was tired ater my action-packed day, so I basically did nothing. In true traveller fashion, I did run into a couple in the internet cafe that I'd more or less bumped into in nearly every town since the Thai/Laos border.

Southern Laos, part 1

2008-06-08T22:20:00.008-05:00

Post Vang Vieng, I headed to the capital of Vientiane, which proved to be little more than a bustling city. I was there for an afternoon and a full day (which was enough for me) before boarding a night bus, my first since I had a credit card stolen in Thailand. They sent a pickup truck around to pick up everyone before getting on the bus, and the Spaniard's words rang true (the one from the boat to Muang Ngoi), as it seemed to be a squeeze to fit me on, but they definitely doubled the number of people in the back of the truck before we were finally dropped off at the bus station. At about 6am the next morning, we were at the bus station in Pakse in southern Laos.

I set off immediately for Tadlo after recruiting two guys (a Canadian and an Argentine) from the night bus to follow me, and after another couple of hours in a bus, we were dropped off at the side of the road in a dusty village (calling it a village is a bit of a stretch... let's say grouping of houses and stores). We asked about tuk tuks, and after finding out there were none, we set off by foot down a narrow paved road. About 10-15 minutes down, we found Tim's Guest House and checked in.

We were pretty much in the middle of no where, and it was great! After breakfast, the three of us set off to check out some nearby waterfalls. We found one, then we set off for another one, but midway, we stopped off at some rocks in the stream and I had a short nap in the sun with the sound of rushing water lulling me to sleep. I woke up, and the three of us continued upstream until we reached waterfall #2. One of the guys set off across two narrow logs which led to a very rickety-looking bridge-like structure to get to the other side of the stream. Luckily, there were no casualties and we made it to the other side, some of us (me) less graceful than others.

Our time in Tadlo was spent lazing about, playing cards, chatting and reading. But I both due to a tight schedule (I had a flight a couple of days later to Cambodia), and lack of much to do (also the beauty of the place), we left the next morning. Funnily enough, a small restaurant about 3 minutes away from our hotel had "local special herbs" in some of their dishes, such as "Fried banana with local special herbs," or the same with Lao Lao whiskey, or even a shake with "local special herbs." We sat around debating as to what the special herb was and if it truly was just a special herb or if it was a Vang Vieng-style "special herb." Well, we asked the restaurant guy what it was, and he replied that it was "weed." Well, we didn't get around to trying that, but they did have some pretty killer coffee shakes for $.50. Yum.

My destination was Champasak, a smallish relaxing village on a river that is close to what my trusty Lonely Planet called "the best ruins in Laos." The two guys decided that that was an ok destination as well, so I had some travel buddies for the ride. We grabbed a tuk tuk after breakfast to the road in hopes of getting the 10:00am bus, but unfortunately, our traveller's luck had run out, as we waited for nearly an hour for the bus. While we were waiting, I crossed the street to check out a market just across the way and I was a little surprised by some of the things they were selling there. Toads, snakes (i think they were alive..), a dead bat, geese, chickens, some sort of lizard (also dead), an owl and a few other random things. Yuumm. After seeing all of that, I sent the boys over to check it out themselves. Eventually, we hopped on board a very rickety bus and set off back to Pakse, which is where we had to go for our next connection.

We were dropped off in a market just as it started to pour down rain (greeeat...) and we ducked for cover in the waiting area shelter. The two guys had little to no cash and were on a mission to get to an ATM. Unfortunately, we seemed to finally have found an area of Laos that didn't have so many tourists, which is usually a good thing, but in this case, it meant that no one spoke English. One guy left to go look for an ATM (it had stopped raining) and I set off trying to figure out the best way to get to Champasak with my trusty Lonely Planet Laos/English dictionary, asking in broken Laos when the next truck for Champasak left. Everyone recognized "Champasak," and I think they understood my pronunciation of Sawngthaew, which is one of their fabulous pick up trucks with benches along the back, but that's where things started to go bad. Apparently the answer to my question of where the next Sawngthaew leaving for Champasak could be found was not quite as easy as a gesture or point. I asked several people who looked at me blankly, several who pointed to some random sawngthaew (and at that sawngthaew, they'd point at another one, and so on..), or even to some random corner of the market.

I returned back to the shelter to find the Canadian who was looking for an ATM was back. He was frustrated because the next ATM was apparently not walkable - it was 8km away, and the tuk tuk driver wanted to charge him $10 to go there and back. At this point in time, we decided that perhaps it would be best to go into town and aim for Champasak the following day after the boys had money, and after we'd had the opportunity to ask a hotel or two just how you get to Champasak.

Vang Vieng

2008-05-15T03:16:00.006-05:00

After a night's pitstop in Luang Prabang following Muang Ngoi, I took off for Vang Vieng, tubing capital of Laos. I decided to avoid the millions (ok, 10-20) of travel agencies that wanted to sell me a spot in a small air-conditioned mini-van or VIP bus full of only foreigners, and I headed to the bus station by tuk tuk, expecting a bus to be leaving before too long. Afterall, Vang Vieng is on the way to Vientiane, Laos' capital, and there's only one road connecting Luang Prabang and the capital.

I arrived to the station just after noon expecting there to be a 12:30 or 1pm bus, as my guide book suggested there might be, and I saw three backpackers on the ground sprawled about their bags and playing cards. Good sign to see some foreigners waiting, I thought - that means that the bus I needed hadn't left yet, and hopefully there would be one soon. Wrong. The next bus left at 2pm, despite signs all over to the contrary.

I bought a ticket and plopped down close to the three backpackers, who were English. We started chatting and I was soon invited to play some gin rummy. I found out that they had been waiting since about 10:30am, and the 11am bus wasn't full enough to go, so they'd deferred to the next time of 2pm. Not a good sign. Luckily, the bus did indeed leave at 2, and we were treated to some beautiful scenery and a very, very windy road. Right as we were setting off, the driver's helper walked through the bus handing everyone 1 or 2 plastic bags meant to be used as sick bags if needed.

We ended up being just fine, and I enjoyed the views immensely. Laos is a beautiful country - green and full of winding roads, which means big hills/mountains. At about 8pm, we were dropped on the side of the road, and we walked to the main strip of Vang Vieng.

Vang Vieng is a very unique place. There are several things that define the small town, and I think that "Friends" is probably the most defining of all features, as there are literally 5-6 restaurants side-by-side that include seats you lean back against so you're basically laying down, all facing the same direction, which has several TVs mounted against one wall, all playing "Friends." You just have to listen for a couple of minutes, and then you'll figure out if they're playing the season you'd like to see. If not, there are another 4-5 restaurants for you to plop down in for several hours.

What a crazy concept! It threwme off when I first got there, but by my second (and last) evening, I had joined the masses and watched a couple of episodes.

The two main things to do around Vang Vieng are tubing and caving. I decided to fast-track it on out of there, so I chose to try out the tubing. For about $5, you rent a tube, and get taken about 5km upstream of town. And that's where the fun begins!

Tubing in and of itself is fun, but tubing in Vang Vieng is a bit dangerous. Not due to rapids or rocks - but because the river is lined with bars, and all bars have some sort of device from which you can hurtle yourself into the water from up high.

I took off down the river with my 3 English friends from the bus, and we stopped at basically every bar. We had a dry bag that we'd rented between the 4 of us for clothes and money, and we traded off who had to float with it. We started off slow, not drinking at all of them. The first one had a ridiculously-high rope swing (*note: the swings were more like trapezes than swings) that I refused to go up to, but the second was a bit more up my alley. The second bar had a zipline starting at about 4-5m high and finishing at about 3-4m. I was a bit nervous before I went, but it wasn't nearly as fast as it looked, and I landed in the water without any problems. After nursing a bit more of my beer (my first), I went again. Fun!

Then the crew headed across the river to another rope swing. I needed to finish my beer, so I said I'd join them. When you're floating down the river and you want to go to a bar, you signal to the guy or gal on the side, and then they'll pull ya in either by throwing you a rope, extending a piece of bamboo or some other like-minded contraption. Saves you from working up too much of a sweat paddling.

The day progressed slowly, and at our 2nd bar, the bar staff started handing out free shots of LaoLao, a whiskey that's so cheap they can afford to give it away. I did a half-shot to appease my British counterparts, then I handed the bottle back to them. When I wasn't jumping off of of or waiting in line for the rope swings, I enjoyed watching everyone jump off of them. Things went along just fine until we hit stop number 5 or 6.

We decided to share a bucket. A bucket is a small pail, about half the size of the bucket I used to use when I went to the beach when I was a kid, and they fill it with ice, half a bottle of booze, whatever mixer you want, and about 10 straws. Vodka/Red Bull was our poison of choice. I had a bit, then I headed up to the rope swing, as any good person on their way to drunk should do, and I jumped, much to the surprise of the three Brits I was with, as I had skipped several of the previous swings because they were too high for me. This one must have been about 20-30 feet above the river. When I came back up the banks of the river, the crew had dipped into our money and gotten another bucket. Great.

The rest of the evening is a blur for me, including a mud fight at dusk involving about 30 people, another rope swing further downstream, a massive (and I mean massive) mystery bruise on my upper right arm (that I apparently got as I slipped getting back into my tube later on), and the tuk tuk ride back to town, as we hadn't quite made it all the way back to town (too much drinking/swinging!) and needed to hitch a ride to return our tubes. And after showering and sending off some drunk e-mails, I plopped down in one of the aforementioned chairs and indulged in some friends.

The Day After
Four Days Later

The next day, I decided it was time to leave, and I was on a mini-van at 9am heading for the capital. I'm sad I missed out on the caves, as they're meant to be great. And I didn't find out until AFTER I left to ask for the "special" menus both on the river and in town. The Special menu is apparently special because the ingredients on it will leave you in altered mind-states after ordering. Someone told me that one day, a certain bar "didn't have" a special menu, but then the next day, after the police had stopped poking around, their special menu magically reappeared.

Anyway, Vang Vieng's certainly a unique town - I could never live there, but getting drunk while floating down a river (it was a very gentle river, mom...) and then curling up to back-to-back friends seems to be just what a backpacker needs from time to time.

Muang Ngoi

2008-05-12T05:00:00.002-05:00

I was told that if I wanted some beautiful scenery, fewer tourists and a nice hammock to relax in, I should head up to Muong Ngoi, to the north of Luang Prabang. So, I set off early one morning to catch the 8:30 bus to Nong Kiaow, where boats leave for Muang Ngoi. (No roads to Muang Ngoi... boats only!)

I grabbed a tuk tuk to the bus station and was dropped off in front of a sawngthaew, which is a pickup truck with benches running along the two sides of the back and a covered metal frame on top (for piling tons of stuff on top of). When I arrived, they pointed me to the ticket window and then I headed back to the truck, which looked like it was bursting at the seams. There was a bit of miscommunication, but then I was ushered to the back and told to get in after people moved aside enough to give me about a cheek's worth of room. Not only were there people on the benches along the side, but there were also several wooden chairs set up in the middle of things with several people, and a couple of kids were perched on top of random crates and containers in the middle. There was one non-Asia couple already squeezed into the other side of the truck, but we were the only non-Laotians there.

Eventually, we set off and I counted everyone. We had 17 adults and 5 kids just in the back. And several big containers with gasoline in them and other random baskets and things. I started to chat with the couple across the way (she's Italian, he's Israeli), and they were equally incredulous as to how many people fit in the truck. After about 45 minutes, we slowed down long enough to let two more people in; the guy next to me squeezed closer to me, and he patted the seat on the other side of him, signaling to one of the new guys that he should sit there. The newly created spot was about the size of my hand, but sure enough, the guy was able to slowly but surely work his backside into the space. 19 adults, 7 kids.

After about 2 hours, the truck finally stopped and was turned off. My eyes lit up, and I asked the guy next to me if we had finally arrived to Nong Kiaow. He shook his head no. It was just a break, so I got out to stretch. When I asked how much longer, he signaled that it would be another two hours. My legs and knees were already pretty stiff from being wedged against a kid and a big plastic container, so I suppressed an inward groan at the thought of another two hours. Sitting across from me were two very old Laotian men; it seemed that one of them was over 80 (who knows - maybe even in his 90's), and the other may have been in his 70s. Complaining about my stiff 20something joints (even inwardly) made me feel a bit like a wuss in comparison to those two.

Eventually we arrived to the river town where our next boat left from, and thankfully, it was only one more hour on the sawngthaew after our pit stop. The narrow boat that took us to Muang Ngoi just a few hours later was equally overloaded. I overheard a Spaniard on the boat describe the Laos phenomenon (that seems to be the case in Guatemala, as well...) that just when you think that nothing else will fit into whatever vehicle you're in, they managed to double the number of people and things on board. So true!

While on the boat, I was treated to some beautiful scenery - mountains, greenery, fishermen, calm waters. About an hour into the ride, we pulled over, and half of us were instructed to get off the boat to walk while the boat went through a shallow part of the river. We walked for about twenty minutes or so, and it was quite pleasant. It helped me to rationalize that it wasn't necessary to do any trekking while I was in town.

Once we finally arrived (about an hour and 45 minutes after we started on our "1-hour boat ride"), I grabbed my bag and headed down the main street. The scenery was stunning! Dirt road through town with every second or third building advertising either bungalows, food, or random household necessities, with mountains in the background and a river to one side.

I headed down to the end of the road and got a cute bungalow with a hammock out front (its most important accessory!) for just over $2. I changed after a night because the bed was hard as a rock, but my second bungalow was also cute and had a hammock and river views. I moved away from my hammock for about an hour or two during the days to walk around town a little bit, but more than anything, I relaxed (and finished a book!).

Wandering around town, I saw millions of little chicks and baby ducks ... perhaps us tourists aren't eating enough eggs! Or maybe it's just bird mating season... who knows? But everywhere you looked, there were little things running around. Weaving looms were also set up in front of several houses, and it wasn't just for the benefit of the tourists - in fact, they didn't seem to sell textiles anywhere in town. It is definitely a tiny town, though, and I bet that no more than 20-30 tourists arrive a day. No electricity - just a few precious hours of generator energy every evening. Just serenity and beautiful nature. I was quite shocked to see a peanut butter and banana baguette on the menu of my guesthouse's restaurant, as that didn't really seem to fit in with everything, but then I was pleasantly relieved that true North American creature comforts hadn't quite made their way to the small town - when I got my sandwich, it was a baguette smeared with butter, sprinkled with crushed peanuts and topped off with banana slices.

The second evening, I ran into the two Canadians I shared a room with at the Thai/Laos border a week beforehand, and we agreed to catch up over a beer later on. It of course decided to pour down rain right when we were supposed to meet, so I donned my rain jacket and ran down the street to find them at a restaurant with an Aussie guy they'd met. They told me about a hare-brained plan they'd come up with and were setting into action. They bought a canoe and some paddles and were going to attempt to paddle down stream, all the way to Luang Prabang. This is a journey that's meant to take about 8 hours WITH A MOTOR. They were hoping to arrive in two days, maybe three. I nearly jumped on board (literally and figuratively) but decided against it at the last minute, as I remembered the nightly rainstorms we'd had since I arrived to Laos. That, and they were setting off the next morning at 6am.

Long story short (sorry, too late), then next morning, I heard my name being yelled from a restaurant close to the dock, and lo and behold, it was them! It was closing in on 9:30am, so headed up there to get the scoop.

They'd set out at 7am or so and gotten about 500m downstream before their boat sprung a leak. So they walked their boat upstream and found someone to repair it. They were going to head off shortly after breakfast, but they'd changed their destination to the less-lofty goal of Nong Kiaow, just about four hours downstream. I haven't heard from them, so I hope they made it somewhere or another without tipping the boat and without injuries!

The ride back to Luang Prabang was similar to the ride out of town, except all of the Laos people were replaced by mostly backpackers and we managed to shove about 25 adults in the back of the truck - and I thought it could never be done! This country will never cease to amaze me.

Luang Prabang, local style

2008-05-02T01:34:00.004-05:00

My good friend and ex-boss Eileen sent me a message a few weeks ago, letting me know that one of her friends lives in Laos, and we should catch up when I'm there. So I sent an e-mail to her friend and found out that she lives in Luang Prabang. Yesterday, Karyn and I met in the morning and went for a nice brunch along the river while we chatted. At the end of brunch, she asked if I'd be interested in going out to a party that evening that was held for the staff of several area restaurants that share one owner. I said yes, and we met up again later that evening.

The entire evening ended up being a great lesson in Laotian customs and culture and great fun on top of that! The invitation said that it all kicked off at 6pm. At about 7pm, we hopped in a tuk tuk and hoped that we wouldn't be the first to arrive. We weren't, thankfully. Karyn immediately spotted a Lao friend at a table near the entrance, and we went to join Lang and a few of her friends at a big round table. The food was already set out on the table, waiting in Saran Wrap until we were given the word to start.

The French restaurant owner came over to say hi and to let us know how the evening was going to proceed, seeing as most everything was going to be said in Laotian over the PA system. It started off with drinks (soft drinks, wine, or the amazing BeerLao), and once most of the people had arrived, we were given the go to dig into the chow. We had bread, rice, mango salad with squid, a nice fish dish, sun-dried beef (which looks like beef jerky's close cousin), some sort of meat teemed with cucumbers on a plate, beef (or maybe pork) and potatoes in a nice yellow curry sauce, cut up mango, and rambutan fruit scattered around our table. I picked around some of the meat, tried the fish, and chowed down on the fruits. All in all, a decent spread.

While we were eating random people were going up on stage and singing Laotian songs. Karyn told me that the people here are not timid about singing and dancing in the least. They love parties and they love to party. After a healthy round of introductory singing, the competition was underway. Nine employees got up and either sang or danced. The singing was all Laotian songs, and I was lucky enough to see my first traditional Laotian dance by the only female competitor, plus two guys dancing hip hop (one with quite a good routine; the other a good dancer but too drunk to really put on a good performance).

A funny trend started with the first singer, as the Laotian started to raid the flower bouquets on their tables and carry them up to the singer to offer encouragement. Karyn told me that traditional gender barriers, as they exist in the cultures I know, don't really exist, as it was common for both men and women to carry flowers up to the singer. But following the first singer's finish, most of the bouquets had been picked through, and they started resorting to the leftover greenery for the second singer. By the time the third singer took the stage, singers #1 and #2 were helping out and letting the others recycle their bouquets. #4 was a dancer, so no flowers were given until the end, but by the time numbers #8 and 9 took the stage, they were bombarded by masses of flowers, some taken from nearby plants and bushes, plus some of the original flowers. It was hilarious, and you could see the people bringing up the flowers laughing at the massive bouquet as they returned to their seats. It was pretty ridiculous but hilarious and kinda sweet as well.

After the competition, the dancing began. Karyn informed me that if anyone asks you to dance, it's considered very rude not to dance with them. And it's not uncommon for women to dance with women nor men to dance with men. I watched one dance go by, and I have to agree with Karyn, it's quite a simple and boring style of dance. At the second song, I was asked to dance about 30 seconds in, and I found out that it's not so hard to learn the dance. It involves shuffling your feet forward 3 steps, then to the back, standing in place for three steps, then you alternate your hands (one up, one down) with every step. Although you dance with a partner, you don't touch at all. Somehow or another, the younger people can turn it into a bit more energetic and interesting dance, but it's still more or less boring. I was asked to dance/endure two more songs before Karyn and I decided to take off. She was hoping for some Laotian line dancing (probably nothing like Country-Western line-dancing), but it never came. She was right - some of the songs go on forever! They seem to last between five and ten minutes... that's a long time to do the same dance with no variation. I miss salsa dancing!

The slow boat to Luang Prabang

2008-05-02T00:03:00.003-05:00

Two days after my trekking, I hopped aboard a bus (well, two... Chiang Mai to Chiang Rai, then Chiang Rai to Chiang Khong) to the Thai/Laos border and arrived at about 7pm. I went searching for a hotel with two Canadians I met on the bus, and we got a steal of a deal - about $6 for a room with 3 beds. Perfect! We had dinner with 3 others from our hotel, and then we went to bed.

The next morning, I woke up and went downstairs to use the bathroom to find about 15 people crowded around the TV watching a movie at about 6:30am. Weird! I later found out that they'd taken an overnight bus to the border town and were killing time until the border opened. I much preferred my more bed to a mini-van going around curve after curve through the hills of northern Thailand.

After breakfast, we started walking to the border and got our stamps out of Thailand (10 seconds per person, yay!), then paid a bit over a dollar for a boat across the river to the Laos side. There, we sat around filling out some paper work for about 10 minutes before forking it over with passport photos and money for our visas ($35 for Americans, $42 for Canadians). Then, I decided that I would indeed take the slow boat up the Mekong River to Luang Prabang. (I had been throwing ideas of going into the jungle near the border on this cool gibbon excursion, or of maybe taking the bus, or of maybe taking the boat partway, then swapping over to bus for the final leg.)

In preparation, I had a sandwich made up, and I bought a seat cushion for just over a dollar (I had been forewarned that the seating consist of wooden benches. And the trip is TWO DAYS LONG.).

I made my way to the boat, which was pretty long and narrow with a roof and big windows. After I put my backpack in the luggage area in the back, I claimed a window spot and hoped that the light rain wouldn't turn into something stronger, although we did have plastic flaps we could roll down if we wanted. I crossed my fingers that no one would sit next to me, but in the end, an English girl did. There was lots of conversation around, and for the next 7 hours, people chatted, read, listened to music, tried to sleep, drank beer (sold conveniently at the back of the boat) and tried to pass the time.

That evening, I hooked up with three of the people from my hotel from the night before, and we went off in search for a hotel in Pak Beng, a town described by a friend as a "no-horse town." We found a place that was very cheap and decided it'd be fine for a night's sleep. The guy who dragged us in there also made it very clear that if we wanted to buy some marijuana from him, that was no problem. When I said, "No thanks," he was like, "why not?" I told him that there was more for him... And then when we went to pay for the room, I didn't have any small Thai bills (they still accept Thai currency and the price was quoted in Thai baht). He said no problem and hurried off to get my change.

He came back with a fistful of Laos Kip and handed them over. Me, being unfamiliar with exchange rates and the two currencies, counted the kip and decided that it didn't seem right, although I couldn't remember the exchange rate. He recounted and said, "oh right, I miscounted," and added a couple of 10,000 kip notes to the pile. That still didn't seem to be enough to me, so I called over my travel companions and asked them about exchange rates. They were pretty useless, as well, but at least I had some moral support. I asked the guy point blank what the exchange rate between baht and kip were, and he pretended not to know. At about that point in time, one of my fellow travellers offered to pay for my room, and I'd pay him back later. So, I started to suggest to the sketchy dude that he give me back my 1,000 baht note, and I'd hand him over the 100 baht he needed. He started doing a song and dance about how the market had closed, and he'd already changed the money, blah blah blah. I continued to insist on getting my 1000 baht note back, and he said he couldn't do that. We moved up to the restaurant area where two women who worked there were standing, and they got involved and started talking to the sketchy dude in Lao. Then I started in on how I didn't trust him, and I just wanted my money back, and we would leave the hotel, blah blah blah. He questioned why anyone wouldn't trust him (!!!), and I came back with commentary on his original "mis-counted" change and the fact that he'd just tried to sell me drugs. Eventually, he gave in and gave me the true exchange rate (or something close to it), and my change was sorted.

Upon leaving my room for dinner, I grabbed all of my valuables, as I wasn't sure if he would try to retaliate or something. I had nothing to worry about, though... nothing had been touched when we returned. The 4 of us had a nice dinner overlooking the Mekong River, and then we headed to another place for a drink and played some cards. At about 9:30pm, we decided we were all exhausted, and we went to bed to sleep in preparation of the next day's 7 hours on the river. Good thing we went to bed then, as the generators for the town's power were shut off at 10pm. I hoped that the rest of Laos would surpass my experience in Pak Beng in enjoyability... if not, it's gonna be a short and fast trip through Laos!

The next day turned out to be closer to 7.5 hours, and I managed to score my own bench for the entire day. Hooray! The whole trip along the river was gorgeous! Lush green hills, local people in dugout canoes and fishing from the rocks, little villages of wooden huts... too bad it was overcast both of our days on the river, but that also provided for a more comfortable journey, as it stayed cool enough to make the trip very enjoyable.

When we arrived to Luang Prabang, the 4 of us, plus a fifth, a Canadian girl, set off to look for accomodation. After about an hour, we'd all found a place to stay, and I was rooming with the Canadian girl in a nice room with a balcony and private bathroom in a quieter part of town for just a little over US$6. We set off shortly afterwards to explore town and immediately stumbled upon the night market, which is full of beautiful handicrafts. After dinner at a street vendor that had about 8 different bowls full of vegetarian local fare (as-much-as-you-can-fit-on-a-plate for less than US$1!!!), we walked around a bit longer before deciding we were all exhausted again, and I was in bed by about 10:30pm again.

Trekking! Cont'd....

2008-04-30T23:46:00.002-05:00

I've decided that I'm never going to get around to writing a day-by-day account of my trekking experiences, since that's now a good week or so behind me, so I will write a list of highs and lows, which gives a pretty good idea of what was involved.

Highlights:
Beautiful scenery
Great company/fellow trekkers
Guide who is originally from one of the hill tribes (and spoke English!)
Bathing side by side with the villages in a stream, wearing a sarong for modesty
Nightly fire circles
RAFTING!!! On bamboo rafts!!! Awesome!
Learning a song in Thai complete with actions on aforementioned rafting, then looking back while singing to see our whole group participating from my own raft and the other two raft
Not seeing another trekking group during our journey
Finishing off the trip with a waterfall visit
Meeting up with the entire group for drinks that evening
Sleeping inside of the home of some of the Karen hilltribe locals, with them sleeping on the other side of the fire.

Lowlights:
Tiny inch-long skinny leeches that penetrated through footwear (!!!) Creepy...
15 minute stretches up steep inclines
Leaky roof in our sleeping quarters, which prompted us to have to move over to a local home (see last highlight)... all in all, it wasn't so bad, and it was kinda amusing.
Straw mats that were our mattresses - Night 1, I didn't have a very good night's sleep, but by Night 2, I slept like a baby despite the lack of padding

So, all in all, it was a good trip. Day 2, we trekked about 6-7 hours (2 hours of which included the damn leeches!), and Day 3, it was an hour of bamboo rafting, then 45 minutes of walking. I'm glad I signed up for this particular trip because everything seemed to be focused on low impact tourism, and the communities we passed through seemed interested in us, but the people didn't beg, persistently try to sell us their weavings and necklaces, nor offer us opium, which is fairly common on the more-touristed areas for trekking.

Trekking! Day 1

2008-04-27T22:39:00.003-05:00

One of the popular things to do around Chiang Mai and northeastern Thailand is to go trekking in the area that's inhabited by the hilltribes. There are several different minority groups (at least 5) that live around here, and people want to go check them out.

Now, of course I can't make any easy, spur-of-the-moment decisions, so I had to talk to several different operators, look online for advice and quiz all travelers I'd come into contact with about their trekking experiences. And it came to light that many of the treks left people feeling like they'd just visited the zoo and looked at the people, and some sort of false environment had evolved from all of the outsiders visiting the villages. They were hassled to buy goods, and the children wanted candy, etc. I decided that I didn't want that, and then I talked to two folks who had gone to the Eagle House in Chiang Mai and done their non-tourist area trek. They saw no other foreigners during their trek, and they had a great time.

So I signed up the next day for that trek and then left for Pai to kill time before the trek left.

On Day 1 of the trek, we met up at 8:30 to store our bags and valuables before we left, and then we set off, each of us with just a small backpack on our backs. We had a lot of driving to do - about 4 hours total - but we first stopped off at a market so they could buy food for our trip.

We were travelling in a covered small pick-up truck with benches along the side in the back... there were 4 people plus driver in the front and 8 in the back, with the guide riding on top of the truck. Our group consisted of a family of 5 from Greece (the mom is from England, so daughters are fluent in English), 2 American girls travelling independently from each other, 1 Irish guy, 1 English guy, 1 German guy and a Canadian guy.

After the market, our next stop was an elephant camp were we were put in groups of 3 on elephants. Two people sat on an actual bench mounted on the elephant, and then a third person sat basically on the elephant's neck just behind its ears. Then our elephants were led on an hour-long loop down to a small waterfall. It was slow going, and those of us on the bench had a fairly easy ride. Those sitting right on the elephants had a bit more work to keep from falling off, but they also quickly got their balance. I thought it was interesting but not an amazing experience, but I did enjoy being able to touch an elephant - their skin is quite tough and their hairs quite prickly!

Post-elephant riding, we had fried rice and piled back into the truck. Eventually, we were given our backpacks and we set out for a fairly easy 2 hours' trek to the town we were going to sleep in. We were walking through rice paddy terracing (dry at the moment because rainy season has not yet begun), crossing a few streams via logs across them, and walking through a bit of greenery. Eventually, we hit our first home, which was a village of the Karen hilltribe, and we sat down to a beer to help recover from the hill we tackled to get up to the village.

Stay posted for more about rainstorms, bathing in rivers, leeches and more!

Northern Thailand, take 2 - Pai

2008-04-27T00:43:00.002-05:00

Where was I? Last I wrote, I'd booked a yoga class in Pai. On Tuesday morning, I donned some flowing and light clothes, followed the instructor's advice to keep breakfast to a minimum and bought a yogurt on my way to the 10am class.

Mama Yoga, as the instructor is called, put on some soothing eastern-style music and began our session. There were 6 non-beginners and 3 absolute beginners, including myself. We stretched and then slowly worked our way into some poses, with us beginners trying our hardest to contort our bodies into new positions, mimicking Mama Yoga. After half an hour, I was sweating and warm, despite our slow movements. By the time the two hours were up, I was ready to rest. All of us sat down together and ate the watermelon, bananas and cookies that were put down in front of us and we started to chat a bit.

We three newbies went back in the afternoon at 3 to meet with Mama Yoga again. We were given a handout with the poses, and then we slowly went through all of the poses again so that we could remember what we'd done that morning. Afterwards, the three of us sat down with Mama Yoga, ate some Phad Thai with rice noodles and talked with her. She's an amazing woman! 60 years old and incredibly fit - she looks like she's 40 or 45. She is from Thailand and is part of the Hindi minority, thus vegetarian. She went to India when she was in her twenties, and there she learned yoga, which nicely complemented her Hindi meditation and beliefs. Ever since, she's done yoga, and she's been happily living in Pai for since about 2000, and it's definitely a great retreat for her. Her husband passed away years ago, her children are grown, and she seems to love teaching and nurturing her yoga students. She's incredible.

The next morning, I squeezed in another yoga session before hopping on a bus headed back to Chiang Mai, arriving in time for my 6:30pm meeting for the trek I was to head off to the following day.

I really liked yoga! It feels great, and after a session, I walked down the street feeling wonderful! I'm going to try to search for other yoga sessions in other towns as I make my way through Asia. Hooray - a hobby that's not as expensive as scuba diving and travel!

Northern Thailand, take 1

2008-04-21T08:23:00.002-05:00

I arrived to Chiang Mai in northern Thailand a four days ago, and it probably wins the prize for the hottest place I've been so far. It's the second largest city in Thailand, so it's quite big, but it has a walled/moated inner part of the city, which I've pretty much kept to, so it doesn't seem quite so big.

After my night on the train from Bangkok to Chiang Mai, I was looking forward to a good night's sleep, but first I had to pass the day... since it was absolutely steamy, I didn't do too much.

Mission #1: find specific Indian restaurant mentioned in Lonely Planet for lunch. Mission failed, but I did find a different restaurant to have Indian food.

Mission #2: explore Chiang Mai. Mission also failed due to sweltering heat. I eventually saw pedicures for less than $3, so I went in and got a pedicure and a foot/leg scrub for a grand total of just over $5. Massages and that sort of thing are so cheap here!

Mission #3: find info on treks and cooking classes in the area. Mission semi-accomplished, as I flipped through the trek book at the place I was staying at.

Mission #4: get a good night's sleep. Failed miserably due to hotel's rock-like beds, poor ventilation in room, sweltering heat, and loud nearby bars.

The next morning, I got up and looked for a new hotel. I spent an extra $1.67 a night to upgrade to a room with better ventilation, softer bed and all-around better feel to the place. Well worth the investment.

I decided to work on accomplishing missions 2, 3 and 4 from the previous day plus add in a visit to the famous night market, and I more or less succeeded! I checked out a couple of temples and then eventually collapsed into an internet cafe with a/c for a while before heading back to my room for a quick nap.

That evening, I headed out to the night bazaar that had been recommended, and I was a bit disappointed. I wasn't expecting a market that was mostly full of things that tourists would buy - I was expecting other random household goods, etc, like the markets of Central America that I'm familiar with. The thing to buy are beautiful - silks (most fake at this market, but nearby you can get the real thing), textiles, wooden carvings, beautiful Buddha paintings, etc etc etc, but I just don't have room in my backpack for anything right now.

At about 10pm, I was nearly falling asleep while walking around, so I caught a tuk tuk and headed back to my hotel for a good night's sleep before my next day's Thai cooking class.

The Thai cooking class was great! There were about 15 of us there, and first the chef took us around a produce market to introduce us to fruits, veggies, and spices we weren't familiar with... and to give us tips about buying eggs, etc. Did you know that the smaller eggs are tastier because they're laid by the younger hens, and they have a better flavor? So, stick to those medium eggs from now on.

After the market tour, we went back to our chef's house to cook - we all had little stations set up with a chopping block, sharp knife, wok, stove, etc. The chef showed us first how to make our dishes, then we'd get our ingredients put out in front of us, and he'd direct us through our dishes. It was great! I made a coconut soup, stir-fried veggies, panang curry with tofu, and pad thai. MMMM.... needless to say, I didn't have dinner than night.

However, I found out during the day that there is a special Sunday night market, and I went to it and found it to be far better than the normal night bazaar, so maybe that's the one that had been recommended to me... I still didn't buy anything, though.

And then, this morning, I got up, signed up for a three-day trek that starts on Thursday (look, I found this link from someone else's blog, detailing their trek and some other stuff.. but check out the trek stuff), and I took off for Pai, where I'm currently at.

Pai is super laidback compared to everywhere else I've been to, and upon arrival, I saw a sign for beginner yoga classes, which piqued my interest. After finding a place to stay (cheapest yet! $3.30/night for my own little hut with a bed... downfall is shared bathroom), I found the yoga place and will be doing 4 hours of yoga tomorrow. Yay! Let's hope I can still walk the next day, when I need to head back to Chiang Mai.

After Chiang Mai and trekking, it's on to Laos. My visa runs out on May 2, so I'll be out of Thailand by then at the absolute latest, probably sooner. Wow, sorry this one's so long! More post-trekking through the hilltribe villages...

Backtracking: night out in Phi Phi

2008-04-18T08:19:00.002-05:00

Back before I went on my diving trip, I was on Phi Phi Island. Phi Phi was hit pretty hard by the tsunami back in 2004, like most of that coast of Thailand, but it's come back full force and is now a mecca for hotels, restaurants, dive shops, tour agencies, and, at the moment, Scandinavian tourists.

My first night there, I'd tentatively told two guys I met on the boat ride over that I'd see them out for a drink later on. Beforehand, I headed off to a local restaurant and ended up eating dinner with Daniel, a guy from England travelling by himself. We hit it off almost immediately, and then we hung out the next two days off and on as well.

When it was time to meet up with the guys from the boat, I dragged Daniel along to Reggae Bar. Little did I know prior to showing up that there was a Thai boxing ring set up in the middle of the bar. Permanently. Part of the draw to the bar was that dumb (or drunk) tourists would get up in the right, put on gloves and headgear, and they'd fight each other. They would both get a bucket of booze for their efforts, which contained a half bottle of booze and some sort of mixer. It sure drew a good crowd! Daniel and I were half-mesmerized, half-disgusted.

And when that was over, we were told to go upstairs to wait for the ladyboy show. Thailand is known for its ladyboys, and although I don't know all that much about that part of the culture, I do know that there are ladyboy shows all over the place. Daniel and I looked at each other, shrugged our shoulders and headed upstairs. The promised ten minutes turned into thirty, but at the end, we were rewarded by what I would call a well-choreographed drag show, complete with ladyboy divas.

Entertaining... and I hit two Thai highlights in one evening! For free!

Bedless for two nights

2008-04-18T07:40:00.004-05:00

After I finished up my diving trip, I headed to the dreaded Patong in Phuket with my dive buddies and a guy from Quebec. The English guy who dived with us owns a dive shop on Ko Phi Phi, where I was prior to my four-day diving trip, and he was looking for a night out on the town. Despite not really liking town all that much, I was dropped off there with the others, and I shared a room with another one of the divers.

Despite being the horrible reminder of all things bad when it comes to sex tourism, I discovered my first time around in Patong that it's a good place to have a few drinks. After having dinner as a group, 2 people peeled off immediately due to one not feeling very good. We walked up and down the main drag, then ironically enough, when it came to have another drink, we all were completely exhausted. So we went back to the hotel at about 10pm, completely sober. Oh well, so much for a night out on the town. Diving can really wipe you out. (By the way, Uncle Jim, YES I will probably always compare my future dives to my Similan dives...)

However, not drinking probably helped me out with my travel plans. I went to bed not knowing exactly where I was going to go, nor with whom or when.

I woke up the next day with a clear head and decided to get out of Patong as fast as possible. I booked a bus to Bangkok that left at 1pm after finding out that I'd have to travel 3-4 hours to a bus station and could not buy my ticket in advance... I could have had to sleep in ugly Surat Thani, and I didn't want that.

What I did get was a bit of a goose chase. I arrived to the travel agency at 1 on the dot, just after it had started to pour down rain, and I was the first to be picked up. The driver was upset that I hadn't gotten there sooner, but the girl had told me 1pm, and walked up the steps as my watch (which is 2 minutes fast) said 12:59:50.

It took about an hour picking up everyone around the island of Phuket (I don't really understand why I was first, since I was located about the farthest north possible, and that's the direction we needed to go eventually... but I digress. We stopped once about 2 hours in so the driver could buy some pineapples, then again after another hour for a "15 minute" break, which turned into 25 minutes. We finally arrived to Surat Thani in one piece and we were deposited at another travel agency and assured that the bus left from there, but at 7pm (it was 6pm).

So I decided to check out the town for about half an hour. I wandered about two blocks to see nothing more than urban-ness, and so I settled down at an internet cafe. Thankfully another woman from my van saw me enter there because at about 6:35pm, she ran in, tapped me on the shoulder, and told me that we had to go NOW!

I ran out of there after paying and followed the girl down the two blocks to the travel agency. We were piled into a tuk tuk and then dropped eventually at yet another travel agency, this one with a restaurant. Oh, I guess the bus didn't leave until 8pm. How screwy can you get?

Well, the bus probably pulled away at about 8:15pm, and I chatted briefly with the Aussie girl next to me until the haze created by my sleeping pill enveloped me. I dozed pretty smoothly until about 5:30am, just about 30 minutes before we pulled into Bangkok.

Upon arrival, I decided to get the hell outta Dodge and went to the train station to buy a ticket for that nights train heading north. They had a spot in a sleeper train available, so I bought it and dropped off my big bag.

That day was spent picking up my camera, which was getting repaired (long story, don't ask), poking around the 8-floor mega mall named MBK, checking out the Royal Palace and the Emerald Buddha, also part of the same complex. That evening (last night), I boarded the night train and I arrived to Chiang Mai, in northern Thailand, at about noon today. I'm pretty exhausted and quite ready for a good night's sleep (non pill-induced). Thankfully, my train travel was much less eventful than the previous day's travel to Bangkok.

Diving in the Similan Islands

2008-04-17T04:29:00.002-05:00

I'm back on dry land after an amazing four-day trip through the Similan and Surin Islands, off the west coast of Thailand, NW of Phuket.

It took a solid half day of travel to get to the dock and to see the Manta Queen II, which was my home during my scuba adventure. There were about 15 other divers on board from France, Canada, Ireland, England, the States, Sweden and Norway - a pretty diverse group. I was put in the group with the most experience so we could maximize the amount of time we were under water (newbies tend to go through their air faster), and I dived with one Englishman, a Canadian girl and 2 girls from Ireland. Our divemaster was Thorston from Belgium. He'd been diving in the area for a long time, and he knew a lot about the sites we were diving.

My first dive was amazing... fabulous visibility and tons of fish swimming around, many of them new to me. That was probably some of the best visibility that we had, but over the four days, we saw some truly amazing things.

Every day, we were woken up at 6:30 or 7am, had a small breakfast of fruit and toast, then were in the water by 7:30 or 8am. After we came up, breakfast was ready. Dive #2 was usually after 2 hours out of the water, and that was always followed by lunch. About two hours after that came dive #3 and a snack. Then around sunset, we got geared up again and hopped in for dive #4 of the day. By about 9pm, we were all exhausted and usually in bed.

Remember those elusive whale sharks I wrote about back in Utila? Well, on dive #3, I heard some screams underwater and it was the Canadian girl, who was ueberexcited about the massive whale shark that just swam by her! I turned and saw it, and we swam with it for about a minute or two before it went off into the distance. Amazing! Definitely a diving highlight for me.

I learned a lot more about little things to be found in the the Indian Ocean, like the ghost pipefish, and I even found a normal pipefish on my own! Most of our dives were over an hour, which was fabulous. There was so much to see, I didn't want to come up any earlier. Some other highlights were catching three cuttlefish in some sort of threesome, much like the picture on this wikipedia article. And on our very last dive, as we were waiting on our five minute safety stop, there was a massive school of squid about 15 feet below us just swimming in formation. It was an appropriate farewell from them (the squid). I saw countless moray eels, triggerfish, Nemos, and other really cool stuff. We didn't see a manta ray, which I was hoping for, but there will always be other dive trips.

All in all, it was an absolutely amazing trip, and I'm glad that it was recommended to me. The boat, the staff, my fellow divers, and the sites themselves were fabulous!

Cat in the fridge

2008-04-16T00:34:00.004-05:00

I thought you'd appreciate a photo to check out the cat I wrote about a couple of entries ago. Here ya go:

In the beginning...

2008-04-11T00:45:00.003-05:00

On my flight from Berlin to Bangkok, the German man sitting next to met tells me that Thailand is a beautiful and wonderful place, but everyone is out to get your money. That's all they're concerned about.

Now, that may be true, but I've found the Thai people to be incredibly friendly and helpful. I haev felt no animosity towards us farongs (foreigners), despite our massive influence on their curlture, beaches, day-to-day life, and even their employment (in the case of the sex workers). Smiles, friendliness and general good-intentions. Sure, taxi and tuk tuk drivers like to pester you to take their vehicle, and then they start off at ridiculous prices, but if you've figured out the system, you're ok.

Unlike in Latin America, I don't feel that the men see (especially foreign) women as a piece of meat. I was originally surprised to see all of the roles that females take here in Thailand. Sure, I expect them to be street vendors selling food and clothes, I expect them to work in laundry places, and even at hotel reception. But I didn't expect to see them in as many travel agencies, or working as guides, or doing as many things as they are. Perhaps the removal of the idea of machismo is what gives the women so many possibilities. Perhaps that is also why fathers and husbands allow their daughters and wives to leave for the big city to become sex workers.

I am on the beautiful island of Ko Phi Phi at the moment, and sex tourism is either not here, or it's not obvious to the general public. However, it's pretty obvious in both Bangkok, and it's pretty damn hard to avoid in Patong, on the island of Phuket. In most bars in Patong, your server is also there to please you in other ways, if you so choose. Several of the popular bar streets are lined with ladies who are available to you.

I walked into a bar in Patong with a couple of Aussie guys I'd met, and when we sat down at the bar, our server came over to us. It seems that each customer was assigned a girl... now, our girl seemed very happy to see a non-working girl in the bar. She said hi to the Aussie boys but stopped in front of me and asked where I was from, told me she liked my hair and thought I was pretty. Now, I don't think she was trying to hit on me... I just think she's got a limited vocab and wanted to converse with me. She got out a Connect 4 board and a dice game and invited one of the guys to play Connect 4. (I guess if there's a communication barrier, you've got to do something to pass the time.) She didn't seem to quite grasp the concept of Connect 4, but the guy continued to play despite winning 3 or 4 different ways. I think she noticed that we were more interested in talking to each other, rather than her, so she backed off. That particular night, I'd only had about 1 or 2 drinks by the time I walked down the main drag, and the sights were appalling. 20-something Thai girls grinding on white men anywhere from ten to forty years older than them.

I had a conversation with one of the Aussies, and both sides of the picture are quite disturbing - both the degradation that the women put themselves through and the circumstances that have brought the men looking for those women. Thai women are very attractive, but the whole situation is a big cycle that can't be positive for either side.

Anyway, enough on that.

I'm on Phi Phi right now, which is one of main places that was hit by the tsunami back in December 2004. All memories of destruction have basically been erased and tourism is bigger than most places I saw in Central america. It is beautiful here; it's where they filmed parts of the Leo DiCaprio movie The Beach.

But I'm leaving this afternoon... I've decided to splurge on a diving trip that will hopefully be amazing. For the next 4 nights, I'm going to be living on the Manta Queen II (more info here) and will be diving in the Similan Islands, which are meant to have some of the best dive sites around. We shall see! I'm very excited.

That's all for now... kudos for making it this far!

Tee hee

2008-04-09T07:32:00.003-05:00

Last night, I looked into the beer fridge at the place I was having dinner at, and there was a cat lying down in there. After about an hour, it pushed the door open and made its way back outside. Apparently, it sometimes prefers the fridge to the stifling heat of Phi Phi Island. Not a bad idea.

Thailand!

2008-04-07T23:31:00.002-05:00

I don't have much time to write at the moment, but I'm in Thailand! I survived my first three days in Bangkok, then I flew down to steamy Phuket, where I've been for the last two nights. Next stop: Ko Phi Phi! It sounds like the hotels are a bit pricey, so I may only be there for a couple of nights.

I'll write more about everything later, including a mega-mall in Bangkok and the in-your-face sex tourism here in Phuket (one of the reasons why I'm leaving...). In the meantime, happy Tuesday!

The rest of my time in Rome

2008-04-05T21:48:00.003-06:00

I was going to do a day-to-day synopsis of my time in Rome, but seeing as I'm already in Thailand, I'm going to speed things along.

My time in Rome was really good! During the days, I usually slept until about 9 or 10 and left the house at about 12 after taking my time over breakfast, reading, etc. I took off on my own (Francesca loaned me her keys for the week) and explored the touristy sights with the help of the buses, metro and trams of Rome. My shoes sure got a workout while I was there!

I went to check out the Vatican one day and was shocked at the number of people there! The line to get into the basilica was stretched clear across the plaza. I decided to pass on that, seeing as I'm not even Catholic, but I did want to head to Vatican museum to see the Sistine Chapel and all of the other stuff around there. I saw a massive line when I arrived, but I wasn't aware of just how massive it was because it went around the walls of the Vatican, and you couldn't see around to the front of it. Forty-five minutes after joining up in the line, I finally entered the museum to join the other million people already inside. It was worth the wait. The frescoes and paintings on the ceilings and walls, not to mention the great mosaic work on the floors were amazing! The Sistine Chapel was pretty impressive, but I also found the map room to be amazing. (This is a shot of the awe-inspiring ceiling.)

Before I'd gone to Rome, I think it was Derek who was saying that it's a city that is a walking museum, and he was so right! If you're not into the architecture from between 1600-1900, then there's the stuff from the ancient Romans. If you're not into that, there are museums. If you don't like those, it's fun to just walk through the narrow alleyways that snake through the historic center to see what's behind the corners. Then there's the shopping, the food, the parks, and the friendly people.

As you can probably tell, I really enjoyed my visit. I think I especially had an amazing time because I had Francesca to introduce me to her friends and to show me around to her favorite places in Rome. The Saturday that I was there was especially nice. We were invited to lunch at her friend Valerio's place, which is kinda in the outskirts of Rome. We were supposed to be there at 3, but that's when we were leaving the house, so we arrived close to 4:15 or 4:30, but it was just in time for lunch. Enjoying the sun, we plopped down on the grass with another 5 or 6 people to enjoy some risotto, fabulous pasta and wine, then cookies for dessert.

Post our massive feast, we went indoors where I hopped in on the backgammon play and had a few hours of that before I let one of Francesca's friends cut my hair. She'd just cut Roman's (Fran's boyfriend) hair and had done a good job, so I let her at mine. She did a decent job and restored it to its shortness from a few years ago.

After the haircut, we were invited to dinner at Valerio's neighbor's house (at about 10:15pm). My slowly-expanding belly protested, but then I stuffed in some polenta and cheese.

Then the discussion started about what to do later that evening. Bar, club, what? It was decided that we were going to head to a drum and bass party (that's electronic music). I was hoping for a bar because it would mean I would get to bed sooner (I'm feeling so old!), but I wasn't the one driving. At about 12:30, we took off. After we arrived, I found out that the party was at an old club that had been abandoned and was now an underground club that is being squatted in. This is fairly common in certain parts of Rome, as far as I understand, but it made the story more interesting. At first, I didn't really know if I enjoyed being there or not, but eventually, I started dancing and we left when they turned the lights on, which was right around when the sun was starting to peek out over the horizon. The best part was that I hadn't had much to drink, so I was only just very tired and after some sleep, I didn't have to battle a hangover!

Anyway, Rome eventually came to an end, but it was great seeing Francesca, meeting her friends and getting to know one of Europe's more famous cities.

Doing as the Romans do, Day 2

2008-03-31T13:48:00.002-06:00

On Thursday, I had a lazy morning catching up on sleep after my late night the night before. I also quizzed Francesca on places to check out in Rome, since it is my first time here.

I took off in the afternoon to explore a bit and get an idea of the general layout of town. I made it to the Colosseum and the older parts of town, then I headed up to the historical center and saw the Pantheon and the maze of streets around it. I finished up at the beautiful Spanish steps at around 6:30pm, then I met up with Francesca and a friend in San Lorenzo again for a drink.

Drinks wrapped up at about 9, then we went for one last one due to the rain. Fran had her scooter but no second helmet, so we didn't risk me hopping on the back. I headed for the tram stop and waited. And waited. In fact, two trams passed by, completely empty, without stopping. I think they must stop running at about 10, so I was stuck not really knowing how to get home. I went to a nearby sandwich stand and asked for a public phone, but they didn't know where one was. A woman offered to let me use her cell phone, so I tried to call Francesca, but it went directly to voice mail. Hmmm.... I found the street that eventually would take me home, and thankfully, shortly after starting off, I saw a bus and remembered that the 105 would take me nearly to the front door. What luck!

It worked out beautifully, and I was back at the apartment at about 11 and ready to stay in for the night. But Francesca was going to go out to meet her boyfriend for just one drink. Right. So I joined her and got my first Roman scooter ride in the process! A must for all...

It was nice at the small little bar she took me to, and we ran into several of her friends there, as well. Drinking in Rome seems to be very different from most other countries I've been to, and I like it. When you go out, your goal is usually to socialize and/or enjoy a couple of glasses of wine/beer/your poison of choice, not to get absolutely trashed. I think I just barely made it to tipsy during the week I was there, and that was just once. Very refreshing!

Back to that night... of course, things turned out as they usually do in Rome, and when 1:30am came around, I was ready to go home, and Francesca was ready to move on to the next bar. Rome stays up late. Due to the cold I was trying to get over, I had a good enough excuse to go home, so I got a ride with a friend of hers and headed home.

Doing as the Romans do, Day 1

2008-03-31T08:43:00.003-06:00

As sad as it was to leave Derek and Dublin, it had to happen. My bank account was starting to get dizzy from the amount of money I was spending in Ireland. So, on Wednesday, I flew to Rome.

After taking the bus from the airport to the main transport hub in Rome, I caught up with my good friend Francesca, a genuine Romana who I met through tour leading. She trained me in Spain, then we ran into each other frequently in Central America.

I got to her apartment at about 6pm, and as we were walking the final block, she finalized some plans for us to go to a friend's (also named Francesca) birthday dinner later that evening. I met Fran's aptly-named Swiss boyfriend Roman, and at about 8:15, we set off for the neighborhood of San Lorenzo. First, we popped into a little cafe to kill some time, and we drank a glass of wine each, then we caught up with Francesca #2. We went to the restaurant and at about 10, we'd found a table at the bustling Rouge restaurant. After a menu tranlation, we ordered at about 10:30 and started our feast. I guess I had to get used to eating late some time! At around midnight, we'd wrapped up dinner and the bottles of wine and it was time to head over to a bar to grab a grappa before taking off. I think I made it to bed at about 1am.

Whew! I was exhausted!

Ireland 1, Leah 0

2008-03-28T13:24:00.003-06:00

Last weekend, I went with Derek and 9 of his friends (6 guys from school, 3irlfriends, 1 wife, 1 child) to Killarney in southwest Ireland, in County Kerry. Six of us took the train down together and were greeted to a downpour upon arrival to Killarney that left us soaked after the 15 second run to the station from the train, but thankfully, that was about it on the rain front for the weekend. It sprinkled a couple of times, but nothing major.

Since everyone had a 4 day weekend, they all decided to go somewhere together for it. We stayed in a fancy hotel and sucked down a few pints on Good Friday in the fancy hotel bar, which still had cheaper prices on pints than Dublin. Thankfully, we were in a hotel because alcohol is only sold in hotels and train stations on Good Friday. Something about it being illegal everywhere else on that day, but they don't want to turn away tourists from visiting Ireland. !!! We didn't go too hard on the booze, though, because we had big plans for Saturday: climbing Carrantuohill, which I learned is the biggest hill in Ireland. Ireland doesn't have any mountains, so it classifies as the highest point in the country, I think.

We got up and everyone slowly gathered themselves, lunches and gear together to climb up the hill. I was happy for the Thursday shopping trip I made with Derek's mom to get gloves, a hat, and a scarf because it was a mostly overcast day and in traditional Irish fashion, fairly chilly. We piled into cars and eight of us set off. About twenty minutes later, we'd arrived. We weren't the first to tackle the hill, though... I think there were probably already a good 30 cars there! In fact, after the other two cars in our caravan had parked, the owner of the parking area came over to us and said, "Can you hold off for about ten minutes? I've got to go move some sheep to make more parking room."

We cracked up and obliged before setting off up the hill. Sure looked like a mountain to me, but I guess it doesn't reach the altitude test for a mountain. Oh well. The path was pretty rocky and pretty soggy where it wasn't rocky, but it wasn't too hard going, except when we had a cross a river a few times. Two of the crossings were pretty straight forward, but the third was a bit more tricky if you wanted to get to the other side more or less dry. I started off walking with the two other girls and then joined Derek about halfway up. In the distance I saw what looked a bit like a big rock slide, and then I realized in horror that that was the way up!

Well, it looked worse than it was, but about halfway up, things started to turn a bit more frigid. There was a stream running down parts of the rocks and the wet mossy bits were starting to freeze. Well, about 20-30 minutes into the "Devil's Ladder," as they call it, I saw a few of the guys in our group coming down, despite the top of the rockslide not being all that close to the top of the hill. It had frozen across the top bit there, and it was too dangerous to cross without equipment. Doh! So, we all turned around and headed back down.

I wasn't horribly sad about that, although some of the guys were pretty bummed. The scenery was beautiful, it was good exercise, and where else would I be able to get a quote like the guy having to move his sheep? The walk down was fairly uneventful... nothing like the way up with Derek was nearly up to his thighs in mud that didn't look nearly as menacing as it actually was. (I felt bad, but I couldn't help but laugh at him while apologizing profusely for doing so...)

So, that's how it comes to be that Ireland defeats Leah 1:0.

Traipsing around Dublin

2008-03-19T07:14:00.002-06:00

I arrived! I've been here since Thursday morning of last week. I'm staying with my friend Derek and his family about 30 mintues from the city center by bus. I've been enjoying my time with him here, but the cold weather definitely is a bit of a shock to the system! I didn't do too much on Thursday or Friday, but on Saturday, we had plans to head into town.

In typical Irish style, it decided to piss down rain ALL DAY Saturday. Fabulous. We were going to grab brunch, walk around a bit and maybe take in the Jameson Distillery, but due to the rain, we ate and then walked around for all of about 30 minutes before landing in a pub to keep warm and to have a pint or two. The Foggy Dew was the pub of choice, and about 20 minutes after we arrived, the Ireland vs. England rugby match started. Derek wanted to stay to watch it, so we ordered up another round of pints and I got a lesson in rugby rules. Sorry Americans, but it's much more intersting and fast-paced than American football. I've heard it for years, but I've finally got to agree with the Brits/Irish/Aussies who've been telling me that.

Three pints after we entered, the game was over, and the Irish had a very poor showing, losing 10-33 to the English. Unfortunately, while we were in the pub, the rain did not let up. We decided to go home to change before going back into time that evening. That evening, we went to Whelan's to check out a couple of bands. Although the music was not really my type (heavy rock/metal-ish), it was good to see live music after only hearing salsa, merengue and reggaeton for so long. We also met up with Derek's brother and a few friends of his out.

Sunday was spent doing next to nothing until the evening, when we were going out to meet up with a few more friends of Derek's. St. Patrick's Day is a national holiday in Ireland, so most people have the day off. Since it landed on Monday, folks seemed to be going out on Sunday night; most people had to work on Tuesday. We had a few pints, first at the Blue Haven, then at The Morgue's before we called it an early night in order to avoid a hangover on Patty's Day, when I wanted to head out into town. However, before heading home, we had to stop off at the local chipper for me to get some "chips" (fries) and Derek a hamburger.

St. Patrick's Day, we went out to Dun Laoghaire (pronounced Dunn Leery), which is on the coast and has a long pier to walk along. Lots of people were out and about, and we strolled for a good couple of hours along the coast before grabbing some pub grub at the Purty Kitchen. Great food! I had corn fritters on top of a great salad.

Afterwards, we walked back to the car, stopping to get some green ice cream along the way. No, they don't do green beer on St. Pat's Day here in Ireland, but I guess they do green ice cream. And they sometimes will put the shamrock on the top of a pint of Guinness, but mostly only at the touristy places, and only on Patty's Day. We drove over to Dun Drum, dropped off the car, and hopped on the tram into town. We managed to miss the parade (intentionally), but when we got off the tram, we saw masses of people decked out in green with crazy hats, spray-painted hair, and Irish flags draped across their shoulders. Many were about 16 or 18 and already drunk at about 4pm. I guess everyone of age had to work the next day or were already in the pubs. We walked around taking in the madness for a little bit before we ducked into the Turk's Head for my token Guinness on St. Pat's Day. We stayed for one then slowly cruised back to the tram and had a quiet evening at home hanging out with the fam and then watching the last movie in the Bourne series.

Yesterday when Derek was at work, I decided to get more familiar with the bus system and cruised into Dublin town by myself. I bought a new ipod (80gb!), poked around in a few of the shops, then went to the Jameson Distillery for a tour. It was packed! Surprise, surprise, though really... what were all of the foreigners in town for St. Patrick's Day suppoesd to do the following day other than cruise through the Guinness and Jameson factories? Despite that, I managed to get myself chosen to be one of the 6 whiskey tasters in the group at the end of the tour, which meant that in addition to my free shot of Jameson, I also got to compare 3 different Irish whiskeys, one Scotch whisky (Johnnie Walker Red) and one American (Jack Daniels). They also gave me a nice certificate for it. That certainly made the €12.50 tour worth it!

That's all for now... next weekend, it's off to Killarney in the southwest, and next Wednesday, it's off to Rome!

Leaving Costa Rica (and GAP-world)

2008-03-19T06:09:00.003-06:00

After La Fortuna, Costa Rica, I headed to San Jose, the capitol city. Three of my former colleagues at GAP Adventures had just gotten an apartment and they were kind enough to let me crash at their place. I spent my last few days basically getting ready to head to Europe.

I bought some new non-sandal shoes (which gave me blisters on the first day... shoes you have to wear with socks are over-rated), bought a few new clothes, mailed some stuff home, and started trying to get my work laptop ready to turn over to the Central American office. Well, the first few things were easy enough, but backing up my photos and music was not so easy. First problem: My ipod was dying. Second problem: Electronics are super expensive in Costa Rica due to taxes. So, the ipod would not be enough store everything on as I didn't have faith that it would last me until Ireland. Correct guess - it completely died the night before I left Costa Rica.

So, off to Office Depot. I started looking into getting external hard drives and found that those taxes were indeed hefty! An 80gb hard drive (called "disco duro" in Spanish, which made me chuckle) cost about US$180, at least double some of the prices on the internet that I'd found. I sucked it up and bought it after checking that it was compatible with both apples and pcs. 20 minute taxi ride home, and guess what! Not compatible with macs.

Next day: chatted with two techie friends, one of whom suggested I buy and burn DVDs with the info. 20 minutes back to the Office Depot, 2 10-packs of DVDs bought. 20 minutes back to apartment. DVD inserted, selected to burn media on iTunes, DVD comes spitting out and I'm instructed to insert disc. DVD re-inserted, re-spat out. It seems that my laptop wasn't a DVD burner. Doh! So, either I say goodbye to all of my music and photos (!!) other than those that I'd uploaded to flickr, or I suck it up and buy an even more expensive external disco duro.

I convinced my old co-workers to go out for a nice meal at an Indian restaurant not too far from Office Depot so I can pick up a 160gb hard drive. Mission accomplished, and I enjoyed a fabulous dinner full of laughter and fabulous food with Mayra, Blaine, and Caroline, some of the ladies who are in charge of making Central American operations run smoothly. We got home and finished up a bottle of wine as I worked on packing. And then I tested out the apple compatibility of my new disco duro. Guess what- it worked! (I did have plan D ready - Give-Up-And-Cry - and was prepared to get to Office Depot at 8am the next morning on my way to the airport to return the damn thing.) But thankfully, that wasn't necessary. And now, I've got something on which I can store my photos while I'm on the road.

The next day, I left Costa Rica and headed to Dublin, Ireland. Although I'd been on the road for about 2 months following the end of my contract with GAP, my move to Europe was pretty big. It felt like a start of my travels... and perhaps it is. I've left behind my old stomping grounds (which happened to span Mexico, Belize, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and Costa Rica) and have moved on with my travel, completely un-connected to GAP. In every country I visited during those two months, I either purposefully or accidentally bumped into other tour leaders or ex-tour leaders. Although they were my friends, ultimately talk always turned to GAP. I was still somewhat in the GAP world, albeit slightly disconnected.

My last fews days in San Jose, I was totally in the GAP world again, hanging out solely with GAP employees, spending time at the office, chatting with my old boss, who is also a friend. I became up-to-date on the changes that had taken place in the Central office (most of them positive changes, to my delight).

But then on Wednesday, I flew away from all of that and landed somewhere I hadn't been for 4 years. It feels very freeing, and I have finally cut old ties. My time with GAP was a great time, but it was also a stressful time with too much work for too few people, and I'm happy to be away from it all. Let the adventure begin! Here's to moving on!

Moving on...

2008-03-09T10:53:00.002-06:00

Not all that much to report today. I had a fabulous 8 days in San Juan del Sur and have now moved on to La Fortuna, Costa Rica.

In San Juan, I caught up with all of the friends I wanted to, managed to time my visit to correspond with a surf tournament, spent lots of time at the beach, and I even squeezed in a scuba dive! My days were pretty chill and usually involved heading out to Playa Maderas, where I would spend my day reading, chatting with friends, cooling off in the ocean and working on my tan. (Yes, I am actually pretty tan at the moment.) I would usually grab one of the delicious smoothies that my friend Alfredo the Peruvian sells out at the beach - orange, payapa, pineapple, passion fruit, banana, a bit of protein powder and topped off with a sprinkling of cinnamon. Yum!

The evenings usually involved either cooking dinner or grabbing a bite somewhere, then most evenings, I would head out for "a drink or two" with friends, which usually turned into a few more than that. It was a fun week.

On Friday, I got up early and hit the road at 6:15am. After 1 taxi, a border and 3 buses, I arrived to La Fortuna at about 3pm. Since I'd gotten about 5 hours of sleep the night beforehand, I had an early dinner and was in bed before 9. Yesterday (Saturday) was a good day... I caught up with my good friend Angie from high school who was here with a group (She's a tour leader.) and we went waterfall rappelling in the morning and hung out in the afternoon. Last night was another early evening, and today, I'm heading off to San Jose to catch up with some old co-workers. Wednesday, I've got a flight off to Dublin, and I'm totally looking forward to my time in Ireland!

Hardcore bookin' it

2008-03-04T08:31:00.000-06:00

Following rafting, I got a ride into La Ceiba in preparation for the following day's travel. I'd been recommended a hotel just across from the bus station, so I headed straight there. I check in at about 7pm, and then I headed to the bus station to buy my bus ticket. The first company, which was about 4 blocks away, was sold out of their 3:30am bus tickets to Tegucigalpa. But they recommended another company that had a bus that left at 3:10am. Conveniently enough, it was only about a block from my hotel. I bought a ticket and headed back to my room.

Why so early? Well, I wanted to avoid spending the night anywhere between Tegucigalpa and the Nicaraguan border... I wanted to get to Nicaragua in one day. And, I found out that evening that there was going to be a nationwide strike which would involve closing down bridges for the morning... and to leave La Ceiba, you have to cross a bridge. But the strikers didn't want to wake up too early, so things were going to be affected as of 6am. All the more reason to get the heck outta Dodge.

I went to bed at about 9pm and woke up at 2:45am and finished my packing. I was sitting on the bus at about 3, and then I popped a Dramamine, which causes drowsiness. (I can't sleep sitting up without something to help me.) I more or less slept until 7am, when we had a breakfast stop.

Now, the night before, I'd made my last run to the ATM, but I'd forgotten to figure in my hotel that night, so I knew that funds were going to be tight if I were to get by on Honduran Lempiras until the border. I figured I had about 50 Limps (~$2.50) for food until I found out exact prices for buses. I spent about 40 limps on breaky and we continued on to Tegus.

At around 10, we rolled into the bus station, and I caught a taxi across town to another bus station. There, I learned the prices of the next three buses to the border. And I had another 15 Limps or so to spend on food! Hooray!

I rode to Danli, switched over to a bus to El Paraiso, then in El Paraiso, I had another snack and a coke (13 Limps). After paying for my last bus ride, I had a total of 3 Limps in my pocket - about $0.16. I paid the Nica entry fee at the border with my last US$7, and when I went to use the bathroom, I was faced with a 3 Cord fee - I asked if I could pay in Limps instead, and they agreed. I managed to leave Honduras with the exactly correct amount of money.

Once I hit Nicaragua, I continued my bus surfing and used 4 different vehicles to get to Granada, arriving at 8:30pm, just 17.5 hours after I'd left La Ceiba. I spent the night there, and after pampering myself in the morning with a pedicure ($3 for an hour's work!) and a fabulous brunch of a panini sandwich with hummus, fruit salad and iced latte, I headed on to San Juan del Sur, one my favorite beach places. Now, I've been here a week and will be moving on on Thursday or Friday.

Jungle River Lodge

2008-02-29T10:50:00.000-06:00

After Utila, I took the ferry over to La Ceiba and headed up to the Jungle River Lodge with a mission to go rafting. There are two trips - half-day and full-day. The full-day costs about double the half day, but you're on the river about 4 times longer. Of course, I opted for the full day. However, I'd been warned the the full-day trip doesn't run very often and there's a minimum of two people.

Maya, a dive instructor at my dive shop in Utila (Utila Water Sports), used to work at the Jungle River Lodge, and her boyfriend Angel used to be a rafting guide (he's now a divemaster in Utila). And they were going to be there when I arrived. From the ferry terminal, it was about a half an hour drive up into the hills to get to the lodge. After leaving town, we were on a dirt road that followed alongside the river and big hills were on either side of the river. It was beautiful.

When I arrived to the lodge, I saw a beautiful wooden building that served as the bar, hangout area, eating area, and, beneath, rafting gear storage area. It was alongside the river, and you could always hear the roar of the water below. I was greeted by Maya and Angel who informed me that I had bad luck, as the full-day trip had just gone out that day. And the two of them were heading into La Ceiba to sleep that evening.

That didn't matter too much, as I wasn't very good company due to the amount of booze and lack of sleep from the night before. I did chat with some people who'd done both the full day and half-day rafting, and although everyone had a good time, the full-day trip sounded much better. I decided to wait around a day to see if anyone else arrived to do the full-day trip.

The next day, Maya got back early afternoon, and we had a good time chatting as we're both in similar places in our lives. That evening, everyone cleared out, and I was the only guest staying there. It was nice, though, because Angel and Maya were there, plus the owner Oscar, two of the rafting guides (Darwin & Roberto), Roberto's girlfriend Rosario, and a Guatemalan who lives in La Ceiba and sells jewelry and dream catchers.

As evening came, the tunes were turned on, and of all things, electronic music was pumping through the speakers. It was kind of bizarre sitting amongst 7 Central Americans (& one Dane - Maya) in a beautiful natural setting surrounded by beautiful green hills and a roaring river, encompassed by flickering candles and some beers and hearing electronic music at high levels. But fun just the same. While we were sitting there, the owner said that he'd run the full day trip the following day for just one person as a favor since I was friends with Maya and Angel. Yay! I went to bed at about 10 and could just barely hear the music for another little while from my bed, but I needed my beauty sleep before a long day on the river.

We left the next day at about 10am to hit the river. We drove about 30-45 minutes to get to the upper section of the river, and then Darwin gave Rosario and me some safety instructions and some info about the commands he was going to give. It was decided that he'd give the commands in English, but other than that, we were jabbering away in Spanish.

The river was pretty low, which meant that some of the rapids weren't as big as other times in the year, and we had to do a bit more maneuvering than usual. A couple of times, we got out of the raft, walked downriver a little bit to check out the next set of rapids, then we got back in to tackle them.... one time, we took a look at the rapid, which was at least a 4-foot drop, and I commented to the Chilean girl in the raft that sometimes it's better *not* to see what you're getting yourself into! However, we made it over safely with everyone intact in the raft.

Further down stream, we went over a rapid, and I swear I saw a body floating on the surface of the water. I looked at the other two in the boat, and they'd seen it too, but I was assured that it was a fisherman. Sure enough he resurfaced after about a minute. Whew! No dead bodies.

All in all, I fell out twice - once was mid-rapids and kinda scary, but I was back in the boat shortly thereafter (after freeing my leg from in between some rocks), and the other was not scary in the least. I've gone rafting at least 5 times, and I'd never fallen out in the past, so I guess there's a first time for everything.

We stopped mid-day for a lunch break, and while Darwin was out getting some food for us from the village up above, kids appeared and took over our raft while we munched on tortillas (still warm!) and guajada cheese. There were about 10-15 kids on the raft at any given time, with a tall and lanky boy at the back of the raft in charge. Somehow, they all managed to fall out once or twice, so there was always some little kid trying to get up the side of the raft. Pretty entertaining.

Near the end of the day, we went down a rapid and parked the raft to go down it just floating in our life jackets. I was give the instructions to "Close your mouth" as you went over because you're dunked for a second and then "Swim hard to the left" right afterwards. Scary at first, but fun in the end.

I'm not sure why, but Darwin decided that we wouldn't get out at the normal place - we would continue down another 5 km longer than usual and finish up directly at the Jungle River Lodge. What that meant is that I saw a helluva a lot of the river (cool!) and I finished up with some sore arms. We started off at 11am, and we arrived at the lodge at about 5pm. We had at least 5 hours of paddling, and I've found some mystery bruises and some scrapes and calluses on my hands and legs, but it was great!

I'd love to go back when there's more water!

Getting off the island

2008-02-27T10:24:00.000-06:00

It's much easier said that done. Getting off of Utila. Yes, there is a morning ferry (6:20am) and an afternoon ferry (2pm), but physically getting yourself and your bag the 10 minute walk down the road to the dock is pretty difficult. Last time it took me 2 months to make the walk. This time I didn't have 2 months.

Initially, I'd said I couldn't leave the island until after I'd reached 100 dives and seen a whale shark. If you follow my blog, you'll know that both of these were accomplished by the beginning of the week. But I wasn't really ready to move on yet. So I said that Thursday was the day. I wanted to go to Bar in the Bush once before I left, and it's only open on Wednesday and Friday. So Thursday it was.

But Wednesday, I wasn't ready to leave yet. Thursday morning, after Bar in the Bush, I woke up fairly ready to go, but I wanted to dive before I left. No afternoon boat that day, so Friday afternoon it was. An Aussie couple at the dive shop (Chris & Kate) said that I should stick around until we had a BBQ with the dive shop folks, and that sounded like a good last evening, but it wouldn't happen until Friday. OK, Saturday afternoon it was.

Plans got modified, and the dive shop staff plus a few extras (I was half-staff because I'd actually worked as a divemaster two days) were all invited out to owner Troy's resort - Laguna Beach Resort - for its fourth birthday bash on Friday.

That afternoon, I went out for my last two dives with Mike, one of the DMTs (Divemaster-in-Training). The first dive was uneventful other than some underwater frisbee played at the end. The second dive was more entertaining and included a massive snapper with big teeth too menacing to go past, a big sea turtle, and some underwater cartwheels (much easier said than done, but definitely hilarious). Good final dive. I'm over 110 now!

That evening at about 6:30pm, we met in the office and the rum started flowing. Everyone chipped in 50 Lempira (~$2.5) for some rum and mixers, and then we headed out to the front dock for a quick booze cruise over to the resort. Once there, we hung out laughing and drinking until the food was ready. At about 8 or so, we had an emergency! No more rum! One of the dive instructors, Kris, had a quick word with Troy the owner and came back gripping another 1.5 liter bottle of the yummy Flor de Caña. Whew! We had a nice dinner (they had BBQ lamb and shrimp, I had salads), and then we were shuffled back on board the boat to take us back to town. 20+ tipsy/drunk people on a boat = lots of fun, and I got some good pictures of the key players.

When we got back to town, it was only 9:30ish. What else to do but continue drinking? We all headed out to the bars and had a good night. I ended up at Bar in the Bush again. It was a late night that ended with someone from the dive shop doubling me down the road on his bike. (Bar in the Bush is a good 15-20 minute walk out of town.) I think Tomas' bike is the usual taxi service, as instructor Kris said that he hitched a ride with him the week beforehand.

And Saturday afternoon, I stopped by the afternoon boat to say good bye to everyone and took off on the afternoon ferry. La Ceiba HO!

Drilling on the ocean floor

2008-02-20T14:55:00.000-06:00

Yesterday was yet another exciting day of diving. I was torn between a deep dive and heading out to a reef a bit farther out to help with the drilling of some holes for moorings. For both, I had to get up at the same time, and when i woke up, I decided to head out to the help out with Operation: Buoy.

We got our equipment together and loaded some tanks onto a cart to take over to the front dock because this dive would not be from the standard dive boats... it would be from a much bigger boat that's usually used to bring cargo to and from the mainland - the Big Time. (All boats owned by Troy, owner of Utila Water Sports dive shop have "Time" in the title... Bottom Time, Any Time, Over Time, Island Time.)

We got all of our gear and 21 tanks loaded and hopped on board. The group consisted of the captain, some deck hands to drop equipment down to the water, Fred who is the local expert on buoys, moorings and fishing, a photographer, four Divemasters-in-Training (Brock, Laura, Chris & Itai), an instructor (Kris), and myself.

The Big Time skirted the southern part of Utila, eventually heading a bit westerly once we passed the southeastern cayes. About an hour and a half after starting, we'd reached the reef. The dive shop owner Troy joined us out there with a much smaller boat.

Fred geared up, which was interesting in and of itself - he had a pretty loaded weight belt, fins, mask, snorkel, and a tank of air that seemed to be strapped to his back with weight belts. No BCD or floatation device. This dude was old-school. He was under with Troy for about 10 or 15 minutes before he came back up. They'd found a place for the mooring. Our mission was to get the holes dug and get some cement in there to hold down some peg-like things. They'll put the moorings in later once the cement has dried.

So, we were needed to help out. They lowered down a hydraulic drill and we kinda looked at each other trying to figure out how to get into the water. We weren't on a dive boat where you can put on your gear and basically walk or roll off of the back. We were a good 2 meters above the water. So, we got everything ready, put on our fins and masks and jumped in with someone throwing our gear in after us, and we put everything on in the water. And we dived down.

We were working at about 15 feet/5 meters the whole time. Fred and Troy basically worked the drill, and Kris wanted in on the action as well, so he helped to hold down the two of them as they needed it. The rest of us twiddled our thumbs wondering what to do until we noticed that when the boat gradually moves in the water (we didn't have an anchor down), the two 100-foot hoses connected to the drill get tangled up in the coral. So I busied myself with keeping everything as tangle-free as possible as I watched the guys with the drill make 3 holes on the bottom.

The process was a pretty interesting one as well as slightly disturbing. It was disturbing for two reasons - first one being the coral that gets stepped on/grabbed/run over by the hoses during the process, thus killing it; second being the hydraulic oil that started to leak out of the drill later on in the drilling. When we came up to the surface, there was a very thin layer of oil there to coat our hair, masks, BCDs, etc. However, in the grand scheme of water pollution, the drill did very little damage.

The coral was more difficult to handle, especially because as divers, we're trained to be so cautious and respectful of the reefs. But I rationalized it by telling myself that many anchors over time would do WAY more damage that what we were doing. Which I think is very true and not just an excuse.

After bobbing up and down for an hour or so, the 4 DMTs (Divemaster-in-Training) and I got permission to poke around the reef, and we took off for a quick 10-15 minute poke-around. It was a very cool site... it's too far away for many people to dive on it, so I'm sure we were some of the few who have recently. We named it Kris' Dream (someone also suggested Kris' Wet Dream, although that might be taking it a little far) after the instructor with us, but I'm not sure if that's going to stick or not...

When we got back to the drilling area, they'd begun filling the holes with concrete. How does one use concrete under water? Well, I'm not sure what's normal, but here in Utila, Honduras, they filled PVC tubing with concrete and put in a styrofoam cork on one end. The other end you cover with your hand as you bring it down, and then you put the hand-covered end into the hole part-way. Then you take the cork out and shove another piece of piping (narrower than the concrete-filled one) and start to push the concrete out. You lose some of it in the process, but that's what happens. Stuff tubing, swim through water, shove into hole & repeat.

While the tail end of the concrete-fiilling process was going on (only 2 people are needed for it), all but Kris were back on the boat after about two hours in the water. Although we were cold in the water with our 3mm wetsuits on, once we were on board, things heated up quickly and Brock and Chris were soon giving us a show by jumping over the boat railing into the water. A quick swim took care of the heat.

After all of the equipment was loaded back into the boat, we started motoring to another part of the same reef. As a side note, getting out of the water was also a bit of an ordeal that involved taking off the equipment, tying a rope to the tank and BCD and letting someone from above hoist it up. They'd rigged up a ladder to the side of the boat to climb back up on, but it was about 10 rungs of skinny metal boards that you had to help you. Thankfully, it worked just fine.

When we got to the second site, we got in the water more quickly and all had a quick swim around. The floor was too soft, so we weren't able to do more drilling, so we swam around for about half an hour for a super chill and very slow dive.

We got back on the boat and three of us headed directly to the padded benches inside for a nap on the way back in. We got back at about 3pm and unloaded all of the gear.

It was nice to have a slightly different day of diving at a site that isn't dived very often. It's not every day you can say you assisted with a dive site mooring project.

Finally!

2008-02-19T17:09:00.000-06:00

Yesterday the day finally came. I snorkelled with a whale shark!

After a day of doing absolutely nothing on Sunday (which definitely did not directly correspond to the amount I had to drink the night before), I stopped by the dive shop to send off a few e-mails before I called the day a complete waste. I found out the boat was heading to the north side of the island the next morning (that's whale shark territory), and when they asked me if I could work as divemaster for two Aussies I've gotten to know over the last couple of weeks, I agreed to it.

I got up bright and early and got to the diveshop at 6:10am to prep for the day's dive. At 7am, we took off. Our first dive site was The Maze, which was turned out to be a pretty good dive. We explored Willy's Hole, a small cave, and found a big green moray eel in the corner, followed directly by a large-ish spotted drum fish. About 15 minutes later, I saw a turtle and quickly got Chris & Kate's attention and we raced after it. After we caught up and had our share of turtle-watching, we turned around and headed back along the top of the reef to the boat, exploring a few smallish sand channels along the way. When all of the divers got back to the boat, we set off for our next dive site.

Not more than 5 minutes later, we spotted the first "boil," which is what you're looking for if you're whale-sharking. It's basically a bunch of activity on the surface where small fish are jumping up above the surface. Everyone scurried to the back of the boat to put on their masks, snorkels and fins, and we waited for the word from the captain. After about 5 to 10 minutes of circling around, he said GO! and I got my first glimpse of it.

Another guy (Brock) was just in front of me, and he got the best view, but I was probably second or third in the water. I basically made out the whale shark a bit ahead of us in the water but quickly going down. My first encounter lasted all of about 3 seconds, and then it was gone.

I disappointedly got back in the boat and we waited around for a bit to see if the whale shark would come back up to the surface again. Before long, we spotted a different (or perhaps the same) boil and headed towards it. This time, I was at the front of the boat and eager to get a better view. Well, I mis-heard the captain, jumped in early and didn't see anything... many others on the boat did see it, though. All I got was tired from having to swim so far back to the boat.

Well, we didn't give up, and by this time, another 5 boats had joined us in our search for the whale sharks. We waited. And waited. There were a few boils that we followed, but nothing. And then there was another boil. Fairly close to us. The captain maneuvered the boat into position and gave us the word. I jumped in and quickly looked around to see where it was because I couldn't see it from the boat. It was right underneath me. I could have touched it.

I yelped. It's not every day that there's the tail of a 7 meter/23 foot massive white-spotted black whale shark underneath you. And then I remembered that they eat plankton, not travellers, and I calmed down. It was swimming slightly faster than me, and I wasn't disappointed when it gained a couple of meters on me - it's still a massive creature and one wrong swing of the tail wouldn't feel very nice. I followed it for a minute or two from the surface with my snorkel, and then I decided to head back to the boat. I exchanged some "Awesome!"s with the Aussie fundivers and we slowly swam back to the boat.

Amazing. And the whale shark we saw is considered to be a smaller one!!!

After our swim, we headed back to the boat and took off for our next dive, which was fairly uneventful, but still good.

100 Dives!

2008-02-14T12:44:00.002-06:00

Well, I hit 100 dives yesterday. 101, to be more precise. On the hundredth dive, we descended to 100 feet at a cool dive site called the Maze. We didn't see much, but the coral wall we were going along was quite impressive, and at the end of it, one of my dive buddies spotted a massive green moray eel.

Although tradition calls for #100 to be done naked, I decided against it and donned the standard wet suit to keep myself warm.

I nearly didn't crawl out of bed yesterday to do the dives (I had to be at the dive shop at 6:10am to set up equipment), but the lure of whale sharks and a calm sea after several days of rough waters got me up. Unfortunately, I have yet to see a whale shark, but hopefully I will before I leave. I'm still crossing my fingers that we'll spot some when I'm on the boat. In the mean time, I'm going to have to continue groggily making my PB & J sandwiches before dragging myself to the dive shop. Good thing that it's less than 5 minutes to the dive shop.

My beer & rum consumption has declined in the last few days, as some hardcore party-ers left the island on Tuesday morning. I've been enjoying good nights of sleep and hangover-less mornings.

Everyone, please think happy thoughts for those whale sharks!

Disappointment

2008-02-08T12:58:00.000-06:00

Disappointment is having a great dive, then upon re-entering the boat and hearing over the radio that whale sharks have been spotted, the boat won't start.

Whilst getting slowly towed to the other side of the island, we saw about 3 or 4 boats around the same area snorkelling with the whale sharks, and we later found out that they saw not one, not two, but THREE of them.

It took us 2.5 hours to get back to the dive shop.

That's a disappointing morning. Especially since I've never seen a whale shark.

Utila update

2008-02-07T09:51:00.001-06:00

Imagine going back to some place you used to call home, and all of the things are the same, but the people have completely been replaced. That's what Utila feels like to me. I left here in June 2005, and this Sunday was my first day back on the island since then.

I went to the dive shop I was at before (Utila Watersports), and I found 100% new faces. On the island of Utila, your social network is generally formed by those at your dive shop. This island is full of drinkers with a diving problem, so it's only natural to finish off a couple of good dives by making plans to head out later on. So although I *knew* that basically no one from the old clique was here, it didn't quite hit home until I stepped through the doors and find a weird sense of familiarity in the surroundings, but no faces I recognized. I'd actually managed to have a pretty good friends network here when I was around the first time. Back to Square One.

Well, it happened fairly quickly. There are actually a few people around that I kinda knew before - the dive shop's manager, Kate, was doing some classes at the dive shop when I was doing my divemaster training, and I vaguely remember her. A couple of other people have been around for a while and know and were good friends with some of the same people that I was close to. And one friend is no longer on the island, but his sister is now here. Going out to bars, I've run into some people with familiar faces. In fact, one bartender recognized me the other night and greeted me with a "Welcome back!" and handed me a drink on the house. And the other day, I was sitting on a bench outside of the diveshop, and the owner's son drove by on his quad and was talking to some other people, then turned to me after a while and said, "Were you here before?"

So, my first night here was the Super Bowl. (This just shows how behind I am on my pop culture - I didn't find out that the game was on that evening until that same day...) When I re-introduced myself to Kate, the manager, at the diveshop, she promptly invited me out to a bar with her and some friends to check out the game. I got there a little after halftime and actually enjoyed a Super Bowl! It was a great game, and perhaps even better was a bet going on at the table... Kate and another guy agreed that if their team lost, the following Saturday (this coming weekend), they would put the winning team's name on their forehead in permanent marker AND they would drink a small bottle of some of the strongest and most vile booze on the island. It's something that sounds a bit like moonshine. As the end of the game neared, Kate and Roscoe traded off on squirming in their seats as each new goal was achieved. I'm happy that I'll be around this Saturday to see Kate with GIANTS displayed un-proudly on her face. Kate formulated and agreed to the bet because she didn't believe that her beloved Patriots could possibly lose to the Giants, and now she's gotten screwed. Anyway, it'll be entertaining.

I passed up on diving on Monday so I could have a day of hardcore relaxation, but I was at the shop at 6:10am on Tuesday morning to head out on the 7am boat. We had 2 really good dives, but unfortunately, no whale sharks. We did, however, see a huge pod of dolphins during our surface interval. Captain John drove the boat over to them, and we enjoyed watching the dolphins race along at the front of the boat, occasionally jumping up. What was amazing is that in addition to the 10 or so dolphins up near the front of the boat, there seemed to be another 40 or so in the 30 meters behind the boat. On the next turn around, we all put our fins and snorkels on and hopped into the water to swim with them. You could here the high pitched clicks and screeches with your ears in the water, and after about 20 seconds of swimming away from the boat, I saw about 30 dolphins beneath me about 10-20 meters. Beautiful! Not my first time to swim with dolphins, but it's always magical to watch these beautiful creatures up-close.

Due to a lack of divers, the boat didn't go out yesterday, but I'm going out this afternoon and tomorrow morning for more dives. My goal is to reach 100 dives by the time I leave (definitely doable) and to see whale sharks (based nearly entirely on luck...). Let's see how I do! I'll probably be here for another week. With free dives, a bed valued at $3/night and beers at just over a dollar, this place is not doing much damage on my budget.... let's just hope I leave before the rum and beer do too much damage on my liver!

Fast-tracking it

2008-02-03T18:34:00.001-06:00

3 countries in 2 days = not bad! I've been on boats for the last 5 days in my travels... I've had all kinds. 1 sailboat, 2 long & skinny speedy boats and 1 ferry.

Yesterday morning, I decided to set off for Punta Gorda, where I was thinking I was going to spend the night. I hoofed it to a dock, took a 20 minute boat ride (with a welcome breeze), then I hoofed it to the bus station and waited for the bus to Punta Gorda. On board the bus, an Australian guy sat down next to me and told me about his plans to head to Guatemala by boat that evening. I decided that if Punta Gorda didn't pique my interested, I would join him and a Swiss girl he'd met the night beforehand at his hotel and head on over to Guatemala.

We arrived to Punta Gorda at about 3:15pm, which meant we had 45 minutes to make the ferry. I took a quick peek around and decided to head on. I'd be in the water and diving faster if I moved on. We took care of the immigration stuff and hopped on board after I found a woman to give me a plate of rice and beans to go before boarding the boat.

What a ride! I have been on rougher boats, but for the hour it took to cross the ocean over to Guatemala, most of us just braced ourselves for the next pounding by the waves.

We arrived safe and sound to Puerto Barrios, which is a sketchy town by an Guatemalan's standards. I wouldn't head there by myself and spend the night, so I'm glad I had the Aussie dude and the Swiss girl along. We found a hotel and decided on sharing a room and each forked over about US$6 for our beds. We settled in, then we were off to explore town! Not much going on around town, and we were back about 45 minutes later after sorting out bus tickets for the other two. As we'd gotten off the boat, a guy asked if any of us were headed towards Honduras because he was driving a van there at 7am the following morning - so I was already sorted with my transport.

The three of us settled in at our hotel's restaurant for some grub, then we went back to the room. It was only about 8, but we were tired. We put on a movie (40 year old virgin) and I think I was passed out by about 9. I needed some good sleep!

This morning, I did some bus surfing (van, border, bus, mini-bus, bus, taxi) and then arrived at the ferry station in La Ceiba, Honduras about 10 minutes before the ferry took off for Utila. Whew! I went to my old dive shop (Utila Water Sports) to see if the old deal of free diving for 7 years if you'd done your divemaster with the shop, and it is indeed! In addition, my bed only costs $3 a night, so you can't beat that! Hopefully I'll get my own room in a few nights, but for the moment, I'm sharing with someone else.

That's all for now - I'm hoping to go out diving tomorrow afternoon. And I hear that they've spotted whale sharks in the last few days on the North Side of the island, so I'm very excited about the possibility of maybe seeing them! I missed them by a day the last time I was here about 2.5-3 years ago.

Blue Hole diving and sailing to Placencia

2008-02-02T10:54:00.000-06:00

I've found wireless! I'm writing from Placencia, Belize. We just arrived here last night after three days of sailing. More on that in a moment, but first to wrap up my time in Caye Caulker...

I enjoyed my time there, but it's so easy to spend money there! As it's an island, everything's a bit more expensive than the mainland, and Belize already has the reputation of being basically the most expensive Central American country. That means that a beer costs about US$3-4, as opposed to Nicaragua's $1 beers and Costa Rica's $1.5-2 beers. I had my own little cabin for my time there (at Ignacio's), which was one of the best deals on the beach, and I managed to score it for less than US$15/night. It just meant that I had to walk 10-15 minutes to get anywhere I needed to go in town. It was slightly run down, but I had my own bed, a bathroom, and a fan, which is really all you need.

So, the Blue Hole! I really didn't have any major expectations for the Blue Hole dive itself, but I was pleasantly surprised! It was one of my shortest dives ever, with a total dive time of 22 minutes, and it probably was the longest/roughest rides out there (2 hours) that I've done for a dive, but I'm glad I've done it once. It was quite cold, but once we got down to the 130 feet, it was one of the most unique environments I've dived in. Stalactites and Stalagmites covered in colorful lichens and things. There weren't many fish, but at the top, as we were doing our decompression stop, we saw some reef sharks not so far away. After that dive, we did two more dives - the first I thought wasn't so great, and the second was pretty decent, although I have to say that I'm a bit disappointed by the visibility here. Perhaps it's just the time of the year.... but at any rate, I love being in the water, so I enjoyed the dives. Another 2 bumpy hours later, we were back in Caye Caulker.

My last night on the island, my tour leader friend Ellis cooked me and a few friends dinner, and it was excellent! Fresh barracuda in a tomato, onion and pepper stew with lots of spices. Afterwards, we had a night out on the town with his sister and a few other friends. It was good, but probably not the best idea right before my 3 days' sailing trip. Oh well.

On Wednesday, I boarded the sailboat with 9 other people plus two staff. Unfortunately, it wasn't the best of groups... most people kept to themselves and didn't mingle all that much. And we were on a small boat.... there was Cheryl and myself who spoke English - she's a Canadian chick i shared my tent with and is a little annoying but overall bearable. There were 4 Norwegian guys who seemed cool enough, but they just sat around speaking Norwegian to each other all the time and didn't mingle much. Then there were 2 fantastic older ladies (late-40s, 50s?) from Italy who seemed like lots of fun, but there was a huge language barrier. And last but not least was what we though was a Czech couple, but they turned out just to be friends... she seemed like she was maybe fun, but she hung out with him all the time and he was BORING. I think he said like 5 words to me the entire trip. (No, it wasn't against me - he didn't talk to anyone.) Last but not least, we had the two crew members - Patrick was the captain and Dice was his crew. They were very cool and a lot of fun.

Despite the lack of interesting people, it was an amazing trip! The company really has a fantastic trip planned out (Raggamuffin Tours)... each day basically entailed a fantastic breakfast, sailing for a bit, snorkelling stop, snacks & sailing, snorkeling stop, lunch, sailing, snorkelling, arrive to an island, rum punch, set up tents, etc, dinner, more rum punch, hang out, sleep in aforementioned tents. Sailing was anywhere from 5-7 hours in one day. We had fantastic weather the whole time, and I've got a decent all-over tan now!

The first night, we were on a tiny island with nothing more than a few palm trees and a couple of palapas. Bathrooms didn't exist (they were called bushes), and it was reallly windy. That plus the fact that the crew forgot the tent pegs to hold down the tents meant a not-so-refreshing night of sleep, seeing as the tent was trying to blow away despite me and a Canadian girl inside of it!

Second night, we were on an inhabited island (English Caye) that had houses, hotels and even 2 bars! It was still tiny, but I really enjoyed that island - probably one of my favorite places in Belize that I've been to so far.

Yesterday, we arrived into Placencia at about 5pm, and I shared a room with the Canadian girl for the evening. We caught up with the two crew members for dinner and some drinks, and then the boys headed back home at about midnight. They had about 12-18 hours of sailing in front of them, poor guys! Long night, I'm sure.

Now I'm going to be heading down to Utila in the Bay Islands of Honduras, which means that first I'm going to go to Punta Gorda here in Belize, and then I'll hop aboard a boat to Guatemala, which should be about an hour or so. Placencia is quite touristy and pricey, so I'm excited to see how Punta Gorda is - i think it's a bit less touristy and it's got more Garifuna culture. I'll probably only be there for a night, but you never know!

Check out the pix I just posted from Caye Caulker on my flickr site. That's all for this time... you'll probably hear from me next from Utila!

Enjoying Belize

2008-01-27T13:22:00.000-06:00

Internet is expensive here, so not much going to be posted. I made it to the island of Caye Caulker, and I've caught up with Ellis, a Belizean tour leader who is dragging me around to see the sites. Yesterday, we rented a golf cart and toured around the island, which was fun, and then in the evening, we went on a sunset sailing trip which was all right. You just end up getting loaded before dinner time, which is never a good idea. I was on my way home at 10pm, and I woke up with a thick head at 8:30 to head off to the island of San Pedro.
When I went to look for Ellis to go, I found him still sleeping in his bed at 10, but he promised me we'd go on the 11:30 ferry. 11:30 rolled around, and he wasn't at the dock, so I went back and woke him up again and dragged him to lunch with me. Today's a lazy day.
Tomorrow, I'm going to dive the Blue Hole, and the following day, I'm off for a 3-day sailing trip on down to Placencia, in the south. It should be good, but no updates until afterwards. I'm looking forward to the diving tomorrow!

Oh, the luck....

2008-01-25T09:42:00.000-06:00

Wednesday morning, I ran around getting some things ready for a package I was mailing... it was a challenge finding a box that wasn´t the size of a TV! Post office doesn´t sell them, nor the stationery store they sent me to... eventually, after asking at several corner shops, I found one with a box full of empty boxes. Hooray! So, I was sitting at the post office with my box, with my goods, with the brown paper required to cover the box, and a big roll of tape. And the post office guys seemed so helpful at first! ¨Here, let me help you cut the box down in size so it can be sent for cheaper... and let me help you cover it with paper.... so, what´s your name?¨ Me: ¨Why?¨ Him: ¨Because you´re very pretty, white girl.¨ Me: ¨Thank you, but I´m at the post office to mail a package, and I don´t need this right now. And I can cover it myself.¨ Note that he is a good 20-30 years older than me. Sheesh... He sat back down and didn´t bother me any more.

That afternoon, I headed to the bus station at about 3:15pm, just in time for my 3:30 bus. The bus didn´t actually arrive until 4pm, so I shouldn´t have hurried. At about 4:15, we pulled away from the bus station. Usually, I´m very ok with the Mexican Time, but this time, I had a connection to make in Chetumal. My bus was originally scheduled to arrive at about 3:30am in Chetumal, and the bus to Playa Mahahual left at 5am. So, 45 minutes behind, I was a little worried about the connection, but what can you do about it?

My seat partner, a Mexican woman of about 50, didn´t really talk much, but once it turned dark, she did have a tendency to start to veer towards my seat as she fell asleep, so I had to gently nudge her back to her side. I slept a little bit here and there (thanks to the motion sickness pill I took strictly because it makes you drowsy), and right in the middle of one of those times that I did fall asleep, I wake up to find a military man with a gun in the aisle of the bus. Checking for firearms and explosives, which means that everyone needs to get off the bus to watch them while they go through your bags looking for those things. That´s been going on for about 6 months now (as far as I know), and it´s annoying enough at about 1pm, but when it´s at 1am and interrupting your beauty sleep, it´s extremely annoying. Anyway, they didn´t find my guns and M-80s, so we were allowed to move on.

At about 4:45am, I woke up with a start and realized that the bus had stopped... and it was Chetumal! I ran off the bus to find they were waiting for me to claim my bag, and then I went inside to check on bus times. There was also a bus at 6am to Mahahual, so I decided to wait an hour and freshen up a bit. Bus arrived at about 6:30, and I hopped on board headed for Mahahual. Along the way, I saw many mangled houses and billboards, which were part of the destruction of a hurricane that passed through several months ago. When I arrived to Mahahual, there was construction everywhere. Everyone was rebuilding their hotels, homes, restaurants, etc. I asked a man in a shop if he could look after my big bag while I searched for a hotel, and he agreed to it. I set off, and needless to say, every place I found was 3-4 times more expensive than I wanted to pay. All of the cheap accommodation had been blown away. It was beautiful, but since I´m going to travel so much, I don´t want to spend 4 night´s worth of accom money in 1 night. So I decided to head back to Chetumal. The next bus was at 1pm, so I plopped myself down at a beach restaurant and had a juice, and at noon, I ordered a beer and dove into my book.

At about 4pm, I rolled back into Chetumal not knowing what I was going to do - my options were to a) find a hotel for the night in Chetumal, b) see if there was a bus heading to Belize that evening, although it´d be kinda sketchy arriving into Belize City at night or c) sleep in the bus station and take the 5am bus to Belize City. I walked up to the ticket counter, and my problems were solved when I heard, ¨Leah, que haces aqui?!¨ I turned around, and it was another tour leader from GAP. He was on his time off and travelling with a friend, and they were also heading to Belize but had heard there was Carneval in Chetumal and were considering staying for the evening. They said it was ok if I tagged along, so that´s what I did. We flipped a coin, and we ended up staying in Chetumal.

Carneval wasn´t all that much - it was a parade of kids in costumes, then there was some music in a park and lots of street vendors selling food. And beer. And not many foreigners at all. We downed a few beers, grabbed some street food, downed some more beer, then (against our better judgment) decided to tackle one of the carneval rides. This one spins you around and around in an up and down motion so your stomach drops ever couple of turns. And it goes backwards most of the time. A full 10 minutes later, we got off on wobbly legs and decided to head home. We got a full 8 hours of sleep and are now at the bus station waiting for the bus.

Tonight I´ll be on an island (Caye Caulker), though, and all will be well. I´m really glad I ran into Martin and his friend - another example of the good coincidences that happen on the road!

Leaving San Cristobal

2008-01-23T09:50:00.000-06:00

I've spent the last while here in San Cristobal in Chiapas, Mexico. Today, I've got a ticket to the Caribbean coast, so I'm finally leaving.

San Cristobal is one of my favorite places, but it's somewhat counter-intuitive that I love it so much. The three strikes against it are that it's cold, it's not very close to the beach (seeing a pattern here), and it's got a lot of tourist traffic.

But there are many things to love about it, too, including some of those tourists. The foreigners who hang out here come in several varieties... you've got the 1-or-2-dayers, who are here to check out the textiles & Mayan culture and appreciate its colonial charm.

Then there are the backpackers who enjoy the above plus the good nightlife, and they end up staying close to a week. They have live music here every night. And not just in one or two bars - I can count at least 4 bars that have live music every night of the week that they're open. And that live music is more along the lines of reggae and ska, as opposed to salsa, merengue and cumbia (which are also prevalent, but not as heavily as in other Latin towns).

There are also lots of hippies/artesanos who sell their wares (mostly jewelry) in the markets and on the streets at night who came for a few days and ended up staying here for weeks or months because of the music, the nightlife, the cheap food and cheap accommodation.

The expats who now call San Cristobal home are pretty decent, usually slightly alternative/hippie-ish, but still pretty down-to-earth. There's a large number of French, French Canadian, and Italians who have decided to settle down here, which means that there are some good restaurants around. Unlike some places in Costa Rica and Nicaragua where you see a lot of divorced and retired men praying upon the sweet local flesh, that's not generally a reason why the expats come here. In fact, I don't recall seeing any of that here, which is refreshing. That's probably because of the lack of warm weather/beach - the pretty young thangs are quite covered up here, so not as much flesh to gawk at.

What this all means is that this place is full of people drawn to this place for similar reasons as I am (music, ambiance, beauty, vibe), and there's hardly a dull moment around. On top of that, I stay at a hostel that has a pretty well-stocked kitchen, and I've been cooking up a storm the past 10 days. Veggie curry last night, home-made creamy tomato and basil sauce with pasta last week, quesadillas, and some good ol' sloppy joe-fu. (Thanks, bro, for coining that name.)

Maybe it's because I've spent more time here than in other Mexican towns, but maybe it's because it only happens here (I doubt it), there are two things that I think are kinda funny, but once you get the hang of it, it works!:

1)The people who sell big jugs of purified water just drive around town all day with a big speaker on top of their truck that blares "The water theme song," which, depending on the company, can be a Mission: Impossible-type theme with a guy announcing the arrival of water to your doorstep just a few blocks away dubbed over or it could be a cheerful xylophone sort of tune. It seems weird and/or annoying at first, but it works. You need water, you know when it's coming with a couple of block's notice. You just hope the driver's shift doesn't start at 7am.

2) The propane gas guys function much in the same way with the back of their truck full of canisters of different sizes. They don't have a theme song; they just have a chain with different-sized metal rings hanging off of the back which end up jingling around as they hit the cobblestones and you hear a multi-tonal metal-against-stone sort of sound. Again, annoying at first, but when I used the last of the gas one day, it worked out AOK.

I'm sad to be leaving here because I know people, and when I go out at night, I run into old acquaintances. However, I haven't quite developed any really strong friendships, so it's probably best I get a move on and start my vacation. And get some of my color back. :)

In the beginning...

2008-01-22T18:20:00.000-06:00

Anyone who's known me for a while knows that I'm pretty crap at keeping in touch with everyone... my work was an excuse for a long time ("I'm so busy!"), but now that I no longer have that going for me, my true colors are going to show - that I'm just not the best at keeping in touch. Now that doesn't mean that I don't love to open up my e-mail inbox to find messages (short or long) from friends and family... in fact, I'm always a bit disappointed when no one has written me.

Why do I think writing a blog will work? I don't, really. I have a feeling that it'll be something that I do for a bit, then I'll slowly but surely melt off the face of cyberspace... But then again, I may not.

Anyway, that said, a friend (thanks, Katie!) told me that as a woman who gets around so much, I really ought to start a blog regardless, and it doesn't matter if I write once a day, once a week or once a month. And she's probably right. My mom said that she feels dumb when people ask her what country I'm in, and she can't give more than a general continent - well, until I forget all about blogging, this might be her solution.

This is the beginning of things for me in a sense, seeing as I just wrapped up one chapter of my life (tour leader), and I'm starting another (mini-trip around the world). Further chapters might be all over the place, but at least this one will be documented.

So, for those of you who don't know, here's the scoop on my next several months:

Now through March 12
- Mexico (San Cristobal & beach)
- Belize (diving, sailing, island hopping)
- Utila, Honduras (more diving)
- Nicaragua (San Juan del Sur, baby! Bring on the Flor de Cana.)
- Costa Rica (say hi to a friend's new baby, bye to old co-workers en route to the airport)

March 13-26
- Dublin (St. Patty's Day!, visiting friends)

March 26-April 2
- Rome (visiting another friend)

April 3-Julyish?
- Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos (no set itin yet)

And then back to the States just in time for my 10 year high school reunion in Iowa, whenever that may be.

Throughout it all, I'll be posting some of my best pictures on http://www.flickr.com/photos/roamingleah , so check back frequently for updates.

That's all for now. And you hung in there until the end! Congrats...