Float down the Mekong- Lao

On the River
Our journey truly began for me when we sailed away from Houayxai down the Mekong. Of course, I immediately nerded out and started photographing every rock and gravel bar. here, the river flowed fast and muddy brown through a relatively narrow valley, with jagged rock formations throughout. Watching the scenery change as we plowed downriver was infinitely entertaining, as was watching the huge group of British teenagers aboard get drunker and drunker until they were unbearable to everyone else on the boat. We arrived for a quick sleep in the tiny hamlet of Pakbeng that seemed only to exist to cater to the literal boatload of tourists that arrive daily. We shared a remarkable candlelit Lao feast overlooking the river with friends we had met on the boat, Ashley and Ben who had just returned from the Peace Corps in Namibia, Alex the Muy Thai boxer, Giu the mechanic...ect Our room was little more than a mattress and mosquito net but we slept soundly and when we woke up it was my birthday! I can live to be 101 and never again have a birthday that so perfectly awakens my creative energy as that day did. Floating the Mekong all day and pulling in to the magical ancient city of Luang Prabang at sunset...it was sublime.

Luang Prabang
Luang Prabang was a whirlwind of gilded wats, huge piles of fresh guavas, mangoes, pawpaw and pineapple for breakfast, late night street crepes, and relaxation.
After a full day spent wandering in and out of wats and galleries, stopping to refresh from the heat with pineapple smoothies, we capped off our exploration of the city by climbing Luang Prabang's only hill to Wat That Phu Si to see the city, river, and dozens of golden wats that dot the hillsides bathed in mellow sunset light. Afterward, we met up with Ben 2 for a street food dinner like no other. Sipping Beer lao from coolers next to the grills, we squeezed in at picnic tables and ate whole juicy Mekong fish stuffed with lemongrass and grilled on bamboo skewers (absolute perfection!), fresh spring rolls, pho noodles, spicy pork sausage patties, grilled chicken...wow.

To work off all that street food, we decided to try biking to a nearby waterfall the next day. Since it was over 30km away, we threw our bikes on top of a tuktuk and hitched a ride up to the waterfall to cut down on time. With a new friend, Bibi, a young Dutch photographer and an older (fellow Oregonian!) gentleman named Neal, we set off in search of paradise and we were not disappointed. Now, if you know me, you know that my life's mission involves swimming in beautiful water. I have quite a discerning eye for nice places to swim and an almost uncontrollable urge to throw myself into water that inspires me. This place was almost too beautiful; it looked as though it had been landscaped and the water was an unearthly opaque turquoise. I'll let the pictures speak for themselves. After some adventurous trekking to the top of the falls where we explored deep pools of this unique water amidst the buttress roots of the forest, we dove into the lower pools for a breathless 15-minute swim.

Chilled to the bone and giddy with happiness, we said bye to our friends and hopped on our bikes for the dusty ride home. On the ride, we noted how different the surrounding countryside was from Luang Prabang, more representative to what we had seen elsewhere in Lao. At that point, we were convinced that Luang Prabang was almost exclusively an amusement park for tourists and really wasn't representative of Lao. As a light rain began to fall, we boarded an overnight bus that night for Vientienne, looking forward to seeing the Lao that exists for the Lao people.

Vientienne
It rained steadily during our time in Vientienne. Under an umbrella borrowed from our guesthouse, Ben and I cozied up and walked the streets of Vientienne, visiting both the Cambodian embassy (for our next visas) and US embassy (I needed more pages in my poor, overworked passport). We visited the Lao history museum and checked out the massive bank stabilization project going on at the waterfront before filling up on some delicious Italian food and boarding another overnight bus to Pakse.

Southern Lao

Our destination: the 4000 islands of the Mekong that mark the border of Lao and Cambodia. To get there, after exhausting multiple travel methods, we found ourselves on an overcrowded typical Lao transportation vehicle: a truck with a covered bed and three rows of benches in the bed. We were delighted to be reunited with two plucky British ladies, Pippa and Jean, that we had met the night before on the bus. At 65 and 68, Pippa and Jean were traveling SE Asia with the style and positive attitude that we seldom noted in younger travelers. As we settled into the hour trip to Champasak, the vehicle stopped and the driver loaded 3 huge propane tank s onto the roof, adding to our cargo of more than 25 people and various market goods, including huge Mekong fish. We weren't 20 minutes down the road, when the driver tried to pass someone and ran off the road, flipping the vehicle. The car dragged down the shoulder for about 30 feet before coming to a stop. Ben and I were on the bottom of the pile, with 25 people, 2 benches, and the huge Mekong fish on top of us. We escaped the rubble to see that we had been extraordinarily lucky: Pippa and Jean, sitting to one side o f us had been injured and both were bleeding, while the Buddhist nun who had been beside me had an enormous contusion on her head. Our first reaction was action- we ran around delivering first aid to people. But then, we all just kind of sat on the side of the road, dazed, wondering what to do next. I found someone who looked like he was in charge and he got a guy to drive us all to the hospital back in Pakse in his truck. Even though Ben and I were fine, we stuck with the tremendously courageous Pippa and Jean while they got stitched up at the hospital and then accompanied them (in a nic e safe van!) down to Champasak. Check them out in the pict ure, only hours after leaving the hospital and they are smiling!


4000 Islands of the Mekong
The next day we said g oodbye to Jean and Pippa (who never missed a beat, holding court in our guesthouse and regaling the other guests with our tale, always smiling and laughing) and we continued sou th to the Lao-Cambodian border where the Mekong widens and slows through an archipelago of islands, some big enough to support villages, others, just a clump of brush that barely holds its head above water. As the water slows, it dr ops all of its sediment and the color of the water turns from the churned sandy brown that we had come to know as the Mekong at this point, into a clear, emerald green, permitting us views of the fish that graze among the islands of vegetation. We set up shop in a hut right over the water and set about relaxing and recovering from our post-traumatic stress of the accident.

When we weren't drinking Beer Lao on our ba lc ony and watching the sun set into the river, we were out and about, exploring our little island and beyond, on foot, bikes, and kayaks. While kayaking just over the Cambodian border, we spotted the extremely rare Mekong dolphins. We also discovered a near-private beach with a calm cove of green Mekong water, perfect for swimming, just downstream of a huge waterfall.

X-mas in China

Here are some pictures from a trip that Kelly and I took over Christmas time. We went down to Jian Shui. Enjoy...........

Riding on the back of a "taxi" upon our arrival

Eating cold pigs feet for Christmas dinner


Sunset tea session on our balcony


View from our balcony


The area is known for tasty shao kao(street BBQ).....this was a yummy stuffed eggplant we ate


Entrance to one of China's largest caves that we visited


Inside the cave

Float down the Mekong River- the beginning

So we have left Yunnan Province for the first time since arriving in China 6 months ago. China is on holiday for the upcoming Spring Festival and we have decided to use the time to explore the Lower Mekong Basin. We started out with a series of bus trips- a 10-hour very comfy sleeper from Kunming to Xishuangbanna, a 7am jaunt to the sleepy town of Mengla, a very crowded minibus to the tiny Chinese border town, Mohan, and back onto a big bus- for five minutes until we reach the Lao border. And all this before noon! Exhausted from our travels, we fell asleep once over the border and awoke to realize we had missed our stop in the northern Lao town of Nam Tha. By the time we realized our mistake, we were two hours west, heading to the Thai border. We were disappointed, as we had looked forward to doing some hiking in Nam Tha, but like good travelers we turned our frowns upside down and let the road take us where it may, which in this case turned out to be the Lao-Thai border town of Houayxai... well almost. The bus driver let us off about 5km from Houaixai and we hoofed it the rest of the way, ending over 24 hours of continual motion at a friendly guesthouse right on the Mekong. We spent a lazy day recovering from the full travel day by watching the steady stream of tourists cross the Mekong from Thailand. Everyone who enters Lao is greeted by a large poster listing all of the things that Westerners love to do that are offensive to Laos- like putting our feet on things, dressing scantily, PDA. We saw very quickly why us Westerners get a bad rap!

But the Laos are extremely patient and gracious hosts, thankfully. Ben and I spent a memorable evening at a Lao pre-wedding party. We had passed a thatch-roof open air bar full of locals that looked like they were having fun, barbequeing and playing music, so we stopped in and sat at an empty table. Immediately, a gregarious Lao approached us and invited us to eat and drink with his family. It turned out that the celebration was for his brother, who was getting married the next morning. As his brother had lived in Hangzhou for 5 years, we were able to communicate very well with him using Chinese. We have been really impressed by the excellent English we have heard here, but most members of the wedding party had only rough English. After leaving the wedding party, we stopped to take pictures of the sunset over the Mekong from the steps of a monastery. We saw a very small nun lugging huge bags up the steps, and after all the Chinese conversation at the wedding, my brain hadn't switched back to English, so I offered to help her, in Chinese. She spoke Chinese as well and Ben and I helped her up to her dorm with her bags. It was very nice getting to practice some Chinese!

Shangri-La photos

Tiger Leaping Gorge photos

Typical nonsensical Chinese sign guiding us on the trail.

the "safe path"

head dunk in a cold waterfall

feeling good 10 minutes in...

traffic jam: sharing the trail with goats

waterfall over the trail

Kelly on the trail

our Irish friends

perspective

halfway

best view from a $9 hotel room

Halfway guesthouse

Kelly on a ladder

the "dangerous ladder"

Photos from Lijiang

Canals of Old Lijiang

Yu Long Xue Shan (Jade Dragon Snow Mountain)

Busch Gardens, I mean, Old Lijiang

Our bike ride towards the Himalayan "foothills"

there were lots of big spiders!

Foothills of the Himalayas Part III: Shangri-La

First prize goes to me and Ben No. 2 (a Kiwi we had met hiking) for finding the most ridiculously crazy van driver in the world. As the two "Chinese speakers" we were sent off to negotiate cheap transportation for our group of seven from the Gorge to Shangri-La. The older, saner drivers were not willing to meet our price, but Johnny, or #1 Driver, as he called himself was happy to oblige. Mullet flying, he karate-chopped his way to the van and off we went. We were not 10 minutes down the road, when we came across a fresh landslide that had just buried the road. Well, guess we have to go back right? Not with Johnny #1 Driver. We hopped out of the van and ran for our lives across fresh, unstable landslide, from which small rocks were sliding and Johnny #1 Driver followed with a burst of speed across the rubble.

We reached Shangri-La with no further mishaps, aside from some slightly unprofessional conversation topics from Johnny #1 Driver. The landscape and culture changed considerably in the 3 hours between the Gorge and Shangri-La. We had left Naxi territory and now were in a Tibetan lands. The huge mountains were still there, but now we were out of the foothills and officially on the plateau. The weather was much colder and Tibetan stupas dotted the alpine meadows of the plateau. We were starving, and after checking into a 300 year old guesthouse, we made our way to a Tibetan restaurant. I had always heard that Tibetan food is bland and boring, but the Chinese/Tibetan meal that we consumed was beyond amazing. The raw yak meat holds the place of honor as most weird yet delicious of the 30 odd dishes we sampled. Yak cheese fried in butter, not so good (in my opinion, but if you get some rice, add a bite of yak meat and top in with cheese...). We literally ate until we passed out.

Highlights from Shangri-La include spinning the world's largest Buddhist prayer wheel, drinking the world's best hot chocolate, and inciting a riot. Many of the hikers we had met on the Gorge trail ended up in Shangri-la with us and one night we were headed out to dinner en masse. A group of foreigners always catches attention in China, even in a touristy place like Shangri-la. A bunch of Chinese stopped us and asked to take our picture, and we pulled them into the picture with us. More people kept stopping to take pictures, and we kept insisting they join the shot. Pretty soon, anyone innocent person walking down the street was grabbed and added to the group until we had blocked the entire street with a group of about 80 people, foreign and Chinese.
Our last day in Shangri-La we again joined our big group of foreign friends and hired a van to go to some hot springs right outside of town. Warm and relaxed from the springs, we said goodbye to our new friends and got on another 15-hour sleeper bus back to Kunming. Again, I slept the whole way (even though my blanket smelled like feet) and woke just before dawn as we pulled into Kunming. It felt good to be home.

Foothills of the Himalayas Part II: Tiger Leaping Gorge

Day One
After bumming around Lijiang for a couple days, we were ready to leave the theme park and go back to China. We took a bus to the tiny town of Qiatou, the start of the Tiger Leaping Gorge trail. The Gorge is where the Jinsha Jiang (headwaters of the Yangtze River) cuts between two massive mountain ranges. On either side of the river are 15,000+ peaks and the trail winds about 3.000 feet above the river. We got a bit of a late start that day, following the often nonsensical signs in Chinese that pointed out the way. We didn't get too far down the trail before we met a friendly Irish couple. We got to chatting and stopped at a small guesthouse for a couple beers, which turned into multiple beers, dinner, great conversation, an impromptu guitar concert, and gazing at the brilliant stars atop a pile of corn before falling asleep.

Day Two
The four of us managed to get an early start the next morning, despite the carnage of beer bottles and empty packs of horrible Chinese cigarettes that we left in our wake. The trail was brutally uphill for a couple hours, but then we turned a corner, and the view of the gorge, mountains, and valley below were worth every bit of the effort. We again intended to put in a full day of hiking, but mid-afternoon we stopped at a guesthouse for a drink and snack, and found the views so incredible that we were reluctant to leave. There was a rooftop patio from which you could practically touch Jade Dragon Snow mountain. Even the toilets had beautiful views! We booked a room where we had a gorgeous mountain view from our bed and celebrated with a glass of wine on the roof patio. Many other hikers arrived that night and we had a great time getting to know a few new friends.

Day Three
The next morning we slept in a bit and left the guesthouse after most of our new friends. The last part of the trail was very steep. At one point, a huge waterfall cascaded right onto the trail and we carefully had to pick our way through the pool, trying not to look at the 1000 or so feet that we would fall if we followed the water. The trail ended too soon, and before we knew it we were reunited with our friends at the end of the trail. We decided to continue the adventure and hike down the very steep and treacherous trail to the elevation of the river. The trip down was harrowing, especially the parts where we had to lower ourselves down the cliff face on rickety ladders. At one point the path bifurcated and a sign let us know we could take our choice of "Safe Path" or "Dangerous Ladder". The roar of the river, squished between two mountain ranges, was deafening and certainly certain death to anyone who ventured in for a dip. After hauling ourselves back up 3,000 vertical feet out of the gorge, our sweaty, grubby group got our egos bruised slightly when we saw spotless Chinese women coming up the same trail we had just climbed, decked out in Gucci clothes and very non-sensible shoes.

Foothills of the Himalayas Part I: Lijiang

We had to get out of the city. Ben and I had been in Kunming for more than 2 months and really hadn't ventured out to explore. We decided to test out Chinese traveling skills with a trip to Northwest Yunnan, an area internationally famous for its beautiful scenery of mountains and wild rivers, incredible biodiversity, and unique cultures. We started our trip with a "sleeper" bus from Kunming to Lijang. For those of you yet to experience Chinese transportation, a sleeper bus has no seats, instead there are rows of double-decker bunks, one on each side of the bus and one in the middle, separated by narrow aisles. Not a bad way to travel, if you don't start to wonder about the hygiene of the last 20 or so people who slept in the bunk before you did... I passed out as we left Kunming and woke up just in time to catch the sunrise over some incredibly huge mountains. The air in Lijiang was crisp and the sky was a perfect, deep blue. We wandered into the old part of the city, and all of a sudden, we were no longer in China. Rather, we were in some Busch Gardens-style theme park depicting ancient China. Old Lijiang was way too clean and organized to actually be real China. Although it was inherently cheesy, we were perfectly content to sped a couple days wandering the quaint cobble-stoned alleys of a place where our every need had been anticipated.

We checked into a charming little guesthouse where the rooms of the 150-year old building opened into a central courtyard and then "touristed" around Old Lijiang for the rest of the day. On the immaculate streets, old stone bridges crossed the canals of clear water that crisscrossed the city. An literal army of workers with brooms and nets made certain that no trash or leaves polluted the city's canals or streets. Lijiang is the historical home of the Naxi ethnic minority and each building was traditional Naxi architecture; wood framed with tile roofs and curving eaves.

One of the highlights of Lijiang actually came when we left Old Lijiang and wandered the New Town in search of the ultimate street food breakfast. We started with a piece of Naxi baba, thick bread that is fried and then baked next to coals in an improvised oven made out of 55 gallon drum. Then we had some tea eggs, hard boiled eggs steeped in a salty broth of tea and herbs. Then some fresh tangerines from a fruit stand. Finally, the coup d'grace, another big piece of Naxi bread, this one soft and doughy rather than fried, stuffed with all the fixins: hot sauce, pickled chillis, strips of raw potato, and pickled vegetables. Yum! After all that fuel, we rented some bikes and biked out of town towards the hills. The 'hills' we saw were the Jade Dragon Snow mountains, the eastern-most foothills of the Himalayas. I say foothills because that is what people call them, despite the fact that they are 20,000 ft tall, snow-covered peaks!

China Bus Adventure #2 (will it go round in circles?)

It started as an innocent Friday evening trip to the Carrefour. Little did we know that we'd embarked upon an EPIC trip that would test our limits and push the extremes of discount shopping. We must have been feeling quite confident in our abilities to navigate Kunming, because for the first time ever we decided to test the Kunming bus system. There is a bus stop located right in front of our house. It was high time that we figure out how to use it. So off we were on bus 100, which Ben remembered dropped off just a few short blocks from the Carrefour. Ben also knew that the Carrefour stop was only 2 stops away, so we were a bit dismayed when, eight stops later, we still had yet to see the Carrefour. No panic...these buses travel in loops...right? We figured we would cool our heels and catch the lovely sights of our great city from the bus window and eventually we would come full circle and reach our destination. The problem was that there weren't any open seats and we're both too tall to see out the window when standing. So, standing squished between Chinese grandmas, little kids, sleeping babies, and shopping bags, the few glimpses that we managed to catch out the window informed us that we were, in fact not traveling in a loop, but rather heading out of town! So 30 minutes later we finally realized where we were....heading back to An Ning Hot Springs. Our suspicions were confirmed when the bus pulled into a large parking lot on the outskirts of Kunming and the one passenger who remained (besides ourselves) got off. Then we drove another 100 feet and the bus driver got off. As he was climbing down, he gave us that super special look that always cuts right through the language barrier. It said...what are you crazy white people doing still on my bus? Kelly had a quick exchange and determined that he was heading out to eat dinner. He told us to get off the bus and wait right here (he pointed to the ground in front of the bus) and another bus would come to take us back to Kunming. So now , here we were, hanging out in front of the bus station (which everyone knows is always the safest place to be) in the growing twilight. Flash forward another 45 minutes and we'd finally gotten back on the bus and were heading in the right direction. We both smiled as we cruised back by our house and on to the right stop. Just as Ben said, 2 stops after the one near our house (the one where we had gotten on the bus 2 hours before), we pulled up to the Carrefour.

We should give you some background as to why this mission was necessary in the first place. Most of the foods we buy in the stores near our home are expired. Apparently, when products in Shang Hai and Bei Jing reach their pull date, they get sent to western China. We had heard that Carrefour has high quality standards and needed to check out their vast selection of unexpired food. Additionally, we had heard numerous tales and myths about boxed mac n' cheese, and other cheap Western delights available at the Carrefour.

How surprised were we to find the same expired Chinese goods that are available at our corner markets? The mythical Western aisle turned out to be smaller than Kanye West's popularity after the MTV music awards. Just some expired Italian cookies and other non-Chinese Asian foods (Thai mostly). There was not a box of Kraft mac 'n cheese to be seen. Funny, in the US, it is not often that we get a hankering for box mac 'n cheese (in fact, Kelly is rather snobbish about powdered cheese products), but here we were just looking for a little taste of America. We looked around for a while and were able to score some Listerine and some real bread (read, "unsweetened"). The buses had stopped running by the time we finished our outing, so even though we now knew which bus to get on, we had to walk home.